Something Different: How To Shave Your Head (And If You Really Should)

It's time to do something different on BLTS - a "How To"

I've been considering writing this ever since I decided to shave my head during the winter of 2004. I still remember staring in the mirror asking myself...is it time? I wish that I had been given some advice and tips on what to do. Hopefully this post will help someone who is on the fence about shaving his/her head.

Not to go back too far in history but when I finished my time in the service, I noticed that my once head full of thick hair had abruptly stopped growing around the crown of my head. At first I rebelled...I bleached my hair blond (which matched my scalp more than brown did) and tried to conceal the fact that the hair on the top of my head was just not growing. Eventually I got sick of the toe-head look and let my original color grow back in. At that point it was quite obvious...the hair on the top of my head had fully retired.

For at least 3 more years I kept it short on the sides to match the apparent thinness on the top of my head. This resulted in a visit to the barber at least once every 3 weeks (if not more.) Worst of all, some barbers would say "You have a lot of hair! You're not going bald at all!" I'm not sure why some barbers would say such a thing when it was so obviously not true...but needless to say I never went back those liars.

Trying to figure out how to make the best of the situation, I tried to negotiate a yearly membership price with a favorite barber so I could come in as often as needed. I constantly needed to have my head cleaned up to hide the hair on the sides of my head that were growing 10 times faster than the top. Even though I offered to pay something close to the equivalent of 3 haircuts a month for a year, for unlimited haircut access...he declined. In the end I was sick of paying for these maintenance haircuts...so it was then I decided to take the leap.

To me, shaving your head says one thing about you...you're brave. You're willing to face the music and embrace the truth...you're going bald. The two dimension liar (also known as a mirror) will make you feel like you have concealed the problem, but the truth is people can tell you are losing your hair. Shaving your head is a way to say "I am not scared of going bald; I'm embracing it."

The sooner you shave your head, the longer you will live with this new identity (which I'm almost sure that you will prefer...if not...it grows back.)

It's important to note that shaving your head isn't for everybody. I highly recommend cutting your hair to the shortest "stylable" length before considering shaving it. Once your hair is gone you have committed to an appearance that may take months to grow out.

Some Of My Screening Questions To See If Shaving Your Head Is Right For You:

• Are you obsessed with a single hairstyle that cannot be changed (and swimming makes you feel self-conscience about your hairline? (Simply put...are hats a necessary part of your outfit?)
• Are you older than 30? (Young faces with shaved heads can look strange...unless you add the element of cool facial hair)

• Do you secretly wish that the cure for baldness will be developed in the next 5 years? (Don't count on it, in the 24th century Captain Jean-Luc Picard is cruising around space with male pattern baldness.)
• Do you spend more than 20 bucks a month for a haircut but the haircut itself takes half the time as someone else's haircut? (Trust me...your barber loves you...same price...less time.)
• Do you have a good wardrobe? (Since the focus will be off of your hair, your self expression will be limited to facial hair and wardrobe. Simple t-shirts won't look quite the same without hair.)

If you answered yes to some or all of these questions, it might be a good time to shave your head!

Before You Do:

Get advice! Ask your friends and family what they think. Your mother will probably tell you not to...that's normal. Listen to everyone carefully and try to discriminate the good advice from the bad. This is a big step. I don't recommend doing it as a form of rebellion because after the angst wears off you're stuck with a shaved head and no plan.

Look into the maintenance of a shaved head. A clean shaven head needs to be shaved every 3 to 4 days (twice a week.) This will require time in the shower and equipment. If you shave with clippers (not quite clean, but with stubble) you can do it once a week, but you have the clippings to deal with (not fun if you like a clean bathroom.) You MUST buy sunblock. Even living in Seattle, if I was going to be outside for longer than 10 minutes I would put a little sunblock on the top of my head. This part of your body is the most exposed to the sun and WILL get burned. Skin cancer that starts on the head could be very unsightly not to mention extremely deadly.

I recommend the following products:

For Shaving With Clippers:

• Wahl Pro PEANUT Palm Size Hair Trimmer Clipper 8685
• A barber cape
• A vacuum and broom for cleanup
• A hand mirror
  

For Clean Shaving*:

• The HeadBlade
• Neutrogena Men Skin Clearing Shave Cream
• Clinique Face Scrub
• Clinique Face Soap
• Lily Of The Desert - Aloe Vera Gelly (beware, it will make your head shiny)
• Neutrogena Ultra Sheer Dry-Touch Sunblock, SPF 70

Clean shaving may require a lot of products, but in the end you will get a very good shave. At the very least I recommend using the Headblade and the SPF.

*You will probably need to cut your hair first with clippers before clean-shaving your head.

