La crise, quelle crise ?

Catégorie : Idées

  • Day 462 – When to pull the plug?

    Day 462Success is the result of many failures. Many stories have been told around successes and failures. One salient point is generally about persistence. But persistence is a two-edge sword. Persisting while you know you’ll get through the hurdles is good and necessary. However persisting beyond the point of complete failure is mad. How many businesses have persisted and bankrupted their owners and investors? Probably too many.

    It’s interesting to discuss with professional traders and derive some learning. Successful traders are cold-blood human beings. They can weather storms, and we know there are violent storms in the stock exchange, but more than anybody else, they know when to get rid of a losing position> they will cut their losses before it’s too deep, for a simple reason: it’s better to lose one arm than both! But how do they do it? They follow a simple rule: they set a target and fire the action when the target is reached. There’s no emotion, just action!

    The same should happen with any project you pursue! Set a limit, persist until you reach it and if you reach it, pull the plug! It may happen you never reach your limit so you may persist until you reach success. But the lesson here is to avoid being stupid in face of adversity. In each and every project, there is risk. Risk ties to our fears and fear is an emotion you need to go beyond. With a limit, you do not kill the risk nor the fear, you inoculate the emotion. It’s like a vaccine: you may catch the disease, but it will not be deadly! So to answer the question I asked in the title is fairly simple: set a limit and pull the plug when you reach it!

  • Day 461 – Debt

    Day 461Debt is the price we pay to live in a modern world. Stop allowing a state to go into debt and most of our infrastructure will stop being maintained, large scale projects will not exist due to lack of funding. Debt can be good and debt can be bad, like most things in life by the way. However, with the various issues around debt in lots of countries and economies across the world, we may need to rethink progress. The world has grown so fast in the last century, so our debt. We will leave an almost dead planet to our kids and a debt they will make years to repay.

    Although I am not a macro economist, not an economist, I keep thinking of debt has good and bad, depending on whether it’s generating wealth or not. I could had to this its neutrality to the environment. In other word, a wealth generating debt that is taxing our environment is bad and so is a non-wealth generating debt that is neutral or positive to our environment. Although we can question the latter in terms of wealth, since if it’s positive to the environment, then it’s generating a certain form of wealth.

    Look at your debts. Get rid of those that are making other wealthy and keep those that are making yourself wealthy!

  • Day 460 – Scripting your life

    Farmers shed in the fields along side a gravel roadMy former partner in business had a motto: « what is not written does not exist ». He was, and still is, right (or shall I play a pun, he’s write). If you do not write it, you cannot share it, you cannot keep it, you tend to forget it. This stands true for everything in life, including your life. What is planning your day? Writing the script of the day. What is writing your goals for the year or your resolutions? Writing the script for the day. What is being part of the 5AM Robin Sharma’s club? Scripting the first hour of your day. In other words, all those activities are about scripting your day.

    When we talk script, we tend to think movies. Each movie has a script. A script contains, of course, the words the actors will need to say, as well as indication on how to play the scene. You will hear some directors stick to the script has it was Holy Scriptures, while others are loosely referring to it, letting actors play more « freely ». In all cases, a script is open to interpretation and therefore change. It’s not because it’s written that it should be played like it’s written, however, it if were not written, it probably could not be interpreted and changed. It’s because it exists it can be played differently.

    This goes with our own life. It’s really, really important to have a very precise idea of what you want in your life, emotionally, psychologically, financially, socially, etc. Thinking precedes scripting, scripting allows clarity, clarity provides direction, direction drives action. You may and will deviate from your script, because you will have to weather a storm or answer an unexpected opportunity. The script will be your own North Pole. There’s no good wind for a ship that does not have a harbor. Do not delay the writing of your script, do it!

  • Day 459 – Flow

    Water in motionThere are days that feels lighter than others. There’s levity in the air. Yesterday was one of those. When I started my morning jogging, my legs felt light and my pace was above average although I did not have the impression to make a conscious effort to run faster. My rule of thumb in those days is not to find the whys and the hows, but to leverage this levity into all the actions I am doing during the day.

    It’s a great day to revisit your monthly, quarterly and yearly goals. Where are you on those? What are the ones that need to be put back on track? It’s a great day to tick all that is on your To-Do. Generally, everything flows easily during those light day. Actually, this state is described in psychology as the flow. I like this sentence that describes the flow: « the hallmark of flow is a feeling of spontaneous joy, even rapture, while performing a task. »

    Above the joy, there’s the efficiency. You go fast, you go deep, but above all you go easy. So when you feel this flow, work with it, go along and do all that you have to do. Not only you will have done much more that an normal day, but you will have it done better and faster, and a surge of dopamine will flood your body! It feels good!

  • Day 458 – Be Brief, Be Bright, Be Gone!

    Day 458Almost two years ago, I had written an article in the Le Matinal entitled the same way, posted on this blog, and translated here. I was then giving the 5 Ss of being brief, bright and gone. But what stroke me those last couple of days is how verbose people can be on topics they do not have a single ounce on influence on, nor understand the real influence it has on their lives. Not that chitchatting is not a pleasant activity once in a while. It’s sometimes relaxing to discuss futile topics. However, I tend to focus my life on what and how I can make a difference in the world, close or far.

    For instance, read the whole noise around the elections in France or about the crash of the Germanwings flight. Of course those are important or dramatic topics that may impact millions of people. Now what influence do I (or you, individually) have on them? Probably none. Will they have an influence on me (or you)? Can I do something about this influence? If you do not live in a specific part of France, it has no real influence on you. On the flight security, it will have a possible positive influence if you are flying once in a while, but it may not really lead to a difference in the way to travel or make a decision on travel.

    However, you cannot open a newspaper, listen to a radio broadcast without having news on one of those topics. So if you want to comment on things you do not influence or which do not have any influence direct or indirect on my or you, be brief, be bright and be gone. We all have 24 hours every day and spending any extra minute on topics that we cannot influence is just a list topic. It’s not being uninterested in the world, it’s just focusing on what you can really deliver!