Collaboration
November 17th, 2008The best ideas don’t exist within an individual
They are in the ability to collaborate across multiple points of view
They exist within the opportunity to collaborate both within and outside a company
Love, Profits, and Work
October 15th, 2008Great quote from Seth Godin today that really hits home the reason why I think I enjoy doing what I do and the reason why I think people should be able to enjoy doing what they do for a living:
“Maybe you can’t make money doing what you love… But I bet you can figure out how to love what you do to make money…”
Tips for finding a person to start a business?
October 15th, 2008So as I continue to work on launching my newest “venture” (which means I’ve put a few days of work and ~$200 bucks to get it started) I keep talking to people about it, trying to get ideas and get some feedback on the viability of the model.
What’s really interesting to me though, is that NOBODY has actually offered to help. Nobody has said “hey, do you need help in creating this?” or “are you looking for a partner to fund the site?”
I’ve gotten at least 3 people involved in one way or another - whether looking at the site or actually talking about the details - and not one of them has shown some interest. Perhaps it could be because I would be the owner and they wouldn’t have a say on what goes on. But, honestly, if that was the issue, why not be candid about it and say “If I help, are we 50-50?”
I’m really curious as to why people haven’t shown interest. Is the idea not good enough? Are people not self motivated enough to want to do it? Did the guys at Google told people what they were doing and nobody offered to help them?
Curious to hear what you think about this, so drop a comment.
The US headed for a mega recession
October 10th, 2008The WSJ reports:
“On average, the 52 economists surveyed now expect U.S. gross domestic product to contract in the third and fourth quarters of this year, as well as the first quarter of 2009.”
I strongly believe the fundamentals of the world’s economies are sound, and most of the panic and negative outlook is purely financial.
I am perhaps idealistic in my not-so-negative outlook for what’s to come, but as is everybody’s guess, only time will tell.
“Beware of Geeks Bearing Formulas” - Warren Buffet
October 8th, 2008Great interview of Buffet with Charlie Rose a few nights ago. Google it and listen to it.
Hilarious Palin Videos
October 2nd, 2008OMG
What?!
The Senate Bill in a Nutshell
October 2nd, 2008This is where we stand as of October 2nd, 2008. Few interesting things there.
Apart from the Troubled Assets Relief Program, the bill before the Senate includes:
* Extensions of the AMT patch, tax deductions on state and local sales taxes, tuition, teacher expenses and real property taxes and tax credits for business research and new market investors
* Energy tax credits and incentives to encourage wind and refined coal production, new biomass facilities, wave and tide electricity generators, solar energy property improvements, CO2 capturing, plug-in electric drive vehicles, idling reduction units on truck engines, cellulosic biofuels ethanol production, energy efficient houses, offices, dishwashers, clothes washers and refrigerators, and fringe benefits for employees commuting by bicycle.
* A requirement for private insurance plans to offer mental health benefits on par with medical-surgical benefits
* Tax relief provisions for victims of this summer’s Midwestern floods, and Hurricane Ike
* Freezing of deductions for sale and exchange of oil and natural gas, mandatory basis reporting by brokers for transactions involving publicly traded securities and an extension of the oil spill tax
But it also extends the following tax provisions:
* Economic development credit to American Samoan businesses
* $10,000 tax credit for training of mine rescue team members
* 50% immediate expensing for extra underground mine safety equipment
* Tax credit for businesses with employees from an Indian reservation
* Accelerated depreciation for property used mostly on an Indian reservation
* 50% tax credit for some expenditures on maintaining railroad tracks
* 7-year recovery period for motorsports racetrack property
* Expensing of cleaning up “brownfield” contaminated sites
* Enhanced deductions for businesses donating computers and books to schools, and for food donations
* Deduction for income from domestic production in Puerto Rico
* Tax credit for employees in Hurricane Katrina disaster area
* Tax incentives for investments in poor neighborhoods in D.C.
* Increased rehabilitation credit for buildings in Gulf area
* Reduction of import duties on some imported wool fabrics, transfers other duties to Wool Trust Fund to promote competitiveness of American wool
* Special expensing rules for film and TV productions
And there’s more:
* Increasing cover of rum excise tax revenues to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands
* Making it easier for film and TV companies to use deduction for domestic production
* Exempting children’s wooden arrows from excise tax
* Income averaging for Exxon Valdez litigants for tax purposes
Startups!