How To Shave With Clippers:

1. Cut your hair standing on a sheet on the floor, or in your shower (turned off), to catch the loose hair. If you cut it out of doors, then you do not need to worry about hair on the ground.
2. Set the clippers to the shortest setting. With most clippers this means removing the guard completely. Avoid using an electric razor on your head as it does not work that well and the noise will drive you mad.
3. Choose to do it yourself or get help. You can do it yourself with practice, or get someone to cut your hair for you. If cutting yourself, plan to shower immediately afterward, so you don't worry about getting the clippings all over yourself.
4. Begin at the nape of the neck and run the clippers in rows up over your scalp to the front.
5. Be sure to give extra attention to the nape of your neck, the sideburns, and just over the ears.
6. Check the style. When you think you're done, use a mirror to check, and try running your hand all over your head. You should be able to feel any spots you've missed.

How To Shave Using a HeadBlade

1. Use clippers to bring your hair down to the shortest stubble possible.
2. Take a shower, and while you're in, do the following:
   
3. Use Clinique Face Scrub (followed by Clinique Face Soap) to ensure that your head is clean and that all hairs are above the surface (an ingrown hair can cause problems.)
4. Apply Neutrogena Men Skin Clearing Shave Cream to your head making sure that the consistency is not too thick (you will need to be able to feel for stubble along the way)
5. Go to HeadBlade.com for recommended techniques. There are videos and FAQs on the finer points of using this tool. I won't waste space here reiterating them.
6. After finishing in the shower, shave the rest of your face as necessary. I've noticed that I have to shave my temples and around my ears with a regular razor because it's a little awkward in the shower with the HeadBlade.
7. Apply SPF
8. I like to put aloe on my head. It seems to help prevent any nicks from getting infected and adds a nice shine.

The first time you shave your head you will probably go through a little bit of hair shock. You might find yourself staring in the mirror and not recognizing the face looking back at you. My coworkers seemed to be slow to like it, but eventually everyone said that it was really a good look. Allow 3-6 months to fully acclimatize and expect a reaction at reunions and holidays (but by then you should love it)

I met my wife 2 months A.S. (After Shaving) and she has never known me with hair. Sometimes I'll pull out old photos and she says over and over how much better I look with a shaved head. A huge bonus is that I can be creative with my facial hair (not so with my former ultra-conservative "hide-the-fact-that-I'm-balding" haircut) and have had fun growing handlebars, goatees, soul patches, and the like.

I am very happy shaving my head and do not plan to grow it out again (what little there is.) With a shaved head I look the age I feel. I hope that a shaved head works for you as it has for me.

Did You Know . . .

There are earlier versions of this that aren't as snappy (see here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMcfrLYDm2U) as this one, but the message is somewhat the same. A while ago I started another blog Geolibrium.blogspot.com (Geo=Earth Librium=Balance) as a way to share interesting (and sometimes boring) tidbits on our earth (namely geopolitics) and how they are rapidly shaping our future. Check it out when you have the chance!

Hope this video makes you think!

Why TV Lost

I read the below essay late last night and it really affected me. I worked in television up until recently for just over nine years. From my first day of work I knew that television wouldn't be around forever. My poor co-workers had to put up with me saying "the end is near!" The below essay captures what I couldn't say.

Why TV Lost

March 2009

About twenty years ago people noticed computers and TV were on a collision course and started to speculate about what they'd produce when they converged. We now know the answer: computers. It's clear now that even by using the word "convergence" we were giving TV too much credit. This won't be convergence so much as replacement. People may still watch things they call "TV shows," but they'll watch them mostly on computers.

What decided the contest for computers? Four forces, three of which one could have predicted, and one that would have been harder to.

One predictable cause of victory is that the Internet is an open platform. Anyone can build whatever they want on it, and the market picks the winners. So innovation happens at hacker speeds instead of big company speeds.

The second is Moore's Law, which has worked its usual magic on Internet bandwidth. [1]

The third reason computers won is piracy. Users prefer it not just because it's free, but because it's more convenient. Bittorrent and YouTube have already trained a new generation of viewers that the place to watch shows is on a computer screen. [2]

The somewhat more surprising force was one specific type of innovation: social applications. The average teenage kid has a pretty much infinite capacity for talking to their friends. But they can't physically be with them all the time. When I was in high school the solution was the telephone. Now it's social networks, multiplayer games, and various messaging applications. The way you reach them all is through a computer. [3] Which means every teenage kid (a) wants a computer with an Internet connection, (b) has an incentive to figure out how to use it, and (c) spends countless hours in front of it.

This was the most powerful force of all. This was what made everyone want computers. Nerds got computers because they liked them. Then gamers got them to play games on. But it was connecting to other people that got everyone else: that's what made even grandmas and 14 year old girls want computers.

After decades of running an IV drip right into their audience, people in the entertainment business had understandably come to think of them as rather passive. They thought they'd be able to dictate the way shows reached audiences. But they underestimated the force of their desire to connect with one another.

Facebook killed TV. That is wildly oversimplified, of course, but probably as close to the truth as you can get in three words.

___


The TV networks already seem, grudgingly, to see where things are going, and have responded by putting their stuff, grudgingly, online. But they're still dragging their heels. They still seem to wish people would watch shows on TV instead, just as newspapers that put their stories online still seem to wish people would wait till the next morning and read them printed on paper. They should both just face the fact that the Internet is the primary medium.

