Capitalogix

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - January 24th, 2021

Here are some of the posts that caught my eye recently. Hope you find something interesting.

Lighter Links:

• Meet the Man On a Controversial Mission To Preserve and Digitize Your Brain. (DigitalTrends)
• What is Consciousness? Scientists Compete To Find Out. (Bloomberg)
• Balinese Temple Monkeys are Sophisticated Thieves and Negotiators. (Economist)
• How Predictive Algorithms are Transforming Data Into Decisions. (JeffBullas)
• What is AI? The Human's Handbook to Computers that Think. (MorningBrew)

 

Trading Links:

• The Stock Market is At or Near the Most-expensive Levels Ever By Most Measures. When Will It Matter? (CNBC)
• Stock-Market Bulls Brace for Major Gut Check as Earnings, Fed and GDP Loom. (MarketWatch)
• David Einhorn Warns of Danger From Valuation-Indifferent Investors. (Forbes)
• How VCs and Founders See 2021 Differently. (TechCrunch)
• Virtual Reality Will Be a Trillion-Dollar Marketplace Within Five Years – Here's a Good Example Why. (MW)

 

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - January 17th, 2020

Here are some of the posts that caught my eye recently. Hope you find something interesting.

Lighter Links:

• Are Humans Smarter or Stupider Than We Used To Be? (Freakonomics)
• Inside Twitter's Decision To Cut Off Trump. (New York Times)
• Robots Turn 100 and Still Enthrall Us. (Wall Street Journal)
• From Good To Great: How the Flywheel Can Be Your Company's Next Big Thing. (Entrepreneur)
• Clever New A.I. System Promises To Train Your Dog While You're Away From Home. (DigitalTrends)

 

Trading Links:

• An Old Foe of Banks Could Be Wall Street's New Top Cop. (Wall Street Journal)
• The 'Black Swan' Covid Catastrophe Shows Us Just How Fragile Our World Is. (TheGuardian)
• The Five Biggest Issues For Technology Companies In 2021. (WSJ)
• 5 Charts Show What the Global Economy Looks Like Heading Into 2021. (CNBC)
• 'I Don't See Anything On the Horizon that Can Stop the Growth of the ETF Market,' Invesco Official Says. Here are Her 2021 Predictions. (CNBC)

 

Language Is A Limitation

Man acts as though he were the shaper and master of language, while in fact language remains the master of man. - Martin Heidegger

Words are powerful. They can be used to define reality, obscure reality, or create reality. Words can be constructive or destructive ... uplifting or demoralizing. 

In a sense, the power of words is seemingly limitless.  But that power cuts both ways. Language is also the cause of many of our problems. 

We created language to aid social interactions and to facilitate our understanding of the world.  However, language also remains a constraint in how we perceive the world and a limitation on our understanding of new things (e.g., ideas, advances in technology, etc.).

Before I go into where language fails us, it’s important to understand why language is important.

Language Facilitates Our Growth

Because without our language, we have lost ourselves. Who are we without our words? – Melina Marchetta

 

 

Language is one of the major keys to advanced thought. As infants, we learn through watching our environment, reading faces, and learning to infer things from body language. As we begin to understand "language," our brains develop faster.  In this context, language isn't limited to the spoken word – intelligence grows with the catalyst of language, whether it's vocalized or not.

It's this ability to cooperate and share expertise through language that has allowed us to build complex societies and advance technologically – but it is becoming an increasingly inadequate tool as the world becomes more complex.

Language as a Limitation

When it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry. The poet, too, is not nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images. -Niels Bohr

In Buddhism, there's the idea of an Ultimate Reality and a Conventional Reality. The Ultimate Reality is the objective nature of something, and the Conventional Reality is tied inextricably to our cognition – heavily influenced by our language.

Language conveys cultural values and biases, personal values and biases, and influences how we perceive “reality.” Linguistic differences create a wedge between various political groups – even when people probably want similar things.  In these cases, differences in language and perception create strife (rather than define it). 

