Over on Tim Ferriss’ Four Hour Work Week blog, I have been enjoying an interesting conversation about the impact of compound investment of time - rather than just money.

While I believe that the ultimate is living a life of passion and purpose rather than making an arbitrary amount of money or even enjoying a particular lifestyle, Tim’s concepts express notions that I believe have a great deal of value.

Check him out sometime - and he’s in Sydney this coming week!

Banks lend money for real estate more easily than other purchased on the basis that the value of the asset securing the loan is greater than the money lent. With a downturn in property values, individuals can end up holding negative equity in their property.

This is a problem. A big problem.

Our current system punishes individual lenders, holding them accountable for the whole amount.

But what if the banks were held accountable?

What if a home owner could settle the debt by simply handing the title back to the mortgagee? Would that more fairly distribute the risk according to the relative capacity of the parties to foresee such risks? Doubtless it would lead to lower property prices - though who would that disadvantage other than opportunistic property developers riding on the back of a pricing bubble?

Here in Shanghai, people talk about becoming a slave to their apartment, reflecting the overinflated property prices here compared with income… perhaps it is time to liberate our slaves.

Sometimes we come across ideas that change the way we see the world. Reading The Fountainhead as a barely-teenager shifted my model of the world radically by presenting values and attitudes that I didn’t again question for many years. Read the rest of this entry »

Really cool stuff doesn’t follow trends.

Kinda cool stuff does - but not really cool stuff.

Google didn’t follow the trends set by the (then!) giants like Microsoft and Yahoo!… and the Pure Digital’s Flip doesn’t either - even though they sold 1,000,000 basic camcorders last year, they radically diverge from the path charted by Sony and the rest of the industry. It wasn’t that their Dan (PD’s CEO - not me!) had focus groups and steadily developed a novel product - “He paid attention, and created a product for them—without hiring focus groups. ”

Isn’t that where the really great ideas come from?

Business schools have been popularising the “Blue Ocean” - but great minds have been thinking this way for thousands of years. In order to get ahead of the pack, you have to either be a born freak or you have to chart a different route. And born freaks just chart a different route intuitively.

We make it hard for those that want to march to their own tune. Radicals are punished - and that it is a good thing in a sense… it is in the nature of the ’system’ to challenge those who work to undermine the Nash Equilibrium presently being enjoyed so as to ensure that the proposed change overcomes the switching cost. It’s not personal - it’s just evolution.

To stand out can be frightening and lonely. Yet if you don’t be true to yourself - or a company is not true to itself - what do you really have left?

Great minds listen to their inner voice. In the modern world, it is often drowned out by the clattering of empty vessels, but if you can stop and listen to the voice within, you can start to explore what makes you great. What makes you unique? What are you better at - or could you be better at - than anybody else? What are you passionate about? If you could stop and listen to that voice from within, what would you do? It’s like we have an internal radio tuner that we seldom tune - and we get confused that all the white noise means that there’s nothing really there.

It is still your song to sing… if you dare.

I’ve had a little post-it note sitting beside my desk for a few months now, so it’s about time I actually wrote something about this! Self-actualisation comes down to three words things:

1. Independence
2. Non-attachment
3. Power-ambivalence

Independence means that you think for yourself. It requires an individual to choose their own path rather than choosing the path that is given to them or the one that others would choose for them. Independence demands that an individual take responsibility for their conditioning and their thought processes, and to take responsibility for their experience of life. Sooner or later, great people have to leave the ‘tribe’ that gave them their foundations - that is the only way to start your own tribe.

Non-attachment means that while you can work towards goals and objectives, you do so while remembering that most things that seem to matter don’t. They might act - even ferociously - as if what they were doing mattered, yet when their work is done they retreat in the peace that comes from knowing that it doesn’t. Money, relationships and our reputation are powerful motivators for those who are not living at this level.

Power-ambivalence means that you do not try to control others. Self-actualised people do not live to manipulate or control others, but instead proceed along their personal path, honouring their truth as their truth, rather than trying to impose their beliefs or ideas upon others. While leaders are called upon by communities to provide guidance, self-actualised leaders do so without becoming attached to the perks, privileges or prestige attendant thereto.

Separation of Powers in Education, Cognitive Competencies, Selective Reinforcement of Spontaneous Behaviour and Open-Hearted Relationships of Unconditional Love… they’re all “hobby horses” that I have ranted on about from time to time, yet I haven’t always explored them as much or taken them as far as I could. Read the rest of this entry »

Sometimes I forget just how much I have changed in the past few years.

Somebody - somehow - found my old blogger blog this morning and made a comment on something I wrote two years ago. She felt called to correct inaccuracies I had made.

And I agreed with her - the simplifications that I had made for the audience that I was addressing the post towards impaired the accuracy of my depiction of the overall message… I wouldn’t have phrased it that way today!

Yet I am grateful for her comment… and that I can notice the difference.

Isn’t it funny how it is often only when we can notice “the difference” that we can see our own progress?

(The post was about David Deida’s Way of the Superior Man, a book you will probably want to read at some point. It’s not for wusses - but it’s got great material. Check out my notes here…)

When I was in primary school I knew that I was going to enjoy public speaking. Debating was my first love though my attention shifted towards public speaking and training. Right now I’m involved with three Toastmasters Clubs here in Shanghai - to me, it still offers the best value speaking training in the world today. Yet I am still staggered at how people who call themselves leaders can possess such embarrassing communication skills. Read the rest of this entry »

Great service in China doesn’t come often, but when it does it really feels great. After a saga of mixups, I just received a box of goodies today - my new bluetooth stereo headset and a cable to connect my phone to my stereo speakers. I love them - and they sound great - but the biggest buzz that I got out of it was the great service that I received from Shirley Pun and Wendy Wu from Expansys.

While they’re part of one of the biggest electronics companies around, they took the time to make sure that everything went wonderfully smoothly for my precise requirements amid returns, order changes and changes in destination. It’s a great thing to run a company that is mostly online - and they’re great at delivering top quality for a great price - but this experience has brought home to me that those rare occasions that you can interface with your customers make a disproportionate impact on the customer experience.

It’s like family. Most of the time you don’t see each other. Maybe an email or a card from time to time… which makes those rare occasions that you do get together all the more memorable and important. And makes it even more important to make sure you get it right when you do get the chance to make contact.

Listening to a Stanford podcast from the founder of Tesla Motors, I made the following notes that I thought worth writing down…

• Do something you’re passionate about
• Do something meaningful
• Be bold
• Think your ideas through
• Build your company while you build your product
• Face reality everyday
• Hire the best
• Aggressively follow all leads

Makes a nice snap back to reality after yesterday’s session with China NLP on values…