Categories
Business Internet Philosophy Self Development Technology Web

Intuition and Instinct are the New Tools of the Excessive Information Age

It has been quite some time since we’ve been living in the information age. We have already quite matured in the web 2.0 and online social network age. I’m sure you’ve heard so many times that we are just bombarded with information from everywhere. I call it the “excessive information age”. All of us are now more than ever so easily influenced by everything and everyone around us from all sorts of social media, and at the same time we are getting confused by all this noise.

It is almost inevitable that we will have to evolve. We are pushing limits of our social and logical cognition. If you really think about it, the situation almost requires quick judgement and adaptation. Stability almost seems nowhere to be seen, and for thousands of years in our evolution, stability is the one thing that we have experienced and adapted to. Our environment(by this I mean our day-to-day activities, by which I mean interaction online and interaction with computers in general) is changing at such a rapid pace that our minds are getting pushed to this quick form of adaptation. Cultures all around the world seem to be blending too. So what we learned while growing up might not necessarily be very useful when interacting when we start encountering people from different races and cultures around the globe. But we are learning and evolving now more or less a single unit.

What does all this mean. Well if you go to the theory of evolution and natural selection, this is what I think is bound to happen. Success in this time and age depends on quick, rapid yet correct action. You can either make it or break it in a few actions, sometimes in a matter of weeks, and crazily sometimes even in a matter of days.

What is needed in this age is not a 1000 hours of research to make a decision, as some people do when chosing a product, a service, a house, or a job. What is required in this age of excessive information is intuition and instinct to make a correct judgement and to be able to do it quick AND TAKE ACTION, at the same time being aware of  the risk of burning out too quickly. We are seeing instant successes – it no longer takes decades to reach a level that most people dream about, it takes a few years and sometimes just a few months, or in some extreme cases just a day, or well… just a single video of less than 5 minutes on this thing called ‘YouTube'(I’m sure you’ve heard of it)

I don’t see all of this as luck. I see all of this as evolution. People who might seem like they don’t have the slightest clue about what they are doing are becoming instant success. It is my belief (and please don’t sue me for this) that these people are instinctively driven to behave in a certain way, or to act a certain way.These individuals who posses this instincts to act in a quick and correct way will become successful, and to some ‘intelligent’ hard working people this may seem very scarey, because you no longer need to get a degree, or a Phd to get ahead in life(actually who am I kidding, that never was the case anyway).

What am I saying here? I’m saying, natural selection will take place because conditions have changed and the rules that applied in the past for success (and ultimately survival) don’t apply now. With these changes in the conditions in our ‘environment’ natural selection will pick out the new winners, who are instinctively driven by and towards quick correct actions.

 

Categories
Politics

Elections Canada 2011 – Part 1

So Canadians will be going to the polls yet again. Yes this is now clear because Parliament has been dissolved. But how did that all start? For people who are keeping up, you must have heard leaders of the major political parties of Canada say that Steven Harper's has been found in Contempt of Court. What does that really mean? Actions which can constitute a contempt of Parliament vary, but typically include such things as:

  • deliberately misleading a House of Parliament or a parliamentary committee;
  • refusing to testify before, or to produce documents to, a House or committee; and
  • attempting to influence a Member of Parliament, for example, by bribery or threats.

Following the budget, the three opposition parties were part of a sub-committee that released a report on ethics. The report recommended the Harper government be found in Contempt of Parliament for failing to disclose the price of new F-35 fighter planes and its failure to disclose the cost of some of its crime bills.

So the report on Contempt of Parliament led to the motion of non-confidence by the Liberal Leader and supported by NDP, and Bloc Québécois. This just means that majority of the members of parliament do not have the confidence in the ability of the Government to run the country.

 

Now to me its pretty obvious all the monkeys in parliament were just waiting to jump on an opportunity to throw the Conservative Party out of their throne, and this is their chance to do it in a legitimate way. That is not to say that what the Harper government has done is right in any way.

