Posted: March 7th, 2010 | Author: siberianfruit | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Twitter | No Comments »
Posted: February 23rd, 2010 | Author: siberianfruit | Filed under: The Big Picture | No Comments »
Following my previous post on NOT writing definitively and not preaching, I present you with my first definite and preaching post. Good luck.
* * *
No matter how much big-picture perspective we have on our lives, as “human machines” we cannot help but periodically get caught up in the dynamics and stress of the human life.
For example, I do what I do, which is build businesses (two at the moment) because it’s the most fun I personally can have with my life. To me, entrepreneurship is about creativity, problem solving, challenges, and continuous growth. Yet, in spite of all this wonderful motivation, I cannot help but get intensely stressed out and loose my beautiful perspective. Yes – what do you know? – I’m only human.
I believe that we all need to work continuously on retaining and resurrecting perspective. This applies especially strongly to people who are intelligent enough to have a big-picture perspective in the first place. Why? Because those are the people who have the tendency to take life more seriously and overthink everything.
The importance of bad music.
I grew up with a certain elitist attitude towards really popular music (stemming from my parents). My music tastes are pretty diverse, but I’ve since come to embrace pop and some really cheesy music because it’s my antidote to taking life too seriously. I believe that we all need “bad music” in our lives.
The recipe.
(This is the part where I tell you exactly how to live your life.)
1. Figure out your big-picture perspective.
2. Arrive at the conclusion that while it’s good to work hard and strive for a fulfilling life, stressing out and having a bad time in general is just not worth it in the long range.
3. Find your personal ways of reminding yourself to not take yourself or your life too seriously on a regular basis. What’s your bad music?
Posted: February 23rd, 2010 | Author: siberianfruit | Filed under: Blogging | 3 Comments »
I’m a discerning blog reader. I actively read many blogs (saved and new) and manage my blogs in Google Reader. Every so often a blog makes it into my “favorites” folder. Yesterday, I came across a new instant favorite – “A Smart Bear,” a blog by Jason Cohen.
I was immediately impressed not only with the quality of posts, but with the quality of the conversation following each post. Can I be friends with all of those people, PLEASE?
My own attempts at writing a blog have been highly intermittent, but I know it’s something I really want and need to do for myself. Since yesterday, I’ve found about 20 pieces of stimulating advice from Jason, one of which is this:
“For me, the point of blogging is not to preach, but to provoke. I’m successful when I make you think — not when I get to you agree but when I cause you to reconsider and clarify your own position.”
This resonates with me. One of the main barriers to blogging for me has been my perceived need to write definitively and one-sidedly. Refocusing on provoking and raising questions makes more sense to me and is inspiring.
This also relates to another post by Jason called Business Advice Plagued by Survivor Bias. In this post, Jason highlights that the difference between good and bad advice is that those who tell you definitevely what you need to do with your business are wrong. Even if they are experts, it’s unlikely that they know your business better than you. So a rule of thumb for entrepreneurs – if the advice you’re getting is definitive, run and don’t waste your time. The whole point of your starting a new company is precisely to do something new, not to repeat what some expert has seen succeed in the past. By contrast the kind of advice you need is the kind that focuses on getting you to think about important questions about your business and perhaps to help you weigh the pros and cons of the various answers to those questions.
I’m excited to develop this blog and to see what happens next. Happy Tuesday, everyone.
Posted: December 23rd, 2009 | Author: siberianfruit | Filed under: travel | 5 Comments »
This is my second day in Vietnam. After passing out like it’s my last chance to sleep early last night, I was up at 5am this morning and decided to get up and take advantage of the amazing connectivity we have in our hotel.
Day 1 was a fun experience. Hanoi is a somewhat small, but crazy hectic city. I have enjoyed walking the streets quite a bit. Some times you can’t find a space to walk through because the bikes and the cars are parked all over the place.
People sit very low to the ground and street food is everywhere. Everyone sits on tiny plastic chairs and use tiny tables (you can probably find them at walmart in the kids section). Street food is my favorite part of walking around and observing the city life. I couldn’t stop taking pictures of all the eating and cooking.
Traffic is absolutely insane and crossing the street is a near death experience every time. I can’t even imagine what it’s like in larger cities like Saigon.
When I was researching the trip, I came across this in-depth instruction on crossing the streets in Vietnam. It’s from Wikitravell.org. Read it over, it’s hilarious.
