Category: Education

Free your Mind: Writing a Journal.

Would you like lower stress, increased focus, improved memory, faster learning?  Sounds good?  There is one simple 5 minute daily habit that can help.  It will also make you a better communicator.  It might be worth a test?

There are 3 major benefits of keeping a written journal.
  1. Writing slows down time
  2. The past is a great resource, but only if well documented
  3. A journal is a good life habit, increased mindfulness and awareness of the patterns around you

What to write about?  Here are 20 starting questions to reflect on in your journal.

How to do your best writing?  These are some places that I do my best writing.

How about 5 minutes a day for the next 30 days?  Have a go.  If it works, great.  If it doesn’t, burn the pages and send me an email requesting (politely) the return of the 150 minutes that were “wasted” in this endeavor.

I write in a paper notepad with a biro.  This works best for me.  There was a 2 year period where I wrote on a Palm Pilot (1997-1999).  Others write on a computer or iPad.

Do you have a journal?  Would love to know how you do it – what tool do you use?  do you do it at a regular time?  what are the positive benefits that you have seen from journaling?

A Rant on Time Management

You don’t need more time management.

You need to say “No” more.

I watched an interview with Elizabeth Gilbert recently.  She said “When I was young I used to think that if I said No to people, they would feel rejected, get angry and feel let down.  Now that I am older I realise that when I say No to people they do feel rejected, get angry and feel let down…  but I have to do it for me.”  It is true.  It is not easy to say “No”.

Dharmesh Shah gives a good thought on framing your “No”. 

It’s not easy.

Imperfect or Mediocre?

NASA photo of Centaurus A that shows the effects of a supermassive black hole.

I just spent the last 60 minutes wasting time.  I sat down at the computer with a clear intention to write an article.  I opened Scrivener, my writing software.  I looked at the blank page…  and allowed myself to open email…  check facebook…  Google+, and have just now surfaced from a 60 minute black hole of drifting wasteland.

Why?

I think I had set myself too high a bar for the article that I was going to write.  I had made the schoolboy error of trying for perfection.  My lizard brain loves moment’s like this, because it is when it can really ensure that I get nothing done.

Aiming for Perfection leads to Doing Nothing.

I am going to go outside and sit in the sunshine with a book.  When I come back, I will set my sights on an imperfect version of the article.

The other choice is keep aiming for perfection and keep doing nothing.  The “Mediocre” choice.

Only two choices here.  Imperfect or Mediocre.

Deliberate Ignorance

There are two types of ignorance: Deliberate Ignorance and Understandable Ignorance.

Understandable Ignorance

A non-financial expert is not expected to know how to calculate discounted cash flow valuations for publicly listed firms.  A European is not expected to know how baseball scoring works.  A non-programmer is not expected to understand the syntax of C++ or php code.  These are cases of Understandable Ignorance.

Deliberate Ignorance

If you work in marketing, you must know the basics.  If you work in finance, there are some basics that you must know.  If you are a programmer you must understand code syntax, optimal code, unit test, system test.  If you manage people, there are some lessons you owe it to your team to know.

As Seth Godin says “People have come before us, failed, learned, written it down. Scientists have figured out what works, and proven it. Economists have gained significant understanding about the long-term impacts of short-term decisions. And historians have seen it all before.”

It is not a company’s responsibility to ensure that you are aware of the basic concepts and important developments in your field.  It is your own.

Performance = Potential – Self-Sabotage

We would achieve much more if we got out of our own way.  The difference between the top athletes and the rest is not better physical ability, but an ability to avoid talking themselves into failure at the key moments.

Performance = Potential – Self-Sabotage

I remember Peter Allis commenting on golf years ago.  A South African golfer was on the tee.  Peter whispers into the microphone “This is the perfect specimen of a golfer…  (pause)…  big hands…  and dumb”.

Thinking too much is not good for performance in the big moments.  It might help you learn faster from practice, but you have to find a way to switch it off once the real deal begins.