 

So now lets talk about the speeches that were given by the Leaders of the major political parties. I personally think Steven Harper gave a very powerful speech. Things that he said that were the highlights were (somewhere along the lines of): Harper was calling a coalition after being defeated in the elections as illegitimate, and then later corrected himself and used the words 'not principled', and that whichever party comes in power, whether as a majority or minority should be allowed to form government. And I agree with what he is saying. What the NDP, Liberals and Bloc tried to do in 2008 was just wrong – you cant lose and then try to form a government. The constitution of Canada does allow you to do that, but you it simply is against normal principles to do so.

 

Harper also added that having a party whose sole purpose is to divide the country (the Bloc) to be part of a government is just wrong, and I think is quite dangerous. He also added that the Ignatieff cannot be trusted and it's his hidden agenda to form a coalition government if Conservative's form a minority and was urging Canadians to vote for the Conservatives so that they can form a majority parliament.

 

Ignatieff seemed like he was taking the whole thing as a joke. Either that he was tried to cover up for something. Reporters repeated asked him about his stance of a coalition and although, he said that he was not going to form a coalition, he still was not clear enough. He kept saying that they will form a Liberal government and he kept saying that. He even said that if there is a minority Liberal government, he will not form a coalition, however he was not clear on what is going to happen if the Conservatives form a minority again. Will Mr. Iggy want to form a coalition then – just to not let the Conservatives rule? Ignatieff also argued that Canada is in a much better economic state then rest of the world because of the Liberal government that ruled previous to the Conservative government.

 

Jack Layton, did something that was quite smart and political. He took no questions, and took the role of a Hero. There was a huge crowd of NDP supporters, chanting, "NDP, NDP, NDP" and "Jack Jack Jack" in brief moments throughout Layton's speech. He is running for Prime Minister, and he has made that clear. Both the Liberal and NDP leader commanded that cutting taxes for giant corporate companies was not the way to go. Layton used all the buzz words – health care reform, eduction, pension plan etc… Layton said that he is going to be providing support for small businesses and better opportunity for post secondary education. I personally agree to both of those. I being part of a small business myself believe that it will definitely benefit me. Also because of a job losses, many people have started small businesses. And small businesses need support to keep the competition going, because if can get difficult to compete with larger corporate companies.

 

I also agree to having lower taxes for larger corporate companies so that they can ultimately create more jobs. But what about the general public? He keeps cutting taxes for corporate companies and increases taxes for the general public.

 

But is Layton ready to be Prime Minister? I think not! He did have a Heroes moment today, but where does he plan to get enough support? And I sure do no want to see a coalition government, because 2 years down the road we will see another election,.. then what?

 

And then a turn of events when Douchebag..err.. I mean, Duceppe, the leader of the Bloc party called Harper a liar and showed the press a letter which he said was waving a 2004 letter signed by Harper, NDP leader Jack Layton and Duceppe, addressed to then-governor-general Adrienne Clarkson, which the three opposition leaders proposed a coalition government in the event the Liberal minority government of Paul Martin lost a confidence vote. Could that be? I actually think Harper is capable of doing that.

 

And there is the Green party…or should i say "the Green Party?". Are they even a real serious political party? No one from the party even won a seat in the last election. I am all for the environment, but we need real leaders to run a government and to lead a country not tree huggers.

 

There's more to come in the following days and weeks leading to the election on May 2, 2011!

Categories
Business

Business Bottom Line – Getting out of a Financial Crisis

What is that one thing that will have the largest impact in your business. That one thing that will have the largest impact on your profit and that one thing that will get you out of a financial crisis?

Why am I so concerned about profits and money making. Well that is THE reason why businesses exists – to make profit. Sure, ideologically businesses are there to provide services, products and serve its customers. But how many businesses do you see in existence that provide all kinds of great products and service and make their customers happy and do not make any profit? The real answer is NONE!

If you are thinking that there some companies who provide great products and services but aren’t making profits, then its either a temporary situation that the business is in, or if they maintain this trend, they will soon go out of business. If however, it is neither of the cases then that business is,..well…out of business already.