September 5th, 2008Currently working for a start-up in the retail/consumer goods environment. It’s an exciting time in my life and I’m learning a lot. And, quite honestly, it’s not a bad place to be for a 26 year old!
In addition, I’m working on a new site which will use a simple technology (wiki) to solve for a common question I get in the industry. My last two experiments failed before take off, but I learned a lot. Here are some things I learned:
1. Simplicity is key. Keep your start-up project as simple as possible, especially if you are a one-man show who has a daytime job in addition to your secondary project.
2. Don’t let anybody let you down. Ask for advice, and listen carefully. Most people will be right, some will be wrong. Sometimes, however, you just have to go with your gut. If you don’t have much to loose, why not give it a try? Be realistic, be enthusiastic, moderate your energy, and follow through the execution of your project.
3. Execution is key. Ideas are great. Here is one: Let’s build a car that uses solar energy as fuel. Great idea, but how will you execute it? The simpler you keep it, the easier it will be to execute.
4. Wrap it up. You have the idea; great. Can you execute it? Great! Now, wrap it up. Package it, sell it, do whatever it takes to evaluate whether or not it will be a success.
Every point above feeds of each other - great ideas need execution, execution is easier when the idea is simple and you have the energy and passion to do it.
Being the Best You Can Be
May 6th, 2008This is a great article everybody should read. It’s all about small improvements, every day, for long periods of time.
We can all be great.
Research now shows that the lack of natural talent is irrelevant to great success. The secret? Painful and demanding practice and hard work
By Geoffrey Colvin, senior editor-at-large
October 19 2006: 3:14 PM EDT
(Fortune Magazine) — What makes Tiger Woods great? What made Berkshire Hathaway (Charts) Chairman Warren Buffett the world’s premier investor? We think we know: Each was a natural who came into the world with a gift for doing exactly what he ended up doing. As Buffett told Fortune not long ago, he was “wired at birth to allocate capital.” It’s a one-in-a-million thing. You’ve got it - or you don’t.
Well, folks, it’s not so simple. For one thing, you do not possess a natural gift for a certain job, because targeted natural gifts don’t exist. (Sorry, Warren.) You are not a born CEO or investor or chess grandmaster. You will achieve greatness only through an enormous amount of hard work over many years. And not just any hard work, but work of a particular type that’s demanding and painful.
Buffett, for instance, is famed for his discipline and the hours he spends studying financial statements of potential investment targets. The good news is that your lack of a natural gift is irrelevant - talent has little or nothing to do with greatness. You can make yourself into any number of things, and you can even make yourself great.
Scientific experts are producing remarkably consistent findings across a wide array of fields. Understand that talent doesn’t mean intelligence, motivation or personality traits. It’s an innate ability to do some specific activity especially well. British-based researchers Michael J. Howe, Jane W. Davidson and John A. Sluboda conclude in an extensive study, “The evidence we have surveyed … does not support the [notion that] excelling is a consequence of possessing innate gifts.”
To see how the researchers could reach such a conclusion, consider the problem they were trying to solve. In virtually every field of endeavor, most people learn quickly at first, then more slowly and then stop developing completely. Yet a few do improve for years and even decades, and go on to greatness.
The irresistible question - the “fundamental challenge” for researchers in this field, says the most prominent of them, professor K. Anders Ericsson of Florida State University - is, Why? How are certain people able to go on improving? The answers begin with consistent observations about great performers in many fields.
Scientists worldwide have conducted scores of studies since the 1993 publication of a landmark paper by Ericsson and two colleagues, many focusing on sports, music and chess, in which performance is relatively easy to measure and plot over time. But plenty of additional studies have also examined other fields, including business.
No substitute for hard work
The first major conclusion is that nobody is great without work. It’s nice to believe that if you find the field where you’re naturally gifted, you’ll be great from day one, but it doesn’t happen. There’s no evidence of high-level performance without experience or practice.
Reinforcing that no-free-lunch finding is vast evidence that even the most accomplished people need around ten years of hard work before becoming world-class, a pattern so well established researchers call it the ten-year rule.
