He’s talking about people who aren’t centered on a god or a religion and the effects of their views.  All around the world modern people are looking past their religions (particularly those religions that judge and point fingers at non-believers I believe) and forming different world views.  What do these people believe in?  What is the effect of these views?  I was surprised at how relevant his observations were.

Speaker: Alain de Botton

Subject:  How we define success, in ourselves and  in others, and what it says about us

Time: 16:55

As of this posting, it has been translated into 15 languages

Another great talk from TED!

I heard about Chris Brogan through an article called “10 Thought Leaders Boiled down to 10 Words“.  Using some free IBM software (called Many Eyes), you can load all the text from your blog (or website or anything) and it’ll give you the most common words you use.  The article summarizes them by showing the 10 most common words found in their blogs.  Cool stuff, and some dynamic people.

A couple of articles from Chris’ website that have really been helpful for me in understanding what a blog is are Elements of a Personal Brand and When your blog is a Grand Stage.  I really like both of them because they are miles away from the “travel blog / journal” concept and get at what the blogging community is.

Other than a blog, and a facebook account, my main contribution to the internet is my del.icio.us account.  For those of you who don’t know what that is, you can read this post or check it out directly.  Comparing the words on my blog with those on all the websites I’ve ever saved, the 5 most common words on my blog are:

1. Taiwan
2. People
3. World
4. Called
5. Things

The 5 most common words I use when I save a website on delicious are:

1. Tea
2. Taiwan
3. Portland
4. Blog
5. Free

What to notice from that?  First off, they don’t match that well.  I my favorite website topic (tea) isn’t equally represented on my blog.  I can also see about my writing style with Called and Things on my blog.  I don’t know what else to say about the significance of it, but I think the question is: How Am I Represented Online?

As I get older I seem to be getting more and more opinionated.  At work, we’ve all known the person who wants to say, “been there, done that, kid.  Ain’t nothin’ new”

I started to wonder if it is possible to get more open minded as you get older.  If you agree that growing more open minded is a good thing, then you’d wonder how to do it.  It doesn’t seem to happen automatically.

There are a few people who’ve left behind quotes or have been talked about as being great at this virtue.  I believe this virtue has been said a lot of different ways, and here are a few:

• Charlie Munger
  (Warren Buffett’s right hand man and someone often compared with
  Benjamin Franklin) – “Any year that passes in which you don’t destroy
  one of your best loved ideas is a wasted year.”
• “The more I learn the less I know”
• Charles Darwin – “Of all the great scientists, Charles Darwin was the least obviously
  brilliant. He was not at all mathematical, he mastered no foreign
  languages…”  Rather what Darwin had more than anything was his unending questioning of his own beliefs.  Darwins words paraphrased: “Conscientious doubt, viewed not as a state of disbelief,
  but as a state of inquiry…”
• Zen Buddhism – the concept of beginners mind.  This is the method of doing everything as if you’ve never done it before.  Stay curious.

I could have found more instances of this theme out there without too much trouble, but what I like about these three is that they are from completely different walks of life.  A biologist, a religious tenet, and a living, very successful, western businessman.  They are out there!

I decided that working / being in different environments (Ie. Taiwan)
would be good for this because I would be forced to challenge a lot of
my own assumptions.  This was one of the things that supported my move
here and I hope will encourage me to grow more open minded, though I
know I can’t do these kinds of things forever.

Image Courtesy of Poor Charlie’s Almanak website

“…the
two general classes of learners—helpless versus mastery-oriented. I
realized that these different types of students not only explain their
failures differently, but they also hold different “theories” of
intelligence. The helpless ones believe that intelligence is a fixed
trait: you have only a certain amount, and that’s that. I call this a
“fixed mind-set.” Mistakes crack their self-confidence because they
attribute errors to a lack of ability, which they feel powerless to
change.”

“mastery-oriented children, on the other hand, think
intelligence is malleable and can be developed through education and
hard work. They want to learn above all else. After all, if you believe
that you can expand your intellectual skills, you want to do just that.”

Good food for thought as you consider how you fit into the world.  Image from this Sam Savage article

Whatever your political views, there are two things I really love about
this video. First, Jon asks some great questions up front, then watched
them hang. Second, he keeps going back to the process. Both of these
techniques seem to be very effective in just about any situation. These
are things we talk about a lot at Screaming Circuits, and I would imagine apply to any work environment or situation.

Going
into the questioning aspect of things, there are lot of books that talk
about that subject. A couple of different things that incorporate the
questioning are the Socratic Method (related to that Socratic Questioning), PDCA (Plan, Do, Check, Act), and some of Toyota’s Lean Manfacturing Techniques touch on it also.

Those
last two are more related to some of the professional training we get
here at Screaming Circuits. PDCA is really about the process side of
things, and utilizes asking questions throughout. Lean is a bit more
complicated, and has many facets. Some of the most interesting are
manufacturing techniques that are counter to what many people think of
as common sense. The most powerful one to me being One Piece Flow.