@ Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs just passed away yesterday at 7:30. This has made me think because I actually looked up to him in some ways. I agreed with his way of thinking in so many ways and I feel like what he has done has truly revolutionized the world. I founded a club at BYU whose purpose was to discuss and implement the ideas and philosophies of men and women who have been remarkable world leaders or those whose work has revolutionized the society and the current and pervasive zeitgeist. We are familiar with names like John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie because they were the ones who revolutionized the world through its industrialization. I believe the world has once again been revolutionized and will continue to be revolutionized by technology. I also believe that it has happened because of the work of a few men with the vision to make the world a better and new place. Steve Jobs has made a huge difference in the world of technology and I think a "better" difference. He said himself that "different has the potential of being much better". I respect him and though I do not own an iPad (though I want one - and you do too if you are honest), I am tempted to buy one just to honor Mr. Jobs.

In his keynote speech at the release of the iPad2, he spoke about why people are loving these new products and why people will continue to love them. He said that people do not love technology in itself. What people love is what the technology enables them to create and be innovative.

And as a tribute to him, I have posted a famous speech he gave at a Stanford University commencement. I think he shares a lot of wisdom from his experience as an influencer and as someone who has learned to live before he died.

Stanford Commencement Speech of Steve Jobs:

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

Beautiful Disaster

No. Not just the 311 song, though it was quite a hit when I was in 9th grade back at Union Middle School. I am talking about my life. And you would think that being laid off from an amazingly growing company like Qualtrics (see Magic Pony entry below) that I would be depressed and my soul harrowed because of losing a job. Well, to be honest, I did shed a tear or two. Twas a good job. And a great experience. However, it has been the best thing that ever could have happened to me! And I actually am not the type of person to just admit that anything has "happened" to me. Because I am the one who likes to know that I am happening to the world! Like the saying goes:

"We must become the CREATORS of our circumstance

***26 year old Billionaire who could have just played video games all day***

and not the CREATURES carried by our circumstance."

***26 year old Hundredaire who is probably really good at Halo or Final Fantasy***

So basically I could have sat back and looked at my life saying "I am a failure and a single, 27 year old college grad with no job who just got laid off". But I will not. Instead I will date the most amazing girl I've ever known, create an iPhone app, start 2 businesses, and get a job working for the most impressive and innovative tech start-up in the valley... (and that is saying something). I would at least argue that it has the most potential as a social deal platform with merchant analytics. And that is exactly what I am doing. The iPhone app is almost done. ASP Media Productions is created. The new website for returned missionaries has been purchased and secured and the book is on the way. I even just partnered with the founder of Parker Planners to integrate this into the website and manual. Icing on the cake: I just ran 10.5 miles yesterday and will be running a 200 mile relay in less than a month! Life is good. Really good. Oh and join Kalood! the company I am working for! You get all kinds of deals! Here is the link: http://kalood.com/GTX

I know this entry may sound a little ostentatious, but I submit to you that many of you are potentially inspired to be loyal your better self when things seem like they have gone awry and to be the Creator of your circumstance instead of the creature carried by it.

Okay go do it!

Oh and PS - watch this speech, it will change your life (Art Williams another Billionaire influencer):

What's the difference between the "$50,000 a year" person and the "$500,000 a year" person? Watch the video.

The Secret to Life-Long Love?

What is the secret to life-long love? Well, there isn't just one, and I don't believe it is a secret. In a recent visit to an art exhibit I found many paintings that caused me and every one who passed by to stop and stare in wonder, lured in by the accents, foundations and shades of all colors upon the canvas.

I truly believe the key to a lasting relationship is not a single ingredient but an entire tapestry. And you, as the observers in a gallery containing depictions of real, life-long love, will find that the anchoring pigment of this masterpiece is sacrifice. Sacrifice to God and sacrifice for your spouse. Added to this are the foundational colors of trust and time. You will also see deeply rooted within the painting, the crucial element of friendship. The tapestry is also beautifully framed within a solid structure called commitment. And scattered throughout this magnificent piece of work are flares of romance, dancing about, and catching the attention of the observer.

And when you or any passerby sees this amazing portrayal of love in the gallery of life, it will spur within you the desire not only to strengthen your love for your spouse, but your love for all those who fall within your circle of influence.

This is life-long love.

