How We Need to Be Fully Committed to a Limited Number of Intents

In the post ‘The Heartbreaking Effects of Being Only Partly Committed to Most Things‘, Leo Babauta exposes all the negative aspects of incomplete commitment. Partial commitment is however much more common than full commitment (remember gyms make a lot of money from people taking memberships and never showing up!).

It is true that partial commitment leads to losing mental effort and investment. And it has negative consequences, including “[losing] trust in ourselves, beat ourselves up for failing again, create a negative self-image, which affects everything“, and possibly creating a negative spiral of non-achievement.

At the same time we can’t commit fully to everything, and in the portfolio of our many commitments, some will take the back seat and will have to be postponed. At any time, we anyway have only a certain limited amount of discipline and will.

I am not thus as negative as Leo Babauta on the issues of partial commitment. There are many more things we’d like to do than we can, and we also need to investigate new things. We can only be fully committed at any one time on a very limited number of projects. But it is true that we have to be fully committed to some. The issue is thus not to be partially committed to some projects, but rather if we are not fully committed to some of those.

What are the projects and intents you are fully committed to?

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How Structure is Needed to Create a Safe Space for Disruptive Growth

I like this post by Charlene Li ‘Disruption Learnings from Self-Publishing a Book and Going to Burning Man‘, and in particular the part about the need for structure to achieve real disruption. Charlene Li is an experienced consultant specialized in disruption.

“One of the most interesting things I learned in my research for my book, “The Disruption Mindset,” is that disruptive organizations are incredibly well structured and ordered. When you don’t have to worry about how to get things done, then you can focus on achieving extraordinary, disruptive growth. You need to feel safe to take on risk, to be both vulnerable and confident in your ability to try and either succeed/fail. “

I find this insight very strong, as it shows that structure is actually needed for large scale change. People need to be able to focus on disruption and the rest needs to work perfectly, not losing time and effort. Messy organisations are not as likely to pull through a disruptive transformation than minimally organised ones.

“The takeaway is that you need to create just enough structure in your organization or community for people to feel safe space taking the first step out of their comfort zone. Your role as a leader is to ensure that this space remains steady for them, that it doesn’t wobble when they push off hard against it to take off on their disruption journey.”

The message is clear then: if you want to create a disruption, make sure you got the basics covered and organised, and create sufficient structure (and not too much) to enable proper focus on the change.

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How We Will Increasingly Interact With Artificial Humans

The artificial human is on the rise, each with its own look and personality. No need to seek permission to use someone’s image anymore, the faces and personalities you’ll interact with don’t exist in the real world. And not only as pictures, soon in video as well, with the full range of emotions.

None of these exist in the real world

One aspect of it is brilliantly exposed in Seth Godin’s post ‘the End of Someone‘: endorsements have now no value. “In 2019, and perhaps forever, we’re now at a new level, one where the polish of photography or video is no longer any clue at all about the provenance of what we’re encountering. I don’t think we have any clue about how disruptive this shift is going to be“. Influencers wa may follow today sometimes don’t even exist (see our post ‘How Virtual Creatures Invade Our Connections and our World‘).

Like we, physical people, may today have several personalities in the virtual world, we’ll get increasingly mixed with purely virtual personalities. And it will become increasingly harder to distinguish one from the other. Fact-checking and source-checking is becoming an essential life and survival skill… as well certains skills to connect with AI-driven virtual humans, and maybe keeping the ability to connect face-to-face with real humans from time to time!

Welcome to the world of the virtual humankind. And a new increase in population, with the advent of a virtual set of humans!

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How Navigation Apps Are Changing Municipal Traffic Policies

This post ‘Navigation Apps Changed the Politics of Traffic‘ explains how municipalities and local governments are adapting to the rise of navigation apps.

The issue is that those apps cater for the needs of the drivers, and not for the needs of the wider community. “Driver-first traffic “fixes,” even with the best of intentions, have deleterious effects on transportation networks overall.” There is a collective price of having each driver optimise its own route. “One widely cited 2001 paper by computer scientists at Cornell found that a network of “user-optimized” drivers can experience travel times equivalent to what a network of “system-optimized” drivers would experience with twice as many cars. Transport engineers call the difference between selfish and social equilibria the “price of anarchy.””

