Bending Reality

How to Make the Impossible Probable By Victoria Song (2021)

This is one of the kind of the books that I never expect to read. But it is a very refreshing change, and unexpectedly the author’s way of phrasing that her book can be re-read a few times to have a new understanding makes it even more endearing.

Here are the ways to bend reality :
1) Recognize where you are : “Am I contracted or expanded right now?”
2) Choose your thoughts carefully
3) Feel whatever arises
4) Be in expansion while you reach for more.
5) Feel your vision coming true from a place of expansion.

There are 11 key unlearnings :
1) The moment we seek to be a certain way, think a certain way, do a certain thing, and are not comfortable just the way we are – in our own unique expression of life – we create contraction.

2) As soon as you relate to anything in your life as “must make something happen”, you are in contraction.

3) Almost all of your actions, thoughts, decisions, emotions and behaviours come from the programming of your subconscious.

4) All emotions are simply energy-in-motion, which is why you cannot selectively numb “negative” emotions and feel only “positive” emotions.

5) There are many things you can do, but the thing that’s going to get you access to your supernatural abilities is the thing that feels like play for you because that’s what gives you access to expansion.

6) The way to remove contraction in your body is to go into the eye of the storm and fully feel it.

7) If you don’t feel your emotions, then the energy patterns get stuck and metastasize, creating disease in the body, which becomes diseases.

8)If you only focus on expansion, you are bypassing what needs to be seen and capping your upper limits on expansion. If you are just focused on removing contraction, you miss what’s possible when you entrain your nervous system to expansion. Combining the two is where the magic happens.

9) It is not until we admit to ourselves how much pain we are in that we can access sufficient energy to say “Enough! ” and create a new reality.

10) You can’t manifest anything you want from contraction.

11) Control is the vulnerable state. Trust is the invulnerable state.

The Practice

by Seth Godin (2020)

Trust your Self

1. Skill is not the same as talent.
2. A good process can lead to good outcomes, but it doesn’t guarantee them.
3. Perfectionism has nothing to do with being perfect.
4. Reassurance is futile.
5. Hubris is the opposite of trust.
6. Attitudes are skills.
7. There is no such thing as writer’s block.
8. Professionals produce with intent.
9. Creativity is an act of leadership.
10. Leaders are imposters.
11. All criticism is not the same.
12. WE become creative when we ship the work.
13. Good taste is a skill.
14. Passion is a choice.
    
    Trust is not self-confidence. Trust is a commitment to the practice, a decision to lead and make things happen, regardless of the bumps in the road, because you know that engaging in the practice is better than hiding from it.
    
    Organizations and people earn trust by coming through in difficult moments. Trust earns you patience, because once you trust yourself, you can stick with a practice that most people can’t handle.
    
    

Generous

Pythagoras and the Fifth Hammer

According to legend, Pythagoras discovered the foundation of musical tuning by listening to the sounds of 5 blacksmith’s hammers. Over the following weeks, Pythagoras weighed and measured each hammer. He wanted to understand why they didn’t make identical sounds and more importantly, why they sound so good when they all clanged at the same time. It turn out that the ratio in the weights of the first 4 hammers led to their ringing in harmony – each had a weight that a multiple of the other. The fifth hammer didn’t follow any rules of harmony. Actually the fifth hammer was the secret to the entire sound. It worked precisely because it wasn’t perfect, it added grit and resonance to a system that would have been flaccid without it.

The Professional

The lifeguard may attend the water safety instructor test and is a strong swimmer. The lifeguard whether uncertain or not, less qualified or not, you leap. Leap first, do your job. How can you be certain? And yet, how can anyone who cares hold back?

Consistency is the way forward

No one knows exactly what movie Greta Gerwig will make next. But her fans will go to see her next movie, because she directed it. She earned those fans by seeing them, understanding them, and helping them change. The promise is a significant one, and it leads to a connection between the artist and those who are served by the art.

What we seek out is someone who sees us and consistently keeps their promises to bring us the magic we are hoping for. Someone who has committed to rhyming with what they did yesterday.

No such things as writer’s block

A roundup of tips and tricks for creators
1. Build streaks. Do the work every single day. Blog daily. Write daily. Ship daily. Show up daily. Find your streak and maintain it.

2. Talk about your streaks to keep honest.

3. Seek the smallest viable audience. Make it for someone, not for everyone.

4. Avoid shortcuts. Seek the most direct path instead.

5. Find and embrace genre. (original)

6. Seek out desirable difficulty.

7. Don’t talk about your dreams with people who want to protect you from heartache.

Make assertions

Assertions are the foundation of design and creation process. You can’t design with intent unless you commit to who it’s for and what it’s for. And that leads to your assertion. The professional creative works to change the culture. Not all of the culture, but a pocket of it.

