serious comedy

Not so much an investment 'cycle' as an investment fun-run.

2009-08-20T13:50:00.002+12:00

I recently saw the movie ‘Run Fat Boy Run’ in which the unachieving loser-hero Dennis abandoned his pregnant wife-to-be at the altar and five-years-on attempts to win back her heart and their son by completing a marathon.(Well, we’ve all been there.)Several themes in this movie about running struck me as analogous to investment. For a start, the American was stuffing it up for everyone else.

The actor playing Dennis’s nemesis (say that really fast a few times) is the same guy who voices half the characters for ‘The Simpsons.’ That the man behind the character deficiencies of Apu Nahasapeemapetilon and Moe was portraying an American investment banker in this movie was highly ironic given recent financial events.

There are prizes and attention for those who win marathons but only a few win, yet thousands enter anyway. To quote the movie again whenever anyone said they ran marathons, “Why!?” Winning, in investment terms, isn’t about sprinting out of the block; it’s about crossing the finish line. There lie rewards for all and those rewards and goals are highly individualised. Once the kick-arse high-performance competitors are out of the way, there is always space for amblers and people with disabilities. And lots of us are financially disabled.

In Auckland’s ‘Round The Bays’ fun-run, the Prime Minister was at the start line cheering us on, making sure we were all going in the right direction and aren't politicians kinda sorta doing the same thing for us with our investments? I suppose by setting up a massive investment fund for selected R&D grant applicants rather than tax breaks for all R&D, they're picking winners. That would be like standing at the start line of the run tripping up 95% of the runners, or giving them a ride a quarter of the way in their taxpayer-funded hybrid-limo?

I don’t want to spoil the ending of the movie but Dennis was tripped up not long after the start of his marathon. It would have been very understandable for him to have given up at that point and gone back to his easy yet empty life. That type of decision point occurs many times during the course of an investment. True investment winners know it is about the long term, staying the course and focusing on the end-goals which is exactly what Dennis did, quite literally. The physical stress caused by the demands on the body of endurance events can cause parts of the brain to shut down. In particular those parts that handle emotion and logic. All that’s left is the core and primal ‘reptilian’ brain at the top of the spinal column which controls things like breathing so we don’t have to bother remembering at a conscious level. When we hit this ‘wall’, in running or investing, our brains fall back on instinct so it vital to have the fundamentals drummed into our subconscious. No one in their right mind would consider taking part in a marathon without training first. Most compete in smaller events first. That’s a very good model for investors, all the way back to primary school savings accounts, learning valuable lessons about putting eggs into more than one basket.

Dennis’s nemesis attempts to break Dennis’s spirit by telling him he lacks discipline and perseverance – the two essential characteristics of a successful marathoner. As well as being a shot at Dennis for lacking those qualities pursuing the woman they both hanker after, those same qualities are essential for investors.

Finally, amidst all the joy and endorphins of crossing the finishing line, you also get a free tee-shirt to commemorate the occasion. Rarely do you get that with investments. Imagine, “I invested with Blue Chip and all I got was this lousy tee-shirt and an extremely dubious property valuation.”

Don't call us, we'll call you: Recruitment tools in other areas of life

2009-02-18T20:56:00.003+13:00

As employers, we are constantly upskilling ourselves to make the best recruitment decisions we possibly can. In addition, we have a life outside work so why wouldn't we apply all our ample employer skills to other non-employment situations? How, for example, might we synthesise recruitment tools to assist in our children's choice of cuddle-buddies, or our nation's selection of its political representatives?

Many people observe the disappointing antics in parliament and judgementally comment that politicians’ behaviour is akin to that of poorly raised children. The Super Nannies of this world would have us believe that poorly raised children can have their behaviour positively modified via a process called "time-out." They are removed from the scene of their delinquency to a place where they do nothing. This process has little chance of modifying the behaviour of politicians as parliament is already the place where they do nothing. So, what alternatives exist? Screen them before they get there.

A typical rudimentary recruitment process might include the drafting of a job specification, placing of an advertisement, reviewing of CVs, structured interviews, psychometric profiling and referee checking. You’d think that with the six-figure salary that MPs get, I’d suggest a more in-depth array of tools but under the system I’m proposing, MPs would be working mostly for tips so I think this will be sufficient.