There seem to be some debate on the actual effect of those apps, and whether the algorithms also include some more collective constraints (one can remark for example that on two different phone, they may not give the same itinerary, showing that they try to spread congestion).

In any case as apps encourage the usage of smaller roads not normally used for transit, local governments act in restricting speed and transit possibilities in those smaller roads normally not planned for transit traffic. This has given a different priority to municipal policies. Other possible solutions is to install tolls for transit traffic or otherwise price mobility differently, or to change the overall traffic patterns.

It is just the start of the change of our urban landscape and mobility brought by real-time navigation apps. Expect physical changes and changes of usage.

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How I Actually Am a Modern Artisan

As a consultant I realized I work as an artisan. An artisan in intellectual work, of course, but nevertheless an artisan. And I am perfectly happy doing this without trying to grow into an industrial approach.

old-fashioned artisan

In my daily consulting work, I spend my time adapting my knowledge and material to my clients’ situations, polishing it with a view on excellence, never twice producing the same although every time it is similar; learning from master and from practice to deliver ever better solutions and insights.

Thus we should see today artisans in a much wider sense than the usual touristy ‘artisan craft’ of old-fashioned love for manual work. And there are actually many artisans all over the modern world putting their love of things well done in their creations for needing clients. There are many more artisans that what you’d believe. And everyday I discover new small niche companies providing artisan-ware and services to many different parts of our societies.

Artisans are not disappearing, they are rather thriving in the new collaborative work as it allows them to have a wider audience and thus sustain their work. It co-exists with industries that are also needed to deliver the benefits of scale. Still we need dedicated artisans, and I am one of them.

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How We Need to Remember that Extreme Stress Creates Diamonds

I love this quote “In times of extreme stress, just remember that pressure makes diamonds.” I’m not sure who to attribute it to, but it’s quite inspiring.

This serves to remind us that we are often mainly shaped by hard times rather than smooth times. Therefore albeit difficult in the present moment, highly stressful situations will transform us.

Hopefully, of course, this transformation will be for the better (extreme stress and pressure can also create stuff that is less nice than diamonds!).

Still it is a good reminder that we can get positively transformed by periods of intense pressure and stress. Keep it up!

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How Being Benevolent Is Not Being Naive

I tend to be rather the benevolent type in business, for example linking often people together without seeking any kind of compensation when I believe this could create value, or providing free advice based on my experience. Recently someone make the reflection that I was being naive. I thus pondered: does being benevolent make me naive in this supposedly shark-infested life?

My conclusion is that no, being benevolent is not being naive, at least up to a certain point. While it is important to protect your core and make sure there is no trespassing of certain limits, I deeply believe that being benevolent is rather positive. Of course this is all based on the consideration that we don’t live in a scarce world but rather in an abundant one. Therefore, creating value for others or supporting them in periods of difficulties is not necessary detrimental to me; and rather creates additional possibilities in the future. They may or not materialize, but at least in the short term I’ll feel good to have supported others.

Of course some limits need to be put there, and there are definitely some people that would be keen to take advantage, but I find that they are relatively easy to identify (not so easy to get rid of sometimes though!).

So, benevolent is definitely not being naive. It is even sometime being courageous; in any case, it is what we should do to create new opportunities for others – and possibly for us in the long term too.

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How We Seem to Be Getting Collectively Sadder and Angrier

This post has really caught my attention: ‘Pop Songs are Getting Sadder and Angrier‘. It includes some graphs measuring average positiveness and negativeness of songs over time that show that songs get on average slower and gloomier.

Billie Eilish, revelation of the year with a rather gloomy repertoire

And it is true that the latest emerging artists seem to have on average a repertoire that is quite more depressed and gloomy than before. It would seem to be a deep trend that would seem to be going on since at least the 1960s.

If we suppose that it is a reflection of our overall societal mood, it’s rather not a good sign on the overall positiveness of our society at least in the western English-speaking world.

What is your feeling about the surrounding negativeness?

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How Demographics Can Only Explain Part of the Millennials’ Economic Situation

I found this speech by Lord David Willetts ‘Have the Boomers Pinched Their Children’s Futures?‘ quite instructive, although I do not completely concur with the conclusions.