What about Bobby Fischer, who became a chess grandmaster at 16? Turns out the rule holds: He’d had nine years of intensive study. And as John Horn of the University of Southern California and Hiromi Masunaga of California State University observe, “The ten-year rule represents a very rough estimate, and most researchers regard it as a minimum, not an average.” In many fields (music, literature) elite performers need 20 or 30 years’ experience before hitting their zenith.
So greatness isn’t handed to anyone; it requires a lot of hard work. Yet that isn’t enough, since many people work hard for decades without approaching greatness or even getting significantly better. What’s missing?
Practice makes perfect
The best people in any field are those who devote the most hours to what the researchers call “deliberate practice.” It’s activity that’s explicitly intended to improve performance, that reaches for objectives just beyond one’s level of competence, provides feedback on results and involves high levels of repetition.
For example: Simply hitting a bucket of balls is not deliberate practice, which is why most golfers don’t get better. Hitting an eight-iron 300 times with a goal of leaving the ball within 20 feet of the pin 80 percent of the time, continually observing results and making appropriate adjustments, and doing that for hours every day - that’s deliberate practice.
Consistency is crucial. As Ericsson notes, “Elite performers in many diverse domains have been found to practice, on the average, roughly the same amount every day, including weekends.”
Evidence crosses a remarkable range of fields. In a study of 20-year-old violinists by Ericsson and colleagues, the best group (judged by conservatory teachers) averaged 10,000 hours of deliberate practice over their lives; the next-best averaged 7,500 hours; and the next, 5,000. It’s the same story in surgery, insurance sales, and virtually every sport. More deliberate practice equals better performance. Tons of it equals great performance.
The skeptics
Not all researchers are totally onboard with the myth-of-talent hypothesis, though their objections go to its edges rather than its center. For one thing, there are the intangibles. Two athletes might work equally hard, but what explains the ability of New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady to perform at a higher level in the last two minutes of a game?
Researchers also note, for example, child prodigies who could speak, read or play music at an unusually early age. But on investigation those cases generally include highly involved parents. And many prodigies do not go on to greatness in their early field, while great performers include many who showed no special early aptitude.
Certainly some important traits are partly inherited, such as physical size and particular measures of intelligence, but those influence what a person doesn’t do more than what he does; a five-footer will never be an NFL lineman, and a seven-footer will never be an Olympic gymnast. Even those restrictions are less severe than you’d expect: Ericsson notes, “Some international chess masters have IQs in the 90s.” The more research that’s done, the more solid the deliberate-practice model becomes.
Real-world examples
All this scholarly research is simply evidence for what great performers have been showing us for years. To take a handful of examples: Winston Churchill, one of the 20th century’s greatest orators, practiced his speeches compulsively. Vladimir Horowitz supposedly said, “If I don’t practice for a day, I know it. If I don’t practice for two days, my wife knows it. If I don’t practice for three days, the world knows it.” He was certainly a demon practicer, but the same quote has been attributed to world-class musicians like Ignace Paderewski and Luciano Pavarotti.
Many great athletes are legendary for the brutal discipline of their practice routines. In basketball, Michael Jordan practiced intensely beyond the already punishing team practices. (Had Jordan possessed some mammoth natural gift specifically for basketball, it seems unlikely he’d have been cut from his high school team.)
In football, all-time-great receiver Jerry Rice - passed up by 15 teams because they considered him too slow - practiced so hard that other players would get sick trying to keep up.
Tiger Woods is a textbook example of what the research shows. Because his father introduced him to golf at an extremely early age - 18 months - and encouraged him to practice intensively, Woods had racked up at least 15 years of practice by the time he became the youngest-ever winner of the U.S. Amateur Championship, at age 18. Also in line with the findings, he has never stopped trying to improve, devoting many hours a day to conditioning and practice, even remaking his swing twice because that’s what it took to get even better.
The business side
The evidence, scientific as well as anecdotal, seems overwhelmingly in favor of deliberate practice as the source of great performance. Just one problem: How do you practice business? Many elements of business, in fact, are directly practicable. Presenting, negotiating, delivering evaluations, deciphering financial statements - you can practice them all.
Still, they aren’t the essence of great managerial performance. That requires making judgments and decisions with imperfect information in an uncertain environment, interacting with people, seeking information - can you practice those things too? You can, though not in the way you would practice a Chopin etude.
