First few minutes after reading this article I was just thinking what a bunch of nerds, and that the world has truly gone to hell. Someone making money on something that has no tangible value? Well I guess that depends on what you consider to be valuable. For example how is it any different than art? The cost to make an oil painting is maybe 500 dollars worth of materials to create, which then sells for thousands. I mean that is real value to someone. Your NHL hockey tickets is more real than your Pee Wee league hockey ticket, because you put value on it. You pay for the luxury of the BMW, though it does the same thing as a Honda.
So are they nerds with no life? Or highly creative capitalists in finding new ways make money? In a way you have to admire people who go around obstacles, conventional ideas of how to make living. Not that we don’t need the traditional ways, but that isn’t the only path and the guy who made real money from selling a virtual asteroid is a testament to that. And why not if draws speculators away from real-world markets, where they screw up values of houses.
I came across a very cool video this weekend. A Dad and son team somehow put an HD Camera, use an iphone for GPS and balloon together and sent it off to space, to record space! Honestly, if this was some MIT engineers I’d think, yeah whatever big deal. But because it was this seemingly normal cool Dad doing a science project with his kid makes it super amazing.
And the footage is just trippy. I recommend getting some snacks and putting the speakers to max to get a feel full effects of this space recording! How did they manage to get up there is beyond my understanding of science. But someone was curious enough to try. If there wasn’t that, none of this would happen. We all do things because we are curious. If doesn’t interest you, you don’t do it. There is no monetary reason to record space, but they did it just because it was fun. Cheers to that.
“That’s what all we are: amateurs. We don’t live long enough to be anything else.” -Charlie Chaplin
I feel lot of the time when growing up we build up this mystique in our heads of what its like to be in a certain profession. We build this up into such lofty heights that we forget that these “pros” were once amateurs too. They were ordinary people like you and me. A little talent and luck ( a lot) help, but there is nobody at the top of there game just because they were the chosen ones.
And ‘the more you know the less you know’ totally rings true. Cos a real person of wisdom would know that they don’t know everything yet. You can desire to know everything, but you simply can’t know everything! You can’t predict everything correctly all the time! I mean we’ve seen what economic forecasting has done for us. It’s now made astrology seem respectable!
So what I am saying is just because you finished university or college or whatever doesn’t mean you stop learning. I don’t mean by books or teachers either. Keep observing and questioning, and then experimenting. You can learn from anybody and from anything.
This is a giant cake! With chocolate, strawberry, and blueberry icing.
One of my favourite scenes from the Hindi movie Jaanu Tu ya Jaane Na is when Meghna asks these kind of questions to Imran Khan. They play this game called… “What’s this?” It’s where you look at something ordinary and you try explain it in a exciting way. It’s a pretty decent game if you ask me.
Ken Robinson gave a talk recently at the Art of Marketing here in Calgary where he mentioned this concept – divergent thinking. Divergent thinking is the ability to come up with lots of possible answers or interpretations to a question. He showed statistics indicating we lose this ability at a rapid rate as we get older and get more educated. An education system that emphasizes linear thinking, multiple choice testing – where you have to converge on one answer to get the correct answer. That’s fine, but what happens if a student doesn’t learn that way? What about having some wit? Scoring 190 on an IQ test isn’t the only barometer for intelligence. What if your talents lay elsewhere? How do you nurture that? We are definitely due for a revolution in education.
Because its those who improvise, live in randomness, are ready for whats thrown at them. They can make connections that others can’t see. Paul McCartney had it right:
I use to think anyone doing anything weird was weird. Now I know that it is the people that call others weird that are weird.
This time last year I witnessed the most insane 2 min phenomenon of my life - the dancing guy at the Sasquatch Music Festival. Below is the video I managed to capture:
Now this to me is the definition of a free spirit. I was watching this guy dance like a maniac for about hour BEFORE this even happened! But then one person decided to join him, and then seconds later came number 3 running down and it became cool. That 3rd guy in my opinion made it legit. Everyone went mental after that!! It switched from being about him to being this awesome dance party. I love the fact the song being performed was Unstoppable by Santigold.
Which brings me to another point: Santigold should give him a yearly dividend. Cos he created a movement that single handily made this song massive!! The dancing guy videos went viral and when that happens, its word of mouth on steroids. Don’t believe me? Check out all the comments for the Unstoppable track on youtube.. they all mention the dance party! It should be taken as a blessing from the skies for any tune to go viral nowadays of 1000 niche musical tastes. Sasquatch should give this guy life time tickets to the event as a token of goodwill! You simply can’t create this again! If it were to happen, it would always be compared to this.
I recently found one of these babies at a friends place this past week.
Its called the iRobot Roombe and it cleans your floor, and afterwards goes back to its docking station. This may seem like “so what? ” to some people, but this blew my mind. Are we that far off from technological wonderland that was the 80′s cartoon, the Jetsons? When can I have robot cleaning lady who takes away my dirty dishes and puts in the washer? Hopefully by the end of this decade. Or is this convenience just another reason to be more lazy? I don’t think so.
We should embrace robots to do the things we don’t want to do, like cleaning our floors, so we can have more leisure time. This is the reason why we have cars, instead of riding horses, why they invented airplanes instead of ships to travel long distances. I patiently await the supersonicMaglev trains of the future. Imagine Tokyo to London in 3.5 hours.
