The Power of Scarce Time
Jan0
Yesterday afternoon, I was tired. Very tired. It was the kind of bone-weariness that comes when you have a straight week of late nights for work but where the morning still come just as early. Yeah, that’s right, tired.
As a result, I was a hair’s width of backing out of my evening’s plans and trying to get some rest. What a loss it would have been! In the course of last evening, I enjoyed dinner at the coolest apartment I have seen in all of Shanghai, got to know a pretty interesting MD from a innovation and design firm called Continuum along with getting to know a fellow environmental entrepreneur better, enjoyed drinks and live music and a nice club called Anaar, met a Deloitte consultant who has done a lot of Prop 8 work in California (with common friends of mine!), made it out to another club where a solid Israeli DJ was spinning, and closed out the night at a late night place called Mao that I had often heard about but never visited. In short, it was an epic night!
Why, though, was it post-worthy here?…because of the thing that got me out of bed to begin with – the sense that I didn’t have time to waste. As with London a year before, I unexpectedly found myself essentially exiled from Shanghai for the end of 2009 to be at home with my father. Then, I returned to Shanghai with the turn of the new year realizing that I was scheduled to have less than a year more in one of the most dynamic cities in the world. Where had my endless time gone?
The result, then and now, has been a recommitment to, as Thoreau would put it, suck all the marrow out of life. I’ve been better at connecting with old friends. I’ve been discovering new ones. I’ve begun living in Shanghai, not just working here. In some ways, it is a strain. Taking advantage of social opportunities comes at the cost of sleep and more recuperative relaxation, but when my grandkids want to know what it was like to live in China when it was a debutant to the world stage, at least now I will have some stories to tell!
walkscore.com
Jan0
Through a status update by J J Raynor (who is doing fascinating work in Malaysia these days, by the way), I came across walkscore.com.
It fills you with the same sort of fascination as zillow.com did when it first came out. Essentially, it looks up all sorts of restaurants, gyms, transit options, etc. on Google Maps, and uses the density of these facilities around your home to determine just how walkable your place is.
It was fun to play with. My friend Warren’s house in Tribeca accurately comes back as a “Walker’s Paradise.” Interestingly, my home in Memphis (one of the least walkable cities I have ever found) comes back with a half decent score largely because we happen to be close to a giant strip mall that most Memphians who lived across the street would still drive to.
Either way, check out your score, and, if your house isn’t walkable, I hope it is at least bikeable!
Invictus
Jan1
I cannot believe it took a Hollywood film to lead me to discover it, but this poem that Mandela carried with him on Ellis Island stands up in my mind aside Teddy Roosevelt’s “Man in the Arena” speech as one of the most powerful messages of courage in the face of adversity.
- Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
- In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
- Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
- It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
~William Ernest Henley, 1849–1903, original
Where Americans spend their money.
Jul0
Scary statistic: the proportion spent on housing is significantly higher in London.
Visual Economics brings numbers from The US Bureau of Labor Statistics to Life
Yosemite
Jul0
Even if I weren’t in the midst of Shanghai’s high-rises, I’m pretty sure I would still find this photo absolutely stunning…
Yosemite in Winter on an amazing morning, taken by a great photographer.
Forth of July in Ramallah
Jul0
I have just returned to Jerusalem from Ramallah where I spent the afternoon having a 4th of July barbeque with an old friend from UNC, Brian Phelps. Even amidst the great beaches and nightlife of Tel Aviv and the history and spirituality of Jerusalem, I think it is likely to be the single part of this trip that will have the greatest affect on me.
Ironically, the trip was not all that exciting beyond meeting some cool people, and that’s just what made it special. I caught a bus to Ramallah at the Old City’s Damascus Gate. We drove through some traffic and through a border check that involved little more than some soldiers walking around the vehicle. Everyone knew the Friend’s Boys School where Brian lives and teaches, and they kindly gave me directions in very good English. On the way back, the border crossing was much more thorough with a series of gated turnstiles, metal detectors, and the like. Still, it certainly wasn’t overwhelming.
While in Ramallah, I enjoyed great barbeque, enjoyed the local beer (Taybeh), ate some amazingly good Kanapeh brought in from Nablis, lit a couple sparklers for the Fourth of July, and met tons of very cool people. One man, Andrew, is an old friend of one of my mentors at UNC, Terry Barnett. He has worked for a decade on preparing leaders for Palestine-Israel negotiations. Another guy is building a very cool company that builds micro-scale geothermal heating a cooling systems for buildings (hoping we may be able to do a carbon project!). They have good bars, a fairly robust arts scene, and very good food. Brian told me in all seriousness that he felt much safer on the streets of Ramallah than Jerusalem late at night. In short, it wasn’t fancy living, but it was quite comfortable living.
