Adam Smith

"Through the whole of his life he pursues the idea of a certain artificial and elegant repose which he may never arrive at, for which he sacrifices a real tranquillity that is at all times in his power, and which, if in the extremity of old age he should at last attain to it, he will find to be in no respect preferable to that humble security and contentment which he had abandoned for it.

It is then, in the last dregs of life, his body wasted with toil and disease, his mind galled and ruffled by the memory of a thousand injuries and disappointments which he imagines he has met with from the injustice of his enemies, or from the perfidy and ingratitude of his friends, that he begins at last to find that wealth and greatness are mere trinkets of frivolous utility, no more adapted for procuring ease of body or tranquillity of mind, than the tweezer-cases of the lover of toys. " - quoted in Adam Smith, Behavioural Economist by Ashraf et al (2004) from the Theory of Moral Sentiments

do not park here

do not park here

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.

workflow

okay, so basketball can wait. ever wonder how ordinary people accomplish extraordinary things? check out how some of these movers and shakers get their stuff done.

energy vs. time management

so Chez and I were chatting about a recent podcast we listened to about managing energy vs. managing time (from these guys). he asked a million times that i blog it. i'm off to basketball so i have no time to wrap the principle in a nice presentation so i'll just throw a snippet of the conversation here.

...
HSN - the energy principle
Chez - i was like wtf
Chez - i jst drink red bull
Chez - energy in a can
Chez - when it goes down
Chez - drink another can
Chez - wtf
Chez - then on days like today jst drink some water
HSN - the biggest lesson for me was, you can spend 6 hours working on something that can take you an hour to do with hte right energy level
Chez - yeah i hear you big time dude
HSN - so if you don't feel you have the energy to sort out your bills, do something you feel like doing, with all the energy necessary, rather than waste the whole day having accomplished NOTHING
...

huh?

wouldn't you like to work here for a day?

mistakes revisited

brad has an interesting post about failure

"I’ve noticed a pattern in many of the VC and entrepreneur blogs I read – very few people ever talk about failure.

Failure is a key part of entrepreneurship. As an entrepreneur, angel investor, and venture investor, I’ve had lots of success, but I’ve also had lots of failures. So has everyone that I know that has accomplished much of anything..."

as i mentioned in my earlier post mistakes are a function of the complexity of what you're trying to do. no surprise then, that entrepreneurs are riddled with mistakes (starting a company is in my opinion one of the most complex (ad)ventures).

i agree with brad and would like to see more people talk about failure. the current influx of success stories can't possibly be a reflection of reality. (of course there's 'the bubble' but that , on the other extreme, was not a reflection of normalcy/reality either)

another week in paradise...

i should pop open a can of sprite today and celebrate. a full week of rather active blogging, i'm quite impressed with myself. what i'm not impressed with is how the blog has organically become a blog about work. the tagline says "work, tech, friends". it seems i gravitate more to rambling about work than tech and much less friends.

so i was a little disturbed about that, because i'm quite sensitive about the work / life balance thing. i think the reason i'm not too happy writing about technnology issues is because so many people do a much better job of it than i do - so i have a bit of a complex where that one is concerned. and friends, well, i'm not too sure what to write about my friends yet. i hold their identities and privacy with the atmost respect, so that narrows down what i can write.

we'll give the blog another week and see where it goes...

thanks coach...

so Shaq gets another championship ring on his finger. happy days.

what stops us from putting on performances like the pro athletes of the NBA (or any other professional sport for that matter). one reason is we don't have coaches. lets face it, how many of you reading this right now have gotten the level of teaching, training and constant feedback that a professional athlete gets? from someone who's "been there, done that". i for one think i could elevate my professional game if i had my own Phil Jackson to show me the ropes. talking me through that next critical meeting or presentation. helping me navigate out of a sticky client situation.

yes there are the mentorship programs, the career counselors etc. however these are no substitute for someone closely monitoring your performance in your most critical of tasks. to use the basketball analogy, i feel me and my friends are playing pick-up / street ball in a professional league. the results are potentially disastrous.

see you later boys and girls, i'm off to find myself a management coach.

death of the mix tape?

whatever happened to the mix tape? well, it was replaced by pandora. think about it, rather than deal with burning a cd with music that's borderline legal, just email your friend a pandora station and have them (legally) discover the music for themselves. how novel.

pictures and other content

...it was picture day today! i managed to get some good ones in before it started pouring. the weather has been very erratic recently, not sure how i feel about it.

so, a common thread i can draw from a bunch of my reading and conversations lately is that we build relationships based on what we bring to them. stephen covey speaks of an emotional bank account - not sure i remember the concept accurately, but basically in each relationship we have there's a bank account. the good things we say/do for someone add to the account and the bad things constitute a withdrawal. relationship management from this perspective consists of keeping track of the emotional account balance.

keith ferrazzi talks about the 'currency' we bring to a relationship. i agree with this view. after all the excitement of introducing yourself to someone (or your company to a potential client), there has to be something one can offer the other - currency. it can be anything that fills the other party's immediate need, humor, currency (the literal kind), knowledge, etc. keith also referrs to this as 'content'. i like this term better. how many people have you met that are all glossy magazine but the more pages you turn, there's no real content, or to put it less harshly, little content you can really use (or share with someone else)? and on the flip-side how many people have you met that are like an academic journal - lots of information you need or know your friends need?