Mastery

I finished this book by George Leonard last week but since I had read it over a period of time, I couldn't make a good summary. Since I'll be returning the book RSN, I should get off my duff and recap it.

The author is an aikido master who has learned to enjoy the journey to mastery. Sure, goals are met and you're happy, but often there's a large block of time before reaching that goal. He also points out that America is counter-mastery in that people live for climactic moments and don't enjoy the plateaus that happen in between. He compares the mastery curve to that of one who dabbles, obsesses, and hacks. His 5 master keys are:

• Instruction - You should find a good instructor. An accomplished master may not be the best instructor.


• Practice - duh.


• Surrender - Let go of things you have gained in order to gain even more.


• Intentionality - get mental


• The Edge - Your limits...

Heck, let me just make some lists of topics he brings up later in the book:
Tools for Mastery: Guidelines to see if you really want to spend the time & effort to get on & stay on the path to mastery:

• Be aware of the way homeostasis works


• Be willing \to negotiate w/ your resistance to change


• Develop a support system


• Follow a regular practice


• Dedicate yourself to lifelong learning

Getting energy for mastery:

• Maintain physical fitness


• Acknowledge the negative & accentuate the positive


• Try telling the truth


• Honor but don't indulge your own dark side


• Set your priorities


• Make commitments, take action


• Get on the path of mastery & stay on it

Pitfalls along the path

• Conflicting way of life


• Obsessive goal orientation


• Poor instruction


• Lack of competitiveness


• Overcompetitiveness


• Laziness


• Injuries


• Drugs


• Prizes & medals


• Vanity


• Dead seriousness


• Inconsistency


• Perfectionism

Master things you do in everyday life: Driving, washing dishes, relationships, etc.

The Riddles of Epsilon

I had spotted this book a while back at the bookstore but had to wait several months for it to enter into the library's system: The Riddles of Epsilon pits its disgruntled teenage protagonist against powerful forces and those that follow them. Jessica is stuck w/ her parents at a family house for the summer when a supernatural being named Epsilon contacts her online and in the real world to gain her aid in an ancient battle of good vs. evil. The "riddles" and light codebreaking does give the story some mystery but I didn't care for the 1st person tone used. This was an okay read, although I did finish most of it in 1 sitting.

You Are Here

A book I would like to add to my collection, You Are Here by Katharine Harmon parades a bunch of maps of the geographical sense and beyond. It is full of photos of artsy maps, fictional maps, old maps, mysterious maps, etc. The 2 things I don't like about this book is that it is paperback, so the spine can easily be bent due to its construction, and that I would like this to have even more maps for they are mostly interesting to me.

Drowned Wednesday

The current book available from Garth Nix for the Keys to the Kingdom series, Drowned Wednesday continues Arthur's travails in a strange world. This time he is duking it out in a piratey ocean world, dealing with oversized rats and a hungry Leviathan. Like the earlier 2 books, he prevails at the end.

The Outcast

The last book of the Guardians of Ga'Hoole series, The Outcast continues where the 7th book left off: Nyroc wants to go to the Tree but before he can, he has to fulfill his destiny. I polished off the book in under 2 hours in the bookstore. A little sad the series is over (I just like animal-character books for some reason..) but I guess next up is a "Legends of Ga'Hoole" dealio..

Grim Tuesday

I bought Mister Monday a while ago during a promotion where if you buy 7? Scholastic books, you get a free bag. The cover piqued my interest. And just like the 1st book, Grim Tuesday throws a reluctant teen into a bizarre world that reminds me of those Vertigo comics I read. Or Neil Gaiman's imagination. Time runs different, strange magics abound, danger everywhere, so forth. I still have the next book to read before I return 'em to the library...

Free Prize Inside!

Another book by Seth Godin, I find I can prolly apply more of the ideas presented in Free Prize Inside! than in Purple Cow. I haven't totally absorbed the ideas that I would like to try as I didn't read it all in 1 or 2 sittings; I feel like I should get my own copy of the book and highlight various points. I'll also forego any blabbing about the book as there's a condensed version on Godin's site. In the meantime, I'll add this to my Amazon wish list.

The free prize @ the end of this book is a 500 pg ebook

Raven's Gate

I've never ready anything before by Anthony Horowitz, but the cover of Raven's Gate looked darkly interesting to me so I libraried (My new term for requesting then borrowing an item from the library) it: A troubled teenager finds out about a freaky town that practices the occult with murderous tendencies, a nearby decommissioned nuclear test site, and prophecies that seem to point to at least 5 books in this "Gatekeepers" series. Yes, darkly - Easier to accomplish with some backwards witchy England town but I wonder what'll happen to the atmosphere in the 2nd book, where the last few pages hint at it being in Peru.

The book is written for teenagers (I guess Horowitz has other young reader series under his belt) and the pace is quick & gripping enough for me to finish this ~250 pg book. I'll prolly look for the next book in the series whenever it comes out.

