Markets
Latest Hurricane Info: [Link Me to NOAA]
[See The Latest Computer Models]
[DHL WORLD CLOCK]
Miami, FL
Friday, June 27, 2014
Google’s Many Arms
Technology| Larry Page on Google’s Many Arms
Subscribe Now
Try a Digital Subscription Today for Just 99¢ for Your First 4 Weeks
Get unlimited access to NYTimes.com and NYTimes apps.Get Digital
Farhad Manjoo
STATE OF THE ART
SAN FRANCISCO — One way to think of Google is as an extremely helpful, all-knowing, hyper-intelligent executive assistant. Already, it can remind you about your flight, open up your boarding pass when you get to the airport and offer you driving directions to your hotel when you land.
If what the company showed off at an event for developers on Wednesday is a true vision of our future, Google’s software will soon reach ever further into our lives, sitting on just about every other device you encounter. The software will be available to help you look up any bit of idle curiosity or accomplish any task, anytime you desire.Continue reading the main story
Related Coverage
It’s an extremely far-reaching agenda — and that may be the company’s problem. For a company whose future depends on people voluntarily handing over their information in return for handy online services, Google’s very ambitions may now stand as its biggest hurdle. Is Google, in its globe-spanning reach, trying to do so much that it risks becoming creepy instead of helpful — the assistant who got too powerful and knows too much?Photo
Credit Stuart Goldenberg
“I think technology is changing people’s lives a lot, and we’re feeling it,” Larry Page, Google’s co-founder and chief executive, said in an interview at the event in San Francisco on Wednesday.
Mr. Page described Android and Chrome, the company’s mobile operating system and web browser, as a kind of glue that will connect all of the devices we will use in the future. “We’ve been talking about a multiscreen world for a long time,” Mr. Page said. “I think you see it culminating in something that’s a great experience across lots of different kinds of devices, from the watch to the TV to the laptop to the tablet to the phone.”
But Mr. Page conceded that the novelty and scope of these devices might breed worries among users. “Everyone can tell that their lives are going to be affected, but we don’t quite know how yet, because we’re not using these things — and because of that there’s a lot of uncertainty,” he said.
Continue reading the main story
Google has lately become a punching bag in what looks like an emerging resistance against the tech industry. In San Francisco, where the technology sector is contributing to rising real estate prices and creeping inequality, the Internet-equipped luxury shuttle buses Google uses to transport its employees have become a target for local protesters. The company has also become the face of technology’s reckless intrusion into our social lives. Google Glass, its tech-enabled eyeglasses, is a frequent butt of jokes on late-night television. In response to a European court ruling on the so-called right to be forgotten, Google has received a flood of requests from users asking the service to delist them from its index.
Even at its keynote event on Wednesday, an affair largely geared toward programmers who are fans of Google, was interrupted by protesters. One blamed some of the firm’s executives for evicting local tenants, while another claimed that Google’s recent robotics acquisitions made it dangerous. “You all work for a totalitarian company that builds robots that kill people!” he yelled before being escorted out by security.
Continue reading the main story Continue reading the main story
Continue reading the main story
Mr. Page, who was joined in the interview by Sundar Pichai, the executive in charge of Google’s Android and Chrome software projects, did not seem overly bothered by the outbursts. “We’re in San Francisco, so we expect that,” Mr. Page said of the protests. “There’s a rich history of protest in San Francisco.”
Mr. Pichai pointed out that the company had introduced initiatives to improve its relationship with city residents. This year, it gave $600,000 to the city to bring free Wi-Fi service to San Francisco parks. “I think in some ways it’s good that there’s an open debate about it and I think we needed it,” Mr. Pichai said. “There’s been a lot of growth and the area is trying to adapt to that growth and that has been a concern.”Photo
“Everyone can tell that their lives are going to be affected, but we don’t quite know how yet,” says Google’s chief, Larry Page. Credit Jeff Chiu/Associated Press
More broadly, Mr. Page argued that people’s instinctive reactions to new technologies were often negative. Once we see the utility in the new stuff, we often realize that it isn’t as scary as we once thought — and soon may realize we can’t live without it. “In the early days of Street View, this was a huge issue, but it’s not really a huge issue now,” Mr. Page said of the company’s project to send a fleet of cars across the globe to snap photographs of public roadways. “People understand it now and it’s very useful,” he said. “And it doesn’t really change your privacy that much. A lot of these things are like that.”
Many of Google’s new services will improve how our computers work by combining personal data and information gathered from sensors to create what the company called “context aware” experiences.
“Today, computing mainly automates things for you, but when we connect all these things, you can truly start assisting people in a more meaningful way,” Mr. Pichai said. He suggested a way for Android on people’s smartphones to interact with Android in their cars. “If I go and pick up my kids, it would be good for my car to be aware that my kids have entered the car and change the music to something that’s appropriate for them,” Mr. Pichai said.
“Or look at the unlocking that we showed,” Mr. Page said, referring to a system in which your computer detects that your watch is nearby, then lets you start using it without typing in a passcode. “It just makes a lot of sense,” Mr. Page said. “That’s a big hassle today.”
If these features sound small to you, it may be because Google is in the early stages of exploring the benefits we will get from combining many different devices into a single, hyperaware computing system. It is certainly not alone in that effort, either. The “Internet of Things” has become the latest annoying catchphrase in the industry, and Apple is widely expected to enter the fray soon with a smartwatch.
But Google may be in the best position to make sense of the chaotic, thing-filled Internet. Because Google makes software for a variety of devices, and because it gives that code to third-party manufacturers free, it is uniquely well-suited to integrate many kinds of devices made by many different kinds of companies. What is more, for “context aware” computing to become truly useful, our devices must deeply understand our context — and that necessarily involves collecting, analyzing and acting on boatloads of information about each of us and the world around us. Google excels at that.
Perhaps more important, only Google has Mr. Page — and he is completely undaunted by the resistance these technologies may engender. “For me, I’m so excited about the possibilities to improve things for people, my worry would be the opposite,” he said. “We get so worried about these things that we don’t get the benefits.”
He pointed to health care, where regulations make collecting and analyzing data very difficult, even if that data is analyzed anonymously. “Right now we don’t data-mine health care data. If we did we’d probably save 100,000 lives next year,” he said.
Saving those lives would be a big benefit. But there’s no doubt that it would also come at a loss of privacy that some might consider too great.
Email: farhad.manjoo@nytimes.com;
Twitter: @fmanjoo
A version of this article appears in print on June 26, 2014, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: Watching Google’s Many Arms. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe
Next in Technology
Facebook Bid to Shield Data From the Law Fails, So Far
Receive occasional email updates and special offers for New York Times products and services.
Create Account
Wednesday, June 25, 2014
Tuesday, June 24, 2014
9 money habits that can help you get wealthy
By Marisa Torrieri, LearnVest
9 money habits that can help you get wealthy
While a six-figure inheritance or high-paying job can land you in the top 1 percent of earners, it’s the little things—your money habits—that often make the difference between a life of prosperity and one of constant financial stress.
