Have a Healthy Learning Mindset

Share This Post: getting into a healthier, more creative state of mind, with Renzie Baluyut.

Besides my competencies in marketing communications, or people skills, or whatever skill set I’ve got going on, I think one of the most important attributes I have is my desire to learn.

It is a hunger for knowledge, an affinity for picking up new skills, and an equivalent desire to share what I know.

I have particularly appreciated this realization at my current age– 35, at the time of this blog post- even as I feel fairly accomplished, and thus far generally satisfied with my career and life choices.

Right now, at the top of my head?  I’d like to learn about growing my own herb and vegetable garden, or building even better websites.  I’d like to pick up more digital photography skills, and make better meat sauce, or learn to cook great soup completely from scratch.  More:  I’d like to learn to sail, and fly, and dive, and cover Depeche Mode on synths, or Boston or Dave Matthews on Guitar.

Fortunately, the internet allows us access to all the things we want to get into.  At the very least, there are all kinds of websites and e-books available to anyone who can do a fairly comprehensive search. You got all sorts of blogs and podcasts on a wide variety of topics, as niche as it can possibly be.

Then you got discussions, forums, and all kinds of communities- so you can go ahead and test your knowledge against everyone else’s.  And finally you have webinars and all sorts of e-learning programs- real convenient as you can listen to a speaker from halfway across the world while you’re having breakfast in your shorts back home in Manila.

The point is: learning now has never been easier or more convenient.  We still have our books and our films and workshops and classes, but now, there are so many additional options available, both online and off.

So go ahead- watch a new how-to video now, join the discussions on your favorite blog, share a link you found this morning on Facebook and Twitter, or sign up for a free webinar today.

This is a great time to learn all the things you ever wanted to learn.

Now is the best time to have a healthy learning mindset.

Thanks to Michael Jastremski for the cute photo.

Cheers, everyone.

Baz Luhrmann’s “Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)”

Share This Post: listening once more to the Mary Schmich-Baz Luhrmann collaboration, with Renzie Baluyut.

About ten years ago, I remembered pushing for this song to get more airplay at the radio station I was working for then.

The song was “Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)” by Baz Luhrmann.  It came out in one of those international samplers the station subscribed to, and I loved it the first time I heard it.

It was inspirational, it was different, it had a positive message to it, and it made for great listening. At the time, the prevailing rumor was that it was taken word-for-word from a Kurt Vonnegut commencement speech he gave for the graduating class of MIT.

Much later, it turns out that Kurt Vonnegut had nothing to do with the song.  The original piece of work was by Mary Schmich, a columnist for the Chicago Tribune.

From Wikipedia:

Luhrmann explains that Anton Monsted, Josh Abrahams and he were working on the remix when Monsted received an email with the supposed Vonnegut speech. They decided to use it but were doubtful of getting through to Vonnegut for permission before their deadline, which was only one or two days away. While searching the internet for contact information they came upon the “Sunscreen Controversy” and discovered that Schmich was the actual author. They emailed her and, with her permission, recorded the song the next day.

However, “Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)” wasn’t radio-friendly- the single ran for more than 7 minutes (you can play 2 songs in 7 minutes), and it wasn’t backed up by any significant marketing effort from the local recording companies.

I managed to sneak the song in several times within some of my special programs, but Baz Luhrmann’s “Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)” unfortunately, never saw the heavy radio rotation I felt it deserved.

Nevertheless, the song remains very inspiring even to this day.  So here it is, along with the spoken-word lyrics to it.  I hope it inspires you too.

Renzie Ten Years From Now

a snapshot of a vision inside the head of Renzie Baluyut.

We’ve all been asked, “so how do you see yourself <insert arbitrary number here> years from now?”

One thing I’ve realized is that this seemingly innocent, yet over-asked question, actually gives you a chance to evaluate your Grand Strategy over your life.  And by “Grand Strategy”, I mean a visualization of exactly what you want to achieve within the next- in this case, ten years.

“I want to be rich.”  “I want to be famous.”  “I want to live happy.”  These would be some of the more typical answers to the aforementioned question.  Nothing wrong with wanting to be rich, or famous, or happy, or thinner, or successful, really.  But you have to paint a clearer picture:

How rich is rich?  Do you want your own G5 jet shuttling you back and forth European cities?  A Bentley for each day of the week?  Similarly, how famous is famous?  Having a million followers on Twitter?  Five thousand friends on Facebook?

The point of filling in all these details, is to put together a realistically attainable (yet challenging) scenario of your future self.  If you were an Isaac Mendez- you’d paint this picture out in a mutant power-induced instant.  This is your destiny, one that you will have to carve out for yourself.

On this one particular beautiful spring morning, I decided to answer that over-asked question and fill in the details of my own vision of the future.  Allow me to acknowledge my vision of a typical day in the life of Renzie ten years from now.

Ten years from now will be 2019.

I see in my mind a beautiful 2-storey house that might be in a residential area in Glendale or Long Beach.  The kids are just about heading off to school with lunches I packed them earlier that day.  My wife’s getting ready for work too.  As she drives off for the day, I head on to the adjoining home office to get things done.

Yep, I have a home-based office, from which I run a network of small business ventures, just after breakfast.

