Archive for the 'Lifestyle' Category

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Being a great customer

Published on 25 September, 2007 in Lifestyle and Stories. 1 Comment

Sometimes you get great service. This morning I grabbed breakfast from my usual local cafe – the BaBaiBan Waga’s. It’s seven minutes walk (yes, I timed it) from my front door and on the route that I take for my usual morning walk. I always get great service there – I know greeted Lisa (the barrista) by name this morning and was pleasantly surprised that she even remembered mine! I guess I really am a regular…

My dear friend and great mentor, John, taught me by example how to get along with service staff. He showed me how to chit-chat, greet them as people (rather than ’servants’ or machines as they often get treated), and how to show sincere appreciation for their work. It’s become very much part of how I live and think, though this morning this HBS article helped make my understanding that much more explicit.

If we want to get great service – like I do there and at my local restaurant in particular – we can try being demanding, respectful, reliable, surprising and engaging. Just five things that make all the difference…

Oh – and my cappucino was absolutely the best that I’ve tasted anywhere in the world – Lisa really worked a miracle with firm froth and a rich yet smooth flavour :)

Financial freedom and passive income is very overrated…

Published on 29 August, 2007 in Lifestyle, Self-awareness and Social development. 4 Comments

A while back, I wrote an article entitled “Beyond Passive Income“, an attack on the modern obsession with being financially free on the basis that I believe that we should do what we love now rather than postponing doing what we love and upon my belief that when we do what we love and love what we do, in that moment we become truly free.

In a few popular wealth creation seminars (eg Tony Robbins’ Wealth Mastery), you will identify a few different levels on the path to financial freedom. This proceeds through financial security and financial independence and other levels that talk about having increasing freedom on the basis that you can take six-months off from working or a year or have your basic expenses covered through your investments or whatever.

To me, if you’re doing what you love to do, you are free and if you are not doing what you love to do, you are not.

What’s worse is that when people who strive for financial freedom finally get there will often look around and wonder “and now what?”

I’d prefer to live a life of purpose and peace… one in which I am doing what I am best at rather than just trying to get enough ’stuff’ to satisfy my insecurities.

And maybe, just maybe, if we can cultivate purpose-driven living, we might help free people from the bonds of impressing others and trying to overcome insecurities that we hold to like an addiction, and instead we can let go of those fears and embrace what we can do best.

Anyway, it’s an old article but here it is…

Self-actualising is really simple!

Published on 17 August, 2007 in Creativity and genius, Lifestyle and Self-awareness. 0 Comments

In Brisbane a few years ago, I met a well known psychologist who studied with Maslow. He was telling me how there are three attributes that self-actualisers share in particular:

  1. Independent of the good opinion of others
    Do you like others to like, approve and validate you, or do you need it so much that you change your behaviour on the basis of what others will think of you?
  2. Non-attachment to outcome
    It’s great to have things turn out the way that we intend them, though self-actualisers do their part regardless of their outcome. They write because they are a writer – not because others read what they write
  3. No investment in power over others
    Having people love you and support you can make life easier and more pleasurable, however self-actualisers regard influence for its own sake as pointless. Though they may enjoy sharing the journey, though would prefer ‘fellow travellers’ rather than ‘disciples’.

A taste of slowThis sort of self-actualisation thinking sounds remarkably similar to concepts of Flow and even Now thinking.

Yesterday I was listening to a TED talk on the “Slowing down in a world built for speed”, ironically while the bus that I was travelling in was crawling along South Pudong Road, and again this seemed to fit very nicely. Let’s take the time to appreciate our world without regressing to the need to dominate others.

The wonders of Shanghai

Published on 21 July, 2007 in Lifestyle, Social development, Stories and Travel. 0 Comments

Contrast is a wonderful thing. This is my third time in Shanghai, though my first in summer. Even though many of my friends – like the lovely Ingrid whose piano concert at the Oriental Art Centre last night was sensational – are struggling with the oppressive heat and humidity, for me it’s actually a really nice change to have consistent 30+ degree days.

Looking out from the 38th floor of the Eton this morning, I was struck by the contrasts of this great city. I saw the Oriental Pearl, Jin Mao and the nearly complete World Financial Centre, yet at the same time there were vacant blocks along the northern waterfront of PuDong… and a road that couldn’t be completed because there was still an apartment block in the way!

Shanghai is smelly, messy and chaotic, yet there are still amazing things happening here.
Let me put in a plug for the best cafe in Shanghai: Gallery Mondu at 93 DanShui Rd… right at the northern end of XinTianDi – their coffee is the best I’ve tasted anywhere, the service is truly exceptional and the venue combines sophisticated design with sublime functionality. Get there before 11pm!

I’m looking forward to seeing my friends at the workshop that I’m running tomorrow afternoon – it should be great! It has prompted me to rework GeniusTraining.com in preparation for the new era in my work there.