Earn your skills

Are you aware of what the reading (your reading) must include? What’s on the list? The more professional your field, the more likely it is that people know what’s on the list. The reading is what we call it when you do the difficult work of learning to think with the best, to stay caught up, to understand.

Half-Life of Facts

Why everything we know has an expiration date (2012)

The idea and caption of the book is interesting. However, the way of writing still make me feel that everything is very ambigious… I am not sure whether it is meant to be that way.

Some ideas :

1. It turns out that facts, when viewed as a large body of knowledge, are just as predictable. Facts, in the aggregate, have half-lives.
   
   
2. The growth of knowledge is exponential (By Drek J.de Solla Price) example he finds that it takes about 50 years to double the number of universities. Psychologist Harvey Lehman finds that it takes 87 years for the yearly contribution in medicine and hygiene to be doubled.
   
   
3. Knowledge in a field can also decay exponentially, shrinking by a constant friction. Example John Hughlings Jackson, a British neurologist say, “It takes 50 years to get a wrong idea out of a medicient and 100 years a right one into medicine.
   
   
4. Moore’s Law of everything basically talkes about exponential growth in technology. Many economists argue that population growth goes hand in hand with innovation and development of new facts. However, Merton said it depends on the population make-up.

There are places in the World where rules are less important than kindness

By Carlo Rovelli (2018)

If someone did not recommend this book to me, I don’t think I will ever read it, judging by the cover and the title. However, after reading it, I was surprised that this book offers many interesting insights.

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After reading several chapters, the author wants people to know that it is important to study between different disciplines. Example a scientist will become better after knowing more about Art or alchemy or even the bible. This is reflected in Newton, who is the founder of modern science. Someone who is a novelist such as Nobokov, can come up with scientific hypothetis after a detailed examination in science or a particular subject.

“Copernicus and Bologna”
The works of the past are like the flowers from which bees collect nectar to make honey. And the honey was really starting to flow in Italy at the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries”

“Dramatic Echoes of Ancient Wars”
This story starts with the achaeological find in Lake Turkana in Kenya that showed evidence of an episode of war that took place there 10,000 years ago. There are 2 main theories concering the origin of war 1) Birth of agriculture – where people know and start to accumulate resources – harvest stored. It leads to robbery and violence.

2) Violence between groups may be intrinsic to our species.

“Charles Darwin”
Charles Darwin’s discovery is that so many diverse forms of life were derived from simple common ancestors. The living constantly change and diversify.

The ramifications of this discovery show us that seeming finality of the biological world is only the result of the richness of combination of things of which the world is made.

“Do Flying Donkeys Exist?” David Lewis says Yes”

David Lewis is recognized by many as one of the greatest philosopher in recent history. He is very prone to talking about science friction movies and time travel.

You will say there are no flying donkeys in this world. David Lewis agrees that there no donkeys in this world. But in other worlds there are. There are many other worlds in which donkeys fly. All of these worlds are really there. They exist. We do not see flying donkeys because we live in a world where they do not fly.

Example if I am in Marseille and not in Rome, I can see the sea of Marseille. Not because Marseille exists and Rome does not. Just as Rome exists even when I am not there, so other worlds exist even though we are not in them.

The Infinite Game

By Simon Sinek (2019)

This is one of the more interesting books that i read.
To ask “What is best for me?” is finite thinking.
To ask “What is best for us?” is infinite thinking.

A company built for the Infinite Game doesn’t think of itself alone. It considers the impact of its decision on its people, its community, the economy, the country and the world.

Any leader who wants to adopt an infinite mindset must follow 5 essential practices :
1. Advance a Just Cause
2. Build trusting teams
3. Study your worthy rivals
4. Prepare for existential flexibility
5. Demonstrate the courage to lead

A Just Cause
1) for something (affirmative, optimistic)
2) Inclusive (open to all those who like to contribute)
3) Service oriented (for primary benefit of others)
4) Resilient (able to endure political, technological, cultural change)
5) Idealistic (big, bold and ultimately unachievable)

This makes me think why i start this blog for so many years …. the reason that i want it to be free, is that in event that i am no longer around, these posts may give someone who read it some ideas, inspiration without reading the whole book.

Any new technology could render our products or cause and an entire company obsolete overnight. Example advancement in automative technology and a network of highways offered people a quicker and sometimes cheaper alternative of the train. Example to a train company, if the railways defined their need to exist in terms related to moving people and things instead of advancing the railroad, they might be the owners of major car companies or airlines today.

