Contribution vs. Consumption
Jeremiah Owyang is celebrating the third anniversary of his blog today and posted a handy little piece of advice: “Pay yourself first.” It’s good advice and we’ve all heard it before. What I found interesting though is in how he defines paying himself first:
“I put in a lot of passion, and read and blog nearly every morning (It’s 3:51am right now) before I check any email (which is paying someone else), have an editorial calendar, and am slowly writing drafts (there are 413 of them right now) each day as I collect little bits of information, or get ideas.”
My notice here is that his definition of paying himself first–blogging, is how I define his biggest contribution to the community. I don’t think it’s any accident that Jeremiah has risen to the blogger A-list over the last three years. To paraphrase something that Brian Klemmer said to me last week, “We define success as position, acquisition, and consumption and then wonder why well paid people don’t contribute and take responsibility.”
Congratulations Jeremiah on all you’ve accomplished and will continue to. Thanks for demonstrating a spirit of contribution!
Note: Jeremiah, Robert Scoble, Kevin Marks, & Mark Silva are participating in an SFAMA panel discussion on small business, tech bloggers, and social media next Thursday night. Come join us!
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Eric Beck