Vote For my Video here:

http://loveishere.com/partners/videos/2/thesecretoflifelonglove.html

The Great High Priest of Good things to Come.

I really like this little Mormon Message for the new year.

2011 is here!!! Twenty Eleven. Oh-Eleven. Two thousand Eleven. Last night at the strike of 12:00, me and my friend Chantel decided to do snow angels in our short sleeved shirts. We listened as the crowd in the apartment above us was chanting 10, 9, 8, 7.... and when we heard everyone scream we dove into the snow backwards and started flapping in the snow! Wonderful frigidity to welcome the new year in! Wish I had a picture of it! In part because my angel was bigger than Chantel's dinky angel, and partly because the snow that stuck to my back when I got up out of the snow was formed into a perfect heart. A good omen for 2011. :)

This year is going to be a great one. I have often looked back on many things in my life. As one year has now come to an end and the next has started, I often look back on some of the amazing experiences that I have had and I wonder: "could it EVER be better than that?" Specifically, I think of the time that I had in my beautiful and surreal Holy Land, the reason I started this blog in the first place. I think of how perfect everything seemed while I was there. I remember waking myself up laughing because I was so incredibly at peace in that place. I remember experiencing ancient Egypt, seeing the mummy of Ramses II (who shook hands with Moses), venturing up the guts of the greatest pyramid in Giza near Cairo, flaunting down the Nile on a fallucca and discovering temple symbolism on the walls of the Temple of Karnac, in Luxor. Then climbing to the top of Mount Sinai to watch the sun come up as we sang and bore testimony. Snorkeling in the Red Sea and floating in the Dead Sea. Then returning to the Golden City of Jerusalem and feeling that it was my home after being away. Hearing the call to prayer every time the sun would drop below the horizon was as magical as watching the sun rise and sparkle off the golden Dome of the Rock. Discovering Jerusalem everyday for 3 months. Living on the Mount of Olives. Making friends with Monks who let me flip through original Gregorian Chant books made 400 years before Jefferson even thought about writing the Declaration of Independence. Singing in ancient churches and sitting to ponder and write in places I only imagined before being there. Places like Gethsemane and the Garden tomb where the most important events of all history took place. Singing and dancing at the Western Wall of the temple mount with machine-gun-clad Jewish boys as if we had known each other our whole lives, singing their songs and feeling the same joy they feel as they welcome in the Sabbath - only wishing that the American Christian or even the Utah Mormon would be able to celebrate the Sabbath in the same way. Finally, living only a rocks-throw away from the shores of the Sea of Galilee and swimming where Jesus walked. Seeing the waves and the sunsets and the fishermen and having sacred alone time early in the mornings sitting with my feet in the sand where Jesus likely sat and pondered. I did many other things, just as amazing and "once in a lifetime".


How could life ever get better than this kind of experience? How could I ever have a greater experience or year? What could EVER top this? I don't know, but I DO believe that 2011 (twenty-eleven) will be the greatest year yet lived by Andrew Scot Proctor. I say this with confidence for two reasons:

1. I have made some amazing goals and planned some amazing events for this year. I have done this based off of Joseph B. Wirthlin's quote: "Determine where you are and what you need to do to be the kind of person you want to be. Create inspiring, noble and righteous goals that fire your imagination and create excitement in your heart. And then keep your eye on them. Work consistently toward achieving them."

2. Jesus Christ is the "Great High Priest of Good things to Come" and I KNOW that if I trust the Savior, He will make my life greater and Better than I have ever imagined. If I turn my life over to Him, He will make a lot more out of my life than I ever could. So I am trying to shape my year with this in mind.

I end with the words of Jeffrey Holland from his talk Remember Lot's Wife:

"So, as a new year starts and we try to benefit from a proper view of what has gone before, I plead with you not to dwell on days now gone, nor to yearn vainly for yesterdays, however good those yesterdays may have been. The past is to be learned from but not lived in. We look back to claim the embers from glowing experiences but not the ashes. And when we have learned what we need to learn and have brought with us the best that we have experienced, then we look ahead, we remember that faith is always pointed toward the future. Faith always has to do with blessings and truths and events that will yet be efficacious in our lives....Faith is for the future. Faith builds on the past but never longs to stay there. Faith trusts that God has great things in store for each of us and that Christ truly is the “high priest of good things to come.”

