Physically, our lives are getting easier. We used to gather our own food, create our own warmth, and build our own shelter. Agriculture came along and we let other people make our food. Someone was really good at building huts, so we got them to build ours, doing something else in return for them. These days, we don’t even have to cook our own meals, or wash our car, or take care of our kids during the day if we don’t want to. Human nature is to want comfort. To make things easier for ourselves. Not only that, getting other people to do certain things allows us to concentrate on what we’re good at. Or what we enjoy. We are constantly giving over responsibility for certain areas of our lives. With AI and automation, this will only increase. For example, … Read More
Taking risks (what do you really need to live?)
I was speaking with a friend of mine recently and he made an interesting observation. He said it’s funny how people who have been in the Armed Forces, specifically the Army, even more specifically, the infantry, seem to be more comfortable taking risks and trying new things. We talked about this for a while and the conclusion was this: People who have been in the infantry have spent a significant amount of their career walking around outdoors, carrying everything they needed to survive on their back. They know what it’s like to be wet, cold, tired and hungry. They know discomfort. I know I certainly did. They also know how far they can push themselves and what they actually need to survive. Not only do they know that they need food, shelter, water and warmth, they know how to get … Read More
5 first steps to financial wellness (for someone starting at zero)
What Hope Community Trust recently did a presentation on wellness. It covered areas such as physical well-being, financial discipline, education and development etc. What Hope is a charity I’m involved with. We work with at-risk youth in south Auckland, focussing on creating a culture of belonging and connection for youth, in a safe environment. As their treasurer, I was asked to contribute 5 steps someone should take for financial wellness. This is what I came up with. It’s very basic, but has important principals no matter what your circumstances. Decide on what you really need Don’t fall into the trap of buying things just because other people have them, or because it makes you happy for a couple of days. Decide on what you should and shouldn’t be spending on, before you even think about opening your wallet. Once you’ve … Read More
Good and bad comparisons (giving some guidance to kids)
One day, in about 10 years, one of my kids is going to come and ask me why we don’t drive a BMW like their friend’s parents do. What am I going to say to that? How am I going to show them the danger of making comparisons like that one? Maybe I’ll tell them of a friend of mine who asked a similar question about 30 years ago. I’ll tell them how hard he worked and how much he sacrificed to get that first flash car. His relationships, a little bit of his integrity, his time. How it satisfied him for about a month until he set his eyes on an even nicer car. Within another month he has traded his in for another, losing a bit on the trade. I’ll tell them how this cycle repeated. And it … Read More
Fulfilling one of your dreams (lessons learned)
A couple of years ago I fulfilled a lifelong dream and became a private investigator. With almost no experience I entered one of the most difficult professions to get into. In doing so I learnt a few things about doing something huge. Something that you’ve always wanted to do, something that may seem impossible, fulfilling one of your dreams. Three things you need to keep in mind: Things don’t have to be perfect for you to make a start. You’ll almost never be the best straight away, or land your dream position immediately. It doesn’t have to be as difficult as you think. What does this mean? 1. Things don’t have to be perfect for you to make a start. Things will rarely ever be perfect. For a huge decision we often wait until what we perceive to … Read More
(Book) Growing great families – Ian & Mary Grant
A well-researched book on growing great families that pulls no punches. It puts the onus squarely back on the parents whilst giving lots of tips. If you read this there’ll be plenty of notes to take and actions to implement once you finish! 1. What is a community? Focus on the need for connection and community – found in a family. Not an individualistic focus. It’s a very secure thing for a child to be born into a family which already stands for something, has values, principals, goals and leadership. It takes a village to raise a child. Truth and love are the bricks and mortar of community. We were designed for connection and belonging. To be part of a team. Make your family a team, able to rely on each other. We bond to things we invest in. … Read More
(Book) Anything you want – Derek Sivers
This book is worth 10 years of life and business experience and it only takes about an hour to read. I suggest you just read it, even if you’re not in business. It’s a great reality check for a lot of areas in life. You can do anything you want. Choose wisely. My notes from the book: What’s your compass? Don’t pursue little distractions in life because you don’t know which way to go. Chase your big dreams. Making a company is a great way to improve yourself to the world. It’s your utopia where you design your perfect world. Your business plan is moot. You don’t know what people really want until you start doing it. With CD Baby, Derek wasn’t trying to make a business. He started off helping a few friends out and, with his love of … Read More
Setting yourself weekly challenges (5 steps to changing your behaviour)
Every year I used to write down these big brave new year’s resolutions. A few things that I wanted to achieve or some habits I wanted to change before the end of the year. No tactics, just a goal. Sure enough, come the end of the year, I was no closer to achieving them. I then thought I’d make it a bit more tactical. I’d break it into weeks and have smaller goals I wanted to do before the end of the week. There’d be about 10 of them. Still no progress. This continued until it was daily goals (still over 5). Very rarely did I ever do even half of them, or significantly change any habits. The problem was twofold. Firstly I had way too many goals to concentrate on. Sure I might achieve the top couple that I’m … Read More
What would life look like if it were simple?
