But as a former radio DJ, and someone who enjoys making audio, it leaves me wondering when audio will have it’s time in the sun for this kind of radical experimentation and optimization.

Audio, as great and popular as a medium as it is, comes with the price of being inherently hard to spread, unless it’s living on a major distribution channel (iTunes for podcasts or Audible for audio books).

Which means the easiest way, right now, for audio to be consumed is if it’s packaged in one of two formats – a podcast or an audiobook. Many apps and services are built around the somewhat efficient delivery/consumption of those two formats.

But what do you do with audio that isn’t one of those two things? What if it’s not a podcast, or an audiobook?

I’m referring to alternative audio entertainment, independent music, or perhaps recordings being served to a set of customers via an online mastermind or course.

One option is to deliver the audio directly to a private list of subscribers, a la email list, and they can then download the audio themselves to figure out what to do with it next.

Not a very fluid or intuitive process for that poor audio file.

The problem with this delivery method is that it presents too many steps for the consumer to both download and transfer the audio to the device of their choice for listening.

A second option is to post everything on SoundCloud, which does have a nice mobile app for both discovering and consuming audio. Also, if you upgrade to a higher-level pro account, you can create private groups who only get the audio you send them.

But the obvious downside is needing people to sign up for SoundCloud and download the mobile app to their device before they can have your audio.

Also, if you’re creating audio you want to distribute for free, then you’re shelling out a nice chunk annually for distribution.

A third option is to create your own mobile app that delivers the audio straight to the user as it’s published. Naturally, this incurs development costs, approval costs to publish to Apple or Android, and the recurring cost of updating the app regularly.

Currently, iOS opens audio immediately upon clicking the link, and lets you push play. But, when I click the little “send to” icon, my only options are to 1) open in Chrome, 2) open in Safari, or 3) copy the URL of the audio file. And then what? What am I supposed to do with that copied URL?

How can I store this audio to my device for further listening without having to take many extra steps of uploading and archiving the audio on a computer and then transferring it to somewhere that mobile can access it?

Can there be a way to allow mobile (phones/tablets) to instantly recognize an audio file, ask if you want it added to your cue in a particular app, and even allow you to open and listen to it right then in said app?

I’d like to see audio handled a bit more like words in the digital world. While I’m fully aware that it’s a different animal, I can’t help but feel as though it’s being overlooked as a kind of awkward form of media that people enjoy, but programmers and developers have a hard time accommodating.

What can we do about that?

Any developer or programmers want to chime in on this? I’m interested to see where this can go.

The world did not end today as many thought it might. At the very least some were convinced of modern society’s collapse rather than total global annihilation.

Admittedly, I’m both pleased and disappointed. I’m pleased there wasn’t complete destruction and fiery doom. But I’m disappointed there wasn’t a post-apocalyptic scenario to wake up to this morning. Something I do admit to fantasizing about since my youth.

I used to daydream about a barren wasteland of empty towns and crumbling cities, with overgrown vegetation, and all manner of wild animals wandering about. To me, it sounded like the perfect scenario. You know, to test my survival skills while rebuilding society.

A hard reset of modern society always seemed like a very appealing opportunity to me. Like it would be a breather from the madness that is right now. A chance to start over, return to simple survival as a daily agenda, and reconstruct the world in a little different way.

Oh, and I could finally get to play the reluctant wandering hero – a part I’m clearly born to play, if you ask me. Sunglasses, dusty jacket, worn out boots, and a stubbly grimace that signaled to anyone I encountered that this guy was not to be trifled with.

But since it’s apparently not happening today, I guess I need to return to doing what I can to improve this current version of society.

Oh well. I’ll start by poking fun at the situation a little bit more. Enjoy.

What is Unlearning?

Well, by my definition, it’s the realization that one has been giving into hype, wrong beliefs, or false expectations. This is usually the point where a person makes the decision to create their own systems for achievement.

I know in my own experiences, the process to Unlearning usually follows precise and predictable stages.

Adam’s Stages to Unlearning

1. Frustration at situation.
2. Frustration at self.
3. Lots of talking to self out loud while walking down a crowded street.
4. Contemplative Scotch(s).
5. Realization that I gave in to hype and popular trends.
6. Anger at self and popular trends.
7. Contemplative Scotch(s).
8. Apologize to self and popular trends for previous anger.
9. Walk home feeling like there’s something…more.
10. Wake up and realize the answer was obviously to forget what I know and create my own way of doing things.
11. Celebratory Scotch(s).
12. Unlearning begins.

The stage of Unlearning is the place that people are most eager and willing to do the work of change, but it’s also the most vulnerable state for them as they re-learn how to trust themselves again.