I love this. I long for the good things to come and I have faith that they are just around the corner. The Lord Himself has promised us this if we just keep pushing**: "Verily I say unto you, that great things await you." (D&C 45:62).

**This story is such an amazing one. Joseph Smith was in the midst of receiving an amazing revelation about the second coming. Right in the middle the vision stopped and the Lord told Joseph that he had to translate the entire New Testament before anything else could be given. And that he would be prepared for things to come as he did so. This was a huge undertaking! Imagine translating the whole New Testament before being able to receive any more revelation. But because of his obedience to this commandment, he was prepared to receive even greater revelations. Specifically, the "great thing" that awaited Joseph was the revelation of the 3 degrees of glory. The entire section 76 of the Doctrine and Covenants. This makes me want to find out what my "translations" are so that I can do them and find my own personal D&C 76.

Things as they really are - Cobb has a Totem, do you?

The person who posted this youtube video was probably just in the theater filming this with their digital camera, or more likely at home because every time I saw that part in the theater there was a "OHHH" by the whole crowd. Either way, if you have seen this movie you experienced the crazy feeling that came after that scene where you don't know if you are also dreaming. When I was walking out of the theater for the first time, I thought that I was in a dream. It blew my mind. It was the first time I had been taken that far into the story and idea of a movie since the last time I had seen one of Christopher Nolan's films (The Dark Knight). It really made me ask myself a question: What is real?

So many philosophers have asked this question including Plato in his classic Allegory of the Cave. Feel free to click and watch this on my homepage. The prisoners in this cave are convinced that the only thing that is real are the shadows on the wall. That is all they know. That is all they have ever known. Until one of them is released and is dragged up the path and into the light of the day. His mind is blown in similar fashion as he begins to see things as they really are. He sees the light of the day and a sun and a tree and a person walking and people dancing (all of which are things he never had imagined).

Moses had a similar experience. He was about as high as you could get in society and politics in Egypt. He knew Egypt in all its grandeur and had everything the world had to offer.

Then one day he had a vision. He was able to reach into the heavens with the eyes of his understanding quickened by divine allowance. God showed him everything: "there was not a particle of it which he did not behold..." (see Moses 1). The closest thing we have to this now is what we get from the Hubble Deep Field imagery (which is also quite amazing). After Moses saw these things he said: "I know that I am nothing, which thing I never had supposed."

On top of Mt. Sinai where Moses had this vision.

Hubble Ultra Deep Field Image

How could you suppose such a thing? It is seemingly impossible to conceive something so vast and reaching with the human brain. Even that image that was taken by Hubble makes me have a cerebral-server overload (every dot in that image is an individual galaxy). I feel so small. But it is something that makes me also realize that there is so much more than is on the surface. We only see what is in our immediate presence and what is within our peripheral view. So how do we know and understand what is real and what is not?

Jacob answers this question after mentioning the impossibility of man to comprehend. He says:

"the Spirit speaketh the truth and lieth not...it speaketh of things as they really are, and of things as they really will be..." (Jacob 4:13)

Therefore, the Spirit is the only way to know the way things really are. What is the alternative? Just Google it. Right? What if you aren't "feeling lucky" in your search or it doesn't give you the results that you are looking for or the only result you get says: "did you mean (fill in the blank)" and it is not even close to what you are looking for. At some point you will reach a moment in your life when you can't just go to Google for an answer. Especially an answer about what is real - an answer about what to do next in your life, and about who you really are and always have been. The only way to know what is truly real is to have the Spirit. This allows you to access the incomprehensible even just for a moment. In the movie Inception, Dom Cobb has what he calls a totem that helps him to know that he is not dreaming. It is something that only he knows the exact dimension of and that is unique to him. Something that when he uses it and engages all his focus on it, it lets him know that he is not dreaming and that things are real. Cobb spent a lot of time in a dreamworld that was not real. A place that had such high fidelity that he lived there for years and couldn't tell the difference. The dreamworld seemed just as real as anything he knew, but it wasn't. The only way to discern was the totem.

