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Create Your Own Retreat

I love this idea.

Overcoming Adversity

I think as well as overcoming adversity, keys to fulfillment, also.

A List of Lists we should all have...

http://www.businessinsider.com/lists-everyone-should-make-2014-8?utm_source=alerts&nr_email_referer=1

To be misunderstood.

To be alone, misunderstood, not like everyone else.
Sounds like a song from the old days, it'll come to me.  I keep reading things like this, that people are misunderstood and dismissed until they hit it, and then they're geniuses.  I wonder how the numbers really work out.  To be outside the group is very painful.  It's in our DNA since being rejected from the group could have meant death in the old days.  No wonder it's so hard to really be different.  No wonder that it almost takes a mental health diagnosis category to be able to do it.

Doing the Hard Things

The quote is from Godin's blog.

It reinforces something I read the other evening from a book called "Launch" which I found particularly helpful in focusing on what it is that makes for a powerful experience.  They ask you to think about Disneyland.  How many things of scale large and small they do to make the experience "magical" and boy does it work.  (Disclaimer, I haven't been in 20 years, but I certainly remember it.)
So in thinking about Disneyland with my own business, I immediately just became exhausted even thinking about it.  Changing from appointment calls, to scheduling to materials, to practice space, music, feedback.  It was so enervating, it was difficult to even continue to imagine. Hurt  my head.
But today is another day, and just like with anything else, I'm sure it's just a matter of planning, breaking it down, making the steps ever smaller. Prioritizing.  So, I love the inspiration of Disneyland, not literally, but of what can actually be accomplished with enough imagination.  Fortunately for me, I do bring something unique and innovative to my practice that helps me to stay motivated, that it's not just shine and no shoes. This blog post echoes the process.

 Doing the hard things
One model of organization is to find something that you're good at and that's easy and straightforward and get paid for that.
The other model is to seek out things that are insanely difficult and do those instead.
Dave Ramsey does a three hour radio show every day. He books theaters and has a traveling road show. He has the discipline to only publish a new book quite rarely, and to stick with it for years and years as it moves through the marketplace. He has scores of employees. And on and on. By doing hard work that others fear, he creates unique value.
Rick Toone makes guitars that others would never attempt. Rollin Thurlow does the same with canoes.
Henry Ford did the same thing with the relentless scale and efficiency he built at Ford. Others couldn't imagine raising their own sheep to make their own wool to make their own seat fabric...
"How do we do something so difficult that others can't imagine doing it?" is a fine question to ask today.

Bezos Tips

Not a particular fan, but like the advice.
http://www.businessinsider.com/7-jeff-bezos-quotes-that-will-change-the-way-you-think-about-business-2014-5
No one can accuse Jeff Bezos of thinking small or falling prey to convention. The man who dared to build the everything store has a famously idiosyncratic approach to business.

From the big things like largely ignoring profits(and mostly getting away with it) to small ones like starting meetings with some communal reading, the Amazon.com founder doesn't do things the usual way.

What's the thinking behind his quirky ways and what can you learn from the Bezos approach to business that might change how things are done at your own company?

Recently on his blog current Microsoft employee and former private equity fund partner Tren Griffin suggested you go straight to the source, helpfully combing through Bezos' public utterances for valuable nuggets of wisdom.

Inc.com reached out to ask if we could round up a few of the quotes he unearthed. Here's a sampling:

"Your margin is my opportunity."

As Griffin explains "Bezos sees a competitor's love of margins and other financial 'ratios' as an opportunity for Amazon since the competitor will cling to them while he focuses on absolute dollar free cash flow and slices through them like a hot knife through butter."

"Bezos spelled out his focus on absolute dollar free cash flow in his 2004 letter to shareholders. He is not about to run his company based on a ratio much beloved by someone outside the company, such as a Wall Street analyst," Griffin elaborates. Are you looking focused on the right numbers for your business or are you more worried about hitting metrics that someone else told you matter?

"The balance of power is shifting toward consumers and away from companies… The right way to respond to this if you are a company is to put the vast majority of your energy, attention, and dollars into building a great product or service and put a smaller amount into shouting about it, marketing it."