Richard Branson In His Own Words

Edited By Danielle McLimore 2013,2020
This is a book with Richard Branson’s quotes for many things including entrepreneurship and dyslexic>

“I think as much practical experience as people can have, the better… I’m dyslexic, so I know that I learn the most from practical experience. The more one can actually make a school act practically, the better.

As a small-business person, you must immerse yourself 100% in everything and learn about the ins and outs of every single department… And as the business gets bigger, you will have to decide if you’re a manager or an entrepreneur. If you’re a manager you can stay with that business and help it grow. If you’re an entrepreneur, you need to find a manager. Then you should move on, enjoy yourself and set up your next enterprise.

If a bank or other investor is looking at your business, they have almost certainly looked at your competitors as well. In your presentation, therefore, it’s imperative that you understand your competition and irreverently explain why your business will do better. Blow them away! Avoid being overly negative.

Don’t be afraid to take calculated risks. Sometimes they turn out to be less dangerous than the sure thing.

Regarding Virgin’s status as a set of more than 300 separate private businesses : I think we’ve proved that a branded group of separate businesses, each with limited liability for its own financial affairs, make sense. We’re never going to have a Barings Bank situation where a rogue trader is able to bring down the whole Virgin Group.

There have been times I was almost bankrupt, and I was very glad to see my name in the Sunday Times “Rich List” because I thought it would assuage the bank manager. (The figures were often wildly off the mark both ways -but I wasn’t complaining)

The key to success is unwavering commitment and focus. You will make mistakes as you launch your product or service – a ton of them. But keep your eye on the prize and never blink.

Strangely, I think my dyslexia has helped … for instance, when we’re launching a new company, I need to be be able to understand the advertising. If I understand the advertising, I believe that anybody out there can understand the advertising.

I can’t speak for other people, but dyslexia shaped my – and Virgin’s – communication style. From the beginning, Virgin used clear, ordinary language. If I could quickly understand a campaign concept, it was good to go. If something can’t be explained off the back of an envelope, it’s rubbish.

We soon found that [social media] channels were an amazing tool for reaching our customers and the public. One of the first things we learned was that our new social media accounts gave us a real-time view of how we could improve.

Regarding how he decides to launch a new business or product : There’s no point in us going into something unless we can really shake up an industry, make a major difference; unless it’s going to enhance the Virgin brand, if there’s any danger of damaging the brand in any way, even if it’s going to make us a lot of money – you know, cigarette companies or something like that – we just wouldn’t do it. And because life’s short, we want to enjoy the experience.

Some people might see Virgin’s 50,000 employees as a cost to be managed, but I see 50,000 potential passionate brand ambassadors.

If you don’t lead a healthy lifestyle, your productivity will be completely screwed.

Fear stops people from doing so many things. Don’t be afraid to talk to people you don’t know, or try a new skill. They are probably just as nervous inside, and if you make the effort, people will often surprise you with a warm welcome.

Innovation can occur when the most elementary questions are asked and employees are given the resources and power to achieve the answers.

Not everybody is cut out to be an entrepreneur. But that doesn’t mean you can’t still come up with new ideas working within an organization. This is where intrapreneurs come in : They unleash the power of innovation from inside companies.

When we lose touch of our intuition, we naturally become more risk-averse and conservative. At Virgin, we like to work fast, to try ideas, see if they stick and find new solutions and new innovations if they don’t.

We have one planet in our solar system that’s habitable and that’s the Earth, and space travel can transform things back here for the better. First of all by just having people go to space and look back on this fragile planet we live on. People have come back transformed and have done fantastic things. There’s a wonderful book called “The Overview Effect”

Frank Wright’s term, the “overview effect”, describes a cognitive shift resulting from seeing the Earth from space that increases some astronauts’ sense of connection to humanity, God, or other powerful forces.

For a relatively small amount of money, you can make a big difference to a lot of people’s lives.

Basic Income is going to be all the more important. If a lot more wealth is created by AI, the least that the county should be able to do is that a lot of wealth… goes back into making sure that everybody has a safety net.

I constantly meet a growing army of entrepreneurs around the world, and when they ask me if I have one single message which will help them, I tell them it’s this : Doing good can help improve your prospects, your profits and your business, and it can change the world.

How I Built This Part 1

By Guy Raz (2020)
The Unexpected Paths to Success from the World’s Most inspiring entrepreneurs

I am quite impressed by this book. It seems that every chapter gives a very clear idea or thing you can pick it up. The author Guy Raz must have spent lots of effort on this book.

Chapter 1 ” The Call”
The way to get startup ideas is not to try to think of startup ideas. It is to look for problems, preferably problems you have yourself. You should only work on problems that exist.

