an inconvenient truth

read the book or see the movie. please.

of single women

% of homes purchased by single men:

• 1981 - 10%
• 2005 - 9%

% of homes purchased by single women:

• 1981 - 10%
• 2005 - 20%

source: Tom Peters slides

of hamburgers and motivation

the funniest thing i heard today:

"i've jst eaten 4 hamburgers...
nothing seems worth it right now "

we cannot fight the last war

Fred Wilson has a great post in which he uses the dot.com bubble and burst as vehicle to describe the human tendancy to 'learn from our mistakes'. it's excellent analysis and advice on the possibility to be too cautious based on prior failures.

life 2.0 has a principle i thought was related:

"... we can transcend the consequences we have put into motion. Cause and effect are suspended. Past actions do not become manifested in future outcomes. The past, no matter what it has been, is no longer a dynamic that must play itself out. Not only do we recognize the past is over, it is no longer at issue. We are able to re-create our lives anew."

bottom line, don't hold your future potential ransom to prior failures, don't fight yesterday's war.

the 'r' word

so there's been enough talk of an impending recession / depression / whatever going on now that i'm beginning to take notice. it doesn't bother me too much however, because 1) i'm not rich, and 2) i live by the old addage, 'if you go from nothing, to nothing, you lose nothing'. either way, the reading around this topic has been interesting. the following is an excerpt from John Mauldin's weekly newsletter - the quote by George Best is worth reading the whole article:

Art, Wine & Horses

One of the recurrent themes of our research has been that it has "never been so expensive to be rich" and that this situation will only likely deteriorate. But even with that in mind, we have to admit that we have been floored by the recent activity at the high end of the market. Take wine, art & horses as examples. As most of our readers will know, modern art, fine wines, & horses, are assets that tend to peak just before the start of a pronounced downturn of the economic cycle. And interestingly, over the past couple of months, these assets have really been shooting up, breaking several records on the way:

* The US$16 million horse. A few months ago, a two-year-old colt who has yet to run a race drew a world record sale price of US$16 million at an auction in Florida, after a furious bidding war between Englishman Michael Tabor and Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum of Dubai (could he be thinking that horses will run better than Dubai stocks?). The sale broke the previous record of US$13.1 million paid in the mid-1980s for Seattle Dancer. Considering that very few horses ever reach winnings of US$1 million and that the all-time leading earner, Cigar, took home close to US$ 10 million, this is a truly mind-boggling price to pay for a horse that has yet to race a single race (incidentally, Seattle Dancer, the previous record holder, went on to win a paltry US$150,000, racing only five times in his short career).

* The unbottled 2005 Bordeaux. In the world of wine investments, Bordeaux is king, with up to US$3.7 billion worth of wines changing hands every year. Over the past twelve months, much to Charles' chagrin (who likes to say that he is now too old to drink cheap wines), the price of top vintages have surged more than +45%. Much of this latest rally can be attributed to the - yet to be bottled - 2005 vintage. The 2005 vintage from some of the top chateaux are reportedly selling for around US$9,000 per case; as a comparison, in 2003, the same wines went for about US$3,800 per case... While investing in wine can be a very risky business, there is one undeniable advantage: if all else fails, it is a liquid asset...

* The US$135 million portrait. A few weeks ago, Robert Lauder bought a portrait by Gustav Klimt for a staggering US$135 million, the highest sum ever paid for a painting, eclipsing a Picasso sold for US$104 million in 2004. While we (by no means) would pass for art connoisseurs, prices do seem to have reached stratospheric heights. In his latest Gloom Boom Doom report, our good friend Marc Faber, describes his visit to the June Basel Art Fair, where one pure black canvas had a price tag of US$1.5 million...

Now interestingly, while the price of the finer things in life has skyrocketed, the company that handles their sales appears to have rolled over. Since its highs in early May, Sotheby's has lost a cool -25%. Is this the shape of things to come? Is the recent frenzy in the world of "finer things" another indication that we are at the top of the cycle. Usually, the last thing to go up in prices are rare automobiles. But then again, as George Best once said: "I spent all my money on cars and women. The rest, I just wasted".

16 rules

1. Get and stay out of your comfort zone.

2. Never give up.

3. When you're ready to quit, you're closer than you think.

4. With regard to whatever worries you, not only accept the worst thing that could happen, but make it a point to quantify what the worst thing could be.

