What teachers know

March 11, 2010

Today’s grad­u­ates face a new breed of chal­lenges as they enter the work­force. They will con­front messier, intractable prob­lems such as cli­mate change, global ter­ror­ism, antibi­otic resis­tant dis­eases and per­sis­tent mar­ket weak­ness. The same tech­nolo­gies that empow­ered them as learn­ers at the same time also mul­ti­plied the poten­tial for global havoc.

And this has changed the def­i­n­i­tion of an appro­pri­ate education.

Teach­ers know this

Teach­ers appre­ci­ate that han­dling the new, intractable prob­lems requires a new skill set. They require empathiz­ing, imag­i­na­tive cit­i­zens –in touch with their own cre­ative impulses, con­fi­dent indi­vid­u­als who can imag­ine totally new solu­tions. Teach­ers want to facil­i­tate their stu­dents’ growth as artists. But teach­ers know some­thing else as well.

Tomorrow’s man­agers must also be lit­er­ate and numer­ate. As well as being cre­ative lead­ers, reach­ing out and find­ing fresh answers to the prob­lems of the future, they need to know every­thing we grad­u­ated know­ing. And they need to be firmer in their foun­da­tions than we were. The stakes are higher for them and the com­pe­ti­tion for jobs is more fierce.

Inside most class­rooms today you find teach­ers tak­ing an iter­a­tive approach, bal­anc­ing the advan­tages of con­stancy and rou­tine with their neces­sity for exper­i­men­ta­tion and adap­ta­tion. You find teach­ers who are doing the best they can with the resources they have. The demands on teach­ers have never been greater. And they know it.

Did you enjoy this arti­cle? Sub­scribe for free by RSS or email and you’ll always know when I pub­lish some­thing new. (What’s RSS?)

{ 0 comments }

The secret of happiness (from Daniel Kahneman and Jerry Seinfeld)

March 6, 2010

I am by day a mild-mannered Econ­o­mist, qui­etly cor­rect­ing stu­dents’ sup­ply and demand dia­grams, dis­cussing the long-term profit pos­si­bil­i­ties in oli­gop­o­lies. But by night, I get to pur­sue my real pas­sion in life: surf­ing –both chan­nel and web. Some­times I do both at once! So I live a pretty full existence.

Some­times on my quests, I unearth a jewel such as this pre­sen­ta­tion from Daniel Kah­ne­man, on our “expe­ri­enc­ing selves” and our “remem­ber­ing selves.” We expe­ri­ence hap­pi­ness, he explains, in the moment and also (often very dif­fer­ently) in our memory.

The two headed happiness-monster

Self-actualization is a process of rec­on­cil­ing these two selves: expe­ri­en­tial and remem­bered. They way this works is sim­i­lar to the les­son told by the ever-sagacious Jerry Seinfeld:

When it comes to Hap­pi­ness we’ve got the spon­ta­neous ‘Now Guy’ and story-teller ‘Then Guy’. Now Guy is your unso­phis­ti­cated, spon­ta­neous younger-self. He’s always got ideas about how to spend your life­sav­ings fly­ing to Vegas for a really wild week­end. But Mon­day morn­ing it’s Then Guy who has to explain the whole thing to your wife. A happy life requires the two to nego­ti­ate and agree.

Did you enjoy this arti­cle? Sub­scribe for free by RSS or email and you’ll always know when I pub­lish some­thing new.  (What’s RSS?)

{ 0 comments }

The Tim Commandments

February 24, 2010

Dis­claimer: I got the idea for this post from Gretchen Rubin’s per­sonal com­mand­ments –which she shares in her Hap­pi­ness Project. I learned so much doing my Life List that I fig­ured I have a go at this as well. (As for the title, I couldn’t resist.)

These ‘’com­mand­ments’’ are actu­ally just reminders to myself of the big real­iza­tions I’ve had about how to keep myself happy and mov­ing forward.

1) A clear target

Take time to con­sider what the ulti­mate sit­u­a­tion would be for me and the peo­ple I care about. I prob­a­bly do this 4 or 5 times a week and it’s actu­ally not an easy task. It IS easy to cop-out and say, “mega-rich on a trop­i­cal island,’’ but that’s not what I really want.

