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Crippled CEO Blog #051:

Why do people buy your product?

What makes you choose what to buy?

Chances are, you think the answer is quality, price, or maybe features.

And if this is why you think you buy, this is what you are going to focus on when trying to market and sell your offering.

However, none of those are the actual reason why we buy things.

We buy things because of the story they tell and the story we tell ourselves — both about the product and about ourselves. 

Jocko Willink is a well known Navy SEAL commander. Every morning at 4:30 AM he posts a photo of his Timex Ironman watch — a rugged, no nonsense, digital time piece. 

I wear a yellow gold Rolex Day-Date with a presidential bracelet and diamond hour markers. It was my dad‘s dream watch. He bought it late in his life and gave it to me a week before he died.

Jocko would never own a gold Rolex Day-Date. It would not matter if it was bulletproof, waterproof, fire proof, and shot out laser beams, he just wouldn’t do it. The features and quality do not matter. The story of that watch conflicts with the story he tells himself about who he is. Meanwhile, the story of that Timex aligns with the story he tells himself. It fits. He might tell you about the features and the quality, but those are just parts of the story. He might mention the low price tag. That is also part of the story. All of those things build toward the image he sees when he looks in the mirror. Tough, hard-working, logical, no frills.

In fact, I really would not choose this watch either. My tendency is towards something more subdued, less well known, probably on a brown crocodile leather strap. But because of the story attached to it, because it was my dad’s, I wear it anyways.

You can probably also guess what kind of vehicles Jocko DOESN’T drive. Even with just the little bit I told you about him, you already know the kinds of cars he would never consider owning. Because the stories of those cars don’t match who he is, or more specifically, who he tells himself he is.

The Omega Speedmaster is an amazing time piece. You could write a book about the movement, the case, the crystal, and so on. But if you go to their website, you will have to dig for that information. There is one main thing they want you to know about this watch: it went to the moon. It was the watch chosen by NASA to be worn by the first astronauts to ever set foot on the moon.  

You are probably never going to the moon. This fact should have nothing to do with you. But they know that the story matters. When you show it to your friends, you’re probably not going to drone on about the details of the internal mechanisms, as innovative and impressive as they are. You are going to tell them that this is the same model worn by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin when they landed on the lunar surface. This is the chronograph they used to time their emergency landing when the equipment failed on board their ship. THAT is what you’ll tell your friends because that’s a way cooler story, you want your story to be connected to it, and so you buy that watch. 

Why do people buy Tom’s Shoes? Are they nicer than other sandals? Not particularly. People buy from Tom’s Shoes because they donate one pair of shoes to a child in a third world country every time a pair is sold. People who buy Tom’s Shoes think of themselves as generous, caring, and thoughtful world citizens. And when they wear the shoes, they know that other people might recognize them and also see how kind and caring they are. The quality of the shoes barely matters because the quality isn’t part of this story. In fact, part of the story might be that the shoes aren’t even all that great, but you bought them anyways because you care that much.

If you own a business that sells a product or service, or you’re a marketer, or you do some kind of sales — pretty much if you’re involved in any part of people buying things from your company — you have to keep in mind the real reason people are buying from you. It’s easy to get caught up in your amazing features, your super low prices, or your incredible quality, but that’s not it. People are buying from you because of the story that comes with your product. And there’s going to be a story. You just have to decide if you want that story to happen on accident, if you want the customer to make it up for you, or if you want to choose it and tell it the way you want it to be told. When you know the story behind what you do, the features, the price, the marketing, and so on just falls into place. 

Since you have to have a story, make sure it’s a good one.

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Crippled CEO Blog #050:

Holy crap. We hit 50. Can y’all believe it? And for #050, it’s going to get a bit weird. But hang in there with me. 

Because I wanna talk WAP. 

Yeah, that WAP, by Cardi B. 

Everyone’s favorite song about making macaroni and cheese.

Now, chances are, you have OPINIONS about the song. You either love it or hate it. I get that. I happen to think it’s great, but that’s not the point here. 

WAP did something genius. Something that I don’t think has been done before. 

And it’s not use controversial lyrics to get attention. That’s been happening since the dawn of time.

The last verse of the song feels out of place. It doesn’t fit the formula of the rest of the song. It has the strongest lyrics, the most memorable lines, but it feels like a unit unto itself. It has a very clear start, middle, and end, and summarizes the song as a whole. It feels like a standalone song within a song.

And it’s exactly 15 seconds. 

If you are a purveyor of the TikToks, the lightbulb in your head just went off.

