A Meaningful Life

I love a lot of what 37 signals are about but I must say I don’t agree with David’s view that monetize is word we don’t need. Monetize doesn’t mean making money. Monetization is a conversion process, which is why I like the word (even though I use it sparingly because it is so misunderstood). For example you can monetize your house by selling it. That doesn’t make any money it just changes the form of the asset.

If people paid more attention to the process of monetization they can indirectly make some money. How you ask? Assets all fluctuate in value. Employing monetization when you want to convert unrealised asset value into realised asset value is key. Lack of asset liquidity is a problem that monetization techniques address, but strictly speaking it doesn’t make you any money, just realises the gains or losses. What you build, sell and do makes the money in reality. Landscape your house to make some money, sell it to monetise it.

The old school software industry is under huge economic, cyclical and competitive pressure. Dogs growl and bite when backed into corners. Some comments I have been reading on recent posts about SaaS are highlighting the pressure which is now extending to CIO’s and CFO’s. These key decision makers are having to decide whether to keep paying big license fees to old school software companies in the face of much cheaper, safer and more reliable SaaS offerings. It causes decision stress I’m sure. In my opinion the smart ones are researching the topic and going to SaaS.

A recent survey by searchCIO.com saw some suggestion that SaaS might be fad like by a commentator. I would never consider SaaS being fad like due to the clear dependency many off us already have on the SaaS offerings such as online banking and online e-mail.

Here’s another 170 billion dollar reason SaaS isn’t fad like - Google. The world’s biggest SaaS utility.

I don’t know about you but Google has never sent me any software disks or cd’s. I’m pretty damn sure I sign into their servers with lots of other people at the same time (multi-tenant) from anywhere in the world (online) via a web browser. They maintain and backup my stuff (service). They upgrade their online applications without making me put a CD in my PC (service). This is SaaS plain and simple. They are a utitlity that I buy (or get for free) my software from, as a service.

Thanks to Ben at Diversity. His colleague, Paul made comment on that article which contained the flickr of SaaS resistance. It was spot on. Sorry I mean’t “flicker” not “flickr”.

p.s. Flickr.com is a SaaS photo album I use. Check it out, it’s very cool. They do all the backups, burn CD’s for me and and provide private access to my albums for my family and friends for less than $30 a year. Access, security, distribution, backups, upgrades are all part of your typical SaaS offering.

Time to clock off.

p.p.s if you need a SaaS Bundy Clock and Time Tracking system then check out 88miles.net (they just built a Saasu connector). If you sign up to both Saasu.com and 88miles.net then I’ll make sure you get a free three month Saasu.com subscription extension.

I’m an X-files fan, I admit it. I love a search for the truth but there is a major problem.

Truth and reality are constrained by the observers knowledge, wisdom and measurement (senses). We know that scientific process is designed to maximize observation, but it is still always so constrained.

While you have not obtained perfection in the senses (and the sciences) you can never begin to come close to the truth. The more knowledge you acquire the less certain you become about the truth of things. I think it’s a bit like a persons age having an inverse relationship to the knowledge the feel they have. The older you get the more you realise you don’t know.

So my aim is not to seek absolute truth but instead to simply close the theoretical gap and then be a creator. Apply the gain, the improved understanding, the better knowledge.

I love fables, here’s one I quickly made up to demonstrate my point about how truth despite being so blatantly obvious to everyone as observers can be absolutely wrong. My previous post in jest about letting my kids believe in Santa relates to this point. It applies equally to business such as what you think you customers want and who you think your market demographic is.

Ambitious Ant Seeks Truth

An ambitious ant is seeking the truth. He spends a lot of time trying to understand his world. One day determined to know the truth he goes on a mission. A month later he returns and the colony welcomes him. In his great returning speech to the colony he makes a profound declaration “I have traveled further than any ant in my colony has before. It has taken me nearly my whole life, a whole month, but I have discovered that there are grasses 100,000 times as big as ours with vast numbers of large round leaves on massively high stems. It takes a whole day to walk around one of these stems, I’ll call it a tree and the stem I’ll call a trunk. The universe is made up of trees and between them is the grasslands we live in. They appear to have existed long before our kind. So knowing this truth, I declare as your leader, that I will now be making the decisions for the colony based on this new truth and knowledge, the reality of our world.” The ant’s quest for knowledge rewarded their species with a better life, new foods from the great trees. However the truth was short lived. The next day one drop of ant-rid killed the entire colony and the Ants obviously never observed the cause of their demise.

