Assorted Notes

WEDNESDAY, 21 AUGUST 2013

If you want to make it in this world – if you want to achieve important goals you have set for yourself, either financial prosperity, or looking back on your life at 45 or 55 or 65 and thinking you have done all right – you would have to spend the best hours of your day utilising your best skills, working on projects or tasks where your experience and/or natural talents are most prominent.

If you ignore what you do better than anything else for the sake of short-term considerations, the possibility of achieving some success is not entirely excluded, but the probability decreases by the day.

It is a simple strategy: Hit the hardest with what you do best. Or like the poet, W.H. Auden said: “You owe it to us all to get on with what you’re good at.”

THURSDAY, 22 AUGUST 2013

Maybe you don’t like the idea of competition. Perhaps you believe your only race is with yourself. Maybe you think life is not just science and math.

Whatever your feelings about this matter, if you want to make it in this world, you better be ready to compete. For every dollar you want to make, there is another man or woman who has set their eyes on the same dollar. For every product you hope to sell, or for any service you want to offer, there is at least one other man or woman who is working on a similar product or offering a similar service. If you think you know something, just know, someone else probably possesses the exact same knowledge.

What can you do? Is there hope for the average non-genius man or woman who doesn’t have access to inexhaustible resources to make up for their shortcomings?

The hope is this: Focus on your talents, every day. If it is to bake cookies and exchange one fresh dozen after another for cold, hard cash, then do that. If it is playing guitar or composing songs, then you do that. If it is bringing people together and teaching them something they did not know, do that. If it is taking care of people in need, do that. If it is to write poems or essays or stories … then you know what to do. Hit as hard as you can with your number one skill.

What happens if you struggle to make money with your number one skill, or if you are convinced that there is no market for it? Do you sigh, “That’s just how life is,” before you start searching the classified ads for the first and best opportunity to sell your time?

The sentiments I express in this note are not motivated by my belief that a creative life is better than a life where you simply survive from one salary to another. They are motivated by a conviction that your best chance of survival – survival! – is to focus on your best abilities.

Still, if you reckon the best thing you can offer the world has no commercial value, ask yourself: Is there any way you can solve a problem for someone else with your skills or talents? Is there any way you can help someone get to a good place where they want to be? Is there any way you can help someone get away from a place they want to move away from? Even if you don’t make money by solving problems for other people, helping them might improve your life in other ways, including opening opportunities you may never have thought of.

The hard reality is that most of us have to pay for our own bread and butter, and maybe for some other people’s bread and butter too. Sometimes it means engaging in activities where we do not employ our best talents or skills, but it is important not to waste your time. Once you have done what you need to do to put food on the table, get back to the things you do better than most other people. Your survival, and your success in life depend on it.

______________________

FRIDAY, 5 JULY 2013

The MP3 player was developed and has since proven to be a great success because people who were already in the privileged position to own Walkmans and Discmans complained – it could even be said that they moaned – about all the cassettes and discs they always had to carry around.

* * *

I make chips of metal, the size of a large coin. At the end of the working day I push all the chips into a slot, and one fresh NT$100 note comes out at another slot for every chip I made. If I made a mistake with a chip or the quality is inferior, the chip will be rejected and dropped into a drawer at the bottom of the machine. I can then fix the error, or do some more work on the chip, and try again.

Because it takes me about twelve minutes to make each chip, I know I can produce five chips in one hour. I therefore know that I earn NT$500 for one hour’s labour. Although I can make as many chips as I want every day, I usually stop after four or five hours.

There is a clear and direct correlation between my labour and the rewards I receive.

I am thinking about hiring one or two people to make more chips than I can make on my own, which I will feed into the machine, after which I will share the rewards with my two workers.

THURSDAY, 11 JULY 2013

20:03

I am watching a documentary entitled, “Million Dollar Traders”. It is about a group of people, who have already been successful in other professions, who are learning to trade in London’s financial district. The story is the idea of a millionaire investor named Lex van Dam. He has appointed as the group’s manager a 29-year-old guy who has already retired – from trading on the stock exchange.

I look at the “City” people, and a profile develops:

– They like money.

– They are serious about money.

– They respect you if you are also serious about money.

– They get upset if someone is not serious about money, or if they are irresponsible with money, or stupid with money.

– They like to live well – good hotels, first-class airline tickets, exotic vacations, beautiful homes, nice cars, good clothes.

– They generally seem to be conservative in their outlook on life.

– They respect people who have mastered something, or someone who is good at something, or who knows more about something that many people are interested in.

21:47

If the place I want to reach can be called Point 100, I am now more or less at Point 14. Which is not to say that I haven’t made much progress. The “14” that I have achieved thus far is after all hard-won ground.

______________________

TUESDAY, 28 MAY 2013

Why do I write?

To serve a cause?

To try to win an argument?

To make a contribution?

I write, to a large extent, to say one thing: I was here.

WEDNESDAY, 3 JULY 2013

“What am I doing?” I ask myself.

Would the guy in prison ask himself this question? If so, what would he answer? Would he answer, “Nothing, I’m in prison”?

Should the family man ask himself the question, he would surely answer, “I take care of my family.”

