Dear Mitchell
Dearest brother Mitchell. I mean to tell you that your selfishness and stupidity knows no bounds. Here’s a picture of us when we were young — who’d have thought one of us would grow up to be such a narcissist, such a self-serving twat. What do you mean ‘who?’ Fine then, I’ll spell it out for you. Where will I begin? At the start then, because I don’t know how much you don’t know, and I can only hope that I get something very important through to you with this letter. So let’s see… the start. Oh yes. Well, you are second born
Joe’s Rule of 10x Potential
I have the rule of thumb that when two people find a way to effectively and deeply collaborate together, they 10x or 100x their potential. So if two people, named Angela and Andrew, each had the potential to impact 10 people with their work, working separately, the potential if they come together is not just 'added', but grows by a factor of 10. For example, Separately, they impact 20 lives - Angela 10, and Andrew 10. If they work together, they don't just impact 20 lives, or even 40 lives (doubling their impact), but I would say collectively, 200 lives. Go towards and support
The Memory Pill Problem
My mother went to her Doctor and mentioned she was having memory problems from time to time. So, the Doctor gave her some supplements that were supposed to help her improve. She was driving away, when her friend turned to her and asked, 'where are your pills?' Mum gasped, 'I forgot them!' The Memory Pill Problem Thanks to Mum, who gave me the perfect example of this to write about, 'the memory pill problem' can be used to understand a lot of marketing and problem-solving situations. It's the case where the problem takes the customer away from solutions, rather than towards them. Solution Approaching Problems When
What to do when no one is coming to help
In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, young Harry finds himself in a predicament towards the story's ending. Having travelled back in time, he is watching past-him being attacked by vicious, ghastly creatures called 'dementors'. Now remember, he's travelled back in time
Build your career like the Harbour Bridge
Wondering what the heck you're meant to be doing in the world? Wondering whether you're in the right place? Well, you shouldn't be. Not because you're failing, not because there's something wrong with you. Just because you're still building your Harbour Bridge. What the heck is your Harbour Bridge? Well, let's stop first and look around. Look around. Your friends might be starting things like little businesses, Instagram pages, blogs, personal websites and Youtube channels. They might write about their day, or they might share travel videos. These things are actually pretty typical. Pretty normal. But how do you make money doing them? How are they going
I’ll Take a Hat
My cousin Tony walked into a Porsche dealership one day when he visiting Sydney from his native Lebanon. Now Tony, you must be warned, is a bit of a character — he has a shiny bald head, speaks in broken English, and has a penchant for the ridiculous. On his visit to the dealership the car salesman at Porsche greets him, and asks his name. Tony answers 'Tony Sajir' — immediately the car salesman's eyes light up with dollar signs. Lebanese-Australians with that last name, in this part of Sydney, are known to have disposable income lying around. Tony is like a
Don’t predict the rain – have the wedding inside
Google is good at predicting the weather for the next hour. It is ok at predicting the weather for the next eight hours. It is touch-and-go when it comes to predicting tomorrow's weather. Google sucks at predicting the weather one week from now. Simple, Complicated, Complex A wheel is a simple system. Infants know how a wheel works. Planes are complicated systems. Few of us know the ins and outs of how planes work, but each subsystem of the plane is simple, like the wheel. The complicated system is just a whole heap of simple systems stitched together. But they are knowable. The weather is a complex, if
Prophets Of A Future Not Our Own
Does the Boomerang Effect happen to you too? Do you come across great passages, one-liners or life lessons that resonate with you deeply… only to then be lost or forgotten? But does the mystic universe then ‘boomerang’ these lessons back to you time and time again…. As if you are meant to revisit them at another time? The passage I want to share with you today was ‘boomeranged’ back to me recently. Though I will ask you to consider it without its religious context, it has come to be dedicated to the brave and revolutionary Oscar Romero, who was shot and killed in
Continuums, Spectrums and Scales, not Absolutes or Binaries
You are used to looking at some people as disabled and others, maybe you, as ‘abled’. You are used to looking at these people as black, and these people as white. You are used to thinking that you are not good at sports, but are good at reading books. You are used to thinking that he is a failure, and that she is a success. You are used to thinking of people from Africa as poor, and people from Western countries as rich. You are used to thinking of the world in terms of ‘us’ and ‘them’, and that you are either good at things,
Is It Better Not To See?
It is my joy today to tell you about the best movie you’ve never heard of. If you’re of my generation, there’s almost no chance you’ve heard of the 1989 classic See No Evil, Hear No Evil starring acting legend Gene Wilder and comedy legend Richard Pryor. In this timeless classic, Wilder is deaf, whilst Pryor is blind. They are both in the wrong place at the wrong time when a murder takes place and are wrongly accused. They suffer from a lack of awareness of what is going on given their disabilities, and this makes them vulnerable: Pryor’s character hears the