Just ask LearnVest Planning Services CFP® David Blaylock, who doesn’t simply advise his clients on the merits of good money habits—he practices what he preaches.
For example, “I do a periodic review of all the subscriptions I have—the ones that hit my credit cards each month,” says Blaylock. “You’d be surprised at how many subscriptions we all have and how many go unused. You could create some significant savings each month just by looking at those things.”
Taking inventory of your recurring subscriptions and services is just one habit that can get you on the road to better fortune.
“If you look at the average amount of money you will earn over your lifetime, and figure out how many years you are working—most people earn more than a million dollars over their working life but very few people become millionaires,” says Nancy Butler, a Certified Financial Planner™. “How they manage what goes through their fingers usually makes the difference.”
So what are these easy changes that can help move you further along the road to prosperity? We asked two financial planners for their favorites.
No. 1: Reverse your thinking
We know: After taxes are taken out and the bills are paid, your paycheck can seem a little anemic—which can make the idea of having to save for retirement too seem like a real stretch. But to build wealth, a change in mindset is required. Namely, instead of spending the rest of your take-home pay, you’d actually take another cut of your paycheck and put it toward your biggest financial goals.
“Most people spend some money, pay their bills and save what’s left,” says Butler. “And that’s backwards: You should be saving for your financial goals first, paying your bills and and then consider spending the money you have leftover.” Another trap is putting your good money habits off till “later,” when life will get easier. The thing is, somehow the minute your income increases, the demands on your money seem to as well.
Now, keep in mind, we’re not suggesting you sock all of your money away and live on rice cakes. As Blaylock puts it: “I’m not asking you to put $1,000 away a month, I’m asking you to put away $50, or a small amount that you can afford. We really can’t underestimate the power of starting small, because most of the time that momentum builds, and once we see progress, we tend to repeat behaviors.”
No. 2: Look where you want to go
Just as performance athletes imagine themselves making the shot over and over again—check out this study for how goal setting improves motivation in athletes—knowing what you want your money to do for you gives your goals a better chance of being reached.
To get going on saving for the future, financial experts often suggest having a five-year plan, where you create specific money goals you’d like to achieve in five years and what you need to achieve those goals. (That is the goal of LearnVest’s 5-Year Planner.) For example, saving six months of income for an emergency fund, or saving for a big event, like a down payment on a house.
“Anytime we have a specific goal in mind, that helps us to save,” says Blaylock. “Whether that goal is emergency savings, or saving for a trip, or saving for college, it doesn’t matter.”
No. 3: Adopt your own private mind tricks
What if not spending $1,000 on a designer purse or new must-have gadget were as easy as following a rule that dictates you can’t spend more than $300 on something that isn’t essential to your life? The good news is you can create financial rules just like that for yourself; in fact, doing so can be a great habit to get into.
Also known as “heuristics,” these rule-of-thumb strategies we create for ourselves—such as not spending more than $15 on an item of baby clothing, or more than $50 on a pair of shoes—can help simplify the many choices we make in a day. Behavioral economists believe that adopting good heuristics can help one develop good money habits (see this piece for more on how and why they work).
If creating a great heuristic seems like an overwhelming task, Blaylock suggests starting with something simple, such as eating out only twice a week, or “not getting a cart at Target,” a heuristic that helped one of his colleagues save money.
No. 4: Live like a 'secret' rich person
For some, the image of a millionaire conjures visions of sprawling mansions and shiny Bentleys. But most millionaires don’t live large like that—rather, they tend to live well below their “means” and do more saving than spending. In other words, they’re not flashing their money, according to Dr. Thomas J. Stanley, co-author of “The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America’s Wealthy.” Stanley’s book, which details more than two decades worth of surveys and personal interviews with millionaires, reveals that much of the wealth in America is more often the result of hard work, diligent savings, and living below your means.
Las Vegas–based David Sapper, who owns a successful used car business, and his real-estate broker wife make a combined income of $500,000 per year. Yet they live like “secret” rich people, only spending $2,500 per month on all bills and extracurricular expenses like eating out, unlike many of their peers. By putting 90 percent of his income into savings and investments, Sapper says he’ll be able to retire early.
His advice? “Find the point that you get what you need and you’re happy and comfortable, and just stay there,” says Sapper. “I had an ‘aha!’ moment when I was watching MTV, and LL Cool J was saying, ‘I lease a Honda Accord for $399 a month,’ while other rappers are going broke.”
No. 5: Tackle retirement now
If you’re in your twenties or thirties, retirement can seem eons away—and saving for it might not seem like a priority. It’s easy to understand: In between paying to attend weddings (which average something like $600 per guest), saving for a down payment on a home, and using anything leftover to put toward “necessities” like vacation, how are you supposed to save anything for retirement?
Unfortunately the later you start saving, the more you’ll have to save. But the sooner you sock money away, the more time it has to compound and grow.
If, for example, you’re 30 and putting $50 a month into a retirement account with a 7 percent rate of return, that $50 a month would turn into $56,000 in 30 years, says Blaylock. Should you wait to age 40, you would need to contribute $110 per month to get to that same goal. This is because your money has less time to grow which minimizes the impact of compound interest.(For more on compound interest and why losing time on retirement can hurt you, check out “The Secret of Retirement Savings: You Can’t Make up for Lost Time.”)
More from LearnVest
Secrets of rich people
Debt-free, savings in the bank, ready for retirement: Now what?
10 questions for ... a behavior expert
No. 6: Know what’s coming in, and what’s going out
Most of us have good intentions when it comes to saving money. But if you don’t know what’s coming into your bank account and what’s going out, chances are you don’t know how much you can devote to your goals. And most people generally don’t track their income and spending, says Blaylock. “It really is shocking to me that clients I work with don’t always review their pay stub,” he says.
You can track your expenses for free with an app like LearnVest’s that helps you budget, set goals and save. Remember: Knowledge is the first step to lasting change.
“If I don’t know how much you spend on eating out, how can I expect you to change that?” says Blaylock. “You kind of have to become the chief financial officer of your household.”
No. 7: Getting out of debt
Everyone has debt at some point in their life. But if you have bad debt—not student loans and mortgages, but credit card debt, where you’re paying high monthly interest rates—nixing it and getting out of the habit of being a debtor—should be priority number one. “I want somebody to develop a plan to have them out of that debt in 36 months or less,” says Blaylock. “It’s hindering you from making progress on your other goals.”
At the same time, emergencies happen—and a $600 car repair can hit anytime. That’s why Blaylock advises putting half the money you could put into paying down debt into an emergency savings account. So, for example, instead of paying $600 toward credit card debt, consider putting $300 toward emergency savings and $300 toward credit card payments. While this means it will take longer to get out of credit card debt, you’ll have money stored up for an emergency.
“Credit card debt is a result of the ‘uh-oh’ moments,” says Blaylock. “We still don’t have any savings built up because we put it all toward our credit card. So while you’re also working to pay your credit card down, you should consider putting an equal amount to an emergency savings account. I often tell clients that their emergency savings are their insurance policy against falling into credit card debt ever again.”
