I just started reading Malcom Gladwell’s Tipping Point: how little things can make a big difference and I’m absolutely entranced by the ideas he has laid out. Gladwell boils down such complex ideas into meaningful bites of information that are coupled with both anecdotal stories as well as factual information to back it all up.
Something that I’ve come to realize is that our interpretation of books is so subjective and it ebbs and flows depending on the situation that we are currently in. Our lives are always changing and we’re always evolving. As things change, our interpretation of our environment and the things we consume change as well.
Over the past year I’ve been head down on a lot of different projects. More recently (in the past few months), Steem has taken a kind of back seat as I focus on a few other things. My timing with this has actually been quite good: crypto has been in a sort of down period both price-action-related and news-related.
What I love so much about Steem is that even though the rest of crypto isn’t doing much, Steem is always chugging along and being further developed into a fantastic ecosystem of updates.
I’ve been doing my best to keep up with all these updates and all the entrepreneurs who are making great projects and progress on the Steem blockchain. DLive and Steem Monsters are 2 of my favorite projects right now and I’m following them closely.
DLive came out with their v0.8.1 update which included some fantastic updates that I was highly anticipating:
HD 720p VideoHover Previews (works similar to youtube and this is a feature that is becoming a standard in the online video industry. And for good reason… It saves a ton of time to be able to just hover your mouse over a video and get a preview of what’s to come)Better Video Support All-around (I’ve noticed that viewing videos on DLive is a lot faster and less buggy than before. I’ve also heard from a few friends that uploading is significantly faster and easier now).
To see this amazing progress in such a great platform that I believe in is great news. Steem Monsters is also making GIGANTIC leaps of progress each week. I keep seeing more and more exciting news coming from the SM team and community. There’s honestly so much going on with SM that I’ll have to work on an individual post just to talk about all the things that I’m so excited about.
My sincere hope is that more projects on the Steem blockchain look to SM and DLive as steadfast examples of development and community. The more projects that can adopt these principles, the better. Each project adds immense value to the Steem blockchain and will serve as a great way to onboard new users to this great ecosystem that is continuing to grow and develop in it’s own right.
You may be wondering why I went on a little rant about those 2 projects in a post with the subject of “How Your Life Will Change.” Gladwell’s anecdotal writing style has obviously rub off on me.
The story of DLive and Steem Monsters is the story of progress and that same story applies to your life as well. Gladwell’s book teaches us that our expectations are that progress will happen slowly and over time.
He teaches us that these expectations are rather misplaced. Progress is always happening, but there is always a tipping point - there is always a time when the progress reaches a certain apex and then change happens in a seemingly blink of an eye.
“We are all, at heart, gradualists, our expectations set by the steady passage of time. But the world of the Tipping Point is a place where the unexpected becomes expected,where radical change is more than possibility. It is—contrary to all our expectations—a certainty.”
-Malcolm Gladwell. “The tipping point: how little things can make a big difference.”
“Where radical change is more than a possibility […] a certainty.” - Radical change is happening on the Steem blockchain and it’s happening in your life too.
So long as you continue to strive for progress in your life - whether it be financially by saving money and investing in your future and yourself or whether it be emotionally by investing time and energy and love into your relationships - you will notice small changes for the better in your life. And then all of the sudden, you will notice a radical change.
You’ll wake up one day and realize that you’ve reached a tipping point. A point where your life radically changes for the better and has little resemblance to the life you were living previously.
You’ll notice that your relationships are stronger, that you have significantly more wealth, that your loved ones love you even more than you could’ve imagined because of your love for them and your effort to build those relationships.
Gladwell offers this question at the end of the chapter which I found the above quote. I’ve been sitting with this question and pondering it’s implications. Hopefully you can do the same and see how it applies to your own life and how you choose to strive for progress:
“Why is it that some ideas or behaviors or products start epidemics and others don’t? And what can we do to deliberately start and control positive epidemics of our own?”
-Malcolm Gladwell. “The tipping point: how little things can make a big difference.”