 

 

We use language and our past to sift and categorize existence into heuristics instead of exploring the true nature of things (in part because if you're trying to survive in the jungle, shortcuts increase your chance of survival by saving time and energy ... and accuracy is secondary to survival). 

On the other hand, when you're trying to expand the breadth and depth of humanities' capabilities, those same heuristics become shackles (or at least blinders). Ultimately, they can lead to issues like groupthink and echo chambers that limit not only innovation but communication. 

Look at groups like Democrats v. Republicans or Israelis v. Palestinians. In reality, there are more similarities than differences. Nonetheless, on a day-to-day basis, each of them focuses more on their differences than finding collaborative solutions for life's tougher problems (or focusing on the things they do agree upon).

Throwing rocks at our enemies also counterintuitively makes us feel better and promotes in-group unity. The problem is it comes at the cost of progress and true unity. 

This is not to say that there aren't real (and important) differences between those groups. It simply recognizes that part of the problem is our willingness to accept "get-to-next" compromises rather than seeking understanding and committing to coming up with real and complete solutions.

Humans Are The Real Black Box

But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought - George Orwell

People often refer to Artificial Intelligence as a "black box" - because the complexity and coding of the algorithms, etc. make it mysterious to a layman. But, Artificial Intelligence is programmed; it is precise and predictable. It is only influenced by the coding used to create it and the data fed to it; this creates its own form of transparency (and bias). 

Meanwhile, humans are nuanced and (to some extent) non-rational creatures. We’re prone to cognitive biases, fear, greed, and discretionary mistakes. We create heuristics on previous experiences, and we can’t process information as cleanly or efficiently as a computer. 

When humans explain their own behavior, they’re often inaccurate - what we hear is more likely a retrospective rationalization or confabulations than a summary and explanation of the choices they made.

All-in-all, it results in a lot of confusion in trying to understand world events, each other, and even ourselves. 

Conclusion

I have friends on both sides of the political divide in America, and once you get past the rhetoric - there's a lot more in common than it seems. Excluding extremist groups, most are looking for unity, the "truth", and solutions to the problems in front of us.

Conflict is often a symptom, not the disease.

On a smaller scale, inside my company, I focus on creating a universal lexicon for our "intellectual shortcuts" because alignment starts with shared understanding.  If the language I'm using means something else to another team member, even if we think we're moving toward the same goal, we'll slowly stray further and further apart. 

As a practical matter, spending too much time moving away from each other (or measuring the distance we are from each other) creates a self-fueling irritation that becomes increasingly annoying, and ultimately caustic. 

Today's problems can't be fixed purely with semantics and semiotics, but they are not bad places to start. 

If we start from a place of agreement and common desire to pursue something worthwhile, the distinctions will call us forward rather than pull us apart.

I hope this helps.  Let me know what you think!

Changing Your Definition of "Resolution"

Planning for 2021 is going well here.  How about for you?

When doing this in a group (or with a team) a common challenge is "alignment".   This is tricky because you have to consider time frames, what you are optimizing for, and also for which "who" you optimizing (you, your customer, some other stakeholder, etc.).

In other words, it's easy to seem like you agree (or are talking about the same thing) only to find out that you don't have the same target or that different factions want to walk different paths. 

This year was the start of a new decade - even though it probably wasn't the start anyone asked for or had in mind. Nonetheless, 2020 is over and we can all agree that we want to make 2021 better than 2020.  To start that process, I want to focus on personal resolutions (separate from business resolutions).

 

Hopefully, you can use some of these concepts.

• Focus on What You Want.
• Focus on Why You Want It.
• Focus on Ways You Might Get it.
• Focus on Evidence of Progress.

Below, I'll take you through an example of each of the four steps.

Moving Towards a Solution, Rather Than Struggling with a Problem.