March of the Penguins

Watched March of the Penguins w/ Fishface, Sherbet & T. From the trailer, I was kinda expecting the story to focus on a penguin couple, (and I hear the original French had voice actors for the penguins?) but instead, it's like a long nature show, narrated by Morgan Freeman. The documentary followed the adult penguins from their trek to the birthing grounds to the time the chicks were able to enter the ocean. Lots of camera focusing close up on the birds. I guess the only thing comparable that I've seen is Winged Migration, but there the documentary followed multiple bird species whereas Penguin followed just 1. I wonder if what we see is the whole of the penguin population, or if there are other birthing grounds elsewhere on Antarctica. And penguin chicks can get quite fuzzy fat.

The Hatchling

Yes, it's another children's series: I guess it's book #7: The Hatchling by Kathryn Lasky. The whole "Guardians Of Ga'hoole" series is told from the viewpoint of owls in what I assume is a post-human world. For books 1-6, the viewpoint was largely from 1 owl, and #7 and beyond looks to base it on a new owl. And that's all I'll say for this one!

I like animal stories. Yes, I've read Watership Down.

More Asian movies

This morning, I polished off 2 more movies:

• Every Dog Has His Date (完美情人): [From the back:] A beautiful career woman Sharon lives together w/ her lovely dog Man. In an accident, Man exchanges body w/ a worker & becomes a human. Unaware of the unbelievable incident, Sharon simply rejects Man to come close. Disappointingly, Man helps a veterinarian to win the love of Sharon, but he finds himself also fall for his master.

  Here's my version of this blurb, but w/ added adjectives & stuff...

  Sharon, a single career woman who works in some kinda studio (who falls easily for a pretty face but is unlucky in love) lives w/ her faithful Golden Retriever named "Man" (who she had since a puppy). In a freak accident involving a pond and electricity during a storm, Man & an unsavory prop employee of Sharon's named Fai exchange minds/bodies. Even though he's in Fai's body, Sharon rejects Man 'cuz of his doggy behavior, but eventually he cleans up some of his act to become more human (he's still able to converse w/ animals) and becomes friends with Sharon. Man helps some stalker/horny vet to try and date Sharon by faking love poems but Man soon discovers that he can't stand the human scent of other women, and is aroused only by Sharon's scent. So there's some kinda sumtin' sumtin' b/w Sharon & Man, but Man decides he'd best return to being a dog, and when Fai-in-Man's-doggy-body returns from being lost/adventuring across China, Man tries to recreate the accident to return each to their former bodies...

  Like most HK movies, kinda campy. They don't really hook up in the end though. I guess it'd be weird. I think I liked the next movie better...



• My Tutor Friend: A Korean flick. [From the back:] Su-wan works as a part-time tutor to cover her college tuition. Tutoring is a tough job, especially when she meets the impossible, the unconquerable & the un-reformable Ji-hoon. Although they're @ the same age, Ji-hoon's repeating his senior year for the 3rd time. He's also a well-konwon fighter & kind of troublemakers @ school. Their lessons begin, and from then on, things started happening 1 after another.

  It's pretty formulaic: Characters with predictable roles, a predictable story, but fun to watch anyway. And yeah, not as campy as them Chinese movies, but still plenty of violence. I like how Ji-hoon's father is more bad-ass than he is, heh heh.

Purple Cow

In addition to the fiction I've borrowed from the library, I've got some non-fiction for general self-improvement, of me or my money situation (can't hurt, eh?) Finished off Purple Cow by Seth Godin (I forget if I picked it off this list or somewhere else, but anyways...)

I guess Godin's forte is marketing and Purple Cow is a small, easy to read book. Since my general job has little to do with marketing (my "clients" are a defined set and they have not much of a choice, heh heh), it's just good to know in general, and something I should keep in mind if I ever make my own foray out into business, or whatever.

After having read through the book once, I feel like going through it again and taking more detailed notes. Godin does put some symbols to indicate "takeaway points" that the reader should note, so I'll include those here. But I guess I should just jot down stuff 1st time around for his other book that I've borrowed currently.

Anyway, here's whatta whatta:

The "Purple Cow" is essentially something remarkable. Godin talks about how TV advertising has become old hat as commercials are no longer holding viewers' interest (I guess maybe except during the Super Bowl) and instead of feeding money into advertising, it should be spent making a better product. Also, your product shouldn't be aiming for the consumer majority else it'd be lost in vanilla-land. Instead, you should target a niche, where the innovators and early adopters are actively seeking something like your product. Then your "ideavirus" will be "sneezed" by these people to the majority. Then, milk that cow quickly and use your monies to develop the next purple cow!

When going for remarkable, it just has stand out to get mouths moving: So you could have the worst service or ugliest doo-hickey, but ppl will talk about it, eh!