CROSSING THE STREET
The stakes are high: if you are to die in Vietnam, more than likely it will happen on the road — be it in a car or under one. Vietnamese cities are crowded, and the roads are absolutely packed. You will take your life into your own hands every time that you cross a busy street in any of Vietnam’s major cities.
Although some intersections in the main cities (Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City) have traffic lights and many are patrolled by a police officer, most lights are either non-functional or ignored, and you are more likely to see a traffic officer sitting in the shade than directing traffic. Also note that many intersections have no give way signs at all, and instead have 4 sets of traffic that all try to get through as they can.
In most of the Western world, the trick is to avoid the cars. That’s simply not possible in Vietnam, as there are far too many cars, trucks (lorries or utes), motorbikes, cyclos and bicycles in far too little space. No, the trick in Vietnam is to enable the vehicles to avoid you.
This is managed by first picking a reasonable gap in the traffic (probably a smaller gap than you’d choose when crossing in, say London or Manhattan or Sydney), then walking slowly and predictably across the street while looking directly at the on-coming cars, motorcycles, cyclos and bicycles.
The predictability of your pace and path is the critical factor between life and death. Do not change direction or speed.
If you stop, retreat or try to dodge the vehicles, you are risking injury, and your possible misfortune will merely annoy a lot of commuters by snarling traffic even further. But if you step confidently and carefully, the drivers will see and smoothly avoid you — often with grace and a casual aplomb that’s initially bewildering to many panic-stricken Westerners. But remember, they do this all the time, every day…or they wouldn’t be alive themselves.
The simplest way to cross a busy street is to find a local and walk close to him or her, mirroring their path and pace. They know what they’re doing! And once you get the hang of it, it’s actually great fun to find yourself walking unafraid through a deadly sea of swarming vehicles and people, suddenly feeling like part of the normal flow in this otherwise foreign land – many visitors find waiting at traffic lights quite boring upon return to their home countries.
Posted: October 10th, 2009 | Author: siberianfruit | Filed under: Questions | Tags: question, travel, trip, vacation | No Comments »
I am starting a category called QUESTIONS. Questions are my recurring open themes. I explore these and come back to them with various considerations and occasional insight. These are OPEN questions.
To get this started, here’s a tally of my travel for 2009 (some locations are repeat trips):
Domestic:
- San Diego, CA
- Big Sur/Carmel, CA
- Zion National Park, UT
- New York City
- Big Bear Lake, CA
- Portland, OR
- San Francisco, CA
- Kauai, HI
- Miami/West Palm Beach, FL
- Santa Barbara, CA
- Chicago, IL
- Joshua Tree Park, CA
International:
- Costa Rica
- London
- Prague
- Vietnam (followed by Cambodia and Thailand in January 2010)
Nice Place to Have a Cup of Coffee
I was told that Schopenhauer made fun of pointless travel by socialites who come back and, when asked about their travel, proclaim, “Never a dull moment!” This has stuck in my mind as a soundbite, and I have been coming back to the idea that travel keeps you busy, in a wasteful kind of a way.
I’m conflicted on this question. When I think about the kind of life I want to have and what I get excited about, travel is very much a big part of the vision. I’ve always valued the ability to “up and go”. I love the idea of going on a big trip last minute. I think the idea is that this is the ultimate expression of my freedom, of adventure and of my lack of being guided by conventional restraints. I’m a maximizer, and going somewhere last minute is one way to ensure that I don’t overthink the various possibilities of the trip.
On the other hand, it seems that the value of my past trips is uncertain. Yes, they contribute to a certain wordliness, and they certainly help to “color in” the various parts of the world map in my head. However, for me personally, past experiences (pretty much anything that’s not happening at the moment) fade away with alarming speed and depth. A lot of my past, including my travel, seems hopelessly disconnected from my current experience. It is quite possible that this is something specific to me and the unique workings of my memory.
Another reason I’m conflicted about travel is that I love my work and I love creating (as part of my work). I don’t want travel to be a distraction from this.
Food for thought from others:
Pretty convincing it seems. I do really like the reminder to invest less in possessions and more in experiences (more here: “Experiences, not possessions, are the best Christmas Gifts“.) Yes. This is great regardless of the conclusion on travel.
Reading this reminded me that much travel IS really unnecessary and doesn’t accomplish much.
Random concluding note that I picked up from some book: frequent smaller trips have more impact on our overall happiness than less frequent bigger trips. (I think this came from a book “Stumbling Upon Happiness”, but I’m not certain.)