A chap from Kiwihost was telling me that the average service experience in New Zealand on a scale from one to ten, after tens of thousands of mystery shopping surveys, is between 3 and 4. (That’s the average; there may be exceptional places where you can expect a five.) So, given that New Zealand is a representative democracy, it only makes sense that we can expect no better from our representatives. And I think that most days, we get a solid three out of ten. Working for tips is MPs’ incentified track to improvement.

The job specification wouldn’t take long - just photocopy Philip Taito-Fields’ job specification and delete about half of it. (You’d have to keep the bit that says, “Assist as required.”) The advertisement needn’t be expensive – just place a card in the window of a pub somewhere. For a start, applicants would have to be able to read which in itself might be a quantum leap forward. If they couldn’t read themselves, they might get a friend to do it for them. Of course they’d actually have to have a friend, which again would be an improvement for most MPs. Psychometric profiling would present the greatest difficulty. They’d have to answer questions without conducting an opinion poll or simply agreeing with their leader. So it would be a short questionnaire, which will save on consultants’ (quite reasonable) fees. What a wonderful future.

And as long as we’re postulating about a wonderful future designed and controlled by our government on our behalf, why are there not teams of scientists working on growing a broccoli that tastes like chocolate? Seriously, how could the anti-GM mob and Greens muster support against that? Chocolate is a vegetable! 5+ a day, I say.

Wikipedia is intended to be a real-time online encyclopaedic repository continually on the grow, fed by all the world’s browsing population and their collective genius. If you know something about our parliamentary wannabees that no one else does, you can reveal all on their Wikipedia page. If your update is inaccurate, flagrantly slanderous or merely disputed, no doubt there is a rigourous moderation process that kicks in at some stage after only a few hundred thousand people have read it and forwarded the ‘facts’ by email.

More than one person has told me that when they meet someone new, they often google them. Not nearly as personally intrusive as such a verb may have sounded ten years ago, googling may yet prove to be a valuable recruitment screening tool. Even if we consider it unsound or unethical for researching potential staff, we may be less critical when using it for valuable fact-finding about our children’s dates.

As a former young person myself in courting mode, I had frequent occasion to “meet the parents.” We all know our rights when we “meet the police” but there appears to be no civil rights or Geneva Convention when it comes to being interrogated by your girlfriend’s old man. It shouldn’t take too long to draft up a set of rights. Silence and anything you say being used against you are two that leap immediately to mind.

Let’s be honest, no matter how liberal, there was always an element of interrogation. Surely our own Generation ‘Y’ teenage children would appreciate some honesty and efficiency in these matters. They can fill out a psychometric profile. Obviously to “get with” their contemporary hip-hop-happenings, we could conduct it online or txt it 2 dem:

“So, wot r yr n10shuns wid my dorta?”

If they text back via a template, you know they’re smart enough to be your MP but clever enough to outsmart you.

Managers: Building The Perfect Beast - Recruiting or Cloning?

2009-02-05T22:11:00.002+13:00

I have a number of fears. I suffer from Agoraphobia – fear of open spaces. (Not to be confused with Angoraphobia – irrational fear of expensive goats-wool sweaters.) I suffer from axiquixotyltlatamsgpixzaphobia – the fear of mispronouncing words. Most recently, I have been gripped by the debate on cloning and genetic engineering and the fears raised by that debate.

I have recently conducted an extensive and elaborate exercise with an awful lot of job descriptions (as opposed to a lot of awful job descriptions.) I sat with my colleagues and wistfully compared our practice of pulling bits of roles from here and there to build a composite role to the practice of Doctor Frankenstein. How often when looking at an almost equal group of candidates have you said something akin to “If only we had a candidate with the experience of person A and the communication skills of person B?” Hmmmm.

Many a superhero is the result of laboratory experiments gone horribly wrong. Hulk, Spiderman, Invisible Man, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Why not redirect this scientific effort into creating some positive outcomes for the recruitment profession? If scientists can grow a human ear on the back of a rat, then the technology can’t be far off. A call centre operator with extra ears can only be positive for service levels. Parking wardens with thicker skin. Used (sorry pre-loved) car salesmen with a conscience.

Sure there are ethical questions such as “What would the commission be on a clone?”