Instead, it’s all about how you do what you’re already doing - you create the practice in your work, which requires a few critical changes. The first is going at any task with a new goal: Instead of merely trying to get it done, you aim to get better at it.
Report writing involves finding information, analyzing it and presenting it - each an improvable skill. Chairing a board meeting requires understanding the company’s strategy in the deepest way, forming a coherent view of coming market changes and setting a tone for the discussion. Anything that anyone does at work, from the most basic task to the most exalted, is an improvable skill.
Adopting a new mindset
Armed with that mindset, people go at a job in a new way. Research shows they process information more deeply and retain it longer. They want more information on what they’re doing and seek other perspectives. They adopt a longer-term point of view. In the activity itself, the mindset persists. You aren’t just doing the job, you’re explicitly trying to get better at it in the larger sense.
Again, research shows that this difference in mental approach is vital. For example, when amateur singers take a singing lesson, they experience it as fun, a release of tension. But for professional singers, it’s the opposite: They increase their concentration and focus on improving their performance during the lesson. Same activity, different mindset.
Feedback is crucial, and getting it should be no problem in business. Yet most people don’t seek it; they just wait for it, half hoping it won’t come. Without it, as Goldman Sachs leadership-development chief Steve Kerr says, “it’s as if you’re bowling through a curtain that comes down to knee level. If you don’t know how successful you are, two things happen: One, you don’t get any better, and two, you stop caring.” In some companies, like General Electric, frequent feedback is part of the culture. If you aren’t lucky enough to get that, seek it out.
Be the ball
Through the whole process, one of your goals is to build what the researchers call “mental models of your business” - pictures of how the elements fit together and influence one another. The more you work on it, the larger your mental models will become and the better your performance will grow.
Andy Grove could keep a model of a whole world-changing technology industry in his head and adapt Intel (Charts) as needed. Bill Gates, Microsoft’s (Charts) founder, had the same knack: He could see at the dawn of the PC that his goal of a computer on every desk was realistic and would create an unimaginably large market. John D. Rockefeller, too, saw ahead when the world-changing new industry was oil. Napoleon was perhaps the greatest ever. He could not only hold all the elements of a vast battle in his mind but, more important, could also respond quickly when they shifted in unexpected ways.
That’s a lot to focus on for the benefits of deliberate practice - and worthless without one more requirement: Do it regularly, not sporadically.
Why?
For most people, work is hard enough without pushing even harder. Those extra steps are so difficult and painful they almost never get done. That’s the way it must be. If great performance were easy, it wouldn’t be rare. Which leads to possibly the deepest question about greatness. While experts understand an enormous amount about the behavior that produces great performance, they understand very little about where that behavior comes from.
The authors of one study conclude, “We still do not know which factors encourage individuals to engage in deliberate practice.” Or as University of Michigan business school professor Noel Tichy puts it after 30 years of working with managers, “Some people are much more motivated than others, and that’s the existential question I cannot answer - why.”
The critical reality is that we are not hostage to some naturally granted level of talent. We can make ourselves what we will. Strangely, that idea is not popular. People hate abandoning the notion that they would coast to fame and riches if they found their talent. But that view is tragically constraining, because when they hit life’s inevitable bumps in the road, they conclude that they just aren’t gifted and give up.
Maybe we can’t expect most people to achieve greatness. It’s just too demanding. But the striking, liberating news is that greatness isn’t reserved for a preordained few. It is available to you and to everyone.
1998-2008 Inflation: Bread, Gasoline, Orange Juice and Bananas
May 5th, 2008From the Bureau of Labor Statistics: Prices for bread, orange juice, bananas and gasoline for the last 10 years.
You be the judge.
Song of the Day
April 29th, 2008This song will make your day at work fly by: Technologic, by Daft Punk.
Here’s an extract:
Buy it, use it, break it, fix it,
Trash it, change it, (Mail) - upgrade it,
Charge it, (Point) it, zoom it, press it,
Snap it, work it, quick - erase it,
Write it, cut it, paste it, save it,
Load it, check it, quick - rewrite it,
Plug it, play it, burn it, rip it,
Drag and drop it, zip - unzip it,
Lock it, fill it, call it, find it,
View it, code it, jam - unlock it,
Surf it, scroll it, (Pause) it, click it,
Cross it, crack it, (Switch)- update it,
Name it, read it, tune it, print it,
Scan it, send it, fax - rename it,
Touch it, bring it, pay it, watch it,
Turn it, leave it, stop - format it. [
40th Walk for Hunger in Boston
April 23rd, 2008Please donate to our team for this venerable cause:
http://projectbread.org/goto/dosamigos
The Healthiest Smoothie Recipe
April 22nd, 20081 cup of Fage fat-free yogurt (tons of protein, low in carbs, only 120 calories)
Some skim milk (probably 1/2 to 3/4 cup… just eye it!)