For those who don’t know, a TikTok video can only be 15 seconds long. 

Cardi B deliberately designed a song within a song made specifically for TikTok. In fact, I would argue that’s the real song, and the rest is just the filler you need to sell it on iTunes and get it played on the radio.

Either way, it’s absolutely brilliant. There’s no question that a large part of the success of that song is due to the ubiquity of it on TikTok. 

What can we learn from this?

If you’re marketing, you need to adapt what you’re doing for the medium you’re using. You can technically put the same post on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, but those are totally different platforms, and they should be treated differently. 

You can upload your IG stories to YouTube, but they’re probably not going to do very well. It’s a different thing.

Cardi B knows that TikTok is the epicenter of musical culture in the US right now, so she designed her content with that specific platform in mind. 

It’s genius and I love it. 

I don’t love it so much that you need to get a bucket and a mop, but it’s very cool. 

(What is this interesting to you? Share it with somebody. You can make sure that you never miss the next one by sending a text message to the phone number 484848.)

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Crippled CEO Blog #049:

What really makes a person successful?

We all have assumptions.

IQ, inherited wealth, good parents, health, good looks, charisma, EQ, education, who you know, luck…

Chances are, you think success is tied to one or three of those. 

Innately, I’m sure I always have.

But, apparently, that’s not the case.

Psychologist and educator Angela Duckworth did extensive research, studying kids in spelling bees, West Point Military Graduates, rookie teachers, corporate salespeople, and everything in between, and found that those aren’t the factors for success. 

Smarter kids don’t necessarily do better in school.

Charismatic, better looking, high EQ sales people don’t necessarily sell more stuff.

So, you ask, skeptically, what is it then?

Grit. 

Grit is the common denominator for success. The persistent, disciplined, ceaseless commitment toward improving your future and achieving your goals. The ability to get up, day after day, and do what needs to be done. Seth Godin describes this as “being a professional“ — doing the work, no matter what, even when they don’t feel like it. 

This is the factor that everyone who does well has in common. People who don’t see failure as a permanent state, but continue to get up and keep going. People who passionately stick to accomplishing their goals, not for weeks, or months, but for years. According to Duckworth, brains and talent have nothing to do with this. In study after study, smart people are just as likely to not follow up on their commitments as everybody else. In fact, smart and talented people sometimes exhibit LESS grit than their less gifted peers. 

You might be thinking this is bad news. No one wants to hear that hard work is the answer. But the ramifications are huge. This means that regardless of the hand of cards you were given, the disadvantages you may have been born with, if you can work hard, day after day, if you can be disciplined, then the odds tip in your favor. 

But what if you know this isn’t you? What if you know that you are lacking in grit? What if you have a history of giving up on your goals prematurely?

Welcome to the club. That’s pretty much all of us.

You are in luck, though. Because grit and discipline can be trained. You get better at it the more you do it. And if you know that this one characteristic is the fundamental key to your long-term success, you now have the motivation to go after it. 

Like anything, the key is to start small. Navy SEAL Admiral William McRaven famously told us all that we should start by making our beds every morning. This is a great start. Next, maybe add flossing to your oral hygiene routine. Keep stacking on these practices that you can succeed at doing every day. And the more you do it, the better you’ll get. 

To use myself as an example, I have written this blog every Sunday for the last 49 weeks. What are the odds that writing the blog is exactly what I wanted to do every Sunday for the last almost year? What are the odds that I felt motivated and excited for 49 weeks in a row? Not great. But I think of Seth Godin, about being a professional, and now 49 weeks in, I’m a lot better at doing this every Sunday than I was when I started. In the beginning, there were a bunch of weeks where I was up late writing this before going to bed, because I had put it off all day. Now, I finish every day in the early afternoon, typically before my 3 PM chess lesson. And I’m sure that will continue to improve as well.

Once you know the real source of success, all of your excuses get stripped away. You can’t blame it on the disability you were born with or your parents or the money in your bank account. Consistent and sustained hard work, treating life like a marathon instead of a sprint — grit — is the great equalizer, and is the chance you have to prove everybody wrong. You just have to start.

(What if this will help that person you are thinking of? You should send it to them. And you should also send a text message to 484848 with the word CRIP so I automatically text you each week with a link to the latest blog post. It’s a smart investment.)

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Crippled CEO Blog #048:

I take chess lessons from Russian International Master and chess coach Vitaly Neimer. 60 minutes every Sunday, and recently 45 minutes each Tuesday and Thursday. 