I try to clar­ify what my days will be like when I’ve finally arrived in my ideal sit­u­a­tion. I want to be able to read the news­pa­per, eat­ing fruit, in a sunny place. I want to have bril­liant friends who I spend a lot of time with. I want to learn a lot every day, as a part of my job. Plus about 50 other things. I think the clearer I can be about pre­cisely where I’d like to end up, the more likely I’ll get there.

2) Some­thing every day

I try to take at least a small step for­ward, toward my ulti­mate lifestyle, every day. I put some­thing on my To Do list every day that will pre­pare me for that sit­u­a­tion (I work on a lad­der), to make sure I’m mov­ing toward that target.

3) Appre­ci­ate it

Just like at Thanks­giv­ing, take a moment to think of some­thing you’re grate­ful for. It’ll remind you of how far you’ve come and that, while not every­thing is always per­fect, you’re life is mostly pretty good. As my mom used to say on cold win­ter nights, “be thank­ful that we have a nice warm place to live.” Or as Socrates said, “He is the rich­est who is con­tent with the least.”

4) Speak up

I’ve had to learn this les­son a few times in my life –that I need to share my ideas. I need to put my ideas into the world for a few rea­sons. First, it’s a way to real­ize what I know and to push my think­ing (to be con­struc­tive). It’s also a way to con­nect with peo­ple, to build com­mu­nity. The last time I real­ized this in a big way was my first trip to Aus­tralia. There peo­ple expect you to have a story to tell. I found I was so used to being a lis­tener that I didn’t know how to tell my stories.

5) Make it a good day

Even on good days, I try to think of one thing that could make the day a lit­tle bet­ter. If it’s stop­ping at the store and buy­ing some candy to eat, that’s okay. What­ever can make it a lit­tle hap­pier okay. Get­ting into my paja­mas early also makes me hap­pier. The point is that, for me, tak­ing each day as a project works.

6) Sleep on rice

This one comes from a story I heard of a poor immi­grant man who slept on rice (with his long­suf­fer­ing wife) in the back room. He did this for year so that he could save money. Even when he had saved enough to move into an apart­ment, he didn’t. He con­tin­ued to make sac­ri­fices until he could buy the store. I’m always inspired by sto­ries of peo­ple who have worked harder than they had to, so they could achieve uncom­mon ends.

Did you enjoy this arti­cle? Sub­scribe for free by RSS or email and you’ll always know when I pub­lish some­thing new.  (What’s RSS?)

{ 0 comments }

Solving the big problems

February 23, 2010

When I started my bet­ter liv­ing project it wasn’t really about qual­ity of life at all. It was more about fac­ing the ques­tion: “what kind of life is best for a per­son liv­ing in our times?” It was as much about being respon­si­ble as any­thing else. I was wor­ried espe­cially about intractable prob­lems like global ter­ror­ism and global warm­ing. Ten years later, ter­ror­ism is still a fear, but cli­mate change in par­tic­u­lar has emerged as the dom­i­nant chal­lenge of our times –our generation’s equiv­a­lent of walk­ing on the moon.

Liv­ing a good life means mak­ing a dif­fer­ence to an impor­tant issue like this, or at least doing our best. (We know that the only thing nec­es­sary for global prob­lems to per­sist is for good peo­ple to do noth­ing about them). But, if you’re any­thing like me, quite frankly as con­cerned as I am for the envi­ron­ment, I do very lit­tle with this con­vic­tion. When I make a choice, the effect it has on the envi­ron­ment is rarely fore­most in my mind. This dis­so­nance (between what we know is impor­tant and how we act) has a lot to do with the com­plex­ity of these kinds of issues. It’s hard to know quite how to make any kind of tar­geted inter­ven­tion, to make any kind of real dif­fer­ence at all.

Below I’ve listed some prac­ti­cal ways to get involved. But, first here are some great insights into the issue from Bill Gates.

a.a
aa

I’ve just taken an online test and found that my per­sonal C02 out­put every year is about 17 tonnes. This is much higher than I expected. 69% of these emis­sions come from trans­porta­tion, which is also sur­pris­ing con­sid­er­ing that, here in Bel­gium, I don’t drive a car. My emis­sions sim­ply from fly­ing equals about 10 tons per year. (If you’re inter­ested in what that means, here’s what one tonne of CO2 looks like).

If you’d like to take a test like this here are some you can use: from the EPA (from the US), from ActOnCO2 (from the UK), ICLEI (Inter­na­tional).