The messiness of innovation

Published on 18 June, 2007 in Creativity and genius, High performance, Lifestyle and Self-awareness. 0 Comments

Changing things is great, though it’s important to keep making progress. And when you’re trying to do something amazing all the time, you have to make sure that you have spare time… otherwise, you’ll end up being late for everything a lot of the time. Back in the 1930s, Felix Pollaczek said this: “high capacity utilization and high variability in task-completion times can combine to create severe delays.”

So if you are committed to getting things done, keep focused on tasks whose duration you can maintain good control; if you are looking to do something amazing, don’t work too hard.

Then again, you could take a leaf out of Tim Ferris‘ book and just work for four hours a week… if you can eliminate time wasting habits, put your cashflow onto autopilot by outsourcing everything that you can, and keeping mobile by moving from place to place in a series of mini-retirements (ie work hard, play hard). I like his style…

I do love how there are so many ways to express the same thing. “Behonce’s Action Method” strikes me as being just a fragment of David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) approach, though it’s still a nice way of expressing the sentiment. I like to think that I come up with the odd novel thought from time to time… though maybe I ought be satisfied with just coming up with my way of expressing something. Yet I really do love their Action Pads and how they’ve created a product from their service experience!

Let’s surf: It’s never going to snow again and the waves are getting bigger…

Published on 31 May, 2007 in Lifestyle, Science and technology and Social development. 0 Comments

Yvon Chouinard, the guy behind Patagonia, told Fortune magazine, “We’re getting into the surf market because it’s never going to snow again and the waves are going to get bigger and bigger.”

Climate change is a serious problem, though I did like this contribution from John Doerr at TED for a bit of reality.

Lose Yourself… or Lose this Day Loitering?

Published on 22 February, 2007 in Business, Creativity and genius, High performance and Lifestyle. 0 Comments

Lose this day loitering – ’twill be the same story

To-morrow – and the next more dilatory;

Each indecision brings its own delays,

And days are lost lamenting o’er lost days.

Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute -

Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.

Only engage, and then the mind grows heated -

Begin it, and then the work will be completed!

While The Secret is riding its wave of popularity it is easy to forget that things change when we change. Not just when we think, but when we do. Not think about doing, but actually do.

Von Goethe wrote about a tendency towards activity with such precision that his words continue to be repeated and contemplated perhaps two hundred years after he wrote this piece. While he was one of the creative giants of history – and a polymath, having attained world-class status as a dramatist, novelist, poet, journalist, painter, statesman, educator and natural philosopher – it is clear that as creative as he might have been, he made things happen and got stuff done.

Intellectualisation, rationalisation and introspection are some of my favourite hobbies. I like to think that many of the mistakes that I have made shall not be repeated as many times because I took the time to notice and amend the cause. But there is nothing quite as powerful as doing stuff! A bit of science helps us understand this – it seems that eminent performance comes after about a decade of disciplined and focused practice within a domain (from Ericsson originally, but more accessible here). Instrumentality – believing that what you do will make a difference – has a big impact in results too (kids who believe that they can get smarter if they work harder do get smarter!)…

But once you’re done intellectualising, the only way that you get somewhere is to get on the phone or the internet and buy the plane ticket… or buy your own plane of course.

Oh yeah… and a huge thanks to Daniel Lewis for his photographic work. You’ll see it here soon!

Ideas that mess with your head

Published on 27 January, 2007 in Business, Creativity and genius, High performance, Lifestyle and Science and technology. 0 Comments

The way that you think is largely a product of your experiences. Our friends and the books that we read are great starting point,and the internet a great opportunity equaliser. Now, while our upbringing and early life, formal education and significant events have a massive impact in how we see things, what if you hung around some of the most brilliant minds in the world for a few days?

There are a couple of these impactful events of intense stimulation now – Davos, Clinton Global Initiative and a miriad of seminars come to mind – but one of the most accessible could just be TED. They’ve just increased their price by 50% (from $4,000 to $6,000pa) but damn they come out with some awesome stuff!

Check out this video that shows what may be the future for our computer screens for example.

(They even had Tony Robbins along this year – though looking like he really needs some help with a suit that fits!)

The real iPhone

Published on 11 January, 2007 in Business, Creativity and genius, Lifestyle and Science and technology. 0 Comments

Though a pretender tried to steal the branding, Apple have now released or at least launched their iPhone. As a long time PDA and smartphone user, this could be really interesting. The question is: “How interesting?”

Apple seem to be trying to undertake a minor transformation in the way that we use smartphones. To me, they’ve essentially packaged together little more than the state-of-the-art equipment set in a pretty (and probably user-friendly) box. This is a good thing in principle – though it’s really not that much of a revolution.

My Motorola A1000 isn’t a great system. It’s small enough, is 3G, and has space for a TransFlash (now microSD) memory card for a gigabyte or two of memory. It uses the clunky Symbian operating system. And it’s not quite as sexy-looking as the iPhone. But it’s mostly the same. The W950 has 4Gb of ram (same as the iPhone) if you’re really after a walkman with phone functionality. The large touch-screen is probably a little better than my A1000 (or the A920 that I had before), but it’s still just a big touchscreen with the same resolution (320×480) as the Tungsten T3 that I bought four years ago or so. Sure, it has WiFi and Bluetooth… but there’s nothing revolutionary there.