For homework, I complete 9-18 challenging chess puzzles per week.

I play several games every day online. 

My goal is to be a National Master in five years. 

You are probably thinking right now that I must be pretty good at chess.

I’m really not.

I get beat by low rated players every day.

I do incredibly stupid moves that make me wince almost immediately.

I’m kinda bad. 

So, if I’m not good, if I don’t have some natural chess talent, why am I doing all of this? 

Because I suck at it, because it’s hard, and because every time I do something stupid and lose, I have to talk myself out of quitting entirely, that this is a pointless pursuit and a waste of my time.

That feeling of being bad at something, doubting myself, and continuing anyways is literally the point. I am training that muscle.

I am teaching my brain that if you don’t quit, success is on the other side of failure.

This isn’t a concept that comes naturally. Our brain wants to protect us from failure. When we were cavemen living in the forest, being bad at something and failing normally meant that you died. 

We are evolutionarily hardwired to avoid that feeling. It takes training and practice to get past it.

Also, learning hard things — like chess, or a new language, or dancing, or jiujitsu (what I would have picked if I was physically able) — actually improves the health of the physical structure of your brain. You are enhancing your neuroplasticity. 

And, just like learning to suppress and overcome that feeling of wanting to quit something we are bad at, when you have examples you can recall of being bad, practicing, improving, and then succeeding, you can lean on that the next time it happens. Getting better at new skills is a skill unto itself, and it’s better to get good at it when it doesn’t really matter, when the stakes are low (with something like chess), so you are ready for when it really does matter.

I don’t know if I will be a National Chess Master in five — or ten — years. But even if I do achieve that goal, the process of getting there will be far more valuable than the goal itself. The reward is in the work, not the prize at the end. 

PS: If you’re interested in also learning from International Master Neimer, he is accepting student applications at PowerfulChess.com. 

(Maybe you found this helpful. Maybe it wasn’t helpful for you, but you know exactly who it is helpful for. Be a good friend and send it to them. They will appreciate it, and so will I. If you have benefited from three or more of these blog posts, you should take nine seconds and send a text message to the number 484848 with the word CRIP as the message. That will subscribe you to get a text from me every week with a link to the latest post. Making a commitment to learning new stuff is good for you.)

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Crippled CEO Blog #047:

We knew from the beginning that we wanted a full wrap.

The first truck for our fledgling pool service business wasn’t going to have a magnet or a decal like these other companies. It was going to have a complete, glorious graphical wrap. 

After taking pictures and measurements, the wrap company asked us for images they could use. Not just our logo, but photographs we wanted used, as well as bullets of text describing our various services. 

I called the designer, Justin Mesteller at Kauff’s Vehicle Wraps. 

“No bullets. Those are tacky. And for the design, do whatever you want. Do you something you wanted to do forever but no one else would let you. Go nuts. We are a pool service, we clean pools, and our staff wear shirts that makes them look like superheroes. Just take that and run with it.”

Instead of telling him what I wanted, I gave him permission to be creative. And the results were awesome. I’m going to attach the pictures here. It really came out great and I am super excited. I can’t wait to see it driving down the road, our new business officially in action.

Besides using this opportunity to show off my awesome vehicle graphics and low-key promote my new business, what is the point of this?

The vehicle wrap turned out so spectacular because I gave a professional the freedom to do his job, without any input from someone who has never done this before (that’s me). I gave a creative person permission to be creative. I gave him ownership over the project. And because of that, not only did he have the freedom to make something really cool, he took ownership of the project and poured more time and energy into it.

My good friend Ashley Bissing, founder of One Love Social Media and fantastic dog mom, creates a lot of the original content for all of our social media channels. I very rarely direct her on what to create, and as a result, she does fantastic work. She has had the freedom to try different things and figure out what works best.

Let the professionals do the work you hire them for. Let creative people be creative. Get out of the way. Not only will the results be better, but it is also less work for you. This is one of the few scenarios where the easier route is actually the most effective. What’s not to like about that?

(Someone you know can use this. Why not look super smart and share it with them? You know what is also smart? Automate your life and make sure you never miss my next post by sending a text with the word CRIP to the phone number 484848. I will send you one message with two sentences and a link to the new post every Sunday. And it is totally free. For now.)

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Crippled CEO Blog #046:

I made sure the seatbelt to my wheelchair was buckled, firmly holding me in, and I was poised on the edge of my kidney shaped pool.

I had just, very carefully, pushed the smaller front two tires of my chair up over the lip of the brick colored tile coping, toward the edge, and paused. 

