Author: Tim

If

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
‘ Or walk with Kings – nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!

If – Rudyard Kipling

On Tools & Results, part 2

NPR has an article about violins.

They gathered professional violinists in a hotel room in Indianapolis. They had six violins — two Strads, a Guarneri and three modern instruments. Everybody wore dark goggles so they couldn’t see which violin was which.

Then the researchers told the musicians: These are all fine violins and at least one is a Stradivarius. Play, then judge the instruments.

Joseph Curtin, a violin-maker from Michigan, was one of the researchers. “There was no evidence that people had any idea what they were playing,” he says. “That really surprised me.”

Curtin says of the 17 players who were asked to choose which were old Italians, “Seven said they couldn’t, seven got it wrong, and only three got it right.”

I think I called this one. It’s the same thing, no matter what field. There should have been a 50/50 split, and instead, only 3/17 were right.

Journal of Consumer Research

I’ve been noticing a lot of articles in the news lately, all citing The Journal of Consumer Research. Odds are that it’s because newspeople are paying more attention to consumption thanks to America’s holiday traditions, but that doesn’t make it bad. In fact, I’m impressed with some of the stuff that they’re doing research on. I wonder who pays for it, but regardless, they are interesting questions.

I find this interesting because we’re all consumers, so there are some neat studies in here that apply to us all. Most recently — if another person brushes against you in a store, you’re more likely to leave without buying something. Amazing.

Unless you’ve got access to it through a university account or otherwise, one of the best options is their Publicity page, followed by the usual googling of the study’s authors to find out more about how it was actually done.

Batman drank ginger ale

Bruce Wayne drinks ginger ale at parties to help keep his body and mind in top shape. I don’t have a good source for this, in that there’s no single authoritative reference that I can link to.

Since I don’t have a single authoritative reference, let’s go with this: a comic about two dinosaurs, one of whom is going to give up drinking. I’m talking about a comic character anyways, right? Another comic is basically a primary source.

There’s also Wikipedia. Just go to the Batman page, and then search in the page for “ginger ale”.

This makes me happy, because I like Batman/Bruce Wayne, and I also like ginger ale. Generally when I’m at a bar, there’s whiskey and a slice of lime involved, but this isn’t a bad idea for ending the night if I have to drive.

Also, Batman used ginger ale as a replacement for champagne. Something worth remembering for NYE. Happy 2012, everyone!

On Grit

I like this. (emphasis author’s)

None of that would have been possible if I wasn’t willing to make a (polite) pain in the ass out of myself.

The world has a way of making room for those who just won’t give up.

There’s one other treat in here.

I wonder if it’s possible to trade away some self-control to get more grit.  That sounds like a good bargain.

That is a fantastic speculation.

The guy who wrote has the name Adam Smith (not the Adam Smith of economics fame, but the Adam Smith of Silicon Valley-email fame). He successfully started and exited (b-school speak for “sold”) a company, something that is very hard no matter how many times you watch The Social Network. It certainly takes something that is beyond intelligence or talent, or ordinary “hard work”.

There’s a term that I like from the Finnish culture — sisu. It means something like “perseverance, determination, and level-headedness”, and it represents something that I want to cultivate in myself. Other than the nice end-rhyme we get from “true sisu”, I think I prefer “grit” now.

Check out this video that Adam referenced in his blog post. It’s definitely recommended for anyone who considers themselves ambitious.

On Tools & Results

Some people love to focus on their tools — photography comes to mind.

I don’t own any photography equipment that’s nicer than my iPhone. For me, always having a camera on me is much more worthwhile than having a very nice camera and lens set that gets left at home because it’s harder to carry.

I don’t own any film cameras, and I don’t own a DSLR (although I might rent something if I’m going someplace that I expect to be particularly photogenic). I have nothing against nice cameras, and one day I will get one with a good lens so that I can take pictures with a foreground and a background, but until then, I’m content to take pictures like these:

Artsy photo

I’m not the only person who thinks this way. Here’s a walkthrough of the difference between pictures from cameras that cost $150 and $5,000.

I like when Ice Cube talks about how Mr & Mrs Eames took advantage of what they had. It’s easy to impress people by working with the best tools and supplies. If they had one-of-a-kind, oversize glass panes custom-produced for the house, it would naturally be impressive to many people. Instead, by using ordinary ingredients, and treating them skillfully, they create something impressive to untrained eyes, and they get respect from pros, because the only thing really used was skill.