They'd be in a better position if they'd done that earlier. When a new medium arises that's powerful enough to make incumbents nervous, then it's probably powerful enough to win, and the best thing they can do is jump in immediately.

Whether they like it or not, big changes are coming, because the Internet dissolves the two cornerstones of broadcast media: synchronicity and locality. On the Internet, you don't have to send everyone the same signal, and you don't have to send it to them from a local source. People will watch what they want when they want it, and group themselves according to whatever shared interest they feel most strongly. Maybe their strongest shared interest will be their physical location, but I'm guessing not. Which means local TV is probably dead. It was an artifact of limitations imposed by old technology. If someone were creating an Internet-based TV company from scratch now, they might have some plan for shows aimed at specific regions, but it wouldn't be a top priority.

Synchronicity and locality are tied together. TV network affiliates care what's on at 10 because that delivers viewers for local news at 11. This connection adds more brittleness than strength, however: people don't watch what's on at 10 because they want to watch the news afterward.

TV networks will fight these trends, because they don't have sufficient flexibility to adapt to them. They're hemmed in by local affiliates in much the same way car companies are hemmed in by dealers and unions. Inevitably, the people running the networks will take the easy route and try to keep the old model running for a couple more years, just as the record labels have done.

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal described how TV networks were trying to add more live shows, partly as a way to make viewers watch TV synchronously instead of watching recorded shows when it suited them. Instead of delivering what viewers want, they're trying to force them to change their habits to suit the networks' obsolete business model. That never works unless you have a monopoly or cartel to enforce it, and even then it only works temporarily.

The other reason networks like live shows is that they're cheaper to produce. There they have the right idea, but they haven't followed it to its conclusion. Live content can be way cheaper than networks realize, and the way to take advantage of dramatic decreases in cost is to increase volume. The networks are prevented from seeing this whole line of reasoning because they still think of themselves as being in the broadcast business—as sending one signal to everyone. [4]
- - -
Now would be a good time to start any company that competes with TV networks. That's what a lot of Internet startups are, though they may not have had this as an explicit goal. People only have so many leisure hours a day, and TV is premised on such long sessions (unlike Google, which prides itself on sending users on their way quickly) that anything that takes up their time is competing with it. But in addition to such indirect competitors, I think TV companies will increasingly face direct ones.

(Click for larger image)

Even in cable TV, the long tail was lopped off prematurely by the threshold you had to get over to start a new channel. It will be longer on the Internet, and there will be more mobility within it. In this new world, the existing players will only have the advantages any big company has in its market.

That will change the balance of power between the networks and the people who produce shows. The networks used to be gatekeepers. They distributed your work, and sold advertising on it. Now the people who produce a show can distribute it themselves. The main value networks supply now is ad sales. Which will tend to put them in the position of service providers rather than publishers.

Shows will change even more. On the Internet there's no reason to keep their current format, or even the fact that they have a single format. Indeed, the more interesting sort of convergence that's coming is between shows and games. But on the question of what sort of entertainment gets distributed on the Internet in 20 years, I wouldn't dare to make any predictions, except that things will change a lot. We'll get whatever the most imaginative people can cook up. That's why the Internet won.

Notes

1. Thanks to Trevor Blackwell for this point. He adds: "I remember the eyes of phone companies gleaming in the early 90s when they talked about convergence. They thought most programming would be on demand, and they would implement it and make a lot of money. It didn't work out. They assumed that their local network infrastructure would be critical to do video on-demand, because you couldn't possibly stream it from a few data centers over the internet. At the time (1992) the entire cross-country Internet bandwidth wasn't enough for one video stream. But wide-area bandwidth increased more than they expected and they were beaten by iTunes and Hulu."

2. Copyright owners tend to focus on the aspect they see of piracy, which is the lost revenue. They therefore think what drives users to do it is the desire to get something for free. But iTunes shows that people will pay for stuff online, if you make it easy. A significant component of piracy is simply that it offers a better user experience.

3. Or a phone that is actually a computer. I'm not making any predictions about the size of the device that will replace TV, just that it will have a browser and get data via the Internet.

4. Emmett Shear writes: "I'd argue the long tail for sports may be even larger than the long tail for other kinds of content. Anyone can broadcast a high school football game that will be interesting to 10,000 people or so, even if the quality of production is not so good."

Thanks to Sam Altman, Trevor Blackwell, Nancy Cook, Michael Seibel. Emmett Shear, and Fred Wilson for reading drafts of this.

Source: http://paulgraham.com/convergence.html

When I woke up this morning the following entered my mind.

The reason [INSERT NEWSPAPER, RADIO, TELEVISION, INTERNET, OR "NEXT GADGET" HERE] is successful is because of the following factors:

• We will want to use it all the time.
• We will talk about it when we aren't using it.
• We will go to great lengths to teach or convince others to use it.

When the next big thing comes along to compete with the internet, test it against the above three factors to determine if it will be here to stay.