After you get out of debt, Butler suggests only having one credit card, and come to an agreement with yourself (or your significant other) that it will only be used during an emergency. “Let’s say the car broke down and you can’t fix it—that’s an emergency,” says Butler. “Something’s on sale, and I know I’m going to need it in six months—that’s not an emergency.”
No. 8: Increasing your earnings
There are two ways to increase your net worth: Spend less or save more money. “And spending less is only part of it – you have to save, and when appropriate invest, the rest,” says Natalie Taylor, a CFP® with LearnVest Planning Services. “Earning more often doesn’t lead to higher net worth because lifestyle expenses grow along with it.”
But if you grow your income, and set some of those earnings aside, you can grow your bottom line. Aside from getting a raise or winning the lottery, there are a few ways to get more money flowing in.
One suggestion: Diversify your income streams by working a second, part-time job doing something you love. As far as earning more, there are a few things one can do. “For those who cannot cut their expenses enough, I love the idea of working part-time,” says Blaylock. “I have a great friend who is an attorney. She has a big travel habit that she is unwilling to pull back on. So, she works at a flower shop on Saturdays during wedding season. It’s a win for everyone: The flower shop has a dependable employee, and my friend loves flowers so she does not think of it as work.”
Another idea: Look for investment opportunities—perhaps with the help of a financial planner—or other ways to get income to come to you. “I think retirement income should come from multiple sources such as rental income, part-time income and retirement assets,” says Blaylock.
No. 9: Consider consulting an expert
There are times in life when consulting an expert pays you back in spades. Even if you’re doing everything you can to start good money habits, using a qualified financial planner can help keep you on track—and help you see the big picture.
“Often times most of us are too emotionally involved in our finances to make really good decisions,” says Blaylock. “So what you’re looking for when you’re getting a professional is accountability and an outside view of what you’re doing. I look at your finances very objectively, where you can’t because you’re that person.”
LearnVest Planning Services is a registered investment adviser and subsidiary of LearnVest, Inc. that provides financial plans for its clients. Information shown is for illustrative purposes only and is not intended as investment, legal or tax planning advice. Please consult a financial adviser, attorney or tax specialist for advice specific to your financial situation. Unless specifically identified as such, the people interviewed in this piece are neither clients, employees nor affiliates of LearnVest Planning Services, and the views expressed are their own. LearnVest Planning Services and any third parties listed in this message are separate and unaffiliated and are not responsible for each other’s products, services or policies.
More from LearnVest
Secrets of rich people
Debt-free, savings in the bank, ready for retirement: Now what?
10 questions for ... a behavior expert
MSN PrivacyLegalAdvertiseSite mapAbout our adsHelpFeedback© 2014 Microsoft
Monday, June 23, 2014
Wednesday, June 18, 2014
5 Tricks To Brainstorm Like It's Your Job
BRAINSTORMING 5 min read
5 Tricks To Brainstorm Like It's Your Job
JUNE 13, 2014
Your next business idea is just around the corner: You just don't know it yet. Many people I have talked to who want freedom from the cube farm say that the lack of an idea is the only thing holding them back. But why let that be the case.
Before I started my last business, I worked in the innovations group of a major ad agency. It was my primary responsibility to think up and execute marketing tactics that had never been done before for Kia Motors America and Dr Pepper and Snapple Group. Toward the end of my tenure at that agency, members of my group had the opportunity to pitch ideas to a big company looking for some unique ways to make an impact at a music festival in a few weeks.
As if there weren't enough pressure from senior management to win the business! Needless to say, it typically took my group months to generate and execute an idea. The shortened time frame meant that my team needed to use some shortcuts to arrive at the best ideas fast. Here are a few tricks that we used:
Related: 10 Tips for Unleashing Your Creativity at Work
1. Brainstorming is a team sport. There really aren't any new ideas. Anything new is just a unique mashup of a few things that are old.
This means that bad ideas can lead to good ideas. So don't censor! Not everything you say is going to be a genius concept. But be a team player and get an idea out there regardless of its quality. There is a good chance it will lead to something useful.
2. Take the whole process seriously. One of the biggest mistakes people make when trying to generate ideas is that they don't see the process as work. "We will just grab some beers and talk through some ideas," they say.
Put the beer down and get focused! When we were working at creating ideas on the innovations team, we always took brainstorming seriously. We set a real-ife meeting with hard starting and stopping points. We took diligent notes. We asked very difficult questions. Sometimes we even had an agenda outlined.
Businesses must innovate to survive, so the future of your company depends on brainstorming. Start taking it seriously.
Related: Collaborating Is a Waste of Time If It Falls Into These 4 Traps
3. Use cool stuff to prime the process. It is really hard to start cold generating ideas so we usually began brainstorming with a session that we lovingly called "cool s***."
During this exercise each individual on the team would talk about something that he or she had found interesting in the past few days. This could have been anything, from the latest Kardashian wedding gossip to a photo of a new robot that folds underwear. The stuff was rarely relevant. We shared it solely for the purpose of warming us up so that we could start thinking about new ideas.
4. Disconnect from the wired world. We all knew that the most important thing during brainstorming was for everyone to stay focused. This meant that the meeting didn't start until we turned off the computer monitors and put away the cellphones.
What about taking notes? We had a whiteboard. What about the email? It waited an hour. Creating ideas is about connecting with other people. It's hard to do that when someone is updating an LinkedIn profile. Shut it down.
Related: Get Your Head in the Game: 3 Easy Skills to Master Your Mind
5. Create a space for innovation. Sir Issac Newton came up with the idea for gravity while spending time thinking in apple orchards. Likewise, the innovations team had a place in the office that we called the Innovation Pad. Thinking outside the box required not being boxed in by ego. So in this space, everyone left their ego and rank at the door.
The day of the pitch we walked the client's team through a handful of amazing concepts. The client representatives absolutely loved two ideas but had a budget for only one. After a day or so of deliberation, we put the best one in motion and executed it so well that the company ended up retaining our team for future projects.
If you are like me, sometimes you may struggle to see the next big opportunity but remember what Sir Richard Branson said: "Business opportunities are like buses; there’s always another one coming."
Your next idea is out there: You just need to look for it. So grab a whiteboard and start brainstorming.
Related: 3 Ways to Think Outside the Box
Copyright © 2014 Entrepreneur Media, Inc. All rights reserved.
Monday, June 16, 2014
Delegates begin planning for changes to U.S. Constitution
Delegates begin planning for changes to U.S. Constitution
Michael Conroy, Associated Press
David Long, Indiana Senate president pro tempore, welcomes delegates Thursday during a meeting to set up the framework for states to amend the U.S. Constitution at the Statehouse in Indianapolis.
June 12, 2014 2:50 pm • Dan Carden dan.carden@nwi.com, (317) 637-9078
INDIANAPOLIS | Representatives and senators from 29 states met Thursday in the Indiana Statehouse to begin planning for the first state-led revisions to the U.S. Constitution since the nation's fundamental governing document was enacted in 1789.
The significance of the work undertaken by The Mount Vernon Assembly to prepare for a future Convention of the States was not lost on the 94 official and participating delegates, mostly Republicans, who filled the House chamber.