"In the old world, you devoted 30% of your time to building a great service and 70% of your time to shouting about it. In the new world, that inverts," Bezos continued. Are you too focused on how you talk about your business and not on what it actually does? "The very best businesses acquire customers 'organically' without advertising. Great products and word of mouth drives sales at these companies. By contrast, companies which must sell their wares with huge advertising budgets are losing their edge in the Internet era," comments Griffin.

"If you double the number of experiments you do per year you're going to double your inventiveness."

Perhaps increasing your innovation quotient is simpler than it first appears. Simply try more things. Based on this quote, that appears to be the Amazon approach.

"If you decide that you're going to do only the things you know are going to work, you're going to leave a lot of opportunity on the table."

This point is obviously related to the one above. Experiments, by definition, can fail. Avoid failure to spare your ego and you cut down on the number of experiments, and it's often a bigger problem to fail to experiment than it is to experiment and fail. According to Griffin,"“Warren Buffett puts it this way: 'Typically, our most egregious mistakes fall in the omission, rather than the commission, category. That may spare Charlie [Munger] and me some embarrassment, since you don't see these errors; but their invisibility does not reduce their cost.'"

"You have to be willing to be misunderstood if you're going to innovate."

OK, it's not only Bezos who says innovation can be lonely, but he certainly exemplifies the principle. "You can't outperform the market if you are the market. Similarly, you must adopt a non-consensus view and be right about that view to beat competitors," Griffin says.

"Frugality drives innovation, just like other constraints do. One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out."

Do you spend your days dreaming of a time a flood of money will scour away your business's problems? Your daydreams may be misguided. "More money often equals more problems. Companies with too much money are often less rather than more innovative," notes Griffin. It can, of course, be hard to learn to love your constraints, but this quote suggests there are benefits to be found in doing so.

"The great thing about fact-based decisions is that they overrule the hierarchy."

Many companies make choices based on the seniority or charisma of those arguing the various points of view. Not at Amazon. Could your company benefit from trying a more fact-based approach?

Read more: http://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/7-jeff-bezos-quotes-that-will-make-you-rethink-success.html#ixzz376HZweFn

Elon Musk

Reuters

"You encounter issues you didn't expect, step on landmines. It's bad. Years 2 to 4 or 5 are usually quite difficult. A friend has a saying, it's 'eating glass and staring into the abyss' ...

"If you’re cofounder or CEO you have to do all kinds of tasks you might not want to do ... If you don’t do your chores, the company won’t succeed ... No task is too menial."

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/brilliant-elon-musk-quotes-2014-6?op=1#ixzz376EoQDTO

Rework the Morning Routine

This one REALLY speaks to me.
8. Rework your morning routine.
Then make sure you can get to that task as smoothly as possible. Pretend you're an Olympic sprinter and your morning routine is like the warm-up for a race. Don't dawdle, don't ease your way into your morning, and don't make sure you get some "me" time (hey, sleep time is me time). Get up, clean up, fuel up—and start rolling.
My elapsed time from bed to desk is about 15 minutes so there's not much I can improve there. So I started taking a different approach. I once checked email first thing; now I get at least one important thing done.
Sprinters don't do cool-down laps before they race. Neither should we.

Mise en Place: Anthony Bourdain

I love this.  I love the practicality.

Ask yourself this question the moment you sit at your desk: The day is over and I am leaving the office with a tremendous sense of accomplishment. What have I achieved?

Websites to Make you Smarter

Ha ha.  Probably most of them are "creative procrastination."  Like FB only you feel virtuous.
http://www.businessinsider.com/websites-that-make-you-smarter-2014-6?utm_source=alerts&nr_email_referer=1

Rune of the Day: Perth reversed

Love this.
"Reversed:


a counsel against expecting too much, or expecting in the ordinary way, for the old way has come to an end: You simply cannot repeat the old and not suffer.  Call in your scattered energies, concentrate on your own life at this mi=oment your own requirements for growth. Perth  counsels  you neither to focus on outcomes nor to bind yourself with the memory of past achievements.  In doing so, you rob yourself of a true present., the only time in which change can be realized.
You may feel overwhelmed with exhaustion from meeting obstruction upon obstruction in your passage.  Yet always you have a choice: You can see this apparent negativity as bad luck, or you can recognize it as an obstacle course, a challenge specific to the Initiation you are presently undergoing.  Then each setback, each humiliation, becomes a test of character. When your inner being is shifting and reforming on a deep level, patience, constancy and perseverance are called for.  So stay centered, see the humor, and keep your faith firm. "

Success Habits: Andrew Carnegie

Basic stuff, but nice reminder.