Here are the takeaway points:

• Instead of trying to use your technology & expertise to make a better product for your users' standard behavior, experiment with inviting the users to change their behavior to make the product work dramatically better


• If a product's future's unlikely to be remarkable - if you can't imagine a future in which ppl are once again fascinated by your product - it's time to realize that the game has changed. Instead of investing in a dying product, take profits & reinvest them in building something new.


• It's not an accident that some products catch on & some don't. When an ideavirus occurs, it's often 'cuz all the viral pieces work together. How smooth & easy is it to spread your idea? How often'll ppl sneeze it to their friends? How tightly knit is the group you're targeting - do they talk much? Do they believe each other? How reputable are the ppl most likely to promote your idea? How persistent is it - is it a fad that has to spread fast before it dies, or will the idea have legs (& thus you can invest in spreading it over time)? Put all of your new product developments through this analysis, and you'll discover which ones're most likely to catch on. Those're the products & ideas worth launching.


• Differentiate your csts. Find the group that's most profitable. Find the group that's most likely to sneeze. Figure out how to develop/advertise/reward either group. Ignore the rest. Your ads (& products!) shouldn't cater to the masses. Your ads (& products) should cater to csrs you'd choose if you could choose your csrs.


• Make a list of competitors who're not trying to be everything to everyone. Are they outperforming you? If you could pick 1 underserved niche to target (and to dominate), what would it be? Why not launch a product to compete w/ your own - a product that does nothing but appeal to this market?


• What tactics does your firm use that involve following the leader? What if you abandoned them & did something very different instead? If you acknowledge that you'll never catch up by being the same, make a list of ways you can catch up by being different.


• What would happen if you gave the marketing budget for youer next 3 products to the designers? Could you afford a world-class architect/designer/sculptor/director/author?


• What could you measure? What would that cost? How fast could you get the results? If you can afford it, try it. "If you measure it, it will improve."


• Are you making very good stuff? (as opposed to remarkable) How fast can you stop?


• Buy a bottle of Dr. Bronner's. Now, working w/ your factory & your designers, Bronnify a variation of 1 of your products.


• How could you modify your product/service so that you'd who up on the next episode of SNL or in a spoof of your industry's trade journal?


• Do you have the e-mails of the 20% of your csr base that loves what you do? If not, start getting them. If you do, what could you make for these csrs that would be super-special?


• Could you make a collectible version of your product?


• What would happen if you took 1 or 2 seasons off from the new product grind & reintroduced wonderful classics instead? What sort of amazing thing could you offer in the 1st season you came back (with rested designers)?


• Go to a sci-fi con. These're pretty odd folks. Do you appeal to an audience as wacky & wonderful as this one? How could you create one?


• Where does your product end & marketing hype begin? Can you redefine what you sell in a ~ way to Dutch Boy?


• Do you have a slogan or positioning statement or remarkable boast that's actually true? Is it consistent? Is it worth passing on?


• If you're in an intangibles business, your business card's a big part of what you sell. What if everyone in your company had to carry a 2nd business card? Something that actually sold them (and you). Something remarkable.


• If someone in your organization's charged w/ creating a new Purple Cow, leave them alone! Don't use internal reviews & usability testing to figure out if the new product's as good as what you've got now. Instead, pick the right maverick & get out of the way.


• All of a sudden, it's obvious why you need a permission asset. Give ppl an e-mail to write to. Write back. You're on your way.


• Go take a design course. Send your designers to a marketing course. And both of you should spend a week in the factory.


• Make a list of all the remarkable products in your industry. Who made them? How did they happen? Model the behavior (not mimic the product) and you're more than halfway to making your own.


• Is there someone (person/agency) in your industry who has a track record of successfully launching remarkable products? Can you hire them away, or at least learn from their behavior? Immerse yourself in fan mags, trade shows, design reviews - whatever it takes to feel what your fans feel.


• Can you create a culture of aggressively prototyping new products & policies? When GM shows a concept car @ the NY Auto Show, there's more than ego involved. They're trying to figure out what car nuts think is remarkable. I'm not pitching focus groups here (they're a waste). I'm talking about very public releases of cheap prototypes.


• You're prolly guilty of being too shy, not too outrageous. Try being outrageous, just for the sake of being annoying. It's good practice. Don't do it too much 'cuz it doesn't usually work. But it's a good way to learn what it feels like to be @ the edge.


• What would happen if you told the truth?


• Remarkabe isn't always about changing the biggest machine in your factory. It can be the way you answer the phone, launch a new brand, or price a revision to your software. Getting in the habit of doing the "unsafe" thing every time you have the opportunity is the best way to learn to project - you get practice @ seeing what's working & what's not.


• If you could build a competitor that had costs that were 30% lower than yours, could you do it? If you could, why don't you?