The main message of this speech and the associated book is that due to demographics in developed countries, baby boomers (born between 1945 and 1965) would have developed substantial benefits to the detriment of the younger generations (the millennial). While it is quite obvious that the economic situation of the younger generations is not quite as good as young people some decades ago, I believe there is a mixture in the analysis between a general trend of economics and inequality increase, and a demographic effect. Everything can’t just be put on the demographics.

I still believe that the dominating economic effect today is globalization and digitization, making it harder for people with low qualifications to get adequate compensation and putting a premium to those that are globally competitive.

Still the weight of the retirees of the baby boom in western countries will be an issue to deal with, albeit a relatively temporary one. And yes, younger generations will possibly have a less easy time in retirement and there will need to be put some limits on economic transfer towards retirees. But that may not be the biggest driver of today’s economical transformation.

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How Having the Right Type of Competition is Great

I like Simon Sinek’s argument ‘How having the right kind of rival can help you thrive in a changing world‘.

“By identifying a Worthy Rival and looking at their strengths and abilities, we can keep improving and innovating“.

According to Simon Sinek, to really understand this we also need to understand we live in an infinite game and not just in a finite game. In a finite game, competition for limited resources means the loser gets less. In an infinite game, there can be mutual benefits based on an expanding playground, with everyone winning.

Having a worthy rival is essential for improvement and progress. If that happens in a fair and almost cooperative manner it is the recipe for great mutual success. However I observe that too many people and corporations still view the world as finite and competition as a war where competitors should get destroyed.

I am myself trying often to get into a positive relationship with competitors, but I must admit that I’ve been often told that it was too naive.

Well I’ll continue until I find a worthy rival with an open infinite mindset which will help me – and me help him – get to greater heights.

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How Low Interest Rates is Not a New Situation and May be the Future too

As you may have noticed I love to put things in historical perspective. This excellent Daily Reckoning post ‘5,000 Years of Interest Rates‘ just shows how the current situation is not new. It even quotes statements from the late 19th century that expressed despair at the low real interest rates of the time.

There is even more: it would appear that the historical trend would be towards lower real interest rates: “Despite temporary stabilizations such as the period between 1550–1640, 1820–1850 or in fact 1950–1980 — global real rates have shown a persistent downward trend over the past five centuries… This downward trend has persisted throughout the historical gold, silver, mixed bullion and fiat monetary regimes… and long preceded the emergence of modern central banks.”

There is a view thus that interest rates should continue to fall down unless another period of exceptional economic expansion kicks-in again (which could be still be possible with the reach of the Collaborative Age).

Historical perspectives are always inspiring. Of course the future is never quite the extrapolation of the past, but one can only observe this ongoing trend towards lower interest rates, that may also be the consequence of more available capital globally.

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Why We Need to Work on Unfashionable Problems

I am getting fed up by the hype around fashionable ‘Artificial Intelligence’. Everything should be Artificially Intelligent nowadays (ref my previous post ‘How Automation Should Not Be Marketed as Intelligent‘). Thus I very much like this post of Paul Graham on ‘Fashionable Problems‘. His point is that too many people work on the latest fashionable technology or problem, and too little on other important aspects.

“Even though lots of people have worked hard in the field, only a small fraction of the space of possibilities has been explored, because they’ve all worked on similar things. Even the smartest, most imaginative people are surprisingly conservative when deciding what to work on. People who would never dream of being fashionable in any other way get sucked into working on fashionable problems.”

On this other hand this consideration also shows that there are great opportunities in working on other things than the latest fashion (although of course it may be much more difficult to get funded). And this is what I like to consider: non-conventional people that follow their interest irrespective of the latest fashion. Paul Graham reminds us actually that “The best protection against getting drawn into working on the same things as everyone else may be to genuinely love what you’re doing. Then you’ll continue to work on it even if you make the same mistake as other people and think that it’s too marginal to matter.”

Thus, do not worry too much about the latest fashion on tech. There are so many other areas where progress would be profitable for humankind. Don’t let yourself be deterred. Find what you’re passionate about and go for it!

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