What are important traits we developed in our infanthood?

John Eckberg in the post “what you learned in early on matters”, suggested:

People who were loved and nurtured at an early age in turn develop loving and nurturing capabilities among people or employees within an organization. Those traits will then be directed by the employees and managers toward their job, clients, and back to the company.

I dare to postulate that the important traits we developed in our infanthood are:
1. Propensity to trust
2. Tuned to listen
3. Positive self perception
4. Joy of exploration
5. Tolerance of failure

With these traits deeply ingrained in our subconscious, we can grow into new environments, deal with new challenges, foster new relationships and develop a sense of self worth. These are the foundations for our later success.

Reinvent yourself

In a piece of nice post titled “Time to quit”, Seth Godin advocated s need for the ambitious to change jobs because it gives you a chance to reinvent yourself. By leaving the past behind, you effectively remove perceptible ceiling imposed on you. He wrote:

The time to look for a new job is when you don't need one. The time to switch jobs is before it feels comfortable. Go. Switch. Challenge yourself; get yourself a raise and a promotion. You owe it to your career and your skills.

It is definitely not for everyone. It is not for you if you are in a niche or highly specialized position, or if you are mostly on your own, such as a college professor or a research fellow, or if you are a self employed entrepreneur. It is most applicable to people whose strengths are general areas and knowledge and skills acquired before are portable to new positions or challenges. Especially for those who are in a managerial career path, if you believe in yourself and want to stretch yourself, this is a good advice to follow. It is good even if you fail. Without the failure, how can you know where your limits are?

Survival of the fittest

I was again strucked by the simple observation of Charles Darwin:

It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change. –Charles Darwin

What does that tell us? Don’t aspire to be strong or intelligent, try to be responsive or adaptive to change. What are the qualities that are important?
1. perceive change ahead of the others
2. cultivate bias to action
3. try new things fast, fail early and adjust accordingly
4. understand before being understood
5. keep long-term goals in mind while focusing on short-term deliverables
6. evaluate/re-evaluate constantly and objectively based on merits not on path of dependency
7. be energetic, passionate and positive
8. favor collaboration over competition
9. appreciate others and self sincerely
10. invest in oneself

All the efforts to maintain the status quo will inevitably fail. Create something new rather than maintain the old.

Best Guide in the United States

This is a joke from ComedyCentral.com:

A group of hikers were being led through the wilderness by a guide. On the third day, the hikers noticed that they had been traveling in circles.

''We're lost!'' One of the hikers complained.

''And you said you were the best guide in the United States.''

''I am,'' the guide answered, '' but I think we may have wandered into Canada.''

Switching

Seth Godin’s Fear of switching is a very relevant piece and the reason behind the fear can be explained by the prospect theory.

People are risk-averse and try very hard to avoid loss. In case of uncertainty, most people will opt to stay in the status quo. When the future return is ambiguous and unwarranted, the possible loss of what we have now overwhelms the possible return. Thus, it is difficult to switch just because it may get newer, better or bigger. Only tangible and guaranteed return will be counted in the calculation to compensate the loss.

For marketers and product developers, the first mover advantage is huge when the customers enjoy the utility or convenience of the product. If the product somehow becomes a part of their necessities, the long term relationship is almost assured. To immerse with their lives in a deeper way, it must feel natural and unobtrusive and it almost unnoticeable and becomes the default behavior. To dethrone the place established by the first mover advantage, it takes a lot convincing that a better experience is guaranteed and make sure they have a way out to back to where they were. To motivate customers to switch, marketers and product developers have to make people feel the pain and inconvenience of using the current product, then the benefit of switching becomes real.

In a fast growing market, imitating strategy stands a chance since there are enough new customers to the market, the imitating product may become their first product in the category. In a stable market or a diminishing market, to be a imitator is not a good strategy to start with.

Expectation and Context

When an ordinary event, which occurs frequently in one’s life, happens in a different context, it may put the event into an unexpected category immediately. Your reaction to it may mark very differently. For example, at a local bar, you find a coworker of the last two years, with whom you have never had any real conversions. Suddenly you feel compulsive to talk to him. The urge to have a conversion with him is created by the unexpectedness due to the out-of-context phenomenon.

In general, expectation is always framed in a set of context. Context change will trigger expectation change accordingly. Oftentimes, the very expectation becomes irrelevant or out of consideration completely because of the context change. In a certain context, what we expect is the norm, which is defined as what happen regularly, or what we regard as the norm, which is usually a stereotype. When something becomes a norm, it fades into the background and our level of attention to it is reduced to a minimal. When the norm is broken, it grabs our attention and we react to it. For instance, we assume people graduated from prestigious universities are more intelligent than those from second class universities. When we encounter an individual who is strikingly brilliant but graduated from an unknown college, our stereotype of classifying people’s intelligence meets an unexpected challenge. We will react more favorably to him than the one who is expected to behave brilliantly as a given expectation.

Some of the unexpected is a delight. Creating these unexpected delights will ensure a fun experience and a lasting memory. The unexpected may not need to be huge but the contrast from the norm will make it special.

Good ideas are simple ideas

It was stated during an interview of Anders Hejlsberg, the architect of C# language, Delphi and Turbo Pascal, “All good ideas are simple ideas.”  And he asserted that if you cannot explain your idea clearly in 5 minutes, very likely the idea itself is not a good one.

This is a very strong assertion. It certainly applies to software engineering as his domain is programming environment and languages and it has been proven again and again in software engineering in particular from his own experiences. It is not a far stretch to extend it to other engineering disciplines. People are good at implementing what they can digest and following what they understand without any much effort. When everything just feels natural to you, you cannot resist following it with your deeds. Conversely, you have to keep struggling in understanding and relating to an idea, you will feel frustrated internally and find yourself enough excuses to exit at earliest possible opportunities in implementing it or using it.

Does the same principle apply to other disciplines such as philosophy, sociology, mathematics, physics and etc? If there are two ways to look at an event, one simple way and one complex way, both of which have the power of explaining the event adequately, empirical research has showed that people favor the simple way predominantly. This is probably embedded in our genetic makeup during the long history of the evolution process.

If you want your ideas sticky, make it simple.

人为什么喜欢偷窥？

绝大多数的人都喜欢偷窥，这也是为什么孔子要教诲弟子，非礼勿视，非礼勿听了。如果人生来对其他人的私生活不感兴趣，又何必如此提醒呢？看来是今人和古人皆无二致，都有偷窥的欲望。那为什么人喜欢偷窥呢？

首先，是因为好奇。个人完全知道的生活只有自己的，别人的生活到底是怎样的，我们只能是猜测，而无法根本确知。好奇心使我们想知道我们不知道的事情，对别人生活的好奇更是一种几乎无法抵御的诱惑。

其次，自我的不安全感是生而俱来的。自我从根本上讲是孤独的，是需要同类的认同的。寻找同类就成了接近本能的一种行为。偷窥是一种在暗处对别人的观察，也是在寻找被偷窥者身上的自我的痕迹。

再次，偷窥是一种禁忌。通过偷窥，可以找到打破禁忌的快感。

最后，偷窥体现了潜在的折射为他体存在的欲望。个人的存在是单一的，也必然有这样或那样的不若人意。不免会幻想成为他体的存在，会是一个什么样子。偷窥使这种幻想实体化，折射成为活生生的个体。我们也就从这他体的存在之中，找到了幻化的影子。

偷窥必定是不健康的吗？也未必全是。偷窥和合理获知的划界是十分模糊的。但是，有一点是肯定的，偷窥强迫症是不健康的，需要得到治疗。