1. Define your purpose.

Create a plan of action and start working toward it immediately.

2. Create a "master-mind alliance."

Contact and work with people "who have what you haven't," Hill says.

3. Go the extra mile.

"Doing more than you have to do is the only thing that justifies raises or promotions, and puts people under an obligation to you," writes Hill.

4. Practice "applied faith."

Believe in yourself and your purpose so fully that you act with complete confidence.

5. Have personal initiative.

Do what you have to without being told.

6. Indulge your imagination.

Dare to think beyond what's already been done.

7. Exert enthusiasm.

A positive attitude sets you up for success and wins the respect of others.

8. Think accurately.

In Hill's words, accurate thinking is "the ability to separate facts from fiction and to use those pertinent to your own concerns or problems."

9. Concentrate your effort.

Don't become distracted from the most important task you are currently facing.

10. Profit from adversity.

Remember that "there is an equivalent benefit for every setback," Hill writes.


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/andrew-carnegies-rules-of-success-2014-5#ixzz33OSaF4wJ

How to learn faster

http://www.businessinsider.com/strategies-quick-learners-use-to-pick-up-anything-2014-4

To understand a problem, ask "why" five times. 

In "The Lean Startup," author Eric Ries offers the "Five Whys" technique for getting to the root of an issue. The idea is to get to the underlying cause of a superficial problem — one that, more often than not is more human than technical error. 
To see the quintuple-why strategy in action, lets look at his hypothetical startup example: 
1. A new release disabled a feature for customers. Why? Because a particular server failed.
2. Why did the server fail? Because an obscure subsystem was used in the wrong way.
3. Why was it used in the wrong way? The engineer who used it didn't know how to use it properly.
4. Why didn't he know? Because he was never trained.
5. Why wasn't he trained? Because his manager doesn't believe in training new engineers because he and his team are "too busy."
By pushing the inquiry five times, Ries says we can see how a "purely technical fault is revealed quickly to be a very human managerial issue."

Keep a positive attitude. 

Worrying that you're not going to be able to learn something is a poor investment of your mental energy, says Harvard Business School professor Alison Wood Brooks.
"Anxiety precludes you from exploring real solutions and real thought patterns that will come up with solutions," she says. But when you're feeling good about what might happen, you get into an opportunity-oriented mindset. "So you think of all of the good things that can happen. You're more likely to make decisions and take actions that will make that world likely to occur."

Don't just learn about it; practice it. 

"You can't learn golf from a book. You need to swing a club at a ball," says Quora user Mark Harrison, the head of technology at British financial company FundingKnight. "You can't learn Ruby on Rails from a book — you need to put together a site."

Find an expert, and then ask them about their expertise.

If you're trying to learn a subject, talk to an expert who can explain it. Buy them lunch, and ask them all about their craft. Tim Ferriss, author of "The 4-Hour Workweek," is a master of this. Whenever he's trying to learn a sport, he'll seek out the nearest silver medalist, arrange for an interview, and then grill them on technique.

Get an accountability buddy. 

Find somebody else who's trying to build the same skill as you — be it rock climbing, cello, or French cooking — and experience the learning process with them. Set up regular times to check in on your progress, whether in person or via Skype, Harrison recommends.

When you don't understand, say so.

Another tip from Harrison: When you don't understand something in a meeting, go ahead and put up your hand and ask, "Sorry, can you just explain why?" Dumb people will think it's dumb, he says, but smart folks will admire the curiosity.
As Mortimer Adler advises in "How To Read A Book," learning is very much a matter of being aware of when you're perplexed, and then following up on that perplexity.

Repeat, repeat, repeat.

It's not so much that practice makes perfect; it just makes actions go faster. This is because when you do something again and again — recall how you recited the alphabet as a kid — you strengthen bonds between brain cells.
"Repetition leads to synaptic conditioning," shares user Hwang Min Hae, a medical student in Australia. "The brain is plastic, and it allows the neural pathway to fire at a faster pace than before. That's why repetition over a long period of time creates an instantaneous recall — that's why you can recite your ABCs and 123s. Try reciting your ABCs in the opposite way, and you'll have a bigger difficulty than doing it forward."  