1 banana
1 spoon of strawberry jam (low sugar even better)
Optional: any other fruit (frozen strawberries, or blueberries)
Mix in blender… and enjoy!
Good amounts of protein, relatively low in carbs, filling, refreshing… Simply delicious!
The Beauty of Ignorance
April 11th, 2008“Some of the world’s greatest feats were accomplished by people not smart enough to know they were impossible” — Doug Larson
More Non-native English Speakers Than Native English Speakers?
March 28th, 2008Did you know there are now more non-native English speakers than native English speakers? Pretty interesting.
The Women’s Guide to Men’s Language
March 23rd, 2008Here is the woman’s guide to what a man is really saying…
“I’m hungry” = I’m hungry.
“I’m sleepy” = I’m sleepy.
“I’m tired” = I’m tired.
“Do you want to go to a movie?” = I’d eventually like to have sex with
you.
“Can I take you out to dinner?” = I’d eventually like to have sex with
you.
“Can I call you sometime?” = I’d eventually like to have sex with you.
“May I have this dance?” = I’d eventually like to have sex with you.
“Nice dress!” = Nice cleavage!
“You look tense, let me give you a massage.” = I want to fondle you.
“What’s wrong?” = What meaningless self-inflicted psychological trauma
are you going through now?
“What’s wrong?” = I guess sex tonight is out of the question.
“I’m bored.” = Do you want to have sex?
“I love you.” = Let’s have sex now.
“I love you too.” = Okay, I said it…we’d better have sex now!
“Yes, I like the way you cut your hair.” = I liked it better before.
“Let’s talk.”= I am trying to impress you by showing that I am a deep
person and maybe then you’d like to have sex with me.
“Will you marry me?” = I might as well get tax benefits for going
through these “talks”
(while shopping)
“I like that one better.” = Pick any freakin’ dress and let’s go home!
“I don’t think that blouse and that skirt go well together.” = I am gay.
Tibet vs. China: Doing Our Part
March 21st, 2008From the WSJ today:
“If freedom-loving people throughout the world do not speak out against China’s oppression in China and Tibet, we have lost all moral authority to speak on behalf of human rights anywhere in the world,” Ms. Pelosi said before a crowd of thousands of cheering Tibetans, including monks and schoolchildren. “The situation in Tibet is a challenge to the conscience of the world,” she said.
I figured having a post up in my blog to object about how things are being done in China would add my grain of sand to a rapidly eroding beach.
Success is Simple.
March 7th, 2008“Success is simple. Do what’s right, the right way, at the right time.”
Arnold H. Glasow
Impolite People
February 11th, 2008I’m going to pull a bad Seinfeld here, but here are a few things that annoy me about people.
For instance, not really sure why we do things like hold the door for somebody who’s right behind you but people sometimes won’t respect the line when you’re waiting for T or the bus. Here are a few more:
- Why do we say “Thanks” to somebody who opens the door for us, but we don’t say “thanks” when a car stops in the street to let us cross the street?
- Why do we tip cab drivers but not bus drivers? Should bus drivers be paid less and work just for tips? Maybe that way they would be nicer.
- Why do people stay at work late even when there’s no work to do?
These are the few that I can remember for now. More to come.
Ana’s Taqueria, Boca Grande, Felipes, Chipotle… How Many Calories in a Burrito?
February 10th, 2008Here is an estimate for the average burrito @ Chipotle.
A burrito can probably vary between 600 to 1,500 calories.
Three recommendations to make the burrito experience better:
1. Skip the cheese. Adds a lot of fat and calories, not much flavor.
2. Enjoy them while you’re young.
3. Don’t go to Ana’s - Boca Grande is about 10 times better.
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Chipotle Nutrition Facts Serving Size: 1 Burrito
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