Genetic engineering is a big worry for me. Peanut plants are very sturdy and resistant to bugs and diseases so it is very tempting to use peanut genes in other crops. I’m very allergic to nuts. If I eat them I could die. If I go out to eat, the subject of my nut allergy always comes up. If I mention it to the waiter they always look at you funny (well, funnier than waiters normally look at customers.) If I don’t mention it, I might eat nuts then die all over the table. Either way, it gets drawn to the attention of people and becomes part of the conversation. "Excuse me, I like the look of the Thai style prawn. Does it have nuts in it?" The waiter or waitress generally gives me a look at this point that says "Fussy." Anticipating this from experience, I then respond "The reason I ask is not that I’m being fussy. Its just that I’m allergic and I could die or at least make a scene which could make the restaurant look bad in the eyes of the other diners and will adversely affect your tip."

Despite this or because of this, I have on three occasions, still been brought dishes with nuts in them. Restaurants are dimly lit places. You think this is to create ambience. No, it is to prevent people examining their food too closely and to aid the covert removal of bodies. Dinner conversation inevitably gets onto the subject of first-aid trachyometries. "Where do you make the incision?" "So you can just use the tube from a pen eh?" "How sharp does the knife have to be?" "I’m having the steak." Then you get all the TV medical experts. "Yeah. Yeah. That was the episode of MASH when RADAR was lost by himself and picked up a wounded soldier who got shot and Hawkeye coached him how to do it over the radio…" "Me. I’m an ER man myself…" And I’m just thinking " I wish we’d gone to Burger King."

The point of that story started out being about genetic engineers messing with nature and the potential for unexpected and unpleasant consequences. By the time I finished the paragraph, I got side-tracked onto waiting staff. That’s an occupation with which we are all familiar and probably one where we’ve experienced the complete spectrum of service. Why is that? It is supposed to be an entry-level role isn’t it, with basic easily learnt skills? Yet service varies wildly. Exceptionally skilled people with wonderful attitudes can be recruited until the cows come home but if they are not working in an environment that supports them, they are constrained and likely to move on. In my experience, organisations of whatever size or nature have a “way of doing things round here.” Bring in a star-clone by whatever magical recruitment methods and they encounter that “way of doing things round here.” In a restaurant they way things are done round there is the way the boss done things round there. I recently worked in a large organisation with five divisions. It was almost as if it was five different organisations who just happened to share the same corporate wardrobe. You know how sometimes owners start to look like their pets? It was like that with these divisions and their general managers. This organisation was investing time, money and commitment in a corporate-wide approach to recruitment with no parallel effort in ensuring a corporately consistent “way things are done around here.” Maybe I’m stretching the cloning metaphor but I went to a website containing the most frequently asked cloning questions. One question was about how feasible it would be to clone Russell Crowe. The scientist’s answer avoided the ethics but apparently even if they could get close enough to grab some DNA, the development of the clone is just as affected by its developmental environment as it is be the genetic factors. So the metaphor holds true, even for our recruitment clone it is the environmental factors that can mess with our star-clone recruit. Might be an idea not to look at recruitment in isolation, but as part of an ongoing process including job design, orientation, performance management etc. (Actually, I can’t imagine it being a problem getting Russell’s DNA. More of a problem avoiding it.)

Even if it were possible, ethical and desirable, I’m still not keen on being cloned personally. German mythology has the doppelganger. They reckon everyone has someone who is their exact duplicate and when you meet them, you die. For people who believe that, what must their social lives be like?

Question: "What are you doing on Saturday night?"

Answer: "Staying at home and avoiding all human contact."

How could you avoid your doppelganger? If you weren't of Chinese descent and went to live in China, you could safely socialise with a billion and a half people. Of course there was that Seven Years In Tibet movie where Brad Pitt played a German living in Tibet which is now under Chinese rule, so I suppose there is a small risk, if you are the exact likeness of Brad Pitt. In this case, my advice is to take your chances and place a call to Jennifer Aniston this very minute.

Science fiction offered up the other employee alternative of androids. If you think humans can get a bit bolshy when it comes to contracts, I suggest you watch Bladerunner. Gives a whole new meaning to the expression “unjustified termination.”

Cloning and G.E. all seem like a great idea at first. Like my idea for a combination coffee thermos and cellphone. It seems like a great idea until the first solicitor’s letter arrives.