Hollywood does an amazing job of portraying a Terminator 2 type future. A doomsday scenario where we will all be enslaved by robots. There is some merit to that. Aren’t we already to our cellphones? I’ve seen it countless times at restaurants, two people at a table busy texting to someone (maybe to one another, who knows) for up to 10 mins, instead of chatting to one another. Remember the film Wall-E? We become fat asses and just press buttons, that this eventual artificial world will separate us from nature. That is true if its used that way. The end of the movie showed that technology properly used will help humans cultivate their true nature – that it must be subordinate to human progress, and help move that along.
People are using the internet more often and sometimes forgetting there is a world outside that. Well thankfully there are initiatives like Neighborgoods that are bringing the online and real world closer together. NeighborGoods.netis an online community where you can save and earn money by sharing stuff with your friends.
Check out the video (and notice the nifty logo):
Now I had a bit of chuckle of when the narrator mentioned “sharing feels good!” and thought what a bunch of hippie nonsense. But I mean why the hell not? This would reduce crime in the neighbourhood, because it would mean you actually have to talk to your neighbour, and best of all as mentioned in the video….. Why store useless crap in your garage when you can rent or borrow from a neighbour?! This relates to studies showing that doing interesting things, experiences lead to happiness more so than buying and owning things. At the same time you need some stuff to enjoy and have these experiences! But not to the point when owning something becomes a liability.
Before I got into the habit of reading loads of books for fun (yeah I am a big nerd) I had this huge appetite for music. The one band that got me into music properly was Oasis.
To me, the Gallagher brothers are the most comically entertaining musicians in the world. Not only did they make the most melodic music to my ears, their antics made them seem like they were from a different planet. It was also the classic rag-riches story, from nothing – growing up in working class Manchester to icons of the 90′s – that made them so fascinating. I always find the environment successful people come from to be telling. Noel Gallagher, is actually left-handed. He just learned to play a right handed due to them being poor, and that was the only guitar in the house, which was owned by his children abusing father. Below is one of the most candid interviews I have ever seen of Noel, asked how this upbringing affected him. Note the 6 min 30 sec mark especially.
Now Noel to me is a hero, unlike Kurt Cobain who sang about how terrible life is. He wrote life affirming tunes that shook the music industry off its depression and made something out of the very little he had. This kind of attitude appealed to me when growing up. Not gangtsa rap music, not the my life is so hard – grunge/emo music scene. It was about living forever, feeling supersonic, a champagne supernova in the sky.
The constraints of being poor, nothing to lose mentality, hard focus on music, resulted in the classic Definitely Maybe. The second album was also recorded with constraints – in 15 days, one song every 24 hours. Wonderwalland Don’t Look Back In Anger came from this album! Oasis were then given keys to the Bank of England, after the huge international success, and what happened? They came out with the bloated 70 minute diabolical Be Here Now. The creativity was reduced when they were given too much. You don’t have to work as hard, when you can throw money at a problem. To be fair as well, it was all fitting in accordance to what the public had built them up to be. They were a monstrously-hyped band at that point and they responded with a monstrous defying songs to capture all of the essence and hype which had been created around them. Noel bragged at the time of having 30 guitars overdubbed onto the song My Big Mouth! Now as much as I still love that tune, the excess made the music not as appealing as those first two killer albums. Too much fat, not enough muscle.
Same lessons can be applied to business as well. You don’t need as much as you think. These limitations force you to focus on the essentials, instead of using that extra time to get distracted by the latest email. It just makes you more creative. This also all leads to why I can’t wait to pick up the debut book released today by the founders of 37 Signals, Rework, that talks about, amongst other counter intuitive topics, the advantage of having constraints.
One of the greatest useful pieces of information I read over the past six months was an ebook by Charlie Hoehn on being a Recession Proof Grad. This ebook is basically the magna carta that should be handed to every recent graduate. It should actually be given to everybody! His tactic is basically find something you have interest in, do free work in this area to see if you actually like it, and leverage this time to build a portfolio that will eventually result in your dream job. Sounds too good to be true? Yes if you feel the world has conspired to make your entire life a struggle. Its an innovative approach to job hunting and probably only seems crazy to people who aren’t willing to hustle.
One of the things he talks about is starting a blog. What are the main benefits that I have taken from it? Blogging helps people understand your thinking, your reasoning. Sharing information, teaching, and then perhaps through this meeting interesting people. Also this is the best way for me to improve my writing skills.
If you liked the ebook, check this guys blog too. One of his posts that resonated with me was his reference to a scene in the movie, Dark Knight, involving the Joker talking to Harvey Dent:
“Do I really look like a guy with a plan? You know what I am? I’m a dog chasing cars. I wouldn’t know what to do with one if I caught it! You know, I just DO things… I’m not a schemer. I try to show the schemers how pathetic their attempts to control things really are.”
Maybe you should stop watching LOST or a show featuring 20 somethings arguing over a guy or whatever new mesmerizing show that is on television these days. Your wasting your most precious resource: TIME.
I say this to people who desperately want to get a job, yet argue they have nothing of value to provide to an employer. I wonder why!! Starting reading useful information. Not just interesting, it has to be useful, that will make you take action. There is a lot of great interesting information out there (the newspaper, most magazines), but that only drains you from whats important. Whats a great resource for useful information? Try the PMBA Reading List. Does the information give you strategies on how to apply it to your situation? Then it is useful! You want to be a writer one day for a company you admire? Maybe start reading all the best books in that industry to have some level of mastery on it.
If a copywriter with 30 years of experience writes a book about magazine advertising, and you buy the book, you can learn in about two days of reading what it took her thirty years to accumulate! How amazing is that?! That is the greatest bargain of all time.
