Assorted Notes

THURSDAY, 3 JUNE 2010

20:58

A question: Do I like people?

Preliminary answer: I think I like people; I just tend to keep them at a distance.

21:49

This is an interesting question.

To make money by selling things to people, you would have to be aware of their needs, their fears, their dreams, their desires, their pain, and their problems. Then you would have to consider how you can help them get where they want to be, or get away from where they do not want to be. You’d have to consider how you can help them fulfil their dreams, relieve their pain, or solve their problems.

Of course, you want to make money in the process, but I think that you will find if you offer real solutions, people will be eager enough to pay you – as long as you offer real value.

Can you make money by selling solutions if you do not really like people? Certainly anyone can add one and one together and figure out that there is a market for something, and figure out how they can give that market what they need or want without necessarily having any particular feeling for people. But, I think the whole process might just be easier, and maybe even more sustainable if you do recognise the individual person in the “market”, and if you have empathy or understanding for his or her hopes, and fears, and desires, and needs.

THURSDAY, 24 JUNE 2010

Most of my ideas, thoughts and notes these days are about making money. Now, talking about making money would be boring were it not for the light it shines on who and what you are, on how you position yourself in the world, on your relationship with other people, and on your historical relationship with, and view of, money.

FRIDAY, 23 JULY 2010

Don’t expect the path to financial independence to be intellectually stimulating. The most successful projects, the most profitable income systems may be extremely boring, with activities that can hardly compare to a good historical documentary or a stimulating argument or conversation. Let there be no doubt: Making money can indeed bore you to death.

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TUESDAY, 13 APRIL 2010

Fuck that nonsense of age and “I am already x-years old” – as if we’re all going to reach 100 and you’re already 37 or 54 or 45 years closer to the target.

Here is a more reasonable approach: Be grateful for every single day you get. Make the most of every single day! Every day is a gift!

WEDNESDAY, 14 APRIL 2010

I am currently going through my notes from 2005. I have a much better idea these days how this material can work on the Internet, how it may be received, and how it can be distributed for maximum readership. I have a much better idea of these things thanks to many failures and many lessons learned since 2006.

SUNDAY, 2 MAY 2010

Read enough history, especially of war, and you would find that many national leaders are enemies of the people over whom they rule – or in whose name they are supposed to govern. Also, that people are in many cases too ignorant to realise that their leaders are, in fact, their enemy. (Most recently read about Europa, 1756 to 1763)

FRIDAY, 7 MAY 2010

“You may want to impress me with a version of reality that is not exactly positive, but I do not believe in a static reality. I understand reality as something that not only changes after we have thought about it and started taking action, but as something that changes because we thought about it in a particular way.” ~ from a conversation with myself

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THURSDAY, 29 APRIL 2010

Riding to school this afternoon, I went through the list of tasks I am currently busy with. Suddenly a thought emerged from a place that could only be described as the subconscious, seeing that I did not consciously decide to think the idea.

“It’s all nice and dandy,” said the thought, “but something’s not right.”

“What?” I asked.

“I don’t know. The tasks are so … mundane.”

“Mundane?” I repeated.

“Yes, I mean … aren’t you supposed to be making money?”

“Yes? And?”

“Well,” started the Thought from the Depths, “to make money is one hell of a big deal, isn’t it? How do you reckon you’re going to make money with such mundane, everyday tasks?”

And there you have it: A Conviction from Down Under.

But then I realised, I created this monster out of making money – a god, as it were, before whom I must bow down in humility; a god I must impress with my hard work: eight hours struggling to turn in a screw with my thumbnail where thirty seconds with a screwdriver would have sufficed; and with complex processes and impressive tasks, not the everyday kind that any entrepreneur with half a brain can manage. This is my work. This is what I do. I created this mythological figure, because making money is an awfully big affair. (I later thought if I had to inspect the figure a little more closely, I would notice it is made from paper pulp and glue because I couldn’t afford clay or metal.)

I reckoned this leaves me with two options:

Option A) Even though other entrepreneurs aren’t shackled with a similar monstrosity in their heads, I must continue to honour the hand-carved God of Money. I would probably also have to work out a mantra to recite while I do my tasks. I would, as a matter of course, also have to burn incense and play religious chants in the background.

Option B) I must recognise this clumsy, bloated figure as the false idol it truly is. Like other people who make monstrous figures out of their fears, or out of things they must do for which they regard themselves inadequate, so I would have to admit to this monster being nothing more than my own creation. I reckon, if I can succeed in driving this hideous hallucination from my mind, I could get on with the sometimes mundane tasks that may just lead to the income that could have been mine years ago.

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WEDNESDAY, 3 MARCH 2010

11:58

Two (possibly) unrelated thoughts:

1. My blue electric guitar that I bought in 2000 in a manic period when I thought I was going to become a rock star or something has finally revealed its true purpose and value: to be sold after ten years for food money that might last for as long as two weeks.

2. In case I missed it, the point is education, and more specifically, me facilitating other people’s education. I think the topic is obvious: financial independence. (How does it work if I am struggling to keep my own head above water? We learn from each other’s mistakes, and from what we gather on the way to our destination.)

20:39

It is better to be psychotic and/or to live in a delusion than it is to give up. “One can never be radical enough; that is, one must always try to be as radical as reality itself,” Lenin apparently once said.

FRIDAY, 5 MARCH 2010

Three images:

– The successful person – family and friends regard him as successful, so do colleagues and acquaintances, but above all, he regards himself as successful

– The one who has given up – draws life-energy from anyone who’s still trying; shoots down all ideas; sours hope; criticises everything; bitter demeanour

– The one who keeps trying – even if it comes to a point where his friends and family start thinking he will never “make” it, even if he fails to achieve his objectives in the reasonable time he had set for himself, he will continue working on them, and he will probably continue until the day he withers away and disappears into the nothingness

SUNDAY, 21 MARCH 2010

Nothing accentuates your shame and embarrassment quite as much as having absolutely no cash, and not enough money in the bank to withdraw what you do have from an ATM.

FRIDAY, 26 MARCH 2010

For years, I have had this tendency to be uncomfortable about the possibility of excessive happiness.

Says a voice in my head: You are doing about 25 or 30% on the happiness scale at the moment. Many people can go to about 80% before they start feeling giddy. You can personally go to about 60 or 65% before your head will explode – which means at least for the foreseeable future you don’t have anything to worry about.

MONDAY, 29 MARCH 2010

Protect the spirit – that is your main responsibility. When the spirit goes, everything goes.

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FRIDAY, 5 MARCH 2010

“Am I on the right track?” I hear a voice ask. “Are we doing the right things now?”

Imagine you are planning a trip, let’s say Pretoria to Cape Town. You booked your train ticket; you pack your bag the day before leaving; you go to bed early; you get up on time. More than an hour before departure time you’re already at Pretoria station. You check in, find your compartment, load your luggage and wait patiently at the seat next to the window for the train to depart. Promptly at the right minute, the train starts moving, and you’re on your way to your planned destination.

Me asking myself why “we” are still broke even though “we” are apparently doing the right things is like me asking in my train travel story when the train is drawing closer to Kimberley, “Why are we still not in Cape Town? Something isn’t right. You say we’re on the right train, apparently heading to Cape Town, but I don’t even see the outline of Table Mountain yet! What’s going on here?”

My advice to the “traveller”: Calm down. You will arrive when the train has made stops at all the right places, and you patiently continued the journey and resisted the temptation to get off at Three Sisters or De Aar because you could swear another train will get you to Cape Town faster. You are on the right train. Just stay calm.

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