In 2020, I made good strides towards being healthy, fit, and vital.  I started a health coaching program that helped me lose weight, gain muscle, and eat more intentionally.  In addition, I exercise smarter and more consistently, and many of my "labs" show marked improvement.  But, before I started making that progress, there was a trigger ... someone who regularly gives me a massage told me I looked fat.  It hurt my feelings but it didn't meaningfully change my habits. 

Frankly, knowing that "you're fat" isn't helpful … even translating that to something a tad more positive, yet generic, like "I choose to be healthy" isn't really helpful either.

Blah, blah … They are just words. 

What I needed was something specific, measurable, and actionable.  How about: "I will lose 15 pounds and stop eating after dinner."  OK, but that isn't inspiring, and there isn't much for me to do. I knew I could do better than that.

Figure-Out a Big Enough WHY, Rather Than Worrying about the HOW's.

This post isn't about health and fitness, it is about the mindset and techniques you can use to set empowering goals and plans in any situation.

So, while I could list a lot of ways to lose weight; and I might even remember to do some of them ... when you create a driving force, the momentum takes care of itself.  The first step in doing that is knowing WHY you want something.

I really do want to be healthy, fit, and vital (it sure beats the alternatives), and I want to have the energy and confidence to live and enjoy my life fully.  The world is my playground, and I want to take advantage of more opportunities to play with family and friends.  In order to do those things, I must find better ways for me to live a healthy lifestyle.

Of course, the "WHYs" are just as important for business goals too.

Focus on Potential Solutions, Rather than Problems or Challenges.

Obstacles Exist. The bad news: I don't eat fish and I don't like vegetables (unless French Fries are vegetables).  My joints aren't close to healthy from years of violent contact sports. I rarely get 7 hours of sleep, and my daily life is naturally stressful.  The good news: is none of those things matter ... and even if they did, it just would mean that I have a lot of room for progress.

It is natural to focus on obstacles. But most obstacles are surmountable - with a big enough WHY, even I'll start to eat vegetables. Instead of dwelling on the limitations,  use them as a reminder to focus on potential solutions instead. They are beacons, pointing the way.

How do you do it?  To focus on solutions, you can make two action-based lists: one is of things To-Do ... and another is of things Not-To-Do.

Here are some of the sample To-Do Items:

• I will drink more water than coffee.
• I will stretch (or do basic calisthenics) on days that I don't go to the gym.
• I will make a healthy shake as a meal replacement rather than as a meal supplement.
• I will focus on relaxation and meditation as much (or more) as I focus on strength & physical exercises.

Here is the actionable list of Not-To-Do Items.

• I will not rely on stretchy pants (or buy new ones with a larger waistband) for comfort.
• I will not eat snacks out of their container and will portion-out what I want first.
• I will not compare my current level of fitness to what I used to be able to do. Instead, I will focus on my actions and improvement.

Create Healthier Habits.

It is easy to follow your routine.  So, make your routine better.  Here are some examples of things you could do to make being healthier happen with less effort.

• Pre-sort your vitamins into daily doses, and keep them by the coffee machine.
• Buy healthy snacks, like fruit, raw nuts, or organic energy bars (instead of chips).
• Make "exercise time" the time you enjoy listening to music or listen to a book/podcast. Dedicating time to something doesn't mean you can't be multitasking.
• Park at the end of the parking lot (so you get to walk) rather than trying to find the closest space.
• Meet with friends at the gym, park, or at a hiking spot (rather than a bar or restaurant).

You get the idea.  Get in the habit of looking for ways to create better habits.  What habits could you alter slightly, to make a big difference? 

What things can you automate or outsource?

One helpful tip I learned this year from Tiny Habits, is to start with something small and easy to do, and then build on it. After you've gotten good at creating the habit – you can change the frequency, duration, etc. 

Focus on Your Progress.

In this case, it really is about the journey.  Instead of keeping track of how far you have to go ... notice how far you've come. Utilize an internal locus of control. It is about creating energy, momentum, and a sense of possibility.  You may have a big, hairy, audacious goal in mind.  That's fine, as long as you realize that reaching each milestone along the way is still an accomplishment.