I imagined pushing hard on the joystick, zooming forward, smashing into the water… and sinking. 

This was the plan.

I was in constant, terrible, unrelenting chronic pain.

One of my closest “friends“ had convinced me that I was socially awkward, annoying, clingy, a chore to be around, completely unlovable, and physically disgusting.

I knew I was going to be alone for the rest of my life.

A girl who I had a small crush on, who had come over to hang out with me, was locked in my roommate’s bedroom. I was pretty sure they were having sex.

I inhaled deeply through my nose and pushed my chair slowly forward. The edge of my pool curved in, and my front left tire was barely on the edge of the coping.

I was running my company. I was the boss. But I knew that people only pretended to respect me. I was a fraud. I was really just a loser who had inherited daddy’s business. And it was only a matter of time before I screwed it all up. I knew that I was going to ruin the company. I was eventually going to put us out of business. I didn’t know what I was doing. Everyone was going to lose their job, I was going to thrust my parents into poverty for the last chapter of their lives, my dad was going to hate me, and I was going to live in a nursing home.

I pushed slightly forward on the joystick. My chair rolled forward. The front left tire hung in the air, nothing beneath it besides the water in the pool. The other front tire was right on the edge of the coping. I wondered if I would flip over forward or if I could go fast enough that I remained sort of upright as I sank. 

My wallet was in a pouch on the side of my chair. It suddenly occurred to me that there was cash in there and it would be a waste if it went in with me. I reach down and eventually pulled it out, dropping it onto the pool deck. It didn’t make sense that I was worried about the $227 in my wallet, but not destroying the $10,000 wheelchair that I was preparing to plunge into the pool. But very little of my thinking was making sense at the moment.

There was an open Word document on my computer that contained my two sentence note. I wanted the people who thought this might be because of them to feel guilty about it. I wanted to allow them to believe that. But I didn’t want to be a jerk and point them out directly. It was better if they wondered. But there was one person who I knew would blame himself, and I wanted to absolve him.

The words that filled my giant computer monitor read:

“I’m sorry, Dad. This wasn’t your fault.”

I knew things were going to get so much better without me. All of the lives I burdened by needing help with all of the trivial crap I need help with would be improved. I would never have to wake somebody up to put me in bed again, or need help going to the bathroom at 3 AM. 

They would sell my house, split up what little money I had, and that would be more beneficial than me sticking around.

Someone competent and qualified would take over running Life Saver. Free of my incompetence, it would flourish.

And I had to do it now, because as bad as things were, I knew this was as good as it was going to get. Things were only going to get worse. I had to go now before everything I knew came true and it all fell apart.

I put my hand on my joystick, closed my eyes, and took another deep breath.

The sound of the door to the backyard unsticking and being forced open startled me. I yanked my hand back from the chair joystick, my legs spasming violently.

“I didn’t mean to scare you,“ my roommate said. Maybe he knew? Was he checking on me? Maybe he cared enough to notice?

“I’m going to bed. Do you want me to let you back in the house?”

Nope. He didn’t.

“… yeah. Sure.”

I carefully backed up. My left tire got caught a bit on the coping as I reversed, and I gave it a bit more juice to get it back onto solid ground.

I drove quickly past him to my computer. I’m sure he said good night or something and wandered back into his room. Shaking, I closed the two sentence suicide note in size 36 font on my screen. I clicked “Don’t Save”. 

Objectively, my life wasn’t that much worse then than it is right now. And my life is phenomenal right now. It was pretty great then as well. The difference was I let other people define who I was, what was wrong with me, and what my future was. The story I told myself was hopeless.

The only real things different between then, when I almost killed myself by driving into my pool with my seatbelt on, and now, were the people I chose to allow into my life and care about, and the narrative loop inside my head. I was telling myself the wrong story about myself. And the reason it was so difficult and so effective, was that the words I was telling myself were true because I was thinking them. I was not lying to myself. It was all 100% accurate.

But when I changed my thinking, my reality changed with it. My belief that my life is incredible and only getting better is now just as accurate and just as true. I’m still in a wheelchair. I’m still running the same business. But now I’m happy, hopeful, and excited. This took a long time. It wasn’t easy. But it happened.

If I can do it, you can, too. At least you can (probably) wipe yourself and cut up your own chicken — you’ve got a huge head start. 

I’ve never told this story before. I’m rather nervous to post it, but maybe it helps someone. And what’s the worst that could happen (see Blog #31)? 