We live in what could be called a dreamworld. Jacob even recognizes it as such: "our lives passed away like as it were unto us a dream" (Jacob 7:26). This is because we are not from this world and even though there are inklings of reality in many things in this world, there is never a fullness unless we tap into the source of reality and look to where we are from. And the way to tap into that source is through the Holy Ghost. The Spirit is our totem. It is the only way to know things as they really are. But do we really take advantage of it? Do we seek the Spirit? Or are we content with what we already know and with the pseudo-reality that confronts us every day? I feel like I live far below my privilege in using my totem. Here are some passages that make me realize how much is available:

I shall not attempt to paint to you the feelings of this heart, nor the majestic beauty and glory which surrounded us on this occasion; but you will believe me when I say, that earth, nor men, with the eloquence of time, cannot begin to clothe language in as interesting and sublime a manner as this holy personage. No; not has this earth power to give the joy, to bestow the peace, or comprehend the wisdom which was contained in each sentence as they were delivered by the power of the Holy Spirit!

This is Oliver Cowdery attempting to describe an encounter with reality, when he was visited by a glorified heavenly being - John the Baptist. (find this on the last page of Joseph Smith History) He continues:

Man may deceive his fellow-men, deception may follow deception, and the children of the wicked may have power to seduce the foolish and untaught...but fiction feeds...many, and the fruit of falsehood carries in its current the giddy to the grave; but one touch with the finger of his love, yes, one ray of glory from the upper world, or one word from the mouth of the Savior, from the bosom of eternity, strikes it all into insignificance, and blots it forever from the mind.

I also love these words of C.S. Lewis (in "The Weight of Glory"):

We are half-hearted creatures fooling around with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

These words make me want to reach higher and search deeper for my own totem, for the Spirit which will help me know what is real, who I really am and who I always have been. Lewis explains this further in my favorite chapter of Mere Christianity. With the Spirit we are given a username and password (as it were) to access for a small moment, reality. That is the only reality there is on this earth, and it is not from this earth.

When, through a process we call inspiration and revelation, we are permitted at times to tap [the] divine databank, we are accessing, for the narrow purposes at hand, the knowledge of God. No wonder that experience is so unforgettable! (Neal A. Maxwell - Meeting the Challenges of Today)

Indeed, an encounter with the only source of reality we have is an amazing experience. I just need to use my totem more often and truly tap into that source of the knowledge of God. Anyone can, if they will.

But as it has been written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nether hath entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea the deep things of God. (1 Cor. 2:9-10)

Therefore it is given to abide in you; the record of heaven; the Comforter; the peaceable things of immortal glory; the truth of all things; that which quickeneth all things, which maketh alive all things; that which knoweth all things, and hath all power according to wisdom... (Moses 6:61).

See also Things as The Really Are

It's Magic Pony Time

The question is, which magic pony do I ride?

Last night we had the annual company Christmas party. I have been kind of busy lately and not very responsible for my social life and was therefore dateless. Everyone at a company Christmas party has a date or a wife or a husband and so going alone is always a little awkward. So I decided to sit at the table with some of the directors of the company so as to glean from their wisdom and build rapport. I sat next to one of our directors who just came to our company after being with Google China. He always has something interesting to say and he was also conveniently dateless. I always like to observe people who have made a great impact like Jared and as I was looking over, I saw that he had a couple of note cards. I thought he must be

studying or something or just had some idea pop into his head about a new product or feature that he wanted to code. Then as I looked closer (call me snoopy), I saw a bullet point with "Ride the Magic Pony" written. This kind of threw me off. I expected anything but a magic pony on a notecard of a multimillionaire from Google. But as he got up in the end to speak, he said some things that really made me think about my life right now. What direction I am going and where the destination will finally be.

His speech was about the past and future of the company. He talked about the past starting in the basement of Scott Smith (he is the one in the video below), the BYU marketing research professor who needed a tool to do his research online and came up with this idea. Then to a few developers and sales guys, then more and a new building, then buying the building, then over 100 employees, and hundreds of thousands of users and now millions of responses monthly with clients all over the world. Next week we will be again moving to a new building where even more growth can happen.

At the end of the night every employee received an irregularly hefty cash bonus along with an awesome backpack that was stuffed with high-quality embroidered hooded sweatshirts. At last year's Christmas party they had a raffle for one flatscreen 50 inch HDTV. I'll just say that this year, there was no raffle. Everyone got one, and more.

Then Jared said something as he looked down at the notecard I saw about the future of this company. He said something to the effect of: "I have been at many great companies before, Word Perfect, Novell, Google, what have you,... and there is always a point in the progress of the company where it begins to significantly expand and then explode in just a few years. It's what I call the 'magic pony time'. You all have the opportunity to make a decision. You can stay with Qualtrics and ride the magic pony till you see that you wont need to worry about money anymore, or you can have great experiences elsewhere. But this is the magic pony time - when you can get on or get off and either way you will see this company do things that no other company has ever done...." and he went on.