Chapter 2 “Is it Dangerous or Just Scary?”

Even starting from chapter 2 “Is it Dangerous or Just Scary?” makes me sit up and think. He uses the analog of bathtubs vs sharks. Bathtubs should be 365 times as frightening as sharks, but its the reverse. In reality, bathtubs claim one American life every day and sharks claim only one per year on average. So why are we thinking it this way?

The reason for this is fairly simple : We are more relaxed around things we are more acquainted with. This makes me think about my current job. It is actually more dangerous to continue to stay on, but its not that scary now. Rather than waiting for technology to disrupt me, I should go around explore more other options.

Anyone who found their success after leaving the relative security of higher education or their previous profession would be utterly unsurprised by the choices that Jim Koch (Boston Beer Company) and Michael Dell (Dell computer) made in 1984. They all talk about the initial uncertainty and the scariness of the unknown. But then those concerns melt away as they reflect on the even greater dangers of regret and squandered opportunity, and as Jim puts it, waking up at 65 years old only to realize that they have wasted their lives.

Chapter 3 “Leave your safety zone. .. but do it safely”

That is the buoying effect of not quitting your job right away and have a fallback plan for when you do. Some of the entrepreneurs continue their job while they startup their company. For example one of the entrepreneurs Daymond eased himself into the entrepreneurial life. It was 40 hours at Red Lobster (being a waiter) and 6 hours at his startup. Then it was 30 hours at Red Lobster and 20 hours at his startup.

Chapter 4 “Do your research”

There is a famous line from Steve Jobs. He said .. People don’t know what they want until you show it to them” What a lot of people don’t know is that there is an important insight at the end of that quote, that inexplicably always cut off, and that statement from Jobs is particularly relevant here : That’s why I never rely on market research.”

All the market research you personally do wasn’t done so that you can collate and regurgitate it back out into the marketplace to give people what they said they wanted. Rather, it was to build a foundation of knowledge on which they could leverage their creative instincts and their professional judgement in order to truly innovate and deliver what dissatisfied customers really needed. You rely on research to teach how to build a plane – which gave them the confidence to lean on their instincts and trust their creative visions when it came time to decide exactly what kind of plane they wanted to build and fly. This has been a winning combination countless times in the history of new ideas.

Uncanny Valley (A memoir)

By Anna Wiener (2020)

I am not sure why I pick up this book to read. Guess maybe its because I used to work in the tech industry when I was in my early 20s. At the start of the story, the author said that she was very broke. As she had graduated college debt free, hence she can work in publishing. (Probably publishing does not pay well)

In beginning 2013, she joined the e-book startup and subsequently worked in some tech companies till 2018 when she leave the industry. Here are some extracts of the book that I like or find it giving a different insight.

“Pivoting meant that they had changed their business model in an effort to generate revenue. Pivoting meant they were worried about runaway. Pivoting meant they were a cautionary tale. Only the two cofounders were left, tucked off to the side. Everyone else had been let go once funding ran out.”

“No one had warned me that in San Francisco and Silicon Valley interviewing was effectively punitive, more like a hazing ritual than an airtight vetting system.”

“Not everyone knew what they needed from big data, but everyone knew that they needed it”

“Our bread and butter was engagement : actions that demonstrated the ways users were interacting with a product. This was a turn away from the long-running industry standard which prioritized metrics like page views and time on site, metrics that the CEO called bullshit”

“It wasn’t our customers’ payment, contact and organizational information – though we could see that, too, if we needed to – but the actual data sets that they collected on their own users.”

“free services usually meant users were being exploited in one way or another. The most straightforward way to exploit them, naturally, was through rapacious data collection. “

The Fourth Age

Smart Robots, Conscious Computers, and the Future of Humanity By Byron Reese (2018)

You can gain a lot of insights from this book. It is interesting to know more of these ideas, but because it is quite a thick book, you have to spend more time slowly digesting it, which for some people can find it a little dry. I find that the author writes more emotionally and makes a greater impact at the last few chapters.

The author has said that things have only changed 3X in human history. Each time was due to technology. Not just a single technology, but groups of interrelated technologies that changed us in a fundamental and permanent, even biological, ways.

1. First Age : Language and Fire
2. Second Age : Agriculture and Cities
3. Third Age : Writing and Wheels
4. Fourth Age : Robots and AI

Once the change really gets going, it will happen rapidly.