Normal transmission will be resumed as soon as possible

2009-01-24T22:26:00.004+13:00

I never go on holiday during the holidays. Most everyone else does. Auckland is a lovely place when most of the people in it leave so I stay. I wait until the weather improves and the schools go back (or thereabouts.) Kind of now-ish. The blog will recommence after Waitangi Day. I could update via my i-Phone but I'm anticipating not doing so. Sharpening the saw and all that. The pen may be mightier than the sword but a sharpened saw, that's pretty mighty.

I'm guessing the next blog post could be about Waitangi Day or a summation of trips to Pancake Rocks, Adventure Tourism, Albatross colonies, chocolate factories, glaciers, hydro-electric dams, goldmines, restored steam trains, fjords, watched whales and the cabin fever of campervanning with kids. I swore I would never be campervan guy but I am now - blocking a state highway near you. Unless you're in Auckland, in which case, it's nowhere near you.

The Basement Of Our Lives - Generation Gaps

2009-01-24T22:18:00.007+13:00

Last weekend, I was skimming through some old papers I’d received at one of the first conferences I MC’d some years ago. I was supposed to be cleaning out the shelves in the basement. My possessions undergo a rigorous protocol to determine whether or not they remain in my possession. Items in constant use stay where they are constantly used, like on the bench. Items used occasionally get slotted into a cupboard, although a nearby cupboard. Items rarely used get posted to a distant cupboard up the back in the dark that you can only reach with a stepstool, a torch and dislocating vertebrae in the process. There follows a descending evolution of merit to the pile out the back of the shed in the garden which is the penultimate stage before the local Council’s inorganic collection. (Oddly enough, many organisations have a similar descending proximity approach to their people, particularly the bit about the distance, the dark and the garden. Hence the term, 'gardening leave.')

So, I’m looking at the conference papers for the first time since the conference, not so much out of interest but out of a desire to avoid doing the actual cleaning. There was a list of the tools employers can use to assess the suitability of candidates for employment. Each tool was ranked in order of its proven effectiveness in determining the eventual success of candidates in the workplace. The number one tool had an effectiveness of 0.52 which places it fractionally above tossing a coin or picking red or black on a casino’s roulette wheel. Fortunately it suggested that combining a number of tools was the best way to increase the odds of selecting suitable candidates. Good advice – more people should read advice like that more often. But that wasn’t what caught my eye as I read the paper amidst the dust, spiders and unknown sticky floor stains covered in sawdust of my basement detritus. The lowest scoring determinant was age.

A recent Department of Labour report showed New Zealand is leading the way in employing more older people in the workforce. (Older? Older than what? Age is such a relative concept. Someone once gave me a photograph of themselves then said, “This is a photograph of me when I was younger.” Surely, every photograph of you is of you when you were younger? Anything else is way too Dorian Gray for my liking.)

It is said that ‘older’ workers (55-59) are less likely to want to climb the corporate ladder, more likely to want to add value in a job they enjoy and are more loyal. It didn’t say if they were more prone to writing impromptu letters to the editor, criticising the haircuts of their younger colleagues or making constant glowing references to some unspecified semi-fictional period known as the “good old days” when it only rained at night, the All Blacks always won and everyone had two well paying jobs yet still had sufficient spare time to coach their local primary school’s rugby team that went on to produce several All Blacks who always won on gloriously sunny Saturdays.

Older workers do stand out though for other reasons. They have names like Stanley, Harold, Gladys and Edith. I have not once ever met a sixty-year-old named Kylie or Madison. Mind you, I’ve never met a five-year-old Gladys either. Perhaps I should search MySpace?

Many employers would struggle today to survive without workers who immigrated here. From high tech companies to the local supermarket’s checkout, we are greeted by people with different cultures, languages and skin tone. Hopefully we generally try to accept those people and ease their transition to their new environment. If we do that for folks from another country, why wouldn’t we do that for folks from another time? (Which is effectively what older workers are.) They have a different culture, a different language and a different skin tone, no matter how much moisturiser they’ve plastered on themselves over the decades. Time travel is possible; it just happens to be one-way and a very slow process.

Older workers sticking it out have adapted to a changing work environment and so should employers. I was in Burger King recently and couldn’t help overhearing the mobile phone conversation of a lady at the table next to me – probably sixty (the lady not the table.) She was engaged in a blackmarket online exchange of knitting patterns, using a similar business model to the music file-sharing concepts of Napster. Wow, that is a successful collision of cultures. I almost regret turning her in.

