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I have been thinking about Focus recently. I have also thinking about how digital social networks are affecting our behavior and responsiveness to one another. And I have a hunch that our intention to make good use of time may have affected how much we are willing to stay on a subject. 

Are habit-formulation and disruption mutually exclusive? I read a lot about how successful people (Pending: Definition of "success") attribute much of their success to well-formulated habits; things they do day in, day out that are fixed in a schedule bound by time. Yet, I also read about unconventional activities that lead to changes in the way our world works that were previously unprecedented. So, in a world where "habit" implies consistency and "disruption" breaks it, what's a 3-year old to choose?

JPM was sworn in today . I spoke to a few people and what seemed common across all opinions was the gratefulness for peace. I interpreted this to mean that no matter who people vote for and what happens thereafter, the only implication is the effect all of this has on oneself. The public sector feels as such: You can't touch it, hold it, directly influence it, but it has a way of touching you in almost every way possible. 

"In any self-organising system there is a need to escape from a local optimum in order to move towards a more global optimum. The techniques of lateral thinking, such as provocation, are designed to help that change." -- Edward de Bono on Lateral Thinking

It seems unrealistic for any society to have pleasantly smooth beginnings. Disruption seems inevitable in the first few decades of a society that is being built. TZ gets complimented on how "stable" it is. But does this stability come at the risk of complacency and lack of significant progress?

I return, about 6 months later. No, I didn't forget about my blog, nor the people that may (read: may never) read it. Oh no. What I may have forgotten is how valuable an activity blogging can be.  Where I work now , time is of the essence. Here's an Edward Said nightmare: We are trying to sell to people who have very little to spend; they need to be in many places at once, and are not as mobile as society may think they are. They are sensitive to change, but are demanding about their aspirations. So when it comes to our products, services and sales routes, we are constantly moving, shifting, trying.  That leaves me with little time to think and do the things I write about here.  I used to think this situation was a binary choice and, therefore, a problem. However, I have come to think of the "binary" in a different way: It isn't about time; it's about ideas.  A friend once told me that I would either spend the rest of my life building someone...

"In an unprecedented move, angry patients who had waited for services of a medical officer in vain were forced to flog him from a nearby bar where they found him drinking alcohol." From The Citizen today.

Does time have a direction? We treat it as though it is linear, irreversible and infinate. Yet, the shape of the skies repeats each day, as do seasons and the visibility of faraway stars. So how linear is time exactly? I find that the saying "history repeats" is remarkably true. What seems to change with different societies is how they get along with one another and what about themselves they value most. Not so long ago - about 60 years ago - we didn't seem to get along too well and decided that we all needed our space/borders. A little later - and still common today - we seem to want to understand each other more but continue to need our space and are willing to protect our capital. How does this compare to our behavior, say, 1000 or even 5000 years ago?

Harun, towards the end of The year of the rebels : "I have killed only murderers, I have robbed only thieves. I gave not ceased to fear God for a moment. I have ceased only to fear the rich and the powerful. Here I am fighting the unbelievers to whom our princes are paying court, I defend the towns which they abandon. My companions in arms are the exiles, outlaws and lawbreakfers from all lands..." Harun, the protagonist 's best friend and brother in law, has all the qualities Hasan wished he had but could not seize. In previous posts , I seem to think that this character is usually the enemy, the ante, the foe. But in Leo the African, the other is on the same side. Perhaps, then, the importance is not in which side the different perspectives support, but in the difference of perspective itself.

Been getting into The Blacklist , thanks to Aly. Still early days, but Raymond 'Red' Reddington went into a monologue once that goes like this: A farmer comes home one day to find that everything that gives meaning to his life is gone. Crops are burned, animals slaughtered, bodies and broken pieces of his life strewn about. Everything that he loved taken from him - his children. One can only imagine the pit of despair, the hours of Job-like lamentations, the burden of existence. He makes a promise to himself in those dark hours. A life's work erupts from his knotted mind. Years go by. His suffering becomes complicated. One day he stops - the farmer who is no longer a farmer - sees the wreckage he's left in his wake. It is now he who burns, he who slaughters, and he knows in his heart he must pay. Fantastic oration by James Spader , here and in many other monologues. Kinda reminds me of a post I wrote  6 years ago discussing heros and villians, and then a revisit o...

