How to Live Randomly
I am a major advocate reading books from the social sciences (or pseudo/pop social sciences for that matter), because while reading them, I get to think about how the social concepts translate to the web.
We finally left, but upon reaching our destination and ascertaining that there was no parking, so we drove 10 minutes away to park, and walked.
I left the party about an hour and a half later. I walked to the Central Bus Station, where I was the tenth person in a shared cab, and we left immediately. Upon arriving in Jerusalem, I was the last person to board the last night bus to my neighborhood.
At face value, these two stories wasted about 40 seconds of your life.
But the books that I am reading now deal with concept of randomness in life. So I decided to analyze the situations by the randomness factor.
In the first case, I planned ahead and lost, and in the second case I did not plan at all, and came out ahead.
The simple truth is that when you plan to rely on one person or tactic, you close all other doors. Any alternate realities that could occur, or any coincidental meetings that may transpire, are headed off before they ever happen.
We always joke about the word "viral" and that most people have no clue what it means. You can't produce a viral video. You can produce a video with viral intentions in mind, and then let it loose in public. But viral means that it spread in an unforeseen way. You could make the clip funny, built on an existing meme, but you can never guarantee that it will be the next big thing.
Don't close doors. Don't plan in the traditional sense. That planning doesn't work anymore.
Don't rely on any one influencer to evangelize your product, your video, or your site.
Embrace randomness. Your product is like a child: you can help form it and forge it, but once it hits high school - all bets are off.
Create quality content. Because in the end of the day, that will be the cause for people to consume the content and share it with their friends.