Life can be complicated. We get that. We expect that. Do we sometimes make ‘complicated’ the default though? What if ‘simple’ was our default? What would life look like if our decisions were made with forethought and rationality? Less would be more. We’d carefully think before acquiring more possessions because more stuff means more worry and more complication. Each time we’d ask ‘do I really need this?’ We’d be more forgiving. Holding on to grudges or bitterness is a sure way to complicate and poison our own thoughts and lives. What people thought about us wouldn’t matter. If you spend your life trying to please people you’ll end up pleasing no one, least of all yourself. Consequently we’d spend less money trying to keep up appearances. We’d choose to work in a field we have an interest in, not one … Read More
(Book) Tribe – Sebastian Junger
An interesting take on how we live in the modern world compared to how our ancestors lived. Individual vs. tribal societies and the role of war and initiation rites. Tribe – Sebastian Junger. These are the ideas that I took away: Introduction How do you become and adult in a society that doesn’t ask for sacrifice. How do you become a man in a world that doesn’t require courage? A tribe may be the people you’re compelled to share the last of your food with. Humans don’t mind hardship, in fact they thrive on it; what they mind is not feeling necessary. Modern society has perfected the art of making people not feel necessary. It’s time for that to end. The men and the dogs In the US, immigration almost always went from civilised to tribal, not much movement the other … Read More
How to figure out what you want to do in life (hint: it’s not about what you do)
I believe that ‘figuring out what you want to do in life’ is the wrong way to look at it for two reasons: 1. What you do actually comes from who you are. Sure you can do things that you don’t believe in, or aren’t really ‘you’. But this is just lying and it’s pretty hard to keep doing this without it eating away at you. Yes, you can change who you are by your actions, but you still need to think about how you want those actions to change you. 2. It’s extremely difficult to figure out what you want to do in life without having done it first. It would be like wanting to be a snowboarder without ever having been to the mountain and touched snow. It looks fun in theory but maybe you won’t … Read More
What are you actually doing right now?
What are you actually doing right now? A few days ago I was playing on the back deck with my daughter, just stacking toys and pointlessly moving buckets around. As I was doing this I thought ‘I really should be doing something more productive’. And then the question came to me. Why do we feel so guilty when we’re not doing something that can be immediately quantified? I think it’s because we love to immediately measure how we’re spending time. And the easiest way to measure it is by the improvement we see straight away, or the financial reward we get for what we’re doing. It’s a real struggle to measure our time in other ways, but it’s a very important exercise to go through. We first have to start with what our priorities are. For me it’s my … Read More
(Book) What matters now – things to think about (and do) this year
I’ve just finished this great little booklet about what matters, from various thought leaders such as Seth Godin, Kevin Kelly, Arianna Huffington, Guy Kawasaki, Steve Pressfield, Derek Sivers and more. You can find it here: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/files/what-matters-now-1.pdf It’s only 82 pages so you should read the whole thing, but the highlights for me were: Generosity – Seth Godin When the economy tanks, it’s natural to think of yourself first. You have a family to feed a mortgage to pay. Getting more appears to be the order of business. It turns out that the connected economy doesn’t respect this natural instinct. Instead, we’re rewarded for being generous. Generous with our time and money but most important generous with our art. If you make a difference, people will gravitate to you. They want to engage, to interact and to get you more involved. … Read More