• References available upon request? Nonsense. Your references are your resume. A standard resume is nothing but an opportunity for a prospective employer to turn you down. A sheaf of over-the-top references, on the other hand, begs for a meeting.


• Visit Monster.com. Millions of resumes, all in a pile, all waiting for someone to find them. If you're in that pile, it's not a good place to be. Before you start looking for a job, consider what you could do today so you never have to worry about that.


• The big ? is this: Do you want to grow? If you do, you need to embrace the Cow. You can maintain your brand the old way, but the only route to healthy growth is a remarkable product.


• Explore the limits. What if you're the cheapest, fastest, slowest, hottelt, coldest, easiest, most efficient, loudest, most hated, copycat, outsider, hardest, oldest, newest, the ... most! If there's a limit, you should (must) test it.


• Is your product more boring than salt? Unlikely. So come up w/ a list of 10 ways to change the product (not the hype) to make it appeal to a sliver of your audience.


• Think small. 1 vestige of the TV-industrial complex is a need to think mass. If it doesn't appeal to everyone, the thinking goes, it's not worth it. No longer. Think of the smallest conceivable market, and describe a product that overwhelms it w/ its remarkability. Go from there.


• Outsource. If the factory's giving you a hard time about jazzing up the product, go elsewhere. There are plenty of job shops that would be delighted to take on your product. After it works, the factory will prolly be happy to take the product back.


• Build & use a permission asset. Once you've the ability to talk directly to your most loyal csrs, it gets much easier to develop & sell amazing things. W/o the filters of advertizing, wholesalers, & retailers, you can create products that're far more remarkable.


• Copy. Not from your industry, but from any other industry. Find an industry more dull than yours, discover who's remarkable (it wont' take long) and do what they did.


• Go 1 more. Or 2 more. Identify a competitor who's generally regarded as @ the edges, & outdo them. Whatever they're known for, do that thing even more. Even better, and even safer, do the opposite of what they're doing.


• Find things that're "just not done" in your industry & do them. JetBlue almost instituted a dress code for passengers. They're still playing w/ the idea of giving a free airline tkt to the best dressed person on the plane. A plastic surgeon could offer gift certificates. A book publisher could put a book on sale. Stew Leonard's took the strawberries out of the little green plastic cages & let the csrs pick their own - & sales doubled.


• Ask, "Why not?" Almost everything you don't do has no good reason for it. Almost everything you don't do is the result of fear/inertial or a historical lack of someone asking, "Why not?"

Okay, hopefully I won't get in trouble for typing all that down, hehe. Else someone better tell me..

The King of Comedy

Tonight I watched a Stephen Chow movie I borrowed from the library: The King of Comedy (1999). Sometimes I wonder how they come up with these English titles that don't really match the movie...

Chow's character is a stubborn actor who keeps returning to the same studio even though they've thrown him out several times: As an extra, he's been invited to higher positions but somehow he keeps messing things up with his over-exuberance at trying to be a good actor. Chow also runs the local welfare center where he's trying to put on a play that nobody is interested in seeing or participating in initially. He develops a romantic interest in a night club girl who came w/ her coworkers to try and learn some acting skillz to better please their clients. These parts of the movie are developed into the 2nd half, when Chow loses a leading man's role only to end up participating in something much more dangerous.

Of course, it's a happy ending. Typical formula as mentioned on the Wikipedia site.

More Books

I've just returned some library books, so here are my thoughts on the following:

• Gregor and the Prophecy of Bane


• What Einstein Told His Barber


• What are the Seven Wonders of the World


• The Roald Dahl Treasury

Gregor and the Prophecy of Bane is the 2nd book, following Gregor the Overlander, by Suzanne Collins. The books follow a formula where Gregor and his baby sister "Boots" are adventuring/on a quest in the Underlands below NYC, guided by cryptic, misunderstood prophecies: The 1st book has the children finding their lost father, who was also sucked into the Underlands, and the 2nd book has Gregor reluctantly fulfilling the prophecy to protect Boots. Fairly tasty for me to digest, I still see that Curse of the Warmbloods has not become available at my local library yet.

I had seen some other "Einstein" book @ a bookstore so I borrowed What Einstein Told His Barber by Robert Wolke. It's just a book of answers to some questions about the world around us. Skimmed through it. eh.

What are the Seven Wonders of the World by Peter D'Epiro is also another non-fiction book I first spotted in a bookstore. Chapters are broken up by the number of things involved: 3, 4, and up: What are the 3 laws of thermo, the Holy Trinity, etc. Skimmed through this one even faster.

I didn't even know the Roald Dahl Treasury even existed until I saw it in the library. It contains short excerpts from Dahl's books and stories. I prefer his full fledged stories to this though.

I also watched Napoleon Dynamite this afternoon when Fishface came over to pick up her watched. A quirky movie, with happy endings for the main characters.