Small steps for man

The most impor­tant thing most of us can do to com­bat cli­mate is to sup­port (and encour­age) gov­ern­ment efforts to reduce emis­sions. Through the gov­ern­ment one per­son, or a small group can make a big difference.

Here area  few other things we all do to reduce our car­bon footprint:

  • Reduce the miles you drive (i.e. by walk­ing, cycling, car­pool­ing  or tak­ing pub­lic transit)
  • Reduce air travel (i.e. by using elec­tronic communications).
  • If you do have to drive, pur­chase a vehi­cle with the high­est fuel effi­ciency avail­able (and also have it reg­u­larly ser­viced, avoid using the air­con­di­tioner, reduce your dri­ving speed and use it as rarely as you can
  • Pay to off­set your CO2 foot­print through orga­ni­za­tions such as Con­ser­va­tion Inter­na­tional, Nature Con­ser­vancy, Cli­mate Trust, Native Energy, Terra Pass, or  The Car­bon Fund. (More details on the costs and projects of each of these orga­ni­za­tions are described here). I’ve done this before, but per­son­ally I am going to make a rou­tine of off­set­ting my emis­sions, by invest­ing in these types of projects.
  • Plant trees. One tree, planted in the trop­ics, will absorb about 1 tonne of CO2 if it lives to 40. Con­sid­er­ing my 17 tonnes usage per year I will need to plant around 14oo trees in my life to make up the dif­fer­ence. Cer­tain other fac­tors, such as the like­ly­hood of some of these trees not sur­viv­ing so long and the ecosys­tems where I have a chance to plant mean that I should plant at least dou­ble that num­ber to ensure I am car­bon neutral.
  • Increase the energy effi­ciency in your home (here is a good list of ways to do that)

The future

Bill Gates makes the point that a big push to inno­vate is also nec­es­sary. One idea I’d love to be a part of is imple­ment­ing crowd­sourc­ing meth­ods to inno­vate solu­tions to cli­mate change. (Stud­ies have shown that diverse groups of peo­ple can often have more suc­cess solv­ing really chal­leng­ing prob­lems than groups of experts.) That seems a log­i­cal way to use tech­nolo­gies (which have con­tributed to the prob­lem) to our advantage.

Did you enjoy this arti­cle? Sub­scribe for free by RSS or email and you’ll always know when I pub­lish some­thing new.  (What’s RSS?)

{ 2 comments }

How to make a million dollars

February 5, 2010

You will likely make a mil­lion dol­lars. The aver­age Amer­i­can earns between $1 mil­lion and $2 mil­lion dol­lars in their life­time. But that’s not what I’m talk­ing about.

This arti­cle will tell you how to end up with $1 mil­lion dol­lars in your bank account. (And, as you’re about to see, you’re going to need it.)

$1 mil­lion at least

I’m 31. If I put $1,000,000 under my mat­tress today, when I came to retire (at 65) that $1 mil­lion would have the pur­chas­ing power of $388,977 today. If I lived until 85, that would give me only $20,000 per year to live on. That’s IF I hit my tar­get of mak­ing a mil­lion before I retire. Sud­denly aim­ing for a mil­lion seems a lit­tle low. For me to feel like a mil­lion­aire when I’m 65 I’m going to need $2,500,080 of today’s dol­lars. (Based on a 3% infla­tion rate). So your tar­get has to be some­where between $1 mil­lion and $2.5 million.

That’s not being greedy. Just responsible.

The way you learned in school

Com­pound inter­est isn’t the answer. Not on its own. Sure, if you put $5 in the bank every day AND find a way to earn 10% inter­est, in 42 short years you’ll have a mil­lion dol­lars. That sounds sim­ple, but a 10% return isn’t easy to come by and no one goes to the bank every day. (If you really like going to the bank though, this might be the excuse you’re look­ing for.)

Open a McDonald’s

Another way is to open a busi­ness, a fran­chise maybe. Fran­chises are a good option, but to start one you’ll need about $200,000 in cash –not a mort­gage for that amount, CA$H. Most real peo­ple, with real lives and jobs, can’t come up with that kind of money. And most peo­ple (let’s be hon­est) aren’t com­fort­able with that kind of risk.

Just do this

I’m just going to cut to the chase. I’m going to tell you what I tell my friends to do (because I like you. You’ve become very spe­cial to me). My advice is: buy an invest­ment prop­erty. Now, using some fancy math, I’m going to show you how easy it is and why it makes sense. I’m going to leave you utterly con­vinced and greatful.