People are not like household possessions. Employers should not shunt them down some informal ladder as they age until they lay unwanted on a pile behind the garden shed awaiting the employment equivalent of the inorganic collection to come and take them away. (Although if it’s the Council doing the taking, maybe they put them to work and that’s why my resource consent is taking so long!)

New Year's Resolutions (Wear Sunscreen)

2009-01-24T07:04:00.008+13:00

It’s that time of year when those of us in biggish organisations feel duty-bound to set goals aligned with our corporate strategic plan. Or ‘New Year’s resolutions’ as they’re also known. Mine started on Christmas Eve as I trawled through a crowded shopping mall thinking what kind of idiot goes shopping on Christmas Eve? I hadn’t forgotten to get gifts. I was determined to wait until the Two Dollar Shop had a sale but it never came. I resolved to buy early next year. There is actually a website called www.how-to-keep-your-new-years-resolution.com. (Don’t go there.) I have also resolved to use less often the phrases “Don’t go there” and “Actually.” The popularity of the notion of a New Year’s resolution might be fading. Mention “resolution” to a kid today and they’re likely to assume you’re talking about PC monitors. Resolutions get tarred with the same brush as political promises, which is a shame. Politicians are like nappies. Both should be changed often. And for the same reason.

I must confess that I fell into the second oldest New Year’s resolution trap in the world. I promised to lose weight. I got out my jogging gear and was about to hit the road. I even got one of those little jogging radios you clip to your waistband. I bent over to tie up a shoelace and my stomach-fat changed channels. Naturally I went to the radio shop to complain. They said, “Get lost fatso.”

I believe our work goals and our personal resolutions all too often suffer a similar fate. I resolve to do my best to empower you to avoid my pattern of failure and achieve, achieve, achieve in 2009. Before you know it, one thing will lead to another. Then you’ll have two things.

Achieving goals is about commitment. Remember the bacon and egg pie. The chicken is involved, but the pig is committed! If you’re passionate and committed and your goal is in sight but you’re struggling, maybe even thinking of quitting and leaving it to the professionals, just remember, amateurs built the Ark but the Titanic was built by professionals. It’s about commitment not good intentions. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Except in my neighbourhood, where the road to hell is continually being dug up by contractors laying fibre for telecommunications companies that will either collapse, merge or focus overseas, resulting in their network roll-out’s cancellation. Which is another example of good intentions and goals unachieved really.

The Rolling Stones sang “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” Getting what you want is made easier if you know what you want in the first place. Not that I’m espousing basing your life choices on the titles of songs by the Rolling Stones. I don’t want you ending up getting no satisfaction.

So here are my five pieces of New Year kick-starting advice. (Four come from a beer commercial. They may be familiar to you.)

Do something every day that scares you. By this I don’t just mean driving to work. I’m sure that when this cliché was originally penned (and then of course, it wouldn’t have been a cliché) that the author didn’t literally mean “scared.” I choose to interpret this as ‘edge of comfort-zone’ scared, not ‘parachute-malfunction’ scared. Daily might be a bit much these days too. I’d aim for once a week. So do something at least weekly that lies at the edge of your comfort zone is basically what I’m saying here. Ultimately it’s the trend that people notice so as long as at the end of 2009, you can look back and see that each week on average that comfort zone was stretched. You’re only human.

Love like you’ve never been hurt. Again I’m not suggesting that you go around literally loving people. Who has the time? To me, this cliché means that you need to learn from previous experience but not retain its emotional baggage. Watch a cat out bird-hunting. When it pounces and misses, it doesn’t start crying, lamenting the raw deal it’s been dealt. It adjusts its co-ordinates and pounces again. Maybe it’s a kiwi thing holding us back. I was at a Sydney beach last year. I’d finished my lunch and threw the last of my chips to the seagulls. As you do. (Note to self – resolve not to use phrase “as you do” anymore.) These Aussie seagulls leapt into action and fought each other frenetically for ascendancy and position for the chips, elbowing each other out of the way. (Technically seagulls don’t have elbows but this is a metaphor and you’ll have to work with me.) The alpha male caught the chips just as they were about to hit the sand and triumphantly flew above the flock squawking “I’m number one! I’m number one!” I was at Takapuna beach last week and again threw the last of my chips to a flock of New Zealand seagulls. The chips hit the ground. The seagulls looked at the chips, looked at each other then looked at me as if to sat “Bit far away mate.” And they sat there waiting. Maybe they were waiting for the chips to move closer by themselves? Maybe they were waiting for the government to place some chips directly in their beaks? I don’t know. Then one seagull broke from the flock and moved towards the chips. He’d gone about three metres when he tripped over his own feet and fell beak-first into the mud. Stuck there, he started to cry. Some ants took the chips. I think they were Australian.