Maybe the design teams at Dopod might just need to tweak a few things, and we’ll have a great challenger on style, and I’m sure at a fraction of the price.

But to give Apple their due, they’ve done something that I really admire. They’ve focused. They haven’t produced a whole swag of versions, just two (only different in memory quantity). And while they haven’t done anything too revolutionary, they’re taken everything that’s available and (from first glance) put it together in a single, simple, satisifying parcel. Great work to the fast follower!

Trends or tragedies?

Published on 17 December, 2006 in Business, Creativity and genius, High performance, Lifestyle, Science and technology, Social development and Travel. 0 Comments

Some things really fascinate me. How we can meet cool people in the weirdest of places (Coffee Been, Mario?). Cool ideas that spring from unlikely places (Post-it Notes). And some amazing trends…

I’ve just discovered some interesting ‘trends’ that may or may not come to pass that really challenge me to think while simultaneously shaking my head:

  • Gravanity - Beyond YouTube, from personalised stamps (that Australia Post actually offers) to average people paying to have their names on the seats in a cinema, there are opportunities for ordinary folk to have their 15 minutes of fame. Or how about Troika’s efforts in letting people project their SMS messages onto objects?
  • I wonder whether every house really is for sale… every house is for sale
  • While they didn’t let me in there last month, I’m pretty impressed with WC1’s £1m job of outfitting a bathroom opposite Selfridges
  • Transumers: consumers who are driven by experiences rather than wanting to own things… preferring to live a more transient lifestyle. And if you take what luxury consumers are doing as an indicator of what the rest of us will be doing in the future, consider this: Spending on luxury experiences and home services nearly doubled between 2004 and 2005!
  • Inspiriences: When we want to make our home environments extraordinary… from the home cinema to the home resort. Not being satisfied with a great place and metaphorical castle, people are wanting to make their homes into a ‘real castle!’ While we have home coffee makers, I don’t understand why we can’t get XXXX on tap in our own home bar – they can get Heineken thanks to Krups…
  • Along similar lines are garden offices. While perhaps out of the reach of our friends in Shanghai and London, it could be interesting for many people… especially the increasing number of teleworkers in the ‘burbs.
  • What about buying great glasses online? A friend in Shanghai just paid RMB3000 (AU$500 – they’re nice!) for her latest glasses, but maybe there should be cheaper ways. The same kinda thing is available for contact lenses too. For either, I don’t think Steff would like this idea taking off though…
  • Renting gardens??? I don’t know if Ross came up with the idea or borrowed it from the Dutch version, but it’s a really cool idea!
  • Create vinyl decals for the side of your car? Not just to make the car use a tax deduction, but to personalise the little beast…
  • Vending machines in the ladies’ rooms… but for a straightening iron! They’re only in the UK so far, but are set to spread…
  • Maybe cone-shaped pizza is your thing. Looks more appealing than most of the stuff available in 7-11’s and takeaway stores… actually, it could be a real alternative to Subway even. Maybe it might teach the Chinese that Pizza Hut has a great business system for making mediocre pizza – even after taking Carol to the Nanjing Road store on Wednesday night, I still can’t believe that people queue for overpriced poorly made ‘pizza’ in Shanghai… so much for being culturally sophisticated! But, best of all, this stuff is actually from Italy!
  • How about going to sea to discover the world – and getting academic credit! Thanks to “The Scholar Ship” now you can.
  • Ticketmaster handled tickets for my brother’s graduation ceremony, but what about running your own events? What if you could have a professional ticketing service for your next event? Sounds cool to me, thanks to brownpapertickest.com
  • With China’s newfound wealth, will we see something like Floridasation for Australia? Maybe they’ll stick with Chongming, though somehow I doubt it…
  • It’s not enough to have stuff and do things: Now we want to show off how great we are… and maybe we want to be really good at showing off how wonderful we are by taking advantage of status skills. From making your own wine or coffee, to tying your tie properly or maybe just being more ‘elegant’… combined with the massclusivity and uber premium trends, I’m guessing we’ll be seeing a lot more etiquette and connoisseurship classes for those who want to be seen as “It” rather than getting caught wearing a Nouveau Riche t-shirt!

For me, I’m looking forward to seeing the movement away from consumerism towards experiences combine with the status skills movement, yielding great rewards for those of us who can teach people to be brilliant… the time when ’status’ will go to those who can actually do cool things are are actually cool people to hang around, rather than those who buy expensive stuff (mostly unused garbage?) that destroys our environment through its wastefulness. What about deriving status (and heaven forbid satisfaction!) from your creativity like artistic, academic and indeed most truly high performing communities? Of course, that would be a opportunity for genius training…

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