"Nothing like this has occurred in over two centuries, though certainly the founders of this nation assumed it would have happened long ago," said Indiana Senate President David Long, R-Fort Wayne, an organizer of the meeting.
Article V of the U.S. Constitution requires Congress call a Convention of the States for proposing constitutional amendments if legislatures in two-thirds of the states (34 states) request one. If the convention approves an amendment, it then can be ratified by three-fourths of the states (38 states) and added to the Constitution without additional congressional approval.
However, because an Article V convention never has been called, there are no clear procedures on how it would begin, what rules the convention would follow or whether it could be limited in scope.
The Mount Vernon Assembly, which organized last December at George Washington's Virginia estate and is planning to change its name to the Assembly of State Legislatures, has taken it upon itself to start answering those questions to ensure a future Convention of the States gets off on the right foot.
"It has been a failure on the part of state legislatures for not stepping up for the past 200 years and saying, here's how we're going to do it, so that's what we're doing," said state Rep. Chris Kapenga, a Wisconsin Republican.
"It's time we accept the responsibility given us because there's little debate in state legislatures, or in the public, that something's not right in Washington."
Throughout the morning, delegates discussed their organizing principles and whether they were being too deliberate in their planning.
Kapenga pushed back on the few lawmakers who wanted to jump ahead to debating amendment proposals that someday could be considered by a Convention of the States.
"This is the Constitution of the United States — we have to be very cautious and go through this process where we make sure anything that we put down is debated and discussed, and debated and discussed, and the final product is solid," Kapenga said.
In the afternoon, delegates organized into four committees to begin tackling detailed planning questions for a Convention of the States, including how many delegates each state should have, whether states must send Congress an identical request and whether past state calls for Article V conventions, such as those submitted by Indiana in 1861 and 1979, are still valid.
State Sen. Jim Arnold, D-LaPorte, was appointed co-chairman of the Judiciary Committee. He will help shape answers to those questions and others ahead of the assembly's December meeting, where its proposed rules for a Convention of the States will be approved.
Ultimately, the Convention of the States, if one ever is called, must decide whether to accept the rules and procedures proposed by the Assembly of State Legislatures.
Long said regardless of that decision, the work of planning and preparing for a convention has reminded states of their rights under America's federalist system of government and their role in the constitutional amendment process.
"States' rights has never been, nor should it ever be, a partisan issue," Long said. "It is instead a constitutionally based concept that has made us the great country that we are today — 50 independent states, governed separately but united together."
Copyright 2014 nwitimes.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Tags
Indiana, State Government, Federal Government, Indiana Statehouse, Convention Of The States,The Mount Vernon Assembly, Us Constitution, Constitutional Amendment, Constitutional Convention, David Long, Us Congress, Politics, Article V Convention, George Washington,Assembly Of State Legislatures, Chris Kapenga, Wisconsin, Mount Vernon, Convention Call, Jim Arnold, Laporte, Judiciary Committee, States Rights, Federalism, United States
© Copyright 2014, nwitimes.com, 601 W. 45th Ave. Munster, IN
Friday, June 13, 2014
Thursday, June 12, 2014
Quote of the Day
The telephone book is full of facts, but it doesn't contain a single idea.
Mortimer Adler
The telephone book is full of facts, but it doesn't contain a single idea.
Mortimer Adler
Stoicism
Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy founded in Athens by Zeno of Citium in the early 3rd century BC. The Stoics taught that destructive emotions resulted from errors in judgment, and that a sage, or person of "moral and intellectual perfection," would not suffer such emotions.[1]
Stoics were concerned with the active relationship between cosmic determinism and human freedom, and the belief that it is virtuous to maintain a will (called prohairesis) that is in accord with nature. Because of this, the Stoics presented their philosophy as a way of life, and they thought that the best indication of an individual's philosophy was not what a person said but how that person behaved.[2]
Later Stoics, such as Seneca and Epictetus, emphasized that because "virtue is sufficient for happiness," a sage was immune to misfortune. This belief is similar to the meaning of the phrase "stoic calm," though the phrase does not include the "radical ethical" Stoic views that only a sage can be considered truly free, and that all moral corruptions are equally vicious.[1]
From its founding, Stoic doctrine was popular with a following in Roman Greece and throughout the Roman Empire — including the Emperor Marcus Aurelius — until the closing of all pagan philosophy schools in AD 529 by order of the Emperor Justinian I, who perceived their pagan character as being at odds with the Christian faith.[3][4]
Stoics were concerned with the active relationship between cosmic determinism and human freedom, and the belief that it is virtuous to maintain a will (called prohairesis) that is in accord with nature. Because of this, the Stoics presented their philosophy as a way of life, and they thought that the best indication of an individual's philosophy was not what a person said but how that person behaved.[2]
Later Stoics, such as Seneca and Epictetus, emphasized that because "virtue is sufficient for happiness," a sage was immune to misfortune. This belief is similar to the meaning of the phrase "stoic calm," though the phrase does not include the "radical ethical" Stoic views that only a sage can be considered truly free, and that all moral corruptions are equally vicious.[1]
From its founding, Stoic doctrine was popular with a following in Roman Greece and throughout the Roman Empire — including the Emperor Marcus Aurelius — until the closing of all pagan philosophy schools in AD 529 by order of the Emperor Justinian I, who perceived their pagan character as being at odds with the Christian faith.[3][4]
Stoicism 101: A Practical Guide for Entrepreneurs
Stoicism 101: A Practical Guide for Entrepreneurs
337 Comments
Written by Tim Ferriss
Written by Tim Ferriss
Topics: Filling the Void, Mental Performance
Stoicism was born on the porch of Zeno, but it can be used in the concrete jungle.
(Photo: Blue Cinderella)
“There is nothing the busy man is less busied with than living; there is nothing harder to learn.”
-Seneca
Few of us would consider ourselves philosophers.
Most of us can recall at least one turtleneck-wearing intellectual in college who dedicated countless hours of study to the most obscure philosophical points of Marx or post-structural lesbian feminism. For what? Too often, to posture as a superior intellect at meal time or over drinks.
Fortunately, there are a few philosophical systems designed to produce dramatic real-world effects without the nonsense. Unfortunately, they get punished because they lack the ambiguity required for weeks of lectures and expensive textbooks.
In the last three years, I’ve begun to explore one philosophical system in particular: Stoicism. Though my preferred Stoic writer, Lucius Seneca, I’ve found it to be a simple and immensely practical set of rules for better results with less effort.
Ryan Holiday is 21 years old and works directly with Dov Charney as his online strategist for American Apparel. He gets more heat, makes more high-stakes decisions, and take more risks in a given week than most people experience in any given quarter. He also happens to be a die-hard Stoic and incredible at putting the principles into practice…
He kindly agreed to write this piece, and I hope you find it as valuable as I do.
Stoicism 101: A Beginner’s Guide for Entrepreneurs
Author: Ryan Holiday
For those of us who live our lives in the real world, there is one branch of philosophy created just for us: Stoicism.
It doesn’t concern itself with complicated theories about the world, but with helping us overcome destructive emotions and act on what can be acted upon. Just like an entrepreneur, it’s built for action, not endless debate.