Is that enough? Is that good enough?

Ask the pastor or church minister or missionary, and they would answer, “I am doing God’s will.”

Easy. Shift the responsibility to God. “I’m just doing what I’m told.”

If the soldier asked himself the question, his answer would be similar to the religious person’s: a pre-formulated answer will be recited. With conviction.

Would the poor man or woman in the squatter camp say they are trying their best to get back on their feet again?

If the mother of two children in a war-torn area asked herself the question, it would certainly be quite reasonable if she answered: “At this point I do what I need to do to keep myself and my children safe and alive.”

What would she say if the guns fell silent?

How would the couple respond who returns to the ruins of their home after two years in a refugee camp?

What would the heroin addict say?

What would the alcoholic say when he has his first drink of the day, shortly after breakfast?

How would the unscrupulous businessman answer? Would he dismissively reply that he makes as much money as he can, as if you should have been able to guess the answer?

Would he really be satisfied with that? If he is reasonably intelligent, and if he thinks about things every now and then, and you sit for an hour with him at a coffee shop or lounge bar, what would his more comprehensive answer be?

What would the entrepreneur with a social conscience say?

How would the young politician answer who has not sold his soul yet?

How does the author, the artist, the actor, the playwright, the comedian answer?

If everyone has to dodge bullets or shrapnel, or if they wake up at night from hunger pains or cold or the call of a hungry loved one, everyone just reacts. If anyone in the area wants to take a moment to ask a philosophical question, he or she will probably be pushed aside. If you simply react every moment you are awake, the answer to what you are doing is obvious.

But what happens when you are not in immediate danger, and you have options to choose from before you act? What do you do then? And why that choice or action?

THURSDAY, 4 JULY 2013

I look at the work I have to do, for my personal writings as well as for my commercial projects.

My rational brain says: I have to do it; otherwise nothing will come of all the work I have already done.

My emotional brain says: For every R100 I am going to put in in terms of time and effort, I will get back between five cents and R1. (“But I guess I have to do it; otherwise nothing will come of the work I have already done.”)

FRIDAY, 5 JULY 2013

What does a cat do?

The cat did not ask to be born. The cat had no choice about its species or gender, or about the time, place or condition of its birth.

And yet, there it is.

What does the cat do with its daily existence? It tries to get through the day and night with as little tension as possible.

That’s the only thing that makes sense to it.

______________________

THURSDAY, 6 JUNE 2013

I had a wonderful morning. First I had my breakfast – oatmeal with All Bran Flakes, sprinkles of pecan nuts, and a few raisins, and then I finished a cup of coffee that my brother-in-law had brewed – so strong that a drop the dog had licked from the floor almost gave her a heart-attack.

Then I took a hot bath – the first in years (I usually shower). After the bath I shaved, brushed my teeth, and made myself a cup of green tea.

Sipping my Taiwanese tea, I went outside to sit in the sun – nice warm June sun, African sun, winter sun. After making notes for an essay about annoying people, I read for about half an hour.

Putting aside the book, I put my earphones on my head, kicked out my flip-flops and pressed “Play” on my music player. And then, for the second half of 1982 and almost all of 1983, I kicked a soccer ball across the lawn, from one side to the other, and back again.

Who says only a child can enjoy the things of a child?

______________________

THURSDAY, 6 JUNE 2013

Yesterday, I was “that person” on the Gautrain: the one on the platform at the airport who does not wait until all the passengers have disembarked before he enters the train with his huge pieces of luggage.

It’s not that I am rude as a rule. It is just the moment when the train came to a halt and the first few people had disembarked, I went into Kaohsiung MRT mode: when the outbound traffic start thinning out, you take a gap.

The moment I stepped into the train, I realised that the airport is the last stop: everyone had to disembark before the next group of passengers could enter.

It was inevitable that someone, red in the face from exasperation, would stop in his tracks to lecture me. “Wait for everyone to get off!” the man yelled at me. “The train isn’t going anywhere! You’ll all get a chance!”

My “whatever” response was unconvincing. I knew that I had committed an error of behaviour that made me that person who annoys everyone else on a train, especially one like the Gautrain when it makes its last stop at a busy station like the airport. I was the person for whom I myself have clicked my tongue and have given a dirty look.

The thought then popped into my head that in the opinion of the guy with the red face I am certainly a one-dimensional character. I am “The Jerk Who Does Not Wait”. If he really had to think about it, he would probably have acknowledged thinking of me as someone who spends his days annoying people. Or that I walk around the airport all day waiting for the train to arrive so that I can inflame the emotions of men with red faces even more by blocking their exit with my huge luggage. Either that, or I evaporate like condensation the moment I have performed my regular rude act.

At Sandton Station, I waited for a few people to disembark before getting off. Because I had to catch another train to Rosebank, I had one more chance to show that I knew how to enter a train like a civilised person.

When the train arrived a few minutes later at a different platform, I hung back. The train doors opened … but before a single passenger had a chance to get out, a young woman stormed the open door.

“How rude,” I muttered. And as my cheeks flamed up with indignation, I wondered how long it would take for the woman to evaporate.

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