mink

 A friend posted a question on LinkedIn: "What matters more, motivation or discipline?" For her, low motivation meant lack of discipline. So she was wondering which one influences the other? Let's try to understand the semantics first. The verb for discipline is "to discipline" and means to bring in line with a set of rules, to straighten out, to make consistent, usually referred to behaviour. The verb for motivation is "to motivate" and means to inspire, to push, to make excited, usually referred to doing things. I don't think these verbs are mutually exclusive. You need motivation to stay disciplined. and you need discipline to stay motivated. If discipline is your tea, motivation is your sugar. If discipline is your mayai, motivation is your chips. If discipline is the money, motivation is your life. 

Quick learnings from 2017 so far: Without any creative activity or observation, work is boring and, if prolonged, diminishes happiness. Creative activity or observation is a serious endeavor, requiring time and money. No serious endeavor is ever left up to chance; the best endeavors are planned.

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?

I have generally considered any non-profit organization I come across as being part of the public sector. However, if I register a non-profit, and use my own capital to run things, regardless of the work that I am doing, is the organization still part of the public sector? What if we did consider the work I was doing; would my organization be classified differently if I was running a neighborhood charity to fix neighborhood walls? Should the public-private classification be based on start-up funds, or content, or both, or something else?

"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

Here I will refer to "traditional" content as content that is translated via TV, newspapers and radio; it is centrally produced and once published cannot be changed. I will refer to "digital" content as content that is translated via the Internet; it can be produced by any number of people and can be changed even after publication. The primary difference between traditional and digital content is that the reader cannot know how many times the digital content has been edited over, or by who. In order to build an audience that trusts digital content, digital content creators (including curators, editors, etc) need to be open in their approach to their content. This requires transparency with both, contributors as well as readers. It also requires a consistent editorial policy, such that content is edited in the same ways, following the same rules, across all articles. These are developing thoughts.

A few recent thoughts on this subject: 1. Time has no direction per se. We created a direction for it. 2. We share a common concept of time so we can work on the same schedule. 3. Most products and services are utilized in the day time, eg: Cleaning, Food. 4. Some products and services are utilized at erratic times, eg: Transporting, Drinks. 5. Some people do not share the common schedule. 6. Some people create their own schedules, ie: their own time. 7. A different concept of time does not necessarily conflict with the common concept.

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?

You play games in life (*) for one of two reasons: either you like what happens when you finish the game, or you enjoy making moves within it. * Assuming there can be games within "life", even if one thinks life is a game.

Following on from yesterday's post . Perhaps it's not just about economic transactions, but more about revolution across the board. When the political, economic and social status quo is so entrenched in thinking X, but a new way of thinking Y has far reaching consequences on this status quo, then perhaps the only way is through force. It's important to consider different forms of force here: Through written or pronouned words, produced sounds, or through physical action. I meant physical action for the majority of this and yesterday's post, but force may come in different ways. And along this line, force may come through natural as opposed to human interventions.

Where you have an ideal that you have gained support for, but which is being violently taken away, how do you protect the ideal? Where you are pushed into a corner for a fault you have never been given notice of, how do you protect your dignity? Where you and the people around you are consistently abused by the law which you try never to break, what law do you formulate to make sense of the situation?

I have a feeling I have written about this before. There is a popular saying (even in The Godfather )   that goes something like this: "It's not personal, it's business". But some time ago, this seemed like an oxymoron to me. That is, if a business is very close to one's philosophy and way of acting, then the business is not just personal, it is the person. But in recent days, I have come to realize one important distinction between what is personal and what is business, and it has to do with the kind of people one interacts with. One's personal space may not - and in most cases does not - involve the same people as one's business space. Yet, one's business space is what keeps one's personal space happy and prosperous. In this light, "it's not personal, it's business" has taken on new meaning for me. Sometimes, the personal needs to stay out of business, otherwise there would not be enough time or resources to satiate everyo...

Today was hard. I always manage to convince myself that my city of birth can't be hard to live in - it's my city after all. I've been over being clamped for no reason by confused parking authorities and lost a whole day of work as a result. I've been misfined by the police themselves. I've been robbed. But today was just hard. I almost hit someone because they were crossing the road without looking, and ended up taking all the blame for a burn-mark the size of my thumb on his knee... and being called a white racist who wants to murder people on the road. Funny how, no matter how hard you try, the stranger in the midst of the public is out to fight you quite hard because that is how the world looks to him. Therefore, it's got to look the same for everyone, otherwise people just get downright shafted. 

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). 

Chris: I will never forget your names, jokes, disses, always-on attitude, choice of music and your bike. Thank you for showing me that the boundaries we create in life are malleable and, most times, irrelevant. Hopefully this isn't the last I'll see of you. Rest well, my friend.

1. Lessons should never be compartmentalized, because decompartmentalizing them always seems disruptive. Yet, progress cannot be achieved without continuous criticism and learning. 2. Everywhere in life, contradictions are inevitable, especially amidst human activity. 3. It's a meritocratic world. Contribute something valuable or perish.  4. You live a finite life. Therefore, self-interest is necessary at some, if not all points in life. 5. Sure, the world changes and so should practices. But the experience of elders counts. 

There was once a group of Thoughts that called themselves the Envies. They distinguished themselves apart from another group of Thoughts who were known as the Tomorrows. At some point in time, all Thoughts were one huge body of thought. There was no real distinction, and so there was much diversity. Each Thought saw themselves as unique yet living in unity. When they bumped into each other, they explained their perspective. When two Thoughts were in disagreement, they spent all the time it took to understand one another, whether it was to conclude that they were almost the same, or nothing alike. One day, one Thought decided that it was time to make a decision and settle down. It did not want to learn about new Thoughts. It did not have the patience to walk around and learn where other thoughts originated, or why. It felt completely sure of itself. So it named itself an Envy Thought. Eventually, other Thoughts grew attracted to Envy's settlement. It saved them the effort of ...