How naive can the ant be, obviously we humans are the most advanced creatures in the universe. Just ask the majority of people who know this to be the truth due to the lack of evidence to suggest otherwise.

To continue the story. In 2100 A.D. (earth time) the Universe scratches the itch on its bum. Amongst fellow Universes it is well known that this itch is only a single planetary death roll. These death rolls are caused by species who have consumed there habitat or destroyed themselves with nuclear war. The Megaverse assures the Universe that the itch will go away.

How naive can we humans be to think we know and can even begin to understand what the truth is.

There are three main things my gut feeling tells me are probably right in life:

1. Evolution seems to universally proclaim via repetition that reproduction or creation is an evolutionary requirement. So I’ll make this truth mean that having children is good!
2. I should cause as small a ripple as possible that harms humankind. I should create as big a ripple as possible that helps humankind.
3. We probably didn’t win the “intelligent life lotto” 1 planet in 50,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 probability and getting more unlikely with every new telescope.

The truth is out there, pick a version but be careful how you use it. It might just be wrong.

Scott Rossenberg points to a very interesting article in The Antlantic.  In a nutshell China has a huge trade surplus undistributed to its people. A lot of it sits in US, UK and Australian government bonds. China is very sensible doing this for their economy in order to prevent inflation. It is an onerous balancing game not unlike controlling the flow of money to your children. Too much and kids don’t value it highly. Too little and they feel deprived relative to their friends. It’s a tough job being a parent, imagine doing that for billions of people.

In an old movie called The Gods Must Be Crazy a light plane pilot throws a coke bottle from his window and it hits an African Native on the head. The African Native hasn’t had much to do with western culture and thinks it came from God. He decides it might be a weapon because when he hits people with it, it hurts.

Most know it as a coke bottle. However, the ‘truth’ is that it’s both and neither at the same time. It’s what you make it to be. There is no absolute truth just versions/stories of truth.

You might be saying to yourself that education removes the ignorance and science reveals the truth but even then the reality is limited by the language and measurement capability you are able to use to describe, measure and classify things like a coke bottle. The coke bottle is silica it’s not a coke bottle. The coke bottle is atoms. Nope, it’s a string theory construct. Not it’s not. We may never know the truth that many of us seek.

Get the drift? No truth, no reality.

The good news. This means Santa is real! Yep I let my kids choose that if they want. Knowing this truth, that there is no truth makes life a joy! It allows you to be a creator of your own world how you want it to be, a God like power.

Inspired by some other good posts on Santa by Rosemary , Lance and Rowan

My new years resolution is very low key. It is to add a little more rigour and discipline to life.

People tend to go for big ticket resolutions but it takes a revolutionary change in your life to have them happen. We all know they don’t, humans just fail badly honouring their New Years resolution promises and commitments.

Here’s a few reasons why my resolution is low key:

• Low key resolutions are far more likely to happen. Small regular wins are better than big fat zero’s.
• 98% of your actions are habit which simply wont change on a shallow statement of resolution.
• It is inauthentic to promise yourself something that you know you wont do.
• You simply can’t stop and change your life based on a date. A “date” has no real power, it’s a word.
• What humans commit to do and what we really commit to do are very different things.

The last one is the crux of the matter. As an example many people commit to less chocolate or coffee. The reality is that we are very committed to satiating feelings. The pleasure of quelling that feeling is what we are really committed to.

What you secretly commit to in your life trumps your resolutions every time.

Resolutions that work are revolutions. Revolutions require shock or structure to make them happen.Roughly 40%-50% of people have a new years resolution to get their finances in order. The next biggest is weight and fitness at 20%-30%. To have any of these happen means massive life upheaval so the vast majority of us will no doubt fail because the is no significant difference in our daily lives to have the change happen. There is no shock factor present or there is no structure in place to have it occur.

Pick something small. Get a win on the board. Then step it up by preparing the structure, systems and resources you will need for your larger personal revolution to occur.