• I have a couple of property management companies- one to oversee the day-to-day operations of a number of apartments along the West Coast, and another buying, selling and renting out real estate in various parts of the Philippines.
• A travel and tours company is just about getting a final count on a number of parties heading out to Blizzcon 2019 at the Anaheim Convention Center.  Tour teams to Disney Resort and Knotts Berry Farm have been prepped and good to go, according to this morning’s report.
• A shipment of anime DVDs, dolls, action figures and other collectibles from Japan will be arriving tomorrow, according to my geek-friendly coffee shop based in Pasadena.  I’ll be dropping by later that afternoon to check out the inventories.

After poring through the rest of the sales figures and reports, signing checks and managing the other online accounts, I head off to town to get even more stuff done.

By 10:30 AM, I’m at the gym, working on tone and cardio for the most part.  I meet up with a client for late lunch, then stop by the coffee shop in Pasadena.  It shares floor space with a hobbies and collectibles shop, and has a nice little niche market of gamers and geeks, both casual and hardcore.

I get a call at 3PM from my wife- reminding me to pick the kids up from school, and to swing by PetSmart for some cat food and litter.  I round up the kids from school and take them out for some ice cream, right before heading off to the store to grab the supplies.

Instead of cooking dinner that night, the kids wanted some pasta and pizza, so we drive on over to a nearby restaraurant and order some carry-out.  My lovely wife is already home, spending some much-needed play time with the cats.

Over dinner, we all talk about school and the latest Twilight movie, which the kids want to see on Friday afternoon, as we would all be out camping over the weekend.  Gotta check on all our gear tomorrow to see what else we might be needing before heading out for the outdoors shop in the afternoon.

As Mom helps out with the kids’ homework, I check my email: approving the copy for a bunch of sales materials for a client due for printing the next day, online brochures for new apartments in Metro Manila, friends confirming game night two weekends from now, a business partner’s itinerary as she flies in from the Philippines next month, and a marketing proposal from a nearby computer shop.  I sync my handheld with my PC, and power down for the evening.

The kids are allowed an hour to play with their XBox 19.  Wife and I retreat to the den and squeeze in an hour of online gaming.  We then get the kids ready for bed and tuck them in.  We get ready for bed as well; she watches her reality shows recorded on DVR while I read a couple of chapters from the latest Robert Greene book.  After making sure the alarms are set right, we both catch some much-needed shuteye to take on a brand new day come morning.

That’s going to be me ten years from now.  A daydream on a blog post perhaps, but also a roadmap.  In my next post, let’s break it all down together, and join me pick on my own brains.

But for now, ask yourself this same question:  How do you see yourself ten years from now?

And this time, really paint yourself a detailed mental picture.

Cheers, everyone!

Wanna Get More Creative? Get Some Sleep!

Here’s something interesting I read over at Lifehacker.

According to the science-folk of Harvard University,  sleeping on new ideas and information allow you to make tougher decisions and solve problems as well.

Sleeping on the job? Naw, I'm just checking the insides of my eyelids for notes I may have missed. While meditating.

Research indicates that sleeping makes you 33% more likely to make connections between distantly related points.

I came from a fairly hectic industry- media and advertising.  When I think about it now, I can imagine that it’s probably the same for just about any industry.  The Philippine work culture reveres the employee who stays up all night finishing the financial reports, the client relations officer who heads straight for a meeting after a 13-hour flight, or the events management team who’s up setting up all night setting up the stage for a 2-hour event the following day.

According to Dr. Jeffrey Ellenbogen, a neurologist at Harvard Medical School and director of the Sleep Laboratory at Massachusetts General Hospital, most people think of the sleeping brain as similar to a computer that has “gone to sleep”- unproductive, dormant and completely inert.

Dr. Ellenbogen brings forward the idea that the sleep actually enhances brain performance, including learning and memory, and more importantly, the ability to think out-of-the-box.

Steven Jobs of Apple once defined creativity as “just connecting things”- which is exactly what a more well-rested brain does: create the connections among seemingly unrelated ideas into something completely inspired and fresh.

So rather than taking a smoke, a coffee break or a snack- why not take a nap instead?

Companies like Google, Cisco Systems and Procter & Gamble have already installed these cool little Energy Pods at the office- high-tech looking recliners with egglike hoods that block noise and light, allowing employees to take naps at work, and come out refreshed and mentally reorganized.

From NYTimes.com: Check out these new EnergyPods- napping on the job has never been more comfortable!

Or it might be as simple as whipping out a pillow and just plopping yourself down for a few minutes.  I’ve actually taken catnaps like these on those few occasions I’ve been sleep-deprived.

Sleep Pod photo courtesy of NYTimes.com.  Read the rest of the New York Times article here.

Cheers, everyone!
Press This

10 Ways to Relax on a Rainy Day

by Renzie Baluyut

It’s the rainy season at around this time of year in the Philippines, so you can expect the usual downpour in the afternoons and early evenings.  There’d be times when it would be raining all day, and if you’re really lucky, you’ll find yourself in the path of the occasional tropical storm.

It’s that time of the year when it’s most prudent to bring an umbrella with you everywhere you go.  You take your chances if you’re planning an open-air event, and you always have to plan for contingencies when making out-of-town trips.

When I used to deal with events for the old radio station I was working for, this was the time of the year when we would plan a lot of indoor activities.  I would have a preference for events and promos involving spas, restaurants, hotels, movies and lots of shopping.  Of course, you do your best to come up with more creative executions of all kinds of below-the-line activities.

So if you’re looking for a few ways to just kick back and take it easy on a rainy day- something that doesn’t involve a PC or your workstation in any way possible- here are a few tips that might just hit the spot.

I think people should unplug every so often and read more books for a change. I know I should.