When laid out in front of you, it should be instantly clear what it means. If you have to study it to understand it, someone is probably try to pull something over on you.
Popular with the educated elite of the Greco-Roman Empire, and with thinkers like Montaigne, John Stuart Mill and Tom Wolfe, Stoicism has just a few central teachings. It sets out to remind us of how unpredictable the world can be. How brief our moment of life is. How to be steadfast, and strong, and in control of yourself. And finally, that the source of our dissatisfaction lies in our impulsive dependency on our reflexive senses rather than logic.
If this were your average introduction to philosophy, we would have to talk about how Stoicism was started (stoa means porch, where the early followers used to hold meetings) and when it began. I happen to think that the history of a philosophy is less interesting than its proponents and applications. So, for a change, let’s spend our time on the latter.
Stoicism had three principle leaders. Marcus Aurelius, the emperor of the Roman Empire, the most powerful man on earth, sat down each day to write himself notes about restraint, compassion and humility. Epictetus endured the horrors of slavery to found his own School where he taught many of Rome’s greatest minds. Seneca, when Nero turned on him and demanded his suicide, could think only of comforting his wife and friends.
Stoicism differs from most existing schools in one important sense: its purpose is practical application. It is not an intellectual enterprise. It’s a tool that we can use to become better entrepreneurs, better friends and better people.
Stoic writing isn’t about beating up on yourself or pointing out the negative. It’s a meditative technique that transforms negative emotions into a sense of calm and perspective.
It’s easy to gloss over the fact that Marcus Aurelius was the Roman Emperor without truly absorbing the gravity of that position. Emperors were Deities, ordinary men with direct access to unlimited wealth and adulation. Before you jump to the conclusion that the Stoics were dour and sad men, ask yourself, if you were a dictator, what would your diary look like? How quickly could it start to resemble Kayne West’s blog?
Stoic writing is much closer Yoga session or a pre-game warm up than to a book of philosophy a university professor might write. It’s preparation for the philosophic life – an action – where the right state of mind is the most critical part.
Stoics practiced what are known as “spiritual exercises” and drew upon them for strength (Note from Tim: I dislike the word “spiritual” for reasons I’ve mentioned before, but scholar Pierre Hadot explains it’s appropriateness here).
Let’s look at three of the most important such exercises.
Practice Misfortune
“It is in times of security that the spirit should be preparing itself for difficult times; while fortune is bestowing favors on it is then is the time for it to be strengthened against her rebuffs.”
-Seneca
Seneca, who enjoyed great wealth as the adviser of Nero, suggested that we ought to set aside a certain number of days each month to practice poverty. Take a little food, wear your worst clothes, get away from the comfort of your home and bed. Put yourself face to face with want, he said, you’ll ask yourself “Is this what I used to dread?”
It’s important to remember that this is an exercise and not a rhetorical device. He doesn’t mean “think about” misfortune, he means live it. Comfort is the worst kind of slavery because you’re always afraid that something or someone will take it away. But if you can not just anticipate but practice misfortune, then chance loses its ability to disrupt your life.
Montaigne was fond of an ancient drinking game where the members took turns holding up a painting of a corpse inside a coffin and cheered “Drink and be merry for when you’re dead you will look like this.”
Emotions like anxiety and fear have their roots in uncertainty and rarely in experience. Anyone who has made a big bet on themselves knows how much energy both states can consume. The solution is to do something about that ignorance. Make yourself familiar with the things, the worst-case scenarios, that you’re afraid of.
Practice what you fear, whether a simulation in your mind or in real-life.
Then you, your company, and your employees will have little left to keep you from thinking and acting big.
The downside is almost always reversible or transient.
Train Perception to Avoid Good and Bad
“Choose not to be harmed and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed and you haven’t been.”
-Marcus Aurelius
The Stoics had an exercise called Turning the Obstacle Upside Down. What they meant to do was make it impossible to not practice the art of philosophy. Because if you can properly turn a problem upside down, every “bad” becomes a new source of good.
Suppose for a second that you are trying to help someone and they respond by being surly or unwilling to cooperate. Instead of making your life more difficult, the exercise says, they’re actually directing you towards new virtues; for example, patience or understanding. Or, the death of someone close to you; a chance to show fortitude. Marcus Aurelius described it like this: “The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”
It should sound familiar because it is the same thinking behind Obama’s “teachable moments.” Right before the election, Joe Klein asked Obama how he’d made his decision to respond to the Reverend Wright scandal. He said something like ‘when the story broke I realized the best thing to do wasn’t damage control, it was to speak to Americans like adults.’ And what he ended up doing was turning a negative situation into the perfect platform for his landmark speech about race.
The common refrain about entrepreneurs is that they take advantage of, even create, opportunities. To the Stoic, everything is opportunity. The Reverend Wright scandal, a frustrating case where your help goes unappreciated, the death of a loved one, none of those are “opportunities” in the normal sense of the word. In fact, they are the opposite. They are obstacles. What a Stoic does is turn every obstacle into an opportunity.
There is no good or bad to the practicing Stoic. There is only perception. You control perception. You can choose to extrapolate past your first impression (‘X happened.’ –> ‘X happened and now my life is over.’). If you tie your first response to dispassion, you’ll find that everything is simply an opportunity.
Remember–It’s All Ephemeral
“Alexander the Great and his mule driver both died and the same thing happened to both.”
-Marcus Aurelius
I understand that entrepreneurs need to dream big and have unshakable faith in themselves in order to do great things. But if recent Valleywag headlines are any example (Cisco Exec Makes Death Threat Over $4,000 Bike), the inhabitants of start-up land can probably benefit from some practice of humility and self control. Not that bad tempers and ego are new problems.
Alexander the Great conquered the known world and had cities named in his honor. This is common knowledge.
Stoics would also point out that, once while drunk, Alexander got into a fight with his dearest friend, Cleitus, and accidentally killed him. Afterward, he was so despondent that he couldn’t eat or drink for three days. Sophists were called from all over Greece to see what they could do about his grief, to no avail.
Is this the mark of a successful life? From a personal standpoint, it matters little if your name is emblazoned on a map if you lose perspective and hurt those around you.
The exercise Marcus Aurelius suggests to remedy this is simple and effective:
“Run down the list of those who felt intense anger at something: the most famous, the most unfortunate, the most hated, the most whatever: Where is all that now? Smoke, dust, legend…or not even a legend. Think of all the examples. And how trivial the things we want so passionately are.”
It’s important to note that “passion” here isn’t the modern usage we’re familiar with. From Wikipedia:
One must therefore strive to be free of the passions, bearing in mind that the ancient meaning of ‘passion’ was “anguish” or “suffering”, that is, “passively” reacting to external events — somewhat different from the modern use of the word. A distinction was made between pathos (plural pathe) which is normally translated as “passion”, propathos or instinctive reaction (e.g. turning pale and trembling when confronted by physical danger) and eupathos, which is the mark of the Stoic sage (sophos). The eupatheia are feelings resulting from correct judgment in the same way as the passions result from incorrect judgment.