• Find shoes that don't hurt your feet.
• Pick a gym or a personal trainer.
• Run more than two laps without stopping.

It doesn't matter what they are... they all count, as long as you know that you are moving in the right direction.

Summary

The point of this post was not really to focus on fitness. These techniques and goal-setting tools work in any situation. The principles are:

1. First, figure out what you want, and why it is important to you. 
2. Second, find something you can do, right now, which moves you in the right direction.
3. Third, notice which things create (rather than take) energy. Spend your time on those, and automate or create routines to take care of the rest.
4. Fourth,  plan forwards, but measure backward. Set milestones so that you can recognize and celebrate your progress.

In business, this translates to Capitalogix having a mission and vision - it's what we want, and why it's important to us. I then create a yearly "Big 3" goals that move us toward that long-term vision. My team creates SMARTs (goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely) and KPIs (key performance indicators) so they know where to spend their time, and what milestones tell them they're on the right track.

Hope this helped.  

Getting To Here: Primal King Podcast

Here is a podcast worth listening to at the beginning of a new year.

A friend of mine, Derek Wilson, interviewed me about mindsets, decision-making, and calling the future you want into existence.

I think it's a good episode,  and it feels very fitting as we start the new year. Check it out.  Or download a transcript made with Otter.AI

 

 

You can also find his podcast on Apple Podcasts.

Best wishes for a great 2021!

Setting Yourself Up For A Successful 2021

We're about to usher in a new year – along with the promise and pressure of filling its blank slate.

2020 is nearly over.  What a strange year it was!

With 2021, we get a fresh start.  

We look forward to what we will achieve – even though history says we rarely achieve everything we hope for.  Meanwhile, paradoxically, it is also true that we rarely achieve things we don’t hope for.  So, Hope!  It may not be a reliable strategy ... but it beats the alternative.

Personally, I’m excited about 2021.

Despite the abnormal market and uncertain political climate, we're clearly moving toward increased stability compared to 2020.

Even though I expect some volatility, we have become more accustomed to handling it (and we've become better at transforming its strategic byproducts into strategic benefits).

On a different topic, think about how much progress we've made and how different the "new normal" has become.  For example, think about Zoom and remote work or how quickly our economy migrated online.  On many levels, what we are doing now seemed like science fiction even just a few years ago.

We are living in an age of exponential technologies and exponential possibilities.

I commissioned this image, from GapingVoid, to remind our team to keep shooting higher.

 

 

Resilience, resourcefulness, and a worthy goal are the keys to many entrepreneurial success stories.

In the spirit of New Year's Resolutions – I’ll add that a deliberate approach to goals is important too.

I'm a big fan of picking a Big Hairy Audacious Goal (sometimes called a "BHAG") and taking actions that move you in that direction. 

I'm also a big fan of Strategic Coach's Bigger Future exercise.  It is a 20-year planning exercise where you layout your commitments and goals to yourself, your family, your career, and your legacy. 

While doing this, I realized that my ideal next 20 years involves taking Capitalogix to the next level (and beyond) through collaboration, cooperation, and joint ventures. 

Once you know what your long-term goal is, it is relatively easy to plan out the steps you need to achieve that goal.  Achieving smaller goals reinforces success, builds momentum, and makes continued progress feel more likely.

Extra points if you make them SMARTs (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-Sensitive). 

Actions speak louder than words, and your words can distract you. 

If your goal is to win first place at a competition, focus on the metrics of a first-place finish instead of the medal. This makes the goal concrete and sets an internal locus of control on your victory.  This also means that you don't need to tell others your goal too soon. Studies show that when you announce your intention to a goal in public, you decrease the likelihood of you succeeding. 

It's okay to misstep, it's okay to get stuck - but recognize where you are, what you've done, and move forward. 

Often the most frustrating thing that any of us feel on a regular basis is to want something really bad, and not be able to get it right away.

The world makes that hard - media everywhere is peddling immediate gratification, but it results in higher rates of obesity, drug abuse, and depression. 