Delivering solutions to people in the state of Unlearning is both rewarding and a challenge. Yes, they’re eager to discover their own version of truth and crave solid fundamental principles of success.

However, until they earn your trust – which might take longer than usual at this stage – they won’t act on claiming those fundamentals for themselves.

Interestingly, you as the leader can be a catalyst or an accelerator of a person’s Unlearning.

That’s usually when you’re connecting with them just as they’re understanding the source of the frustration they’re having with themselves and they’re situation.

In those cases you need to lead those people on to the next stage, into the unknown of Unlearning, which again, can take time.

If however, you’re finding each other at the place of their conscious decision to Unlearn, you can see what happens if you work at accelerating their self-trust in their own abilities again.

This doesn’t apply to every industry or stage of business, but if you’re in the business of solutions and relief, especially via information, then start with the Unlearned ones.

They’re ready to take themselves and their work much more seriously than ever before.

It’s interesting to learn how people consume information online. For some it’s a deliberate practice of order and for others it’s a scattered activity of trying to keep up.

As a dyslexic, it’s very important for me to have no distractions while reading because it would take, and has taken me, forever to read simple articles, books, and essays.

Reading is a chore for me, so it’s vital I create ways to make it as pleasurable a chore as possible.

That’s why I’m always looking for new and better ways/tools for consuming content in as simple and elegant a fashion as possible. And I’ve found plenty.

But this article’s intentions go beyond the idea of distraction-free reading.

It occurred to me after asking folks how they read online content, that very few people who are in my circles of contact are utilizing a streamlined “off-web” style reading system.

On top of that, no one that I see is taking the time to teach their readers how to best consume the content that they’re working so hard to produce.

So, I thought I’d present a simple solution to this problem. And yes, it’s a problem.

Web Reading Is Broken

The unfortunate fact is that most people do their content reading via either a browser-based blog interface or their email inbox.

The major problem with browser-based reading on a website or blog is that it’s never quite the clean, portable, or quiet enough environment necessary for the information to truly be digested.

And no, responsive web design does not always ensure correct treatment of the content contained in that design.

The problem with subscribing to blog posts via email and consuming information from an inbox, is that you are reading in an environment that is representative of overwhelm, instant gratification, and the prevalent need to fulfill your end of “communication obligation.”

How can this be a place for calmly digesting high quality articles and essays? It’s not.

Off-Web Reading Is Beautiful

If you’re even mildly aware of what the 21st century is doing to facilitate better reading experiences, than you know that there are a large number of applications and services that will send chosen content into much more beautiful and simple reading environments than what your inbox and most web sites can deliver.

Readability, Instapaper, Pocket, Flipboard, and Pulse, are just a few of the ever-growing services and tools that turn web content into an experience worth reading and consuming by stripping away distractions in favor of the eye’s desire for simplicity and calm.

Plus, it’s all done via connectivity. Apps working apart from web based browsers and interfaces. Apps working with each other and the other services to create elegant reading experiences on your laptop, tablet, or mobile device.

How I Read

It starts with RSS.

Since I don’t care for having blog posts grace my inbox, I am a huge fan of RSS.

Forget the naysayers. The number of tools around RSS are too immense and too amazing to ignore it and declare it dead or irrelevant.

Using RSS allows me to implement third-party aggregation tools that create a simplified, unified, and beautified reading experience consuming the content I want while truly enjoying the reading process.

My mornings are usually spent with a cup of coffee using the Caffeinated app to explore the articles of that particular day.

If I am wanting to do something away from the laptop, that’s where the beautiful, elegant, and amazing Flipboard comes into play.

With its ability to aggregate my RSS feeds as well as all of my social media channels, it literally can become a one-stop destination for all the information I want to consume on a daily basis on a tablet or mobile device.

Plus with IFTTT I can use a formula that will take anything I read via RSS in Flipboard or Caffeinated, and allow me the option to feed it to Buffer to be scheduled out on Twitter or App.net for sharing later.

Also, within both Flipboard and Caffeinated, I can choose to send any article I want to Readability for future reference.

Readability is a beautiful service that I have been using for several years. It allows me to take any content I want from mobile, desktop, or tablet and it will create a simplified elegant reading experience by stripping away confusing web formats leaving nothing but the text.

There’s also an ever-growing list mobile apps using Readability as the preferred way to display the content of external links instead of opening a default mobile browser.

People who do use services like Readability or apps like Instapaper will typically syphon everything they want to read into these places. The reason for this is simple.

They are tired of being disturbed and pulled away while reading by confusing and disruptive web layouts. They treasure and value the content they consume on a daily basis, and they want to glean as much as they can from this content.

Your website does not matter to these people. What matters to them is what you’re producing in words, topic, and meaning. That’s what matters to them.

For myself, I have not been able to use Readability as a go-to default source for reading everything because it would require me to manually send every piece of content into it.