5. Focus on what you want to have happen.

6. Take things a day at a time.

7. Always be moving forward.

8. Be quick to decide.

9. Measure everything of significance.

10. Anything that is not managed will deteriorate.

11. Pay attention to your competitors, but pay more attention to what you're doing.

12. Never let anybody push you around.

13. Never expect life to be fair.

14. Solve your own problems.

15. Don't take yourself too seriously.

16. There's always a reason to smile. Find it.


The above rules for survival are included with the permission of Bob Parsons (http://www.bobparsons.com) and is Copyright © 2004-2006 by Bob Parsons. All rights reserved.

update

so the moans and groans from the peanut gallery requesting an update to the blog have started... again. i agree that the posts have been few and far between, and probably not as potent as the friends are used to.

well, for what it's worth, work and lack of motivation have kept me from sharing from my vast and unending pool of knowledge (sic), but be not dismayed, it was only for a season, there are more exciting posts to come. stay tuned.

some things i've been thinking about:

work - i recently did an online survey (one of those life satisfaction types) and one of the questions asked was in effect "does your job allow you to reflect your real capabilities". mine doesn't, and in a discussion with a friend, he didn't feel his did either. so what to do, not all of us can thumb our noses at the boss and quit our jobs and pursue the activities our brains are wired for. the non-billable hour highlights one of the common mistakes of consultants:

"Your clients have problems they do not know you can solve. Clients have many problems you can solve. But with many of those problems, they have no idea that your business can help solve them. It is up to you to identify the problems, let the client know you understand them, and tell them what to do about it."

i think that truism applies to all professionals. you need to think 'outside the cubicle' and identify problems that your colleagues, your organisation and (with the permission of the product development types or whoever governs the look/feel/shape of the work you deliver) your customers. there has to be some room within the confines of whatever job description you have now to solve problems previously out of the scope of your work - and therefore approach doing in your everyday grind the things which you're most suited to doing.

one question to ask yourself about your current work situation:
- do your boss/manager and your colleagues know what other tasks you're capable of doing? what you did in previous jobs? what education/courses/certifications you have?

this reminds me of a time i turned down a proposal to perform a network assessment because noone in my team had the skills, only to find out a member of the team was a cisco certified network something or other. we taylor our resume's to target the jobs we're applying for, but once you're in, make sure your entire skillset is well known in the organisation. some food for thought.

links of the week:

dandelife - your life story, in words, pictures, movies, timeline. web 2.0 style

size of earth - size of earth relative to other stuff in space. amazing

10 ways to relaxify your workspace - not applicable to road warriors like myself with no workspace to call our own - maybe steve should write a 'how to relaxify your laptop bag' article.

Ornette Coleman on Jazz

“Jazz is the only music in which the same note can be played night after night but differently each time.” - Ornette Coleman

self-attribution bias

interesting quote from James Montier - Director of Global Strategy at DrKW:

"We have a relatively fragile sense of self-esteem; one of the key mechanisms for protecting this self image is self-attribution bias. This is the tendency for good outcomes to be attributed to skill and bad outcomes to be attributed to sheer bad luck. This is one of the key limits to learning that investors are likely to encounter. This mechanism prevents us from recognizing mistakes as mistakes, and hence often prevents us from learning from those past errors. "

more thoughts on workflow

i had a consultant friend who taught me an important lesson. 'start with the draft'. up until then, my normal course of action in completing an assignment was a flurry of planning, research, haphazard meetings to try and garner fodder for a deliverable. my consultant friend, on the first day of the first assignment we were put on together asked me "where's the report?". i learned, after that episode, the best way for me to work is to start with a skeleton of what i'm trying to deliver and fill in the gaps. i think one of the reasons this is effective is at the end of everyday you feel you have something to show for your effort. i value every minute spent thinking and talking to people about a problem/solution but it is very disconcerting when you have nothing to show for the activity. starting with a draft and adding to it through 'stepwise refinement' is one way to avoid this situation.

i was reminded of this lesson while reading about how Judge Richard Posner - US Supreme Court of Appeals works:

"I'm a very fast writer. I can write 20, 30 manuscript pages in an evening. I do revisions later, but I find it more efficient to get something down that indicates where the gaps in my thinking are, and what research has to be done, and so on."

So next time you're stuck on how to proceed, start with a draft.