Officially, this abbreviation stands for Terms of Reference. But I've seen it so many times in the development space that I now see it as an outsourcing tool. Which is OK, unless you're outsourcing the most interesting, audience - facing and practical part of your work. If that's the case, then what do you do exactly?

Corporate Social Responsibility seems like the reinvented wheel of economic activity itself. That is, products and services ought to be useful to peoples' lives, otherwise one would wonder why they last the sight of day. (OK, I know there are reasons why some products proliferate even though they diminish life's value, but that discussion is for another post). Following this, CSR should be thought of as business as usual. Your primary product or service should be socially responsible. CSR should not be an afterthought, or charity. 

Human development is not just about what people need , but what you can do for them. 

It's difficult to control how others will steer their ambition. You only control what you drive. The challenge is navigating the path before you to the best of your advantage with as little obstruction to those around you. 

Human life, among other things within it, is limited. Dreams may exist without boundaries, but in order to bring them to life, they must have constraints. These constraints must be proportional to those that constrain life itself. In making constraints, sacrifices are necessary and inevitable. Choosing which sacrifices to make might seem an open-ended task, but in reality it seems to make most sense to exclude any sacrifices that prevent the choice-maker from living a happier, longer and more prosperous life (if not, then the possibility to one day make less choices may become a worthy sacrifice and that is contradictory). 

Governments cannot possibly deal with all street-level issues that arise on a daily basis. So they appoint representatives, such as local authorities, to deal with or channel such issues so they get attended to. This presents a paradox. How can an institution interested in national, long-term, wide-reaching policy work with an institution that is interested in street-level, shorter-term policy? A few variables are at play, such as: (1) The number of people who you consider constituents; (2) The level of resources required during implementation; (3) The amount of time it would take for implementation; and (4) The number of changes possible in a given timeframe. I'm sure this paradox is a daily consideration for those policymakers who mediate between the national government and local government authorities. But a presentation this morning at Twaweza on declining access to water amidst rising population (thanks Ruth!) got me thinking twice about this set up. Perhaps what ...

It could just be me and the field I have been involved in for some time now. But I observe many people have a career tagline that usually ends with something like "... improving people's lives".  It seems that, to make a statement like "my work improves people's lives", you need to actually have three things locked down: 1. Grounded understanding of the people you are talking about, including their language, history, religious values, other cultural values, ways of dressing, ways of walking, etc. 2. Experience in seeing what does not actually lead to improvement, including many failed programs with well-defined and clear indicators signifying failure. 3. Proven successes in the business of life-improvement, including many successful programs. Now, do people who openly say that they are in the business of improving peoples' lives really have these three on a lock down? It seems impossible to me to get 1 straight. I still feel like ...

One of my good friends from Lafayette, who is currently travelling the world supporting international study programs, sent me Thabo Mbeki's " I am African " speech. My favorite part of this speech comes near the end: Together with the best in the world, we too are prone to pettiness, petulance, selfishness and short-sightedness.    But it seems to have happened that we looked at ourselves and said the time had come that we make a super-human effort to be other than human, to respond to the call to create for ourselves a glorious future, to remind ourselves of the Latin saying: Gloria est consequenda - Glory must be sought after! What does he mean when he says "together with the best of the world, we are too prone to pettiness..."? Does he mean to say that all humans are fallible, regardless of who they are? Or does he mean that we have conditioned ourselves to think temporarily, when in fact, we are built to think of eternity? Whichever it is, I thin...

Historically, we have settled with our tastes. At least we used to settle down with our tastes/demand for goods and services for longer periods. Not sure if that is still the case today. But if that still stands in our everyday behavior, then how do we explain changes related to development? That is, in all the behavior change efforts transpiring today, what changes are likely to last more than others?

( in-too-ish-ee-yah-no ) Once, there was a small town, Intuitiano, Which was very simple.  People lived by their will, By what drove them to act, And they lived peacefully. A young woman was once Robbed near her family, And nobody said shit. You see the town just lived, Day in, day out, it lived, On intuition. And intuition, Called for continuous Existence. No matter (what).  So she went on living, Without her precious things, But her instinct was hurt. Nobody seemed to care, Nor did she want them to, She was simply puzzled. Then a strange man arrived, He was not from the town, And he brought her things back. "Why did you steal from me?" Asked the young woman. She was a bit confused. He said: "It was a test. I wanted you angry. You people need to wake." She replied: "That we are. Awake for tomorrow. Asleep for yesterday." Him: "But what about rules? And what ...