What do you think?  Are we our own worst enemies?

How to tell if you have a good idea

A good idea? or…?

Greg Digneo of Cloud Marketing Lab wrote a beautifully simple explanation over at Triiibes of how to test an idea before you spend any money building.  Even “small” ideas like hosting a webinar or writing a short/free ebook to give away on your blog can be tested even before putting time into creating it.

4 Steps to Test an idea

Here’s what Greg does:

  1. Use Unbounce to create a simple landing page. You are trying to get the idea tested as quickly as possible, not creating a landing page work of art.  Basic templates work fine.  (no affiliation with unbounce, just like their product).  You get 30 days for free which is more than enough time to test your idea.
  2. Marketing to consumers? Buy Facebook ads.  They generally cost less than $1.00 per click. Marketing to a specific business function?   Use Linkedin ads.  They generally cost around $3.00 per click.
  3. Test and tweak the ads and the landing page for about a week. Include weekends. You’d be surprised at how much activity happens on a Saturday and Sunday.
  4. If there is enough interest in that week, then implement the idea.  If not, then you’ve wasted a few bucks (learnt a lesson) and not ploughed a lot of time into something that no one wants.

Test an idea.  Surely you have one?  Try it.  Nothing to lose.  Maybe a big gain.
Have a great weekend – and do some cheap tests of your ideas before you spend any time writing business plan, developing code, doing UI design.  Please.  Only Kevin Costner can do “Build it and They will Come”.

Thanks to Greg for sharing these simple steps.

Reining in the State

There was a wonderful letter to the editor in this week’s Economist magazine that used a powerful metaphor of an orchestra to highlight the untenable future of state social spending as currently provided.  The letter was in response to Taming Leviathon – a special report on the future of the state.

“Sir, you twice mentioned – and then went on to ignore – The Baumol cost effect: the same number of musicians are needed now to play a Beethoven symphony as in the 19th century, even though real wages for musicians have since risen.


But William Baumol was an optimist. A better analogy would be an orchestra whose musical instruments steadily increase in size, so that they are soon too large to manipulate without motors and computers. Eventually a larger concert hall is required to accommodate them. The new hall is, of course, equipped with “dynamic acoustics”, which can be tailored in real time to the music being played. This in turn, requires teams of engineers and computer technicians, as well as mechanical hoists and their operators, to move the instruments.


This works until the instruments reach a size that their (aging) players can no longer maneuver them single-handedly and more musicians must be employed. And another hall built. Such is the nature of the pressure on health care and pension costs imposed by accelerating developments in medicine. It is a structural problem, which cannot be solved by pretending it doesn’t exist, or that it’s just a matter of “catching up” with private sector productivity.” Monty MacLean, Stockholm.

The western world has a big problem.  We have mortgaged our future requiring large debt repayment costs to be added into the costs of doing business…  but we are now competing on a global scale with economies which do not have that additional cost, or high costs of living and therefore high wage bills.

I do not think the answer is widespread cuts and reduction of all social provision to nothing.  I do know that sitting back and waiting to see is not the answer.  Any good ideas?

Standard of Living is Directly Proportional to Labour Productivity
I think a few areas are key: ensuring world class digital infrastructures, ensuring world class education for all, developing leadership and communication skills that allow for unparalleled collaboration and creation of new products, services, ways of living.  In the long run, the standard of living of a country is directly proportional to the productivity of labour – which is a factor of quality of infrastructures, quality of leadership and systems of work, and efficiency of labour.  My brother has some great thoughts on conquering procrastination.