Don't just write it out; draw it out.

Dan Roam has written two books about visual thinking, "The Back of the Napkin" and "Blah Blah Blah." He also consults for companies like Google, eBay, General Electric, and Wal-Mart. They bring him in to help explore the "aspects of knowledge that can't be expressed through words."

Annie Murphy Paul

Words and pictures complement each other. 

"Often the best approach to solving problems and generating ideas involves a combination of words and pictures," he says. "When you add pictures, you add layers and dimensions of thought that are almost impossible to achieve with words alone ... It's a way to get your idea down while still keeping it in a fluid state."
You can do that with a "mind map," or diagram, that visually outlines interrelated ideas. 

Learn the difficult stuff at the start of the day.

Willpower is finite, research shows. We have lots at the start of the day, but it gets depleted as we make decisions and resist temptations. (That's why shopping is so exhausting.) So if you're learning a language, an instrument, or anything else that's super complex, schedule it for the start of the day, since you'll have the most mental energy then.

Use the 80/20 rule. 

The 80/20 rule states that you get 80% of your value out of 20% of work. In business, 20% of activities produce 80% of results that you want. Fast learners apply the same logic to their research areas.
Quora user Stefan Jerome, a student at the University of Leicester in England, provides an example: 

When I look at a book, for example, I look though the contents page and make a list from 1-5 with 1 being the chapter with the most relevant material. When looking through a instructional video, I often skip to the middle where the action or technique is being demonstrated, then I work backwards to gain the context and principles.

This works, he says, since the beginning of most videos will be fluffed with exposition, and most books are layered in with filler to make length requirements. So with a little cunning, you can extract most of the knowledge from those materials while investing a fraction of the time.


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/strategies-quick-learners-use-to-pick-up-anything-2014-4#ixzz35IvLzv8D

Improving Benefit of the Doubt

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2014/05/the-benefit-of-the-doubt.html
I know Godin is really pounding the concept of "placebo" in marketing.  Meaning, if your customer believes, you're a long way there.  I have problems with this, obviously, since placebo has been the bugaboo for acupuncture research forever.  But I post it here, because, well, one needs to keep an open mind.

A Latticework of Mental Models

We've discussed Mental Models before, in particular in the context of Charlie Munger.  Or maybe it was in my other blog.  At any rate, this is a great reminder. The link is at the bottom of the page. (Blogger isn't letting me put in any images for some reason.)

Latticework of Mental Models

Munger is best known for  emphasising the power amp; importance of multi-disciplinary learning (or he calls it, quot;worldly wisdomquot;) to become successful at stock-picking as well as life generally. He argues that investors should not just focus on a few narrow topics but expand their horizons to understand many different subjects. This allows savvy investors to avoid myopia - quot;If you have a hammer everything will start to look like a nailquot; - and profit from others' shortsightedness.
The best example of this thinking was a speech he gave in 1994 to the University of Southern California Business School entitled quot;A Lesson on Elementary, Worldly Wisdom As It Relates To Investment Management amp; Businessquot;. Rather than discussing the stock market specifically, he challenged the students to see the market, of finance, and of economics as part of a larger body of knowledge, that also incorporates psychology, engineering, mathematics, physics, and the humanities. To drive his point home, Charlie used a memorable metaphor to describe this interlocking structure of ideas:
quot;You've got to have models in your head and you've got to array your experience - both vicarious and direct - on this latticework of models.... The first rule is that you've got to have multiple models because if you just have one or two that you're using, the nature of human psychology is such that you'll torture reality so that it fits your models, or at least you'll think it does...  And the models have to come from multiple disciplines because all the wisdom of the world is not to be found in one little academic departmentquot;
While this may seem intimidating and beyond the capacity of mere mortals, Munger suggest about that 80 or 90 important models will do 90% of the work and, of those, only a mere handful are the most important. Unfortunately, he doesn't specify exactly which models he's referring to, but others have speculated on the list and it seems clear from his writings that he's refering to concepts like auto-catalysis, decision-trees, operant conditioning social proof, and natural selection.