So, I use Readability more as a research archive or library in that I only send articles I want to re-visit that will require long term reading and exploration.

In the near future I anticipate apps and services like Readability and Flipboard to not only continue delivering elegant reading experiences off-web, but to also produce competing alternatives for even publishing to a website or blog ever again.

Imagine being able to hit publish on an article and it lands only in the apps and services your people are using to consume your content without them having to even digitally touch your site. We’re a lot closer to that than you think.

Why Aren’t We Teaching How To Read?

We live in an age where both the opportunity and responsibility exist to guide people in not only finding our content but also in how to read it once it’s found.

You work hard to produce content that people will want to consume and willingly receive. But, what else are you doing to ensure their experience with that content is the best that it can be for them?

Instead of continuing to enable people’s short-term attention spans, why not teach them a fluid system for maintaining attention on your important content as long as what you’re producing is worthy of their attention?

A group of incredible geniuses joined us to uncover the best route to working and living from a premium perspective.

As much teaching as I did during the three-month course, I did even more learning from these folks.

Below are the lessons that impacted me the most.

1. It doesn’t matter where you’re at in business and life, there’s always room to level up and it’s going to look the same as the first time you decided to change your life for the better.

2. Work/life balance is a myth to some and an end goal for others. Let it be both.

3. We’re never as aware of our own self-imposed limitations as we claim. This applies to the most successful people in the world, too.

4. There are entire sections of the Internet (underserved communities) that have been operating with the greatest of ignorance and the scarcest of resources. They think they have it made.

5. The opportunity to share experiences is an opportunity to expand your human network and learn to listen like a humble person.

6. The intense drive to aid in someone’s success can be very detrimental if it’s not always checked against the greater good.

7. Enabling a small deliberate portion of ignorance does more good than harm.

8. Teaching is eating. Too much is always too much. Overwhelming is always overwhelming. Give until people are 80% full. Then, let them digest.

9. Emotional attachment is a self-concocted disease that’s running rampant in digital business. The cure is always so anti-climactic, that it’s purposely ignored.

10. There’s more to life than business, and there’s more to business than life.

11. Holding on to a “dream” so tight that you’re the one suffocating is idiocy (Please see lesson no. 9).

12. All existential crises are just simple truths being pulled out of you from the most painful orifice imaginable.

13. There are an amazing amount of creative geniuses still waiting to discover their perfect path. It’ll be a wonderful world when they do.

14. The intimate connection between one’s physical state and one’s financial, relational, and success state is another purposely ignored truth.

15. Success on your own terms isn’t a formula. It’s a training regimen.

16. No matter how much knowledge you plan to deliver as a genius, you’ll always be floored by someone else’s brilliance. Thankfully.

17. You have no hope of surviving business if you can’t stop taking feedback personally.

18. Clarity and self-awareness are two essentials most people forget even exist.

I’m pleased to say that Make Your Mark has reopened for the Fall term. I can’t wait to see what we all learn this time around.

This cannot happen until the sources of information and trust step into the responsible role of leadership with the sole intent of informing the people for the sake of making decisions that better their lives and allow for their most honest expression of that living.

Before you start to roll your eyes thinking this is headed into the tiresome realm of politics and elections, let me assure you, it is not. That is a scenario that only plays itself out every couple of years.

What I’m describing happens every minute of every hour of every day.

In this age of digital connection and contribution, the people creating the information are in a unique position of earning trust on a daily basis with each new article or blog post or video or podcast.

The people consuming the information are also in a unique position to decide for themselves, and on their terms, who to trust and who to ignore.

While this may seem like the ultimate union of freedom for both parties, it doesn’t always play out like that.

In an age-old effort for numbers and eyeballs, the producers of information on this open and free platform of equality, mimic the tactics and behaviors of mainstream companies and media institutions that have attained those high numbers and attention, but it’s come at a cost.

We (I am including myself) give into the statistics that tell us people are scanning rather than reading, and that content is consumed on such a large level, leaving people overwhelmed.

Their entire days are spent digesting emails, Tweets, Facebook updates, blog posts, and on and on.

While this information is true, what reason does this give for us to continually contribute to that same deafening noise?

And in such a way that we fail to truly inform our readers and subscribers, and only cater to their already full, yet unfulfilling lifestyle of information consumption?

This is especially problematic when you factor in that most of us content creators are also business owners, who make a living from the people that consume that information.

I’m not denouncing the model, I’m just here to proclaim and end to the formula for myself.

I write here at adamking.me to give my ideas a place to live. It’s a space to send them out and see which ones deserve people’s trust and attention.

But, lately, they’ve not been as intelligent or as honest as I know they need to be. I’ve held back on purpose. But, not out of fear, or uncertainty.