(If you know someone that could use this, please, please share with them. And if you would like to make sure that you never miss a post, send a text message with the word CRIP to the phone number 484848. I will send you a link to the latest blog post every Sunday, as soon as it’s out.)

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Crippled CEO Blog #045:

If you’ve read my prior posts, you know that my dad served in Vietnam in the army. His father fought in World War II. In the World War II army field manual, they state that unless you are dead, all failure is psychological. As long as you are breathing, failure is only in your head. It’s mental. 

That doesn’t mean that you’re going to immediately succeed at everything you do, that you’re not going to lose some battles. Because you will. You are going to screw up.

If you haven’t died, and if you don’t quit, you can still make a tactical retreat, regroup, reassess, and continue the path towards success.

If you are a starting actor who has never had a paid roll, and you get picked to be in a toothpaste commercial, you are going to be ecstatic. If you are Tom Cruise and the best work you can get is a toothpaste commercial, you might consider that a failure. The circumstances are identical. The failure is purely mental. It is entirely psychological.

If you haven’t decided to quit, then you have learned. You have gained experience. You are better now than you were before. Referring to his many attempts at inventing the lightbulb, Thomas Edison famously said,  “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

Your ability to choose the story you tell yourself about your situation is tremendously powerful. You’re not a failure unless you decide you are. And I’ve decided that I’m not a failure until I’m dead. You can, too. 

(Do you have a friend who has stumbled and might find this helpful? Please share it with him. And if you want to make sure you never miss the next one, send a text message with the word CRIP to the phone number 484848.)

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Crippled CEO Blog #044:

“Why are you eating that fish?” 

“Because I love fish!”

“You love fish. That is why you pulled it out of the ocean, killed it, filleted it, and ate it. You don’t love the fish. You love what it can do for you. You love yourself.“

The man meets a woman and she’s perfect. She is beautiful. She is kind. She is funny. And after some time, he decides that he loves her. She fulfills his physical and emotional needs. She makes him so happy. He loves her. And she feels the same way.

This is the same as the fish. This is, as Abraham Twerski calls it, Fish Love. 

He doesn’t love her. He loves himself. And he loves the way that she improves his life. He loves the enjoyment, gratification, and laughter she provides. 

Real love isn’t receiving and liking it. There’s no love in that. That’s just run-of-the-mill selfishness. It’s Fish Love. 

Real love is giving. Real love is when we take away from ourselves for somebody else.

There’s an important nuance to this, though.

Our instinct is to think that we give to the people we love. But that’s not entirely true.

We love the people to whom we give. Giving to somebody is investing part of us into them. And, as we know, we love ourselves. So, when we invest ourself into somebody else, when we invest our time, our resources, our energy, and so on, when that other person is imbued with this part of us that we love, now we can love this part of us that’s in them. 

My friends know that generosity is a way of life for me. At my funeral, I want people to remember me as someone who always gave with abundance. But this lifestyle of generosity has also allowed me to care about people in a much more authentic way. 

Don’t confuse real love with Fish Love. Real love is giving. Fish Love is receiving. 

(Could this help somebody? Share it with them — loving is giving! If you want to make sure you never miss a blog post, send a text message to 484848 with the word CRIP as the message. I’ll send you a link to the latest blog every Sunday as soon as it is up.)

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My dad was a heroin addict for many years. After that, he was a methadone addict. He was also a successful business owner, an amazing father, and a great husband.

My dad started doing heroin while serving in Vietnam. He was in a combat position, serving as the leader of a long range patrol group that would go deep into the enemy jungle, alone, and try to find things that they could destroy, or that they could call in air support to destroy.

It was the kind of role you might see in a movie about soldiers in Vietnam — with all of the atrocities that went with it.

Most members of his squad died shortly after joining. The turnover rate was extremely high. He told the story of one soldier who tried to injure himself to get sent home, but the attempt went horribly wrong, and ended with a bullet coming out of his chest, killing him instantly. 

Given these conditions, it almost makes sense that someone would turn to something like heroin as an escape, and many others in his position did the same thing.

The majority of soldiers who did drugs like heroin in Vietnam left their drug use in Asia, no longer needing the coping mechanism upon returning to normal life.

My dad did not. His life back home wasn’t that great either, and his addiction to heroin continued on for years.

He eventually sought treatment, which meant methadone in the 70s and 80s. Methadone is another opiate narcotic very similar to heroin. It is essentially like giving someone addicted to wine beer instead. It’s not a whole lot better, but it’s legal, and regulated, so the thinking at the time was that it was an improvement.

He was on methadone for nearly another decade.