Spending time there made a conflict that I’ve heard about from my earliest memories much more real. In the similar experience to those that I had when I first went to China or to South Africa, that transition seemed to make both of the outliers in my emotions much stronger:
On the one hand, as I’ve experienced elsewhere, life really does go on. The security situation within Ramallah (unlike the Gaza Strip) really isn’t dire today, but I’m sure life went on even when it was. When you’re a million miles away, it is easy to forget how great humanity’s ability to adapt, to live, indeed to be happy, really is.
On the other hand, relaxing in Ramallah allowed me to understand just a little bit better what the pain of a violent conflict in your home would really be like. All those people around me were living their lives day-to-day, just like I live my own. Yet if I imagine my own life and livelihood being profoundly disrupted, as so many of theirs must have been repeatedly over the course of their lives, it is hard to imagine the fear, the sadness, even the hopelessness that one would have to battle as a result.
All in all, I am yet again humbled by the strength and vitality of a community far too often dismissed. I have a lot to learn.
Social Networking Site Dominance
Jun0
My old friend Tim Stallmann, who knows a crazy amount about innovations in cartography, referenced this map (click image to see big version). I find it fascinating. In some ways, the social networking sites remind me of nation states. The question that comes to my mind is whether or not convergence into a single “mega-network” is inevitable, likely, unlikely, or impossible. Every answer could be reasonably made. The real outcome seems like it could be a harbinger of the direction the world is heading in a century or two.
(Click image to see big version)
Entrepreneur’s Paranoia
May2
Recently, I had a fantastic day. Deals were closing at work. The sun was actually shining in London. My workout went well (and I actually managed to have a workout!). The Fates were on my side.
Amidst all of this, what did I find myself thinking about? Going out with friends? Heading to the park? Watching a movie? No. I found myself wondering with no small amount of trepidation about what I should be worrying about. That’s right, somewhere in the last year or so, I have developed paranoia. To be precise, it is a condition I call “entrepreneur’s paranoia.” It means I am constantly looking for problems, and if I don’t see any, I assume it just means I need to look harder.
On the one hand, it is an outstanding trait for an entrepreneur. Small businesses are plagued by the arrival of the unexpected because they lack the resources to weather a storm. Thus, the more a business is able to anticipate, the better it can perform. The Climate Bridge team has been excellent at anticipating events that our peers have not, and it has allowed us to outperform. Beyond anticipation, the process of scanning for what is next dulls the impulse of the present, smoothing out the highs and lows of daily business activity. The result, generally, is a greater ability to exhibit dispassionate judgment, another trait that entrepreneurs too often lack (because you’ve got to have a healthy dose of passion to go out on an uncertain limb to start a business to begin with!).
On the other hand, many times, its not such a great trait for a human being. It can temper the joy and freedom of life’s best moments, and it can create conservatism or even mistrust in places where boldness and trust are to be desired.
So far, I have not found any people that can effectively turn entrepreneur’s paranoia on and off in their daily lives. I have found some who lack or have shed it entirely (often to their detriment), but none who can turn it on and off. The question, then, what is the right and realistic place for “entrepreneur’s paranoia” in an entrepreneur’s life?
Fresh air
Feb0
Eighteen months ago, I was working in San Francisco. I was making day trips up to Marin County and down to Palo Alto. I was getting out in the sun, enjoying the breeze, and I was loving every minute of it. You know that feeling you sometimes get on a stressful day, where you just feel like you need to breathe? I didn’t have those in San Francisco.
Then, I went for a sum total of one hike in 2008. It was a fantastic jaunt in the Tennessee mountains with great people and great conversations in a great setting. It provided inspiration, energy, and ideas that drove me for months thereafter.
Now, I am thinking of moving from the outdoors-challenged London to the outdoors-deprived Shanghai. It’s a city where the haze limits visibility to a mile or two on a good day. It’s a country so densely populated and so short of National Parks that my only real options for substantive outdoors activities will be the Himalayas or leaving the country. It’s a country where emissions are so high that some cities are literally bordering on uninhabitable.
Sure, it will make for some interesting stories, but how long do you want to be in a place where the sky only looks blue if you’re looking straight up because the stretch of smog gets thicker as your eyes travel to the horizon?
I know, I know, that’s exactly what I’m going to China to work on, and there’s honor in being in the thick of the battle. There’s something unique and challenging about being on the front lines of whatever issue you’re fighting for: the environment, an end to poverty, education for all. On the one hand, you are putting yourself in the perfect place to understand your impact and refine your efforts. On the other, it means that you are shooting yourself in the foot. You are putting yourself directly into the resource-constrained environment that bred the problem. On the whole I am excited to head eastward at least for a time, but I can’t claim that I don’t sometimes think that many social and environmental battles much more comfortably fought from a distance.
I gotta get some fresh air!