The idea was to be free of suffering through apatheia or peace of mind (literally, ‘without passion)’, where peace of mind was understood in the ancient sense — being objective or having “clear judgment” and the maintenance of equanimity in the face of life’s highs and lows.
For those interested in browsing the Greek words used in Stoic writing that are often mistranslated or miscontrued in English, here is a glossary of common terms.
Returning to the point of the exercise, it’s simple: remember how small you are.
For that matter, remember how small most everything is.
Remember that achievements can be ephemeral, and that your possession of them is for just an instant. Learn from Alexander’s mistake. Be humble and honest and aware. That is something you can have every single day of your life. You’ll never have to fear someone taking it from you or, worse still, it taking over you.
Tim: To illustrate a few real-world examples, here is an email from me to Ryan as we were working on this post:
Thanks, Ryan. Read it all and ran over all the material again. I think we’re getting there. The piece should be uplifting and empowering without being defensive, so it will still take some working, but no worries. I’ll be reading Epictetus tonight for more ideas. The part that bothers me is the entire “Remember you’re small” bit, which doesn’t jive with start-up founders. To do huge things, I really think you need to believe you can change the world and do so better than anyone else in some respect. It is possible, however, to simultaneously recognize that all is impermanent: the transient pains, bad PR, disloyal false friends, irrational exuberance, hitting #1 on the NY Times, whatever. I think it’s about not dwelling on pain and not clinging to ephemeral happiness. Enjoy it to the fullest (this is where I disagree with some of the Stoic writings), but don’t expect it to last forever, nor expect some single point in time to make your entire life complete forever.
*****
Stoic writings are not arcane arguments for bespectacled professors—they are cognitive exercises proven to center practitioners. To humble them. To keep them free and appreciative.
Stoic principles are often practiced in rehabilitation clinics with alcoholics so that coping mechanisms don’t drive them to drink. One wouldn’t view their new perspective on life as pessimistic or limiting; we celebrate the fact that, for their first time in their lives, they are empowered and unburdened.
We’re all addicts in some respect, and we can all experience that same freedom.
You can be a Stoic, and joke around and have a happy life surrounded by what’s valuable to you.
In fact, that’s the ultimate goal.
Stoicism is Ideal for the Entrepreneurial Life
The Stoics were writing honestly, often self-critically, about how they could become better people, be happier, and deal with the problems they faced. As an entrepreneur you can see how practicing misfortune makes you stronger in the face of adversity; how flipping an obstacle upside down turns problems into opportunities; and how remembering how small you are keeps your ego manageable and in perspective.
Ultimately, that’s what Stoicism is about. It’s not some systematic discussion of why or how the world exists. It is a series of reminders, tips and aids for living a good life.
Stoicism, as Marcus reminds himself, is not some grand Instructor but a balm, a soothing ointment to an injury wherever we might have one. Epictetus was right when he said that “life is hard, brutal, punishing, narrow, and confining, a deadly business.”
We should take whatever help we can get, and it just happens that that help can come from ourselves.
To finish, I want to share some of my favorite Stoic reminders. Look at them as short, mental routines to run through often. Each is a quick reset to recalibrate yourself and be happy with the things that matter:
***
Marcus Aurelius
“So other people hurt me? That’s their problem. Their character and actions are not mine. What is done to me is ordained by nature and what I do by my own.”
“Today I escaped from anxiety. Or no, I discarded it, because it was within me, in my own perceptions—not outside.”
“When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own–not of the same blood or birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me.”
“Because your own strength is unequal to the task, do not assume that it is beyond the powers of man; but if anything is within the powers and province of man, believe that it is within your own compass also.”
***
Seneca
“‘What progress have I made? I am beginning to be my own friend.’ That is progress indeed. Such a people will never be alone and you may be sure he is a friend to all.”
“Show me a man who isn’t a slave; one who is a slave to sex, another to money, another to ambition; all are slaves to hope or fear. I could show you a man who has been a Consul who is a slave to his ‘little old woman’, a millionaire who is the slave of a little girl in domestic service. And there is no state of slavery more disgraceful than one which is self-imposed.”
“Count your years and you’ll be ashamed to be wanting and working for exactly the same things as you wanted when you were a boy. Of this make sure against your dying day – that your faults die before you do.”
“Nothing, to my way of thinking, is a better proof of a well ordered mind than a man’s ability to stop just where he is and pass some time in his own company.”
“Cling tooth and nail to the following rule: not to give in to adversity, never to trust prosperity and always take full note of fortune’s habit of behaving just as she pleases, treating her as if she were actually going to do everything that is in her power.”
***
Epictetus
“So-and-so’s son is dead
What happened?
His son is dead
Nothing else?
Not a thing.
So-and-so’s ship sank
What happened?
His ship sank.
So-and-so was carted off to prison.
What happened?
He was carted off to prison.
-But if we now add to this “He has had bad luck,” then each of us is adding this observation on his own account”
***
Related Post:
Harnessing Entrepreneurial Manic-Depression: Making the Rollercoaster Work for You
The Stoic Reading and Resources List:
(Note from Tim: I have bolded my favorites, the first two from Seneca)
Letters from a Stoic by Seneca
Dialogues and Letters (includes “On The Shortness of Life”) by Seneca
The Meditations (Gregory Hays translation. I strongly recommend this translation over all others. It’s the difference between liking and hating it.)
The Inner Citadel: The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius by Pierre Hadot
Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault by Pierre Hadot
The Stoic Philosophy of Seneca: Essays and Letters
To Philosophize is To Learn How to Die (essay) by Montaigne
Discourses and Selected Writings of Epictetus by Epictetus
An Essay on Marcus Aurelius by Matthew Arnold
An Amazing Lecture Series on Marcus Aurelius and Stoicism
A Man in Full by Tom Wolfe (Wolfe, Bonfire of the Vanities etc, wrote an epic book that is a modern allegory of the teachings of Epictetus)
Seneca on Trial: The Case of the Opulent Stoic The Classic Journal, Vol. 61, No. 6 (1966)
Rudius Media Book Club Discussion of Stoicism (led by Ryan Holiday)
Have you seen?
Tim Ferriss on TechCrunch’s Crunchbase
Tim Ferriss on Google Profiles
Tim Ferriss on MySpace
The Tim Ferriss Podcast, Episode 4: Ryan Holiday
The Obstacle Is The Way — The Tim Ferriss Book Club, Book #4
How to Travel: 21 Contrarian Rules
The Tim Ferriss Book Club Launches — Book #1: Vagabonding
How to Dominate Any Tradeshow, and Why Even Solo Entrepreneurs Should Try
XML Sitemap / WordPress Sitemap / Site Terms of Service / Powered by WordPress.com VIP
Copyright © 2007–2014 Tim Ferriss.
THE 4-HOUR® is a registered trademark of Tim Ferriss.
Stoicism was born on the porch of Zeno, but it can be used in the concrete jungle.
(Photo: Blue Cinderella)
“There is nothing the busy man is less busied with than living; there is nothing harder to learn.”