Why am I telling you all this?

Because of the third sentence of this blog. He was a great entrepreneur, a great dad, and a great husband. Those aren’t traits you normally associate with junkies.

He spent the first 3.5 decades of his life doing terrible things to himself, causing himself great harm, and not experiencing a whole lot of success.

But everyone I know who knows him thinks of him as nothing but successful. They know him as somebody who always did the correct thing, who was honest to a fault, who gave great guidance, who was meticulous and organized, and who was successful in every definition of the word, with his business and with his family.

How is this possible?

Because you can totally blow it, do nothing productive, and live an all around terrible life until you’re 40, and still turn things around and be successful, be someone that other people aspire to become.

We put so much pressure on ourselves to hit certain milestones by certain arbitrary times, and the reality is that it’s all BS. Students think they can’t take a year off between high school and college because they will then be behind and at a disadvantage, when the truth is, they could take 15 years off and still probably be fine.

What you’ve done before does not have to dictate who you’re going to be in the future. 

My dad at 20 was a junkie. 

My dad at 30 was a junkie. His parents wouldn’t talk to him.

My dad at 50 was running a national company that he started in his garage with over $1 million in revenue. I would take over this business a few years later when he retired at 53. 

My dad at 65 owned a Porsche and a 32 foot Catalina sailboat and was zip lining in Mexico wearing a Rolex. He was a father to adult sons who were all doing great and admired him. He was adored by everyone who knew him.

If other people have done it, you can too. If you’re not happy with where you’re at, there is no reason you can’t change. You just have to start.

(Did you like this? Please like it and share it with friends who you think might benefit. And if you want to make sure you never, ever miss a blog post from me, send a text to 484848 with the word CRIP to get a message from me every Sunday with a link to the latest blog post.)

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LOTS of people right now think Facebook is damaging them, making them crazier, or impacting them in a negative way. I’ve heard lots of people talk about deleting the app, or actually going ahead and doing it.

And this makes perfect sense. If something is bringing you more harm than good, get rid of it.

But WHY are people hating their time on Facebook? It’s not Facebook itself. The app works rather well. 

It’s the people. 

But more specifically, it’s the people you don’t want to hear from — the conversations you don’t want to see or be tempted to engage in. Conversations you were exposed to randomly that were never intended for you to see. 

But how did they end up there? You probably have hundreds, if not thousands, of friends on Facebook. But you only see posts regularly from maybe 50 of them. You didn’t pick those 50. Facebook did. It did its best based on what you engaged with, but it still chose on your behalf. Because it knows there’s no way you can keep up with a chronological stream of hundreds or thousands of people posting every day. 

But, ultimately, you’re in control of what you see on Facebook. More importantly, you are in control of who you see it from.

Many have improved their experience by unfollowing select bad offenders, and this is great, but Facebook is still deciding everything else you see.

I have a friend who unfollowed every single person besides his wife. His newsfeed is exclusively posts from her. Because that’s what he wanted to see. This is amazing.

He gave me the idea. Why don’t WE choose, consciously, who we care about enough to follow? Instead of letting Facebook choose, why not decide for ourselves?

If you are sick of Facebook, or you think it’s hurting your life, or you’re thinking about getting rid of it, or you just think you want a better experience, try this: without Facebook’s help, make a list of 5, 10, 20 or so people — the number is up to you, but try to pick a number to stick to — then go to Facebook, go to Settings, go to Newsfeed, and choose “See First” for that list. After that, whenever you see a post from somebody not on the list, unfollow them. And if you want, you can get a jump on it and unfollow a bunch of people right off the bat from the settings, but if you do it consistently from your newsfeed, it won’t be long until you’ll see the words, pictures, and videos only from the people you enjoy interacting with and spending time with. You will guarantee a positive Facebook experience. If someone from outside the list wants you to see something, they will have to send it to you directly. 

This works great, because most of the stuff you don’t want to see is posted by people you didn’t want to hear from, and they did not post it with you as the intended audience. So, if it wasn’t for you, why not cut it out?

If you are worried about people being offended that you didn’t notice whatever they posted, you could even make an announcement: 

“I have decided to Unfollow everyone except my mom, Eric, and cat memes. I don’t want to see anything not intended specifically for me randomly or by chance anymore. If you’d like me to see something you are sharing on Facebook, you will have to share it with me specifically, otherwise I won’t be able to see it.”

I’m currently trying this out, and I’ve been really surprised by the results. I think the impact might be larger than you think. Give it a shot, and let me know how it goes for you.

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