Gestures

For most of his life women would watch him pass by. A little smile guaranteed a positive response. He would practice his gestures to attract their glance. Moving his mouth, stretching his back and arms and turning his head just so. He could give watching women some hope.

One day he found this no longer worked. It seemed to happen in an instant. Celestial youth moved away from him. What was once a thick brown mop had thinned out and turned grey. His hairline was now a replica of his father’s. Teeth which were once white and shining were now stained and chipped. A ragged smile.

This forced in him nothing less than a reckoning with the universe.

Trying to start a streak

Fred Wilson blogs on the power of streaks (link)

This is something I have not been able to generate in my life lately. Life with two tiny children is challenging, fun, tiring, amazing and, above all, interrupted! There is not a minute goes by where the parent is not needed for something – especially true when both parents are working from home as we are. Starting a streak in ANYTHING is tough.

Things in which I could start a streak, even with two little demanding limpets attached to my leg all day:

  • this blog – post every day until it’s a shame to not keep it up (keeping limpets off the keyboard)
  • listen to a new album every day (at night, when limpets sometimes fall asleep)
  • get a new customer in business every month (limpet-permitting)
  • going to the gym (dropping limpets at the limpetcare centre)
  • greeting my wife kindly each day (limpets actually help with this one)
  • eating right (not too hard – helps if limpets sleep, and then I sleep, and then sugar cravings subside)

etc. etc.

Streaks are the result of habits, and habits change your world…..limpets-permitting.

Discounts don’t work

More important is to care about the customer’s point of view, to do the maximum emotional labor possible and to believe that what you do is worth money.

Giving a discount cheapens your work and probably makes the customer think they were hard done by – that they could have actually asked for a bigger discount.

Discounts don’t work.

Chip away at the stone

It’s an old Aerosmith song – I’m pretty sure Steven Tyler is referring to wearing down a woman’s rebuttals, but I am using the phrase to refer to creativity and making something good.

There is no such thing as a fully formed masterpiece. It has to be worked on day in and day out over time. Some examples:

You can’t reap the true benefits from a healthy diet by merely throwing up after eating a Macdonalds. Or even by cutting down on the bad stuff for a week. It needs to be a sustained, long term effort to have any impact.

The Beatles honed their craft in Berlin for years before releasing a hit record.

Apple iterates on its software more times than I care to imagine.

 

 

 

Remakes and back-catalogues

Resident Evil 2 just won the Game Critics Awards top honour. This was a risky move by Capcom – to remake a classic. Sort of like covering a Beatles song, the danger is the new version will never live up to the original.

But this gamble seems to have paid off. It is part of a much bigger gamble in the gaming world – making older games available all over again. Xbox in particular is betting heavily with its backwards compatibility.

Personally I have found it difficult to buy old games on a new(ish) console. It goes against the narrative we have always been sold that the newest and latest is inevitably the best. Of course this is purely hype and marketing, and the massive back catalogue will be as valuable in gaming as it is in music.

It’s just a psychological hurdle to overcome in order to enjoy the old stuff all over again.

 

Malaria and hijacking

Where I come from, malaria is seen as something pretty manageable. Treat it once it hits you – sort of like a bad cold. Obviously you will feel grim if you catch it, but the trick is not to let the risk escalate after you got the disease. Treat it quick. No worries.

Risk versus reward.

Murder and hijacking rates in Johannesburg are high – the risk is all around you, and yet millions of people live their lives accepting the pros with the cons. Make money, socialise like mad, good restaurants, events, culture atmosphere and the risk of getting shot.

At the end of the day we all die, so the risk vs. reward equation is important because it answers the question of why we do what we do.

But it is completely subjective. My comfort zone is another person’s crisis.

Long term>Short term

I am always pushing myself to focus more on the long term. This is focused on plans I have made with my wife. This is not as easy as I had hoped. The problem is expediency. Expediency is spending time on things that are convenient versus spending time on things that are in your best interests.

Long term plans help to distinguish what is expedient and what is meaningful.