-Seneca
Few of us would consider ourselves philosophers.
Most of us can recall at least one turtleneck-wearing intellectual in college who dedicated countless hours of study to the most obscure philosophical points of Marx or post-structural lesbian feminism. For what? Too often, to posture as a superior intellect at meal time or over drinks.
Fortunately, there are a few philosophical systems designed to produce dramatic real-world effects without the nonsense. Unfortunately, they get punished because they lack the ambiguity required for weeks of lectures and expensive textbooks.
In the last three years, I’ve begun to explore one philosophical system in particular: Stoicism. Though my preferred Stoic writer, Lucius Seneca, I’ve found it to be a simple and immensely practical set of rules for better results with less effort.
Ryan Holiday is 21 years old and works directly with Dov Charney as his online strategist for American Apparel. He gets more heat, makes more high-stakes decisions, and take more risks in a given week than most people experience in any given quarter. He also happens to be a die-hard Stoic and incredible at putting the principles into practice…
He kindly agreed to write this piece, and I hope you find it as valuable as I do.
Stoicism 101: A Beginner’s Guide for Entrepreneurs
Author: Ryan Holiday
For those of us who live our lives in the real world, there is one branch of philosophy created just for us: Stoicism.
It doesn’t concern itself with complicated theories about the world, but with helping us overcome destructive emotions and act on what can be acted upon. Just like an entrepreneur, it’s built for action, not endless debate.
When laid out in front of you, it should be instantly clear what it means. If you have to study it to understand it, someone is probably try to pull something over on you.
Popular with the educated elite of the Greco-Roman Empire, and with thinkers like Montaigne, John Stuart Mill and Tom Wolfe, Stoicism has just a few central teachings. It sets out to remind us of how unpredictable the world can be. How brief our moment of life is. How to be steadfast, and strong, and in control of yourself. And finally, that the source of our dissatisfaction lies in our impulsive dependency on our reflexive senses rather than logic.
If this were your average introduction to philosophy, we would have to talk about how Stoicism was started (stoa means porch, where the early followers used to hold meetings) and when it began. I happen to think that the history of a philosophy is less interesting than its proponents and applications. So, for a change, let’s spend our time on the latter.
Stoicism had three principle leaders. Marcus Aurelius, the emperor of the Roman Empire, the most powerful man on earth, sat down each day to write himself notes about restraint, compassion and humility. Epictetus endured the horrors of slavery to found his own School where he taught many of Rome’s greatest minds. Seneca, when Nero turned on him and demanded his suicide, could think only of comforting his wife and friends.
Stoicism differs from most existing schools in one important sense: its purpose is practical application. It is not an intellectual enterprise. It’s a tool that we can use to become better entrepreneurs, better friends and better people.
Stoic writing isn’t about beating up on yourself or pointing out the negative. It’s a meditative technique that transforms negative emotions into a sense of calm and perspective.
It’s easy to gloss over the fact that Marcus Aurelius was the Roman Emperor without truly absorbing the gravity of that position. Emperors were Deities, ordinary men with direct access to unlimited wealth and adulation. Before you jump to the conclusion that the Stoics were dour and sad men, ask yourself, if you were a dictator, what would your diary look like? How quickly could it start to resemble Kayne West’s blog?
Stoic writing is much closer Yoga session or a pre-game warm up than to a book of philosophy a university professor might write. It’s preparation for the philosophic life – an action – where the right state of mind is the most critical part.
Stoics practiced what are known as “spiritual exercises” and drew upon them for strength (Note from Tim: I dislike the word “spiritual” for reasons I’ve mentioned before, but scholar Pierre Hadot explains it’s appropriateness here).
Let’s look at three of the most important such exercises.
Practice Misfortune
“It is in times of security that the spirit should be preparing itself for difficult times; while fortune is bestowing favors on it is then is the time for it to be strengthened against her rebuffs.”
-Seneca
Seneca, who enjoyed great wealth as the adviser of Nero, suggested that we ought to set aside a certain number of days each month to practice poverty. Take a little food, wear your worst clothes, get away from the comfort of your home and bed. Put yourself face to face with want, he said, you’ll ask yourself “Is this what I used to dread?”
It’s important to remember that this is an exercise and not a rhetorical device. He doesn’t mean “think about” misfortune, he means live it. Comfort is the worst kind of slavery because you’re always afraid that something or someone will take it away. But if you can not just anticipate but practice misfortune, then chance loses its ability to disrupt your life.
Montaigne was fond of an ancient drinking game where the members took turns holding up a painting of a corpse inside a coffin and cheered “Drink and be merry for when you’re dead you will look like this.”
Emotions like anxiety and fear have their roots in uncertainty and rarely in experience. Anyone who has made a big bet on themselves knows how much energy both states can consume. The solution is to do something about that ignorance. Make yourself familiar with the things, the worst-case scenarios, that you’re afraid of.
Practice what you fear, whether a simulation in your mind or in real-life.
Then you, your company, and your employees will have little left to keep you from thinking and acting big.
The downside is almost always reversible or transient.
Train Perception to Avoid Good and Bad
“Choose not to be harmed and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed and you haven’t been.”
-Marcus Aurelius
The Stoics had an exercise called Turning the Obstacle Upside Down. What they meant to do was make it impossible to not practice the art of philosophy. Because if you can properly turn a problem upside down, every “bad” becomes a new source of good.
Suppose for a second that you are trying to help someone and they respond by being surly or unwilling to cooperate. Instead of making your life more difficult, the exercise says, they’re actually directing you towards new virtues; for example, patience or understanding. Or, the death of someone close to you; a chance to show fortitude. Marcus Aurelius described it like this: “The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”
It should sound familiar because it is the same thinking behind Obama’s “teachable moments.” Right before the election, Joe Klein asked Obama how he’d made his decision to respond to the Reverend Wright scandal. He said something like ‘when the story broke I realized the best thing to do wasn’t damage control, it was to speak to Americans like adults.’ And what he ended up doing was turning a negative situation into the perfect platform for his landmark speech about race.
The common refrain about entrepreneurs is that they take advantage of, even create, opportunities. To the Stoic, everything is opportunity. The Reverend Wright scandal, a frustrating case where your help goes unappreciated, the death of a loved one, none of those are “opportunities” in the normal sense of the word. In fact, they are the opposite. They are obstacles. What a Stoic does is turn every obstacle into an opportunity.
There is no good or bad to the practicing Stoic. There is only perception. You control perception. You can choose to extrapolate past your first impression (‘X happened.’ –> ‘X happened and now my life is over.’). If you tie your first response to dispassion, you’ll find that everything is simply an opportunity.
Remember–It’s All Ephemeral
“Alexander the Great and his mule driver both died and the same thing happened to both.”
-Marcus Aurelius
I understand that entrepreneurs need to dream big and have unshakable faith in themselves in order to do great things. But if recent Valleywag headlines are any example (Cisco Exec Makes Death Threat Over $4,000 Bike), the inhabitants of start-up land can probably benefit from some practice of humility and self control. Not that bad tempers and ego are new problems.
Alexander the Great conquered the known world and had cities named in his honor. This is common knowledge.