Needless to say, it has made me think A LOT about what I am doing with my life. Where I am in the company. What I have accomplished there. Where I could be in 5 years, and whether I want to ride the magic pony of Qualtrics or find another pony to ride. Another successful businessman (who was the visiting father of one of my dear friends at the company) told his daughter (who then mentioned to me later) that if we stayed at Qualtrics, we would never have to worry about money and to "stay if you can".

All this has been difficult for me to digest as I have been planning to go to grad school all along. Money is very comfortable. More money is even more comfortable. And I like the comfort, and being the dateless snooper that I was, I thought about supporting a family and how cheap it is to have a baby (though I am neither pregnant nor married) under the insurance they have and how great the benefits are. I just have a picture in my mind of someone who worked for Amazon, or facebook who left because they didn't really see a future in it because they thought it was boring or that it was not for them, then they kick themselves now that these companies are booming successes. So for the next five years (which will very much influence the next 50 years) I will either be at the Q developing new ideas and building it, or I will be at grad school, or I will be doing something else entirely. So what do the Ponies look like?

Magic Pony #1

Score well on the GRE this Friday, finish all the grad apps (some of the deadlines have already passed for my top choices). Some are not till early to mid January. Go to grad school in the fall of 2011 by myself, hopefully with scholarships.

Top picks: UMass Amherst, Penn State, U of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, University of Michigan. All programs are in communications and media effects. I was informally offered an internship position for the summer near Boston that is totally relevant to the field and I have been preparing for grad school for my whole undergrad career.

Why I should go:

It makes a lot of sense. I am passionate about knowledge. I am passionate about education and the current effect of the technology explosion/revolution and the media on everyone and everything in the world. I love history and knowing what the masses are thinking and the direction they are going. What is happening now with technology and the media has NEVER happened in all history (at least on this world) and there isn't really a reference for what is happening. I have high aspirations and would like to have more than a bachelors degree in psychology from BYU in the end. The longer I wait (if I decided to wait another 20 months - if I don't go in the fall, that's what it would be), the less valued and relevant my undergraduate letters of recommendation will be.

Why I should not go:

It is expensive (without an amazing scholarship or series of grants). I still don't know what exactly are the jobs that a masters or PhD lead to (other than a professor of communications or a research consultant). I feel like my search has not been comprehensive in where to go. I just feel like there are places that I don't know about and I am making a decision to go to (the ones listed above) because I haven't heard of many others in what I am looking for. Though I have a fervid passion for learning, I don't know if I eventually want to end up in academia. It does seem like more people trust you if you have PhD after your name, but really though, who cares in the end if I can still learn and can comfortably support my family? Speaking of family, I don't have my own. I'm not married. I am not even dating anyone. This can change pretty fast and I may find some amazing and special young woman before I ship out in 8 months, but if not? Should I fly solo? I think not. I always told myself I would never go to grad school alone. Call me a banal Mormon, but in the end what matters most? Family matters and if I end up with 3 advanced degrees and respect and research and all the erudition this world has to offer and yet no one to share with? What then? Start a facebook fan page? No. That doesn't feel right. I do want more education. Don't get me wrong. I've always wanted to be Dr. Proctor. But I feel like I need to follow the counsel of one of the prophets and slow down, and remember what matters most. Here are some penetrating words:

"...it is good advice to slow down a little, steady the course, and focus on the essentials when experiencing adverse conditions.This is a simple but critical lesson to learn. It may seem logical when put in terms of trees or turbulence, but it’s surprising how easy it is to ignore this lesson when it comes to applying these principles in our own daily lives. When stress levels rise, when distress appears, when tragedy strikes, too often we attempt to keep up the same frantic pace or even accelerate, thinking somehow that the more rushed our pace, the better off we will be."

So I feel that slowing down and not trying to forget everything in life other than grad school and GRE prep would be wise. Plus I am scheduled to take it in 6 days and not prepared as I should be. I just can't get my speed up. I know a lot of the stuff. I just need to be more nimble.

Magic Pony #2

Hold back for 20 months. Study longer for the GRE. Get a better grasp on exactly what I want to study in grad school while building multiple streams of income, taking more time for social endeavors, and developing some things at Qualtrics that will establish me as credible and dependable.