Don't be fooled.  Overnight successes are rarely actually overnight successes.

It's also important (once you've accomplished your goal) to set new goals. 

Over the next 20 years, there are a ton of people I want to impact and a lot of goals I want to accomplish. Capitalogix is the way I intend to do that.

It hasn't always been easy - but building Capitalogix has been an intensely rewarding passion.

I look forward to you all being a part of it as well. Here's to a successful 2021 and an even more successful 2041.  

Onwards!

The Shapes of Stories

Seemingly complex things are often simpler when understood.

This applies to many things.

For example, great writing is diverse and nuanced ... but its underlying structure isn't.

Kurt Vonnegut wrote a number of "Classics", including Cat's Cradle, Slaughterhouse-Five, and The Sirens of Titan.

For all his great writing, and all the complexities, he simplified stories into a few basic story shapes.

Here is a graphic that explains the concept.

Here is a 17-minute video of Vonnegut discussing his theory of the Shape of Stories.  You can get the basic concepts in the first 7 minutes ... but he is witty and the whole video is worth watching. 

 

 

You can explore a bit more elaborate version of his "Shapes of Stories" from his rejected Master's thesis from the University of Chicago.

Vonnegut's idea was fulfilled not too long ago--a computer was used to identify story shapes. Researchers extracted the emotional trajectories of 1,327 stories and discovered that there are six core emotional arcs:

• Rags to riches (a rise)
• Tragedy (a fall)
• Man in a hole (fall, then a rise)
• Icarus (rise, then a fall)
• Cinderella (rise, then a fall, then a rise)
• Oedipus (fall, then a rise, then a fall)

 For more on writing from Kurt Vonnegut:

• How To Write With Style
• Eight Rules For Writing Fiction

 

Thinking About Thinking

We're in the middle of annual planning - which I mentioned in my video on Chunking Higher. 

Today, I want to focus on another aspect of getting better at planning and alignment ... the idea of thinking about your thinking. 

I shot a video that discusses several useful techniques to amplify decision making.

 

 

One of the ideas is something called "Think, Feel, Know." Basically, it explains that you have to deal with superficial thoughts before getting to deeper feelings. Then, you have to deal with those feelings before you get to "knowing". 

Another technique discussed in the video involves adding time to look for "insights" after working on something.  Those insights are often the seeds for something greater.

Let me know what you think of the video ... and I'd love to hear ways you try to amplify intelligence.

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - December 13th, 2020

Here are some of the posts that caught my eye recently. Hope you find something interesting.

Lighter Links:

• Google Reveals the Most Searched Terms of 2020 - You'll Probably Guess a Few. (TechRadar)
• Ted Talk: The Strength In Weak Leaders. (TED)
• Microsoft Files Patent For a Chatbot that 'Could' Become the 'Twin' of a Deceased Person. (Entrepreneur)
• Seattle Tech Leaders Including Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella are Investing In Cricket Teams. (GeekWire)
• The Public Just Haven't Grasped What Happens When Hospitals Get Too Full — Covid-19 In America. (Economist)

 

Trading Links:

• Congress Just Voted To Spend $10 Billion On A.I, and Quantum Computing. (Protocol)
• Intel Not Inside: How Mobile Chips Overtook the Semiconductor Giant. (Wall Street Journal)
• The Best-Managed Companies of 2020 — And How They Got that Way. (Wall Street Journal)
• Tesla Tells Employees Model S and X Production Will Shut Down For 18 Days. (CNBC)
• Global Ranking: 20 Countries Where House Prices Rose Most In 2020. (UK)

Trends To Watch Due To The Pandemic

The pandemic has affected many things beyond basic health. Increasingly, I see research showing meaningful increases in pornography consumption, suicide rates, and a host of other trends that are shaping our world today ... but, in the longer-term, it is also affecting the face of tomorrow. 

Flexible Workplaces

In May, after only several months of lock-down, I was surprised how many businesses decided that they had no intention of ever requiring their employees to come back into the office. 