You see the same pattern in other areas, food, for example. There’s an episode of Kitchen Nightmares (UK) where Gordon Ramsay trains a chef on how to make oxtail delicious — and he explicitly says that it’s always a sign of a talented chef who can take a plain and ordinary ingredient, and turn it into a delicious meal. In addition, it’s an easy way to make a nice profit: cheap ingredients, impressive results. (There’s a corollary here: it’s not what you’re drinking, it’s who you’re drinking it with)

Or in life…what’s more impressive? The child of an upper class family, educated in private schools, who goes onto become a Senator; or the child who grows up in urban projects, fought and struggled to succeed, and becomes a Senator. There’s a reason we love rags-to-riches stories in America — it ties into our belief that with the right skill and attitude, you can take ordinary inputs and produce extraordinary results.

I’m sure there are many other areas that I’m not thinking of where this pattern repeats.

I don’t mean to knock an investment in tools. Even Gordon Ramsay would have a difficult time trimming a steak if all he had was a butter knife. Or a spork. Ansel Adams would probably notice if you gave him a cheap camera. A good tool has a multiplier effect — it takes the level of skill and makes the result better. But that still means that if you want to see an improvement in results, as long as the tool is “good enough”, you’re better off focusing on improving your skills — the improvement in skills will continue to be multiplied by the good tool, and you’ll have gained something that can’t be taken away.

Or to be lighthearted about it: it’s not what you’ve got, it’s how you use it that counts. 😉

Hustle

I like this. It’s a classic Zen story, and the video is good.

It reminds me of that speech Will Smith gave. Running & reading. It’s the modern day version of the body-and-mind connection that the Greeks talked about.

He’s got a phrase that he’s used in other interviews: “die on a treadmill”. I’m not sure if I should be proud that I’ve nearly done this.

There’s a story that I heard about Timbaland. Apparently if he’s got work to do but gets invited to a release party, he’ll show up for 15 minutes, shake hands, offer congratulations, and then go back to the studio. That’s how to hustle.

Of course, there’s another side to this, just to keep the universe in check: be careful what you wish for. You can get anything you want, make sure it’s what you really want.

Mostly unrelated:

GigaOm Roadmap

I went to GigaOm’s Roadmap conference last week on the 10th, and I was very impressed. Great crowd (lots of visitors from Finland), the speakers were very open and available, and I was one of the lucky winners that got a new Jawbone Up.

The talks were interesting, and one of the things that stuck with me is a discussion with Matt MacInnisand Richard Nash about the publishing industry. Obviously both of these guys have a vested interest in seeing the publishing industry change, and almost everyone knows that the publishing industry is going to change.

One of the things they said was that the publishing industry is a US$40 billion industry — their point being that the industry may change and profits may go down, but there’s a long way to go, if it happens that way. Normal retail book sales are changing thanks to e-books (although there are claims that people who use e-book readers buy more books — definitely my experience), but the college textbook publishing industry is definitely going to see some major changes ahead.

I worked at the UCF Barnes & Noble while in school, and it happened to be B&N’s most profitable college store. Seeing the cost breakdowns on textbooks is remarkable, but the used textbook industry is the most interesting.

Textbooks are bought and resold over and over. Ebooks don’t have the same resale market, so the used textbook market is going to dry up. The thing is, it is actually an advantage for publishers, even though the price per book is going down. Since used textbooks tend to be resold 2-3x, it turns out that the price of a new book can be cut 60% and still allow publishers the same profit (ignoring the fact that printing, shipping, and other costs will be removed).

Personally I’m most interested in the all-you-can-read type of thing. Yes, I know what a library is. I want an ebook library. It’s coming.

I also loved the talk from Tony Fadell about the Nest thermostat — literally the iPhone of thermostats. he was very open about a lot of the design issues involved, and I especially liked a side comment that Tony made. He joked about the manufacturing side of things, and how he got used to premium treatment at Apple, where the factories would bend over backwards to accomodate their needs. With his new gig, they started talking to him with the same “oh yeah, anything you need!” attitude, until they realized how small of a production run he was going to get — then they apparently backed off slightly. To me, there’s something there about the experience that entrepreneurs have when they have been in big companies and then make a move to the startup world — if you want it done, it’s often on you.