When you came into this world, all shiny and new, and people proclaimed about the miracle of your creation, do you truly believe that your existence on this planet was destined to be living in a cage 9-5, hitting buttons for treats like a lab rat?

I don't think so. If you haven't watched Office Space yet, please do. It will explain everything that's wrong with cubicle life. If you have, the likelihood is that you too obsess over the photocopier or stapler, or want to trip over the annoying person who tells you off for having 'a case of the Mondays'. 

So, how do you break free and escape the cubicle? Here are some tips:

1. Work out how much it matters that you do. Are you still at the 'I could do a little side hustle for a couple of hours a week and eventually move out of this cubicle' stage, or have you progressed to the 'I don't care what it takes. I will borrow money, sell my car, and go without shoes to leave this low paying soul-sucking dump' stage? If the latter,...

Listen, I'm not some great basketball expert but I'm a total word nerd, and I know poetry when I witness it. Whether it's on the page, on the stage or on a basketball court, when the scansion's on fleek and doesn't skip a beat, you've got to bear witness. 

So, here's the scoop on the LeBron/Shakespeare thang. Watch the guy play. Seriously. I'll wait. Audio starts a few seconds in. If you're not a basketball fan, you can get a sense of the guy within the first minute of watching him, so just do that and I'll get on to how this helps you even if you've never seen basketball in your life. Bear with me on this. What I'm about to say will make so much more sense when you see this poetry in motion... 

The LeBronspeare Business Model

What LeBron and Shakespeare have in common is four-fold:

• Standing on the shoulders of giants
• Having a sense of their own greatness, but also raising those around them
• Using the GOOD aspects of ego, but coming primarily from their 'higher selves'
• ...

Everything has a marketing department. If you're a solopreneur, it's you. If you're the Catholic Church, it's The Vatican. Catholicism is the 'product' and the marketing department for that is The Vatican. It's kind of like 'Head Office' or 'Corporate'. Then, the churches are sort of like affiliate marketers. They follow the rules set by Corporate and teach people the message of Catholicism.

The thing is that the marketing department at Corporate has done really well with fear marketing when it's come to lead generation. Dr. Michael Bernard Beckwith has said that fear pushes you until a vision pulls you. Catholicism is certainly not short of visions, but most people are not there yet. They've not had a powerful enough connection with God to be pulled towards a spiritual vision, but they'll fill pews on a Sunday if it keeps them out of Hell. They'll confess their sins if it saves them from the eternal fires of damnation. They'll throw notes on a plate to save...

Automation has been a freaking godsend on Twitter over the years, but it's going away now. Recent political scandals involving data scraping and bots have thrown into sharp relief the extent to which misuse of automation can adversely affect culture. Given the drop in Facebook's value when the Cambridge Analytica story broke, it makes sense that Twitter would want to protect itself from future issues around the use of non-human interaction to shift what trends and, ultimately, shift opinion in a way that is undemocratic. 

Goodbye Marketers!

So, it's goodbye to marketers then? Not as such. As I've always said, ethical influence is the bee's knees, the bee's butt, and every other part of the bee's anatomy. It's unethical influence that's messing things up on social media. 

Think of it like a party. It's your 21st birthday and your parents are going out of town for the night. They're letting you use their house for your party. If you invite all your friends, they're...

You are the only person on the face of the planet who doesn't have their shiz together. You know that's a lie, but isn't that something you tell yourself often? Be honest for a second. If anyone else put you down the way you put yourself down, would you ever speak to them again? Hell no! If you're like most people (I've coached and taught thousands of people over the last couple of decades, so I can PROMISE this is true) you're your worst critic. 

When you're criticising yourself like this all the time, what excuse do you give yourself for being so mean to yourself? Is it that you're a perfectionist? Is it that you don't want to get too comfortable being average? Whatever it is, stop it! 

Life Isn't Perfect

The truth is that life isn't perfect... for ANYONE. The gurus or celebrities you follow, who seem to have it all together, are human beings. They're showing you their lives through a PR filter. You're getting the highlight reel. As the meme says, you need to...

