Category: Thoughts
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The Difficulty of Imagining Other’s Perspective
In spite of an overwhelming group of people communicating their personal perspective on the internet, it still remains nearly impossible for us to understand how others see the world. We experience our lives in vivid 3D with a depth of emotion and experience that makes our perspective seem obvious. Meanwhile, we experience other’s perspective with…
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Serendipity, Making Friends and Marketing Adages
“I know I’m wasting half of my marketing budget, I just don’t know which half” – Old Marketing Adage Over the last several years, we moved to several different locations throughout the world. While we obviously enjoy the adventure of travel, one of the challenges we face is meeting new friends. In each locale, the…
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Political Corruption and Cultural Inertia
One of the more common topics of discussion here in Mexico is government corruption. It is a widely held belief that those with power abuse it for their own ends. Complaints abound but with no solutions. I think that cultural inertia plays a role — other people’s perception of our behavior affects the way that…
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The Power of Fear
Yesterday, I overheard a conversation at the airport between a husband and wife of a young family. The husband asked his wife: “Should we board? We can board at any time since we have young kinds” The wife responded: “Yeah, but I thought we could board when it was our turn”. The husband quickly retorted: “There…
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What Pleases and Satisfies?
A question was asked of MBA students at Stanford: “How much pleasure did your car provide you this morning?” The result of this survey showed that regardless of the type of car each student drove, they all had about the same satisfaction with their car that morning. Another question was posed: “How much pleasure does…
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What Do You Take Pictures Of?
This weekend we attended a birthday party for my Spanish teacher here in Guadalajara. Her friends brought a simple point-and-shoot digital camera and were taking lots of pictures of everyone there. They themselves posed for many pictures. I realized that the pictures I’ve seen from Mexican events are pretty much exclusively of the people that…
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The Importance of a Warm Up
Several weeks ago, we went to see Daddy Yankee in concert. He is one of the more popular reggaeton artists, which is mix between pop, rap, and latin music. Doors opened at 7pm, so we showed up 15 minutes early to queue up and get a good spot. After waiting for about an hour, they…
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Visualizing Our Mental Limitations
When I saw this picture on my friend Daniel’s blog, I immediately thought it was an excellent picture of one of the themes that I write quite a bit about — our inability to both predict the future and recollect with accuracy our past. In both cases, we don’t see things as clearly as we think…
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Cycle of Generosity
How do you normally respond when someone is unexpectedly nice to you? Our typical response is to want to pay them back as quickly as we can or to give them something in exchange. This works very well with the Hari Krishnas at the airport giving someone a flower, the person gives them money out…
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Rowers and Sailors: Two Types of Startups
More often then not, entrepreneurial enterprises get lumped together as all the same. We speak of entreprenuers which includes people who start restaurants, new retail stores, or web 2.0 companies. While we often recognize the difference between companies that “can scale” (like software) with companies that can not (consultant services, stores, etc), we seldom consider…