The sce­nario: You’ll need to find a prop­erty you can rent. The rent will need to cover the mort­gage, or bet­ter. (If you can find a prop­erty where the annual rental rev­enue equals 11% or more of the property’s sale price you’ll be mak­ing an income from the prop­erty from day one, even with­out the cap­i­tal return I’m about to talk about).

Year 0: You’ve just put $10,000 of your own money on a prop­erty worth $200,000. It was tough com­ing up with that much money, but you did it.  You’re capa­ble like that.

Year 5: Fol­low­ing a 5% property-inflation rate, which is rea­son­able for most major cities (except maybe in the US at the moment), your prop­erty is now worth $240,916. Not amaz­ing, but not too bad either.  (Just trust me on the 5% part. I’m trustworthy.)

Year 10: Now the place is worth $292,166. Ten years ago, when you started, you only owned $10,000 of the prop­erty. But now your equity (the amount of the house’s value you own) is over $100,000. This is really some­thing. And it’s just just some­thing because you’ve mul­ti­plied your money by 10. It’s some­thing because now you’re the kind of per­son who really knows what to do with $100,000!

So now you’re smil­ing more. And you have a nice deci­sion to make. You remem­ber that you were able to get that first prop­erty with just $10,000. And you have $100,000 of equity in that prop­erty. The bank sees this like you have $100,000 in a bank account with them.  If you sold your prop­erty you’d have $100,000. The bank knows this and they don’t want to lose you as a cus­tomer. So, if you ask them, they’ll let you use some of that equity toward another prop­erty (or 2 more, or maybe even 3 more –depend­ing on your salary and smile).

You can do that with­out hav­ing to come up with another cent.

If you sell your first prop­erty after 30 years (using that 5% property-inflation fig­ure) you will have $500,000 in your pocket. ($10,000 got you half a million.)

The actual num­ber of prop­er­ties you’ll need to hit your tar­get will depend on a few dif­fer­ent fac­tors, but 2 or 3 will likely be enough.

Did you enjoy this arti­cle? Sub­scribe for free by RSS or email and you’ll always know when I pub­lish some­thing new.  (What’s RSS?)

{ 0 comments }

Live life like a game

February 3, 2010

As I kid I loved Snakes and Lad­ders. I don’t even know if you can find that board game any­where any­more, but I enjoyed it. (Okay, I just found it on Ebay for $2).
It was pretty sim­ple. Basi­cally you roll the dice to see how many spaces you can move for­ward. The first per­son to […]

Comments Read the full article →

A Money Lesson from Matt Weinstein

January 22, 2010

The TED site has started post­ing the best TED-esque con­tent from else­where on the web. My favourite so far is this one from Matt Wein­stein. In it he describes a money les­son he learned in Antarctica.

I find the way he han­dled this really amaz­ing.  I guess, to keep it all in per­spec­tive, he has been […]

Comments Read the full article →

Dying for a Good Time

January 8, 2010

This is the third time I have sat down to write this post. I keep delet­ing it.
I watched a doc­u­men­tary this week in Swe­den and I can’t put it out of my head. It was about a group of moun­tain climbers attempt­ing to sum­mit the sec­ond high­est moun­tain after Ever­est (K2). I’m not going to ruin the story […]

Comments Read the full article →

Career Advice from Randy Komisar

January 8, 2010

Randy Komisar is a good guy. He’s a Sil­i­con Val­ley CEO. Lis­ten­ing to him speak is like being sat down by your down-to-earth uncle, who wants to give you career advice. Komisar is good at giv­ing inter­est­ing advice about ‘fol­low­ing your pas­sion’ with­out sound­ing trite or overly moti­va­tional.  A lot of us get stuck on […]

Comments Read the full article →

What Matters Now? (60 Inspiring Answers)

January 3, 2010

Seth (the Mac­Daddy of Mar­ket­ing) Godin has gath­ered ideas from 60 bril­liant peo­ple, each shar­ing their insights into what mat­ters at the begin­ning of 2010.
Frankly, if you flip through this slide show and don’t feel at least a tin­gle of inspi­ra­tion, you’re read­ing the wrong blog.

I can’t choose which ideas I’d most rec­om­mend. There is so much […]

Comments Read the full article →

← Previous Entries