As we close in on a year in the pandemic, I am surprised how easily we adapted to the new normal.  Even with a vaccine in sight, I suspect many of the adaptations will remain.

Personally, I like going to the office.  Most days, I still do ... even though a tiny fraction of our people are there.

With that said, I know that our business matured.  We are better at the skills, tools, and mindsets that make remote work possible or profitable. We've gotten better at deciding what's a meeting (versus an e-mail or an online chat). People are working hours that are more comfortable for them, and we see meetings happen both earlier and later than they used to, before the quarantine. 

As a macro trend, we also see a flight from urban centers.

 

via visualcapitalist

I keep hearing about people moving far from their work-places.  Ultimately, they decided that remote work enables a new form of freedom for them – to live where they want, regardless of what they do (or who they do it for).

Over time, I'm curious how a remote workforce will impact the quality and the amount of work done. 

Adding to my initial concerns, flexible workspaces cause (or exacerbate) other issues, including cybersecurity, digital collaboration, defining the new workday, and a host of other challenges. 

Digital Explosion

I remember the early 2000s and the distress I felt watching how many time cycles my son "wasted" being on his phone (which to me, at that time, seemed like "all-the-time"). But, in retrospect, that was nothing. 

Flash forward to 2019, and everything was even more "digital" and "smart."  Refrigerators, exercise bikes, billboards, and more all had screens, and 2-year-olds were already digitally literate. "All-the-time" took on a whole new meaning.

Somehow, the pandemic still took our reliance on the digital world (or our augmented alternate reality) to the next level. 

 

via Alaska DHSS

Kids are also getting less physical activity and human contact, and spending much more time online.  Contributing to this is the reality that much of their academics have been forced online.  Likewise, adults also are shifting more of their attention and activity cycles to the digital world.

Continued screen-time increases coincide with video game revenue spiking and Internet traffic increasing by more than 50% worldwide. 

As the world opens up, I still expect digital reliance numbers to stay above pre-COVID benchmarks. People's reliance on digital to feed their need for information, entertainment, and companionship is growing.

Changing Business Landscape

Starting with consumers, we've seen a massive movement toward frictionless and touchless payment. Even physical stores are prioritizing getting in and out without having to deal with another human. In addition, there's a massive move toward delivery services for groceries and meals. 

On top of the changes to normal retail services, reliance on online shopping has increased, while the time it takes for electronic purchases to your door has decreased. Combined, these factors will terraform commerce.  Consequently, this year was likely an inflection point for e-commerce penetration ... and, from that perspective, life will never be the same again.

 

via visual capitalist

Despite the growth of online retail, many small businesses that couldn't move online are struggling, and many have already gone under. 

Which leads to the next trend ...

Increasing Wealth Stratification

While small business owners and front line workers have been struggling, billionaires saw their wealth increase by over half a trillion dollars. 

Part of this is due to government aid toward large companies, part of it is due to tax laws, and part of it is due to the digital rise mentioned in the previous section. The big tech companies were already thriving, and the pandemic created a positive inflection point. 

Despite those gains, the pandemic hit millennials and small businesses hard. 

 

via Morning Consult

The longer the economy is affected by COVID-19 measures, the larger the wealth inequality will grow, and the more people you can expect looking for government assistance. The strong will thrive while others will suffer increasingly from learned helplessness.

Obviously, the 2020 quarantine has created impacts in many other areas – including family stress, community isolation, political radicalization, etc. Moreover, these effects won't be isolated to this year - and we should expect many to impact our "new normal" for years to come.

Some people consider this a challenge. I think it's the playing field. It's going to be true for everyone. What you make it mean, and what you choose to do, it is up to you.  Some will be like a cork, floating on the water, going where the tide takes it. Others will recognize the situation as an opportunity and thrive.

The impact has been global, but the choices you make are local ... and they are still your to make.

Here is to making 2021 our best year yet!

Onwards!