Dance like no one’s watching. If you’re dancing in your office, or doing anything else you’d rather no one saw and you think no one’s watching, I have two words for you: “web cam.” My interpretation of this cliché is that dancing is one of those activities that required practice and coaching and when you first start out, chances are you’re not good and you’re very self-conscious. This applies to anything like starting a job, course or project. If you can’t handle being observed during your learning stages, that’s a major obstacle to success.

Work like you own the company. This doesn’t mean parking where you like and storing large quantities of company stock and equipment in your basement. To me this gets back to examining what it is you want to be and achieve, in your work and personal life. If these don’t match the goals and values of your employer, then that’s a large chunk of your time not contributing to your happiness. Plenty of shareholders “own” companies and don’t do any work for them at all. I’m sure the author of this cliché meant work like you had a hobby that started generating revenue to the point where you gave up your day-job then got sufficiently successful so you had to hire others to help you but now you’re doing a lot of things like GST that aren’t directly related to the original fun hobby. Take a couple of steps back from that point and that’s how you should work.

Wear sunscreen. Self-explanatory surely. Do I have to do everything for you? And don’t call me surely…

Life's Too Short

2009-01-23T06:42:00.009+13:00

The other day someone asked me what skills I have learned that can be used in managing the stress caused by the Christmas / New Year / summer holiday season. Here was a person not only determined to let the holidays cause them stress but was investing time and energy anticipating that stress. I bought them a(nother) drink and told them the following joke: "Someone put a little notice under my windscreen wiper. It was headed Parking Fine. It’s always nice to get a compliment."

She laughed, stopped asking me questions and walked away but my point is that everything depends on how we choose to react to situations. One person’s stress is another person’s motivation and Christmas is much the same. From commercial hype to religious differences to the fertile ground for conflict laid by blood relatives in enclosed spaces with alcohol and over-excited children. It doesn’t have to be like that. If we compared family arguments at Christmas to a crime scene then it ain’t Christmas’ fault. Christmas provided the opportunity but not the motive.

The reason such scenes occur is due to the repression of lots of little incidents and feelings. Then when they do get released, it is volcanic in proportions, rather than the hissy-fit status they deserve. This why organisations make regular performance reviews mandatory, or at least why they should. Things can be nipped in the bud. Pressure release valve opportunities are provided. Today we are so focused on work, or success in school or sport that families are spending less time with each other. For many, the dinner-time ‘review’ is rare or non-existent. Greater emphasis and expectations get placed on events like Christmas, weddings and so forth.

A survey revealed that the number one stressor at Christmas time is "finding enough time to fit everything in." So whatever you’re going to do at Christmas, you should start early. My sister buys all her presents on Boxing Day for the following year. Somewhere between you and my sister is the right level of preparedness.

The summer holidays present an opportunity to “get away from it all.” Technology allows us “it all” to chase us. You may have seen the television advertisement of the couple in the beach-house getting amorous only for the woman to remember her scheduled tele-conference with the marketing team. A friend of mine is taking his family to Christchurch for Christmas. The main present for the kids is a trampoline, which he isn’t taking to Christchurch with them. To provide a vicarious trampoline present-opening experience, he scanned photographs of all the big presents and published a website which the kids can log onto come December 25. Not a memory from my own childhood but then this is a new millennium. The same guy signed up his son for a Disney website as part of his Christmas gift planning. He told me he tried to make the password MickeyDonaldGoofyScrooge because it had to be at least four characters.

Focus on the positive outcomes you want from the holidays, not the expectations of others. New Zealand is a wonderful country during the summer holidays. Sure sometimes kiwis have to go overseas to achieve their potential because we don’t do enough for them here. Lord Rutherford wanted to be first in the world to split the atom – had to overseas. (Not enough atoms in New Zealand apparently?) Kiri Te Kanawa wanted to be the best opera singer in the world – had to go overseas. Ed Hillary wanted to climb the highest mountain in the world – had to go overseas. (Probably not New Zealand's fault.)