Profit is the juice, the fuel, the gas, the food, the energy, the chi, the life force that keeps businesses operating. The book definition of profit is Income minus expenses, and to maintain a positive profit(i.e. NOT loss), which is also something that we are actually interested in, you need to have income more than expenses.

So what is that one thing that has the largest impact on profits? The answer is SALES, SALES, SALES and more SALES.

Let’s face it, you can reduce your expenses as much as possible, streamline the crap out of your business, but if you are falling short on SELLING, then you are in trouble. The only way to get your business out of a financial crisis, is to sell yourself out of one – and that is the bottom line!




Categories
Uncategorized

Accident – my script removed all comments

I just want to say sorry to all my readers and subscribers. Comments that were posted on my blog by you folks were accidentally removed. I keep getting spam comments from people and in order to get rid of those I wrote a script and without realizing I deleted all the legitimate comments on my site. I’m pretty sure that happened months ago and I just recently noticed it – as you can tell from my last blog post which was indeed months ago.

Categories
Business Philosophy Self Development

Learning from Success

I haven’t really found it a very useful strategy to learn from your failures. Every time I realize that I have made a mistake or that I have really failed at something and decide that this is the particular lesson I have learned from it, I really don’t really seem to learn a lot or that it really doesn’t help me a lot. I have only learned how not to fail again, but haven’t really learned how to succeed in that particular situation. I mean, really think about it. Do you really want to know all the ways of how not to fail, or would you rather learn a few techniques that help you succeed and master it?

For the past one year I have been reading, listening and watching a lot of self help, or self development material. My understanding of peak performance, about different tools and strategies to achieve your goals, how to set your goals and how to determine what I really want in life has expanded to an extent to which I can safely say I can write a book now from what I have learned and from my own way of thinking. And for some reason there always seems to be something lacking. It helps me a little, but then sometimes(not always) I fall in to the same rut; into the same old habits.

Just two days ago I was thinking about all my successes in the past. Actually I have done that a lot of the times in the past. I think about all my successful moments in life and keep wandering, what was it really that made the difference. It has been many months, and for some situations I can even say it has been years since I started inquiring about what it really was that made the difference. There have been times when success seemed so easy to attain. Two days ago I made some very key distinctions that resulted in my quick and easy success.

  1. I knew exactly what I wanted and believed without a doubt that I could achieve it. Failure not only was not an option, it just didn’t exist in my mine; I could not even imagine what failure in those instances would be like.
  2. I just did it! I did not plan, or think, or ponder, or come up with a strategy.
  3. It was fun, enjoyable and exciting. No matter how difficult it would have seemed from a third person view point, I did not see it as work. It was so much just natural.
  4. I was focused on the end result, and every step I took was in the direction of what I wanted, and every step that took me away from it was quickly eliminated.
  5. I did not look at temporary set backs as failure. I took it as, since this doesn’t work, the set of possible guesses was getting smaller and I was getting closer to success.
  6. Once I believed I had succeeded, I tested it! And started using what I learned from it.

According to me, these are my key 6 steps that I have used unconsciously to succeed. What is or was your success strategy? I’m sure everyone has their own strategy; their own algorithm of success. Scrap out the old belief that you have to fail many times to succeed. Before I knew this idiotic concept of learning by failure, I was actually successful in a lot of things that I did. When I started learning from failure, I was actually failing more and succeeding less. You know what they say, “I was born smart, education made me stupid”.

Categories
Internet Software Technology Web

#CIRA 2010

I attended the annual CIRA(Canadian Internet Registration Authority) annual general meeting. There were two brilliant keynote speakers Terry O’Reilly – radio host of CBC’s O’Reilly and The Age of Persuasion, Mitch Joel – Social Media expert and author of Six Pixels of Separation. There was a panel of “Architects of the Internet”, which had some of the most brilliant and pioneers in the field and they discussed the origins and the future of the Internet.