For myself – our family, our business, and my own professional and personal fulfilment are meaningful. This blog is meaningful. Exercise and study are meaningful. Facebook newsfeed is not meaningful. Facebook messenger and Twitter are meaningful. Mindfulness and giving my head some space are meaningful. Nutrition is meaningful. Friends are meaningful.

A small quick paragraph to write, but to stick to it is very hard given all the temptations and distractions that abound.

 

Fear and desire

I can’t concentrate.

Irrational fears and desires are pushing at some primordial nerve. At any given time i want to:

  • eat
  • to sleep
  • to play computer games
  • to watch movies
  • to listen to music

But I also want/need to:

  • work
  • study
  • complete chores
  • spend time with my wife and children

How can i get rid of the noise and focus on the right thing at the right time? I have 2 suggestions today.

1 – Understand your personality type. I took a personality questionnaire the other day from understandmyself.com – it delved into my responses to certain questions, assessing me under 5 big personality traits:

  • Agreeableness: Compassion and Politeness
  • Conscientiousness: Industriousness and Orderliness
  • Extraversion: Enthusiasm and Assertiveness
  • Neuroticism: Withdrawal and Volatility
  • Openness to Experience: Openness and Intellect

I have extreme elements which make up my personality (as does anyone) and this makes me want certain things, find some things easier than others and generally behave in certain ways. Of note in my assessment – I am non-assertive, withdrawn, extremely open and agreeable by nature – so I have plenty to work on and my fears and desires stem in some way from my innate nature.

2 – Understand our culture of gratification and pleasure at the expense of long term benefits. The lazy, primal part of our brain is being taken advantage of by the tech in our lives. Structure your life around managing this desire (ie. downtime from the tech), and the signal can more easily be heard among the noise.

Creative piece – Look around

The low hum of air conditioners filled the room. No talking or laughter could be heard. If you closed your eyes, the only sign of life from a room full of people was the click-clacking of fingers on keyboards. The paint on the ceiling and walls was an efficient and completely nondescript colour. Stale coffee smells filled the air.

Garth let out a deep, anxious sigh. He wondered how long it was until lunch. Lifting his head he stretched his neck to peer over the top of his cubicle. Rows of people at desks, wearing collars and pretending to be interested in what was happening on their computer screen. The coffee cups at their sides, a last ditch effort to get a buzz from the day. A corporate drone army.

How did it come to this? What made it even more unbelievable was that Garth knew he wasn’t alone in his disengagement from daily life. In a recent survey the company had found that only four out of ten employees knew what they were selling. And yet they stayed at their desks.

Garth wondered what Mandy was doing. He had noticed her new haircut this morning when she arrived at work. She seemed chuffed to hear his remarks. Or maybe that was annoying for her?

As if prompted by his thoughts, Garth saw a familiar brown hairdo rise from a cubicle at the other side of the room. Mandy was on the move. She walked purposefully down her aisle and then, Holy Cow! She turned down the aisle that Garth was sat in. She was headed straight towards him!

Garth panicked and ducked back down in front of his computer. What to say? Another hair comment? No too much. A joke of some sort? No…..Oh please dear Gods give me something to say to her!

Garth looked up again. As she passed his desk Garth managed to let out a small sound that somewhat reminded him of a stray cat living on his block. Mandy smiled and kept moving. Garth resorted to holding his head in his hands and beating himself up in his mind a million different ways.

Breaking the moment of exasperation, Garth heard quick footsteps coming back towards him, and then a little piece of scrunched up paper landed on his desk in front of his face (which was still in his hands). Garth looked up to see Mandy trotting away, disappearing round the bend.

It’s from her?!! Garth’s heart pounded like he was running a marathon. His palms secreted a layer of fine sweat. Must open it.

Uncrinkling and unfolding the paper, Garth saw her smooth hand writing in green ink. The sweat layer doubled up on his palms.

There in front of his eyes a little message lay: “Let’s leave here now and go get an ice cream…xx M”