The Answer To Your Question Is… IT DEPENDS
If you're reading this you've probably asked me, Joe, a very simple question. Well, at least it seems like a very simple question. But instead of a simple answer, I've sent you this instead. Questions Like
How to give yourself better problems to solve.
In 2018 a group of young students from my old school took time out of their trip to Nepal to visit us and witness the work of From the Ground Up. Nick and I spent the day with them discussing the story of the organisation, the communities of Ghumarchowk and Sankhu that we were working in, and we toured our projects and brick factory. At the end one of the school teachers made a point to the boys. She pointed out that whilst Nick and I could be doing anything with our lives, we were choosing to help people. This was meant to
You must build interests or die tryin’ – preface to Interest Mapping
In 2014 I had all of my eggs in one basket. Then something crashed into me and I dropped the basket. The eggs broke. I’m not the first, nor will I be the last to put all my eggs in one basket. Despite the conventional wisdom. It’s easy to fall into the trap when everything is going well - an example that will keep repeating itself is housing. When the market is hot, it’s hard for people who have never put eggs in baskets before to understand that the temperature will eventually change. They stretch themselves more and more to get into more and
Accelerating Midlife Crisis
Let’s be honest - we all do it. We see a middle-aged man riding around in a hot-red ferrari that just feels and looks out-of-place. As out-of-place as socks-and-sandals. We laugh and think to ourselves… that will never be me. No it won’t be you… but not because you’re immune to the midlife crisis. But rather because you’ll be driving a Tesla. I wonder if anyone has ever tried to accelerate, rather than avoid their midlife crisis. Appreciation, Getting Intrinsic Last time out we discussed the very problematic Expectations Gap phenomena, a theory that seems to explain the Happiness Curve. This issue is utterly catastrophic in its
The Expectations Gap
I left high school thinking I would become one of the greatest film directors of all time. I pictured myself winning an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, Best Director and Best Actor in a Lead Role all in one fell swoop before the age of thirty. To me, that was the way to go down as the greatest and stand out from everyone else who’d ever worked in film: To do what no one else has done, all before the age of thirty. As such, achieving all this before thirty became an ESSENTIAL, a REQUIREMENT. Failing to live up to this
Unforgetting – because people have forgotten how to draw
“When my daughter was about seven years old, she asked me one day what I did at work. I told here I worked at the college - that my job was to teach people how to draw. Share stared back at me, incredulous, and said, ‘You mean they forget?" - Howard Ikemoto. Unforgetting. When you’re ready to unforget, I’ll be right here. I want to ask you two very personal questions today. The first, what are you afraid of doing? The second is, what don’t you know how to do? There are many answers. But I’m curious if there are things we never learned to do, or if we
The Law of Ensuement – Direct vs. Incidental Goals
The greatest things in life cannot be pursued directly. They must happen incidentally. The greatest rewards in life cannot be pursued - they must ensue. I call this, ‘The Law of Ensuement’. The Thousand Doors Theory My central framework for journeys through life is understood as the Thousand Doors Theory. The theory suggests, we use the Thousand Doors System to reach the most remarkable places because the most remarkable places live in the unknown. When we turn down one ‘door’ or one opportunity in life, we so often fail to recognise that it is the First of a Thousand Doors - the other nine-hundred and
Don’t hold your goals like Gollum
They should be goals and not GOLLUMS. You don’t want to end up like the one formerly known as Smiegel, from The Lord of the Rings series by J.R.R. Tolkein. “Strong opinions, loosely held” As Paul Saffo from the Institute for the Future is credited as saying. Well, the same should be said of our grand dreams and goals. Strong goals, loosely held. You see the principles of the Minimum Viable Lifestyle (MVL) and An Audience-of-None defend us against the traps of over-investing in grandiose dreams, if those dreams rely on external factors beyond our control. These questions are interested in, What is the least