Paul Vixie – Internet Systems Consortium(ISC). He is the primary author of BINDv8, has been contributing to Internet protocols and UNIX systems since the 1980s. He has developed tools like, sends, rtty, cron etc…

John Demco – Webnames.ca. John is basically the God Father of “.ca”. He helped create the .CA domain in 1987 and was its initial registrar, and chairing the CA Domain Committee until 2000. He has also been responsible for chairing and managing a number of academic and research networks.

Chris O’Neil – Google Canada. Chris leads Google’s operations in Canada as Country Director for Google Canada. He is focused on building Google’s brand and driving innovation to help fuel growth for Canadian Business.

Byron Holland – President and CEO of CIRA.

Categories
Business Internet Marketting Software Technology Web

Get mobile but dont throw your laptop away

Everyone everywhere is getting mobile – actually this statement is so 2000. What I should be saying is everyone is mobile and everyone is connected everywhere every time, and the fact is even that this is so 2006.

The question that I am trying to answer is – should we be throwing away our desktops and laptops and go completely mobile with cell phones and tablets like the iPad?

Definitely throw away your desktop. If you just bought one, then keep it to store your media and then when it’s time to throw it away, throw it away.

Laptops – keep those because they won’t be going away anytime soon. The iPad isn’t really a netbook killer yet and netbooks simply put are not notebooks. There are a lot of things that the iPad doesn’t have. Like a web cam, less computing power and etc etc. We’ve heard all about the iPad haven’t we?

Even this blog was posted from my phone, and I am not talking about using a web browser on my phone. I’m actually using a wordpress app on my iPhone to draft and post. I can approve, disapprove and delete comments directly from this app.

When I need to go somewhere and I don’t know where it is, I don’t even bother checking. I get in my car, look it up the gps on my IPhone and I’m off.

I don’t carry a watch on me, I use my phone(likes millions do these days), I don’t keep alarm clock – got a phone. And remember those daily planners, those little books they used to carry back in the days – ya you don’t even need that anymore, and if you are still carrying those – shame on you!

Get a smart phone!!

Even shopping had been made easy. Some of the major stores have their own apps for phone like the iphone and you can browse their entire catalog.

Just about to head into a meeting, so I’ll just wrap it up here, but stay stunned!

Categories
Philosophy Self Development

“Do it Anyway!”

The Paradoxical Commandments” by Kent Keith(Mother Teresa Version)

People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered;
Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;
Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies;
Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;
Be honest and frank anyway.
What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;
Build anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;
Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have,
and it may never be enough;
Give the world the best you’ve got anyway.
You see, in the final analysis,
it is between you and God;
It was never between you and them anyway.

Categories
Business Philosophy Self Development

One of the best definitions of Success

This to me is probably one of the most accurate definition of success. In 1904, Bessie Anderson Stanley wrote the following definition of success in Brown Book magazine:

He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often and loved much; who has enjoyed the trust of pure women, the respect of intelligent men and the love of little children, who has filled his niche and accomplished his task; who has left the world better than he found it, whether by an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul; who has never lacked appreciation of earth’s beauty or failed to express it, who has always looked for the best in others and given them the best he had, whose life was an inspiration, whose memory a benediction.

Categories
Business

Toastmasters – Ice Breaker Speech

I joined Toastmasters a little over a month ago and yesterday I gave my first speech; the so called ‘ice-breaker speech’. I think I did well. For anyone who does not know what Toastmaster is, it is basically a public speaking club. I am a member of the North York Toastmaster’s club in Toronto. It’s a very diverse group since there are first timers to very experienced public speakers. Everyone’s very friendly and very encouraging. There are a lot of talented speakers there too, which is amazing because it will give me the added motivation to keep improving myself. I absolutely get totally engrossed in listening to some of the speeches.

I went full out and gave it all that I had in my own first speech. I actually went way over the time limit,…hehe, but yes since it was my first speech it was quite flexible. I will have to work on that in my following speeches.

Overall it was an amazing experience. Can’t wait for my next speech. 🙂