You think you understand reality, but you don't. 

You're awake right now, as far as you know, and you're reading these words, and you understand how the world works. Do you? 

Your New Organs

Did you realise, for instance, that you have an organ in your body that is huge but that medical science had no idea existed until just now? It's true, and it has massive implications for health. Here's the science. 

Let's not forget that female sexual organs were completely misunderstood until 2009! Let that sink in for a second. Without going too 'NSFW' here, the clitoris is anything but tiny. It's freaking massive. Bear in mind, also, that it's the only organ created purely for pleasure, with no function for reproductive purposes. Just throwing that in there for anyone still stuck in the dark ages about a woman's right to enjoy sex. Anyway, if you want to get clued up on that, there's a pic here that explains all and won't get you fired if your boss sees you looking at it....

Ever had a moment with your 'to-do' list where you realised that the little slacker was deliberately avoiding doing its job? 

I mean, isn't there a part of you that secretly thinks that the act of writing the things down alone should count for something? Isn't there a part of you that secretly thinks the to-do list should... well... do itself?

The To-Do List Won't Do Itself

It is quite an adulting moment when you finally realise that the to-do list won't do itself. And yet, you continue to write lists that never get completed. Maybe you set yourself 10 tasks for the day. You complete 2. The feeling of disappointment at the end of the day, when you write your 8 tasks for the following day, along with another 4 new ones is palpable. If you're not careful, life can become a series of to-do lists, sewn together by brief stitches of sleep.

 Tweetable...

"If you're not careful, life can become a series of to-do lists, sewn together by brief stitches of sleep." ~...

At the time of writing this post, the Cambridge Analytica scandal is playing out. Millions of people's data has been misappropriated including, it would appear, private messages. If you are friends of friends with even one of the people in Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania or a couple of other places that Trump's political marketing arm targeted on Facebook during his election, it is being alleged currently that your data was stripped out. This is making people think carefully about what they have shared on Facebook. 

It may be wise to have a little spring clean about not only what you've shared on social media, however, but also what you've consumed. Through your years online, how many book and course recommendations have you jumped on without thought?

How many times have you looked at 'perfect' pictures of other people and judged your own appearance harshly?

How often have you looked at the lifestyles of your peers and felt either unworthy or, maybe, a little too worthy? 

Is...

 You've heard the standard training, right? Focus on your strengths. Ignore the news. Positive thinking. Deliver value. Sound familiar? Not working though, is it? Be honest. Bet you're wondering why.

Why The Standard Advice Doesn't Work

Most people won't tell you this because they want to keep you under their control. They want to keep you clueless and confused and easily manipulated, so you buy more of their stuff. Hey, don't get me wrong, I want you to buy my stuff too, but I don't get a kick out of disempowering people. I'm lit up by Indiepreneurs - those gloriously independent-minded 'freaks, geeks and uniques' who break the rules, escape the cubicle, and create their own universes. Look at the top of the page. See that 'clockerfly'? That's the symbol of the Indiepreneur. It takes some pretty mighty wings to break out of a freaking clock, but you're doing it. Sometimes feels as if half of you is still stuck in the 9-5 'someone else is controlling my clock' world...

Thaw Out Your Potential

In Britain right now, we are being hit by the so-called Beast From The East. It's basically some snow and wind, but we like to be dramatic whenever possible.

Small island. Good at marketing ourselves.

If we say our storm is bigger than anyone else's it will trend on twitter. And it has. Yay us.

Everyone's bought 'storm bread' to save them from the perils of snow. Since even the gluten intolerant appear to be hitting the supermarkets to hoard barnloads of the stuff, I think we're meant to throw it out of the windows to appease the storm gods or something. Who knows?

Anyhow, it's chilly. When it's chilly, it can be hard to remember that it's actually the start of spring. There are a couple of different dates for the start of spring, but according to The Met Office - those cheery blighters who predict storms and the like - today is the first day of spring in the UK. Well, I'm snowed in and all but... good to know. Since I am somewhat of an action taker, I'll be...