Observation #1: Succesful people respond

In preparation for my trip to LA, I learned my first lesson about people in LA. It's this: Successful people respond to e-mails. Promptly.

During the past two weeks of frantic networking, I've contacted 16 people that live out in the area and are involved with the industry. They range from unemployed student and consistently employed grip to accomplished "deep voice guy", locations manager and director. Plus, there's a ton of in-between.

Here's what I've noticed: the most accomplished people respond first and most consistently.
The individuals that I'd put in the category of "Successful, real-life adults" each responded to my emails within five hours.

And these guys are busy! One has written a musical that was made into a movie. The movie came out on Friday. I e-mailed him on Sunday. He e-mailed me back 2 hours later.

Sidenote: Rock of Ages is hilarious.

Now, you know these people aren't responding because they can somehow benefit from connecting with me. If anything, I've done a great job making it clear to them that I am a disaster. But, they reply. And their replies are fantastic. They offer advice, one offered his couch, and all of them offer to meet up with me once I'm there. They are really trying to help.

I have a hard time diagnosing precisely why the individuals who are 8 million times busier than myself are better at responding to my e-mails than I am to theirs.

As a rule, I am terrible at responding. To e-mails, text messages, really any form of communication.  In thinking about it, I realized that I'm overwhelmed by communication. It's much easier to check something and decide that it can be handled later than it is to sit down and tackle it right-away. These guys, on the other hand, knock stuff out instantly. And it's no coincidence that they have this attitude and have accomplished some really great things.

If you've listened to me in my past posts you know that you should never listen to me. I've done a thorough job getting across the fact that my life is a scattered shitshow. So, I'm not writing this to give advice. I guess I'm just letting you all know, starting now, I've realized that it's important for me to be better at responding to e-mails (texts, phone calls). So, I'm going to be. And you guys can hold me to it.

The people I've contacted are helping me out so much and I'm infinitely grateful. I hope it's only a short matter of time before I can help out the future disasters.

"The porpoise of human life is to serve, and to show compassion and the will to help others. " -Albert Schweitzer