4 approaches to learning a new discipline

The US Aikido master George Leonard in his book “Mastery” speaks of 4 approaches that we take to learning new disciplines.  It scares me that I might be a regular Hacker…  how to shift my approach and push through “good” and reach “better” and one day “expert”?:

  1. The Dabbler – The Dabbler’s learning curve rises very quickly, meets an obstacle and then drops to zero, since the dabbler gives up the activity and goes on to another; repeating the same curve on different activities.
  2. The Obsessive – The Obsessive’s learning curve rises quickly, meets obstacles, which The Obsessive tackles by redoubling his effort, getting more books and tools and trying to figure out ways to get better results faster and cheaper, and then burns out in a short while when he finds that the curve is not a straight line upwards.
  3. The Hacker – The Hacker’s learning curve rises quickly, meets an obstacle or two and then plateaus out on a straight line. The Hacker doesn’t consider the need for more instruction or rising above that level. He is content with level reached and plans to stay at that level.
  4. The Master – The Master’s learning curve rises quickly, plateaus for a while, and with consistent practice, rises again with some regression and plateaus again for a while and so on. The Master knows that Mastery is a lifetime path. The Master enjoys living on the plateau. The Master knows that while he is on the plateau, learning is happening and practice will inevitably raise him to a higher level.
How do we make the journey of learning a journey towards mastery?  George outlines five keys to mastery:
  1. Instruction – get an instructor.
  2. Practice – learn to love the plateau and practice for the sake of practice.
  3. Surrender – surrender to the learning process and the learning curve.
  4. Intentionality – bring all of your willpower and the mental game to the learning.
  5. The Edge – focus on the fundamentals and the leading-edge.
Have a great weekend.  Looks like spring is here.

Entrepreneurship is not a Panacea. It requires its own Education.

Peter Thiel, founder of PayPal, says that Higher Education is the new over-inflated bubble.

I agree with his premise.   A nice, costly certificate from a well branded Center of Learning is no guarantee of a safe, secure life.  In the end it will depend on you making use on a daily basis of the knowledge and the network of contacts you get in the course of your studies.  It will mean taking better decisions because you have better tools and practice in examining complex problems, and you are able to pick apart problems to find root causes.

Entrepreneurship is not a panacea. 
However, I would challenge his assertion that jumping into entrepreneurship is a solution for many.  The attitude of “I will make my own luck” is great, but, in the immortal words of Colin Powell “Hope is not a Strategy”.

It is easy to point to Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and say “phew…  glad these guys dropped out of school…  look at what they achieved”.  These are the lottery winners.  They had a lot going for them – Bill Gate’s mum was on the board of United Way with the Chairman of IBM…  possibly giving young Bill an advantage when he sold his DOS operating system to IBM’s personal computer division?

Entrepreneurship requires many skills
Entrepreneurship requires learning.  The best place to learn is next to experienced entrepreneurs who are building businesses.  You need an apprenticeship.  You need to try, fail, learn, try again, succeed, try again, fail, learn…  Tenacity combined with reflection…  Read Paul Graham on The Most Important Determinator of Entrepreneurial Success.

Entrepreneurship requires network.  Only people who know and trust you will give you resources.  You need to get to know people with resources that you may need.

Entrepreneurship requires tough ego-free decision making.  The ability to take a step back from the situation and examine the problem.  Don’t be an entrepreneur if you can’t handle the brutal choice between horrible and cataclysmic.

Entrepreneurship is lonely.  Only other entrepreneurs can really understand how lonely.  The Entrepreneurs’ Organisation is a great place to connect, and their Accelerator programs help early stage entrepreneurs get a good start.

Entrepreneurship is an attitude towards life.  Scott Adams talks about how he used his time at university to really learn about running businesses.

Successful entrepreneurship is a different game.  Malcolm Gladwell wrote a piece (“The Sure Thing”) a couple of years ago in the New Yorker looking at what “Rich Entrepreneurs” (1-2% of total) do differently than “Poor Entrepreneurs” (98-99% of total).  The first was start thinking about the 3-5 year exit strategy rather than the current great idea…  There are plenty of other things that the rich entrepreneurs do to reduce risks and control their outcomes.

A better education system?
So maybe we need to define the path for learning entrepreneurship?  And perhaps work better at creating an education system that fosters to the strengths of each of us – not just those that are good at maths & science, at sitting still for hours, at paying attention for hours…

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