National parks in New Zealand have those fire-risk-meters. A large sign with an arrow depicts the danger on a scale of low (green) to high (red.) Visitors see the sign and it is a constant reminder to be careful and not create sparks. A household I was in one Christmas had a similar device stuck to their fridge with a magnet, only it was a Christmas-stress-ometer. Visitors see the sign and it is a constant reminder to be careful and not create sparks. This use of a small but humourous technique got everyone talking about the stresses and pressures and that in itself provided release from them.

Perhaps this year for you has been a negative one from an economic perspective and the festive season, with its financial demands, exacerbates that. If you bought one thousand dollars worth of shares a year ago, it would now be worth $67.50. If you bought one thousand dollars worth of beer a year ago, drank all the beer, kept the cans, and traded in the cans for recycling, you’d have $78.10. Everything depends on your point of view. There was a Larson Far Side cartoon with three identical frames. Each had a man staring at a glass. The first said “the glass is half full.” The second said “the glass is half empty.” The third said “What is this glass doing here? I ordered a cheeseburger!” A lesson there for all of us I think.

Poignant rather than funny, is the tale of Emmanuel Kant. Emmanuel Kant, as you will know, is the German philosopher of great renown. He was cared for much of his life by a manservant named Lampe. Then he discovered that Lampe had been systematically robbing him, and he was forced to dismiss him. (HR issues here!) But he missed him. Terribly. And after Kant's death, his journals revealed the recurring note: "Remember to forget Lampe." I think of that every year about this time as a signal about New Year resolutions. The only resolution worth making is -"remember to forget". Forget all the minor hurts inflicted on you in the course of the year, the silly things you did, the petty jealousies, the embarrassing moments. Kant's painful and pathetic diary note is a reminder to take a moment to remember to forget, and to remember to move on. Life’s too short.

Rent or own?

2009-01-22T07:35:00.003+13:00

Home ownership can be daunting. But for little more than the rent you pay now, you could be generating wealth for yourself, not the landlord. The word “Mortgage” comes from the French language: “Mort” meaning dead and “gage” meaning pledge or guarantee. So when you take out a loan to buy a house, you’re basically saying to the lender that you’ll pay it back if it kills you. (Or, you’ll pay it back or they’ll kill you.) But times have changed and registered lenders very rarely kill people these days, unless you count the ill health impact of stress. (Hence the term, “terminal payment.”)

Happiness is over-rated

2009-01-21T10:19:00.004+13:00

If you ever think at any point in your life, “Wow, this is it, I’ve finally made it,” that statement alone, if you truly believe it, will pretty much prevent you from being happy in the long-term. Happiness isn’t a club with lifetime membership. We’ve evolved as a species because we’re collectively and genetically unable to maintain happiness. Our survival and progress as a species has been reliant on dissatisfaction. Necessity is the mother of invention but unhappiness, failure and dissatisfaction are the three guys who might be the father.

The Solution? Ignore Your Problems!

2007-05-17T15:56:00.006+12:00

This article moots that the Middle East is irrelevant, the conflict is over-hyped and that the best response we can muster should be to ignore it. Apparently, the number killed in the Jewish-Palestinian conflict since 1921 is about 100,000; about the same as a single season in Darfur. And we're all seemingly happy with ignoring that. The writer might be right. The writer might be wrong. He could be impartial or a raving fanatic from one side or the other, or the other, or the other... That's the beauty of opinion pieces. I have no opinion on anything yet can write opinion pieces and then say, "Oh, I was just being provocative." (Although that's unlikely as provocative is way too something for my liking.)

I should stress at this point that I am against killing. Killing is wrong. Except in those specific and particular situations where it is demonstrably right. Each case on its merits, I say. Absolutes are almost always indefensible. To say, "Killing is always wrong" opens you up to specific cross-examination. If you had a time machine and you could go back and eliminate Hitler before he went off the rails (but after he made the trains run on time) then surely killing is OK in that situation? Get one little hole picked in your absolute statement and your life starts a-crumbling like a house of cards built on Pamela Anderson's bedside table.

Ignoring a problem works in many scenarios. If you have gangrene in your leg, ignore it. The problem will soon go away. The pedants amongst you might argue that your leg falls off and you develop worse secondary infections. I say those are different problems and that the original problem has indeed gone away. Let me know if there's anything else I can help you with by applying this personal philosophy on a grander scale – like the Middle East.