Quite frankly I don’t care how my writing is received. You can denounce it or praise it, and I’ll have the same unemotional response.

But I do care about my role and responsibility as an informer and as a business owner.

These ideas aren’t just for me to randomly toss into the wind. These ideas are intimately connected to everything I’ve experienced and am experiencing.

These ideas aren’t just for me to play with. They’re new material for readers to take for themselves and test, stretch, prove wrong, and reform into their own world views.

But most importantly, these ideas and this space act as a gateway into the work I do with my businesses. And that’s something I’ve been ignoring in favor of mild obscurity and anonymity.

As a partner in a business whose sole purpose is to better people’s lives through information, I can no longer continue my usual formula of random thoughts and vague ideas that don’t serve the people beyond the three minutes that they take to read.

If I’m not informing people in a way that will allow them the honest space of true choice, than I’ve done nothing short of misinforming them. Even if that’s not the intention and regardless of whether we’re (myself and the customer) aware of it or not, that is indeed what’s happening.

My main purpose in life, from as far back as I can remember, has been freedom. Freedom of choice, freedom of action, freedom of thoughts, words, deeds, and creation.

So, in the same vein of being invested in my own freedom, I must also become invested in the freedom of others.

And if I’m co-creating products with the intention of enabling their freedom, than I must also be creating peripheral information that immediately frees them to make truly informed, honest decisions based on their convictions and judgement.

It’s a minority that works in this manner, but they believe in it and so do I. I always have, but for the sake of achievement I didn’t act on it wholeheartedly.

In this age of collision between digital access, media, and commerce, the responsibility and opportunity is never more prevalent as it is now, to cultivate a truly informed people that can and will make life-changing decisions based on their most honest and properly informed world views.

Even if that comes at the expense of business.

Freedom is worth the perceived risk of irrelevance.

“Let’s face it. Human error is the number one cause of digital failure these days. Well, according to my experience anyway.”

The reason is simple – you and I are not a part of perfect technology. And our failures are never the cause of anything other than our secret desire to fail.

It’s not the tech that’s broken, it’s the person or people involved. It’s always going to come down to human error.

Instead of fighting against it, I finally embraced this fact a long time ago. There’s no external excuses, no entity to blame, no scapegoat.

It’s on me, just like it always has been. Just like it’s always been on you too.

Too many people take the basic daily fundamental decisions of business way too personally.

It’s a separate-but-equal arrangement, like all great ones are. Real business is an extension of your best self, but kept deliberately separate in it’s rightful place – just business.

In the end, it’s dangerous to be looking to business as a way to fulfill you in the emotional areas that you’re responsible for fulfilling.

No event, daily routine, or accomplishment in business will ever bring the “completion” you’re after.

That’s all on your shoulders to create for yourself.

For me, it’s the time I spend creating a new habit for the better. I keep close tabs on how I’m thinking, feeling, moving, and acting as I train my brain. Doing this, teaches me to recognize both the good patterns and the bad. And that gives me a major advantage next time I create a new habit.

Outside of that type of scenario, there really isn’t much good micro-managing can do.

Micro-managing is typically created out of the fear of becoming irrelevant, and manufactures/exploits the fear of perhaps missing out on something, or anything for that matter.

Today, it’s so easy to dissect a topic like business into a million tiny subjects all sub-divided into thousands more micro-topics. Each one claiming to somehow give you an edge or advantage that you’re absolutely foolish to ignore.

Do you feel like monitoring 300,000 micro-topics around your online business?

If a person can uncover some hidden “gems” in the tiniest of unexplored areas, then people will surely have to keep showing up to pay homage for their discovery. And to keep putting these tidbits into action because otherwise, they’d be missing out on something huge! Right?

Really, who’s being served with a micro-managed business, life, and content strategy? It’s certainly not the readers or the patrons.

Go on. Keep micro-managing your entire existence. It’s fun watching you spin in dizzying circles.

Especially if you’re the one whirling around trying to micro-manage the business that’s built on exploiting micro-managing.

“We have gotten used to the idea of being in a tribe of one, loyal to our own party.”

“WE expect more from technology and less from one another and seem increasingly drawn to technologies that provide the illusion of companionship without the demands of relationship.”

“When people are alone, even for a few moments, they fidget and reach for a device. Here connection works like a symptom, not a cure, and our constant, reflexive impulse to connect shapes a new way of being.”

“We used to think, ‘I have a feeling; I want to make a call.’ Now our impulse is, ‘I want to have a feeling; I need to send a text.’”

“We think constant connection will make us feel less lonely. The opposite is true. If we are unable to be alone, we are far more likely to be lonely. If we don’t teach our children to be alone, they will know only how to be lonely.”

Precisely.