Will Robots take all our Jobs?
The author list 3 possible outcomes :
1. Robots and AI take all the jobs
2. Robots and AI take some of the jobs
3. Robots and AI take none of the jobs

Most technological advances don’t eliminate entire jobs all at once per se, but only to certain parts of the jobs. And they create new jobs in entirely unexpected ways. When ATMs came out, most people assumed that they would eliminate the need for bank tellers. But what really happened?

Well, of course, you would always need some tellers to deal with customers wanting more than to make a deposit or a cash. So instead of a branch having 4 tellers and no machines, they could have 2 tellers and 2 ATMs. Then, seeing that branches were now cheaper to operate, banks realized they could open more of them as a competitive advantage and guess what? They needed to hire more tellers.

Are there Robot-Proof Jobs?
A good method for evaluating any job’s likelihood of being automated is what I call the “training manual test.” Think about a set of instructions needed to do your job, right down to the most specific part. How long is that document? Think about a posthole digger vs an electrician. The long the instruction manual, the more situations, special cases and exceptions exist that need to be explained. Interestingly, when surveyed, people overwhelming believe that automation will destroy a large number of jobs but also overwhelmingly believe their own job is robot-proof.

There is one example that I like from the book.
Imagine a person called Jerry who mows lawns for a living. Jerry graduated from high school but has no more education than that. Let’s say someone develops a self-driving lawn mover that sells for a low price and Jerry suddenly sees the bottom drop out of the lawn-mowing profession.

Now Jerry has to find a way to add value. Then he has a job. Jerry might, for instance, learn on the internet how to plant and maintain grape arbors. I am not saying Jerry becomes a horticulturalist. He just reads enough to learn about how to plant and grow grapes. He then goes door to door with his message about the joys of growing your own grapes.

Then 20 years later, Grape Arbor Robotics comes out with a robot that can plant vastly better arbors than Jerry can. So what does he do? He can read up on landscaping in the Victorian era. Then he goes door to door offering to plant historically accurate shrubs and flowers in his historically accurate arrangements. Someday a robot will be invented to do that, but Jerry will have retired by then.

Non obvious Mega Trends Part 2

By Rohit Bhargava (2020)

2019 Trends at a glance
1. Strategic Spectacle (Trend Longevity Rating : A)
Brands and creators intentionally use spectacles to capture attention and drive engagement.

2. Muddled Masculinity (Trend Longevity Rating : A)
Rising empowerment of women and re-evaluation of gender are causing widespread confusion and angst about what it means to be a man today.

3. Side Quirks (Trend Longevity Rating : A)
Global shift towards individualism drives people to follow their passion, start a side business and appreciate quirks in one another.

4. Artificial Influence (Trend Longevity Rating : B)
Creators, corporations and government use virtual creations to shift public perceptions, sell products and even turn fantasy into reality. People are fighting back against this and demanding more authenticity.

5. Retrotrust (Trend Longevity Rating : A)
Often unsure of whom to trust, consumers look back to organizations and experiences with brands that have a legacy as well as those with which they have a personal history.

6. B2Beyond Marketing (Trend Longevity Rating : B)
B2B brands use non traditional methods to embrace their humanity and reach decision makers along with a broader audience. Although it was well predicted and quantifiably true, it struggle to accelerate because of the resistance so many B2B bands have to different thinking.

7. Fad Fatigue (Trend Longevity Rating : A)
Consumers get weary of innovation claiming to be the next big thing and assume none will last long.

8. Extreme Uncluttering (Trend Longevity Rating : A)
To simplify their daily life, people shed their excess stuff and seek pared-down experiences and ways to unclutter their digital identities too.

9. Deliberate Downgrading (Trend Longevity Rating : A)
As tech-enabled products become overbearing, consumers opt to downgrade to simpler, cheaper or more functional versions instead.

10. Enterprise Empathy (Trend Longevity Rating : A)
Empathy becomes a driver of innovation and revenue as well as a point of differentiation for products, services, hiring and experiences.

11. Innovation Envy (Trend Longevity Rating : A)
Fear leads entrepreneurs, businesses and institutions to envy competitors and approach innovation with admiration or desperation.

12. Robot Renaissance (Trend Longevity Rating : A)
As robots adopt more human-like interfaces and micro-personalities, they are raising new questions and issues about how we relate to technology.

13. Good Speed (Trend Longevity Rating : A)
The urgency of the problems facing humanity is inspiring corporations, entrepreneurs and individuals to find ways of doing good and generating results more quickly.

14. Overwealthy (Trend Longevity Rating : A)
Growing income inequality leads to more guilt among the affluent prompting them to seek more ways to give back.

15. Passive Loyalty (Trend Longevity Rating : A)
As switching from brands becomes easier, companies re-evaluate who is loyal, who isn’t and how to inspire true loyalty.