Why I should do this:

Because it feels better. I know that in this time frame I could create multiple streams of income that will be a huge blessing not only during grad school, but for the rest of my life. I already have the ideas for them, but just need to "push the button" and begin. Many of them are things that I am almost as passionate about as education and that would very possibly be a better way to support a family than being a professor. I currently am giving up everything other than food and my job and church to figure this out. I have sequestered myself to my room and the library to study so that I can study more. I do love studying, however, I also want to love people and to finally love one young woman. I treasure these words from Thomas Jefferson about this in his inner debate between love and intellectualism:

“Let the gloomy monk, sequestered from the world, seek unsocial pleasures in the bottom of his cell! Let the sublimated philosopher grasp visionary happiness while pursuing phantoms dressed in the garb of truth! Their supreme wisdom is supreme folly; & they mistake for happiness the mere absence of pain. Had they ever felt the solid pleasure of one generous spasm of the heart, they would exchange for it all the frigid speculations of their lives.”

I love this. I seriously want to be an educated person like TJ was, but even deeper within is the desire to be a supportive loving husband and a confident dependable father who enjoys on a regular basis these "spasms of the heart". I haven't had such spasms for a while. The only spasms I have had were due to food poison! Yuck.

Additionally, if Qualtrics really does explode and become the worlds authority in research, it will be a good team to be on. Who needs a PhD when all the PhDs come to you for help already?

And I won't have a heart attack because of the stress that I feel right now. I could actually enjoy the Christmas festivities and focus on people instead of tasks.

What makes me nervous about this:

I kind of already did it once last year and I hate feeling like I am a consistent giver-uper. I look indecisive and unprepared. It makes my letters of recommendation fade in meaning if I want to ever use them (it is hard for professors to recommend me if they don't remember me because of how long it has been). It even could seem that I am 26 years old and have no definite pathway in life. These are the main things that I worry about. Or if I end up losing the window of opportunity for grad school (which I don't see happening) and Qualtrics doesn't pull through (which I also think is hard to imagine).

Magic Pony #3?

Something else. Go to a film school? Work my way up at some other technology company after establishing myself at Qualtrics? Other opportunities unforeseen?

I am leaning heavily to Magic Pony #2. What do you think?

PS - I commend you for reading this far.

Ragnar, the GRE, and Spiritual Stamina

Holy cow. (never say that in India by the way). I just ran a 195 mile relay in Las Vegas called the Ragnar. Me and a team of 11 other runners were sponsored by the company I work for (Qualtrics), to go and represent them. I used to be a sprinter/hurdler (see above - sorry about the whiteness of the legs) and I am slowly converting to distance running. The race started in the Valley of Fire State Park in Nevada and ended on the other side of Las Vegas at the Red Rock Casino. It was quite the race. I only ran about 18 miles of it, but that is longer than I have ever ran before. We started at 7:30 AM on Friday and ended at about 2:00 PM the next day (about 30 hours of strait running). Two of my three portions of the race were in the middle of the night. (Not a huge fan though it showed me that I am capable of running 6 miles even at 4:00 AM!). I really enjoyed the experience, but ended up being very sore and tired at the end. My friend Esther on the other hand, was fresh at the end of each of her legs (portions of the race). I was amazed that she was fine and not limping around like I was at the end. I felt like I was like 80 and needed a wheel chair (please don't take offense if you

are 80+ and reading this!). It got me thinking, something I never do (ha)...that it was such a lesson for life. Esther runs everyday probably like 4 to 5 miles a day. It was just a normal thing for her to run 18 miles in a couple of days. I wasn't used to it. I did not have the stamina. I used to be able to run a 400 meter dash like a champ and be done, but running 8 miles uphill and in the middle of the night can really get to you if you are not ready. There is no "winging it". This is the same with life and spirituality. I am preparing to take the GRE on December 4 and I can't just show up and expect to get a good score. I know that I will have to practice daily - a daily 4 mile run so to speak.

Spiritual stamina is also the same. You can't just fake it when you need spiritual stamina. You need to build it up so that when the temptations come and when things are hard unexpectedly and you have to "run in the middle of the night", you can finish that leg of the race. This life is like a Ragnar. Long stretches of hard, dedicated and focused running. But it is possible!