The Power of Checklists

Munger is also an advocate of employing a checklist approach in order to try to marshall acquired knowledge effectively. As he noted in a speech to the University of Southern California Law School :
quot;Checklist routines avoid a lot of errors. You should have all this elementary [worldly] wisdom and then you should go through a mental checklist in order to use it. There is no other procedure in the world that will work as well.quot; 
He also noted in another speech:
quot;The antidote to man with a hammer is a tool kit full of tools, not just a hammer. And use the tools checklist style because you’ll miss a lot if you hope the right tool just pops up unaided whenever you need it. But if you’ve got a full list of tools and you go through them in your mind checklist-style, you will find a lot of the answers you won’t find any other way.”

An Investing Principles Checklist

On that note, Charlie's Almanack contains a fascinating 10 point investing principles checklist, along with some interesting comments/observations in support of each point. It is emphasised that this isn't used by Charlie in a one-by-one procedural fashion, nor are the principles prioritized in terms of importance. Nevertheless, the idea is that each of these elements should be considered as part of the investment analysis process...

1. Measure risk: All investment evaluations should begin by measuring risk, especially reputational.  This is said to involve incorporating an appropriate margin of safety, avoiding permanent loss of capital and insisting on proper compensation for risk assumed. 
2. Be independent: Only in fairy tales are emperors told they're naked.  Remember that just because other people agree or disagree with you doesn’t make you right or wrong – the only thing that matters is the correctness of your analysis.
3. Prepare ahead: The only way to win is to work, work, work, and hope to have a few insights. If you want to get smart, the question you have to keep asking is “why, why, why?”
4. Have intellectual humility: Acknowledging what you don't know is the dawning of wisdom.  Stay within a well-defined circle of competence amp; identify and reconcile disconfirming evidence.
5. Analyze rigorously: Use effective checklists to minimize errors and omissions. Determine value apart from price; progress apart from activity; wealth apart from size. Think forwards and backwards – Invert, always invert
6. Allocate assets wisely: Proper allocation of capital is an investor's No. 1 job. You should remember that good ideas are rare – when the odds are greatly in your favor, bet heavily. At the same time, don’t “fall in love” with an investment.
7. Have patience: Resist the natural human bias to act. “Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world” (Einstein); never interrupt it unnecessarily and avoid unnecessary transactional taxes and frictional costs.
8. Be decisive: When proper circumstances present themselves, act with decisiveness and conviction. Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful. Opportunity doesn’t come often, so seize it when it comes.
9. Be ready for change: Accept unremovable complexity. Continually challenge and willingly amend your “best-loved ideas” and recognize reality even when you don’t like it – especially when you don’t like it
10. Stay focused: Keep it simple and remember what you set out to do. Remember that reputation and integrity are your most valuable assets – and can be lost in a heartbeat. Face your big troubles; don’t sweep them under the rug.

Of course, how one translate this into an actionable set of investment ideas is the $200 billion question, but it's still a very interesting list of principles to reflect upon when investing!

The Lollapolooza Effect

A final idea that Munger introduces is the  quot;Lollapalooza Effectquot;. This describes multiple biases, tendencies or mental models acting at the same time in the same direction. This tends to produce extreme outcomes and investor misjudgement. During a talk at Harvard in 1995, Munger mentioned Tupperware parties and open outcry auctions as good examples of this effect:

the open-outcry auction is just made to turn the brain into mush: you've got social proof, the other guy is bidding, you get reciprocation tendency, you get deprival super-reaction syndrome, the thing is going away... I mean it just absolutely is designed to manipulate people into idiotic behavior.

From the Source

In addition to the quot;Poor Charlie's Almanackquot; compilation (available on Amazon or direct from the website itself), there are a number of interesting speeches by Munger available online:

• Munger on Human Misjudgments 
• A Lesson on Elementary, Worldly Wisdom as it Relates to Investment Management amp; Business
• The Great Financial Scandal of 2003
• On The Psychology Of Human Misjudgement
• USC Law School Commencement
• Academic Economics: Strengths and Faults After Considering Interdisciplinary Needs

It's also worth checking out the excellent Munger resource page at Value Walk.


Read more: http://www.stockopedia.co.uk/content/charlie-munger-investing-success-from-mental-models-checklists-63841/#ixzz318VKjZyn

How to Remember What You Read

Really like this one.

And Sometimes Work Pays Off

the value of this is exclusively personal, but sweet nonetheless and I need to savor.  Blogger is really being difficult, grrr.

This is photo of the honorarium received for my most recent poster for the AAMA.
Poster.