Stoics would also point out that, once while drunk, Alexander got into a fight with his dearest friend, Cleitus, and accidentally killed him. Afterward, he was so despondent that he couldn’t eat or drink for three days. Sophists were called from all over Greece to see what they could do about his grief, to no avail.
Is this the mark of a successful life? From a personal standpoint, it matters little if your name is emblazoned on a map if you lose perspective and hurt those around you.
The exercise Marcus Aurelius suggests to remedy this is simple and effective:
“Run down the list of those who felt intense anger at something: the most famous, the most unfortunate, the most hated, the most whatever: Where is all that now? Smoke, dust, legend…or not even a legend. Think of all the examples. And how trivial the things we want so passionately are.”
It’s important to note that “passion” here isn’t the modern usage we’re familiar with. From Wikipedia:
One must therefore strive to be free of the passions, bearing in mind that the ancient meaning of ‘passion’ was “anguish” or “suffering”, that is, “passively” reacting to external events — somewhat different from the modern use of the word. A distinction was made between pathos (plural pathe) which is normally translated as “passion”, propathos or instinctive reaction (e.g. turning pale and trembling when confronted by physical danger) and eupathos, which is the mark of the Stoic sage (sophos). The eupatheia are feelings resulting from correct judgment in the same way as the passions result from incorrect judgment.
The idea was to be free of suffering through apatheia or peace of mind (literally, ‘without passion)’, where peace of mind was understood in the ancient sense — being objective or having “clear judgment” and the maintenance of equanimity in the face of life’s highs and lows.
For those interested in browsing the Greek words used in Stoic writing that are often mistranslated or miscontrued in English, here is a glossary of common terms.
Returning to the point of the exercise, it’s simple: remember how small you are.
For that matter, remember how small most everything is.
Remember that achievements can be ephemeral, and that your possession of them is for just an instant. Learn from Alexander’s mistake. Be humble and honest and aware. That is something you can have every single day of your life. You’ll never have to fear someone taking it from you or, worse still, it taking over you.
Tim: To illustrate a few real-world examples, here is an email from me to Ryan as we were working on this post:
Thanks, Ryan. Read it all and ran over all the material again. I think we’re getting there. The piece should be uplifting and empowering without being defensive, so it will still take some working, but no worries. I’ll be reading Epictetus tonight for more ideas. The part that bothers me is the entire “Remember you’re small” bit, which doesn’t jive with start-up founders. To do huge things, I really think you need to believe you can change the world and do so better than anyone else in some respect. It is possible, however, to simultaneously recognize that all is impermanent: the transient pains, bad PR, disloyal false friends, irrational exuberance, hitting #1 on the NY Times, whatever. I think it’s about not dwelling on pain and not clinging to ephemeral happiness. Enjoy it to the fullest (this is where I disagree with some of the Stoic writings), but don’t expect it to last forever, nor expect some single point in time to make your entire life complete forever.
*****
Stoic writings are not arcane arguments for bespectacled professors—they are cognitive exercises proven to center practitioners. To humble them. To keep them free and appreciative.
Stoic principles are often practiced in rehabilitation clinics with alcoholics so that coping mechanisms don’t drive them to drink. One wouldn’t view their new perspective on life as pessimistic or limiting; we celebrate the fact that, for their first time in their lives, they are empowered and unburdened.
We’re all addicts in some respect, and we can all experience that same freedom.
You can be a Stoic, and joke around and have a happy life surrounded by what’s valuable to you.
In fact, that’s the ultimate goal.
Stoicism is Ideal for the Entrepreneurial Life
The Stoics were writing honestly, often self-critically, about how they could become better people, be happier, and deal with the problems they faced. As an entrepreneur you can see how practicing misfortune makes you stronger in the face of adversity; how flipping an obstacle upside down turns problems into opportunities; and how remembering how small you are keeps your ego manageable and in perspective.
Ultimately, that’s what Stoicism is about. It’s not some systematic discussion of why or how the world exists. It is a series of reminders, tips and aids for living a good life.
Stoicism, as Marcus reminds himself, is not some grand Instructor but a balm, a soothing ointment to an injury wherever we might have one. Epictetus was right when he said that “life is hard, brutal, punishing, narrow, and confining, a deadly business.”
We should take whatever help we can get, and it just happens that that help can come from ourselves.
To finish, I want to share some of my favorite Stoic reminders. Look at them as short, mental routines to run through often. Each is a quick reset to recalibrate yourself and be happy with the things that matter:
***
Marcus Aurelius
“So other people hurt me? That’s their problem. Their character and actions are not mine. What is done to me is ordained by nature and what I do by my own.”
“Today I escaped from anxiety. Or no, I discarded it, because it was within me, in my own perceptions—not outside.”
“When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own–not of the same blood or birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me.”
“Because your own strength is unequal to the task, do not assume that it is beyond the powers of man; but if anything is within the powers and province of man, believe that it is within your own compass also.”
***
Seneca
“‘What progress have I made? I am beginning to be my own friend.’ That is progress indeed. Such a people will never be alone and you may be sure he is a friend to all.”
“Show me a man who isn’t a slave; one who is a slave to sex, another to money, another to ambition; all are slaves to hope or fear. I could show you a man who has been a Consul who is a slave to his ‘little old woman’, a millionaire who is the slave of a little girl in domestic service. And there is no state of slavery more disgraceful than one which is self-imposed.”
“Count your years and you’ll be ashamed to be wanting and working for exactly the same things as you wanted when you were a boy. Of this make sure against your dying day – that your faults die before you do.”
“Nothing, to my way of thinking, is a better proof of a well ordered mind than a man’s ability to stop just where he is and pass some time in his own company.”
“Cling tooth and nail to the following rule: not to give in to adversity, never to trust prosperity and always take full note of fortune’s habit of behaving just as she pleases, treating her as if she were actually going to do everything that is in her power.”
***
Epictetus
“So-and-so’s son is dead
What happened?
His son is dead
Nothing else?
Not a thing.
So-and-so’s ship sank
What happened?
His ship sank.
So-and-so was carted off to prison.
What happened?
He was carted off to prison.
-But if we now add to this “He has had bad luck,” then each of us is adding this observation on his own account”
***
Related Post:
Harnessing Entrepreneurial Manic-Depression: Making the Rollercoaster Work for You
The Stoic Reading and Resources List:
(Note from Tim: I have bolded my favorites, the first two from Seneca)
Letters from a Stoic by Seneca
Dialogues and Letters (includes “On The Shortness of Life”) by Seneca
The Meditations (Gregory Hays translation. I strongly recommend this translation over all others. It’s the difference between liking and hating it.)
The Inner Citadel: The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius by Pierre Hadot
Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault by Pierre Hadot
The Stoic Philosophy of Seneca: Essays and Letters
To Philosophize is To Learn How to Die (essay) by Montaigne
Discourses and Selected Writings of Epictetus by Epictetus
An Essay on Marcus Aurelius by Matthew Arnold
An Amazing Lecture Series on Marcus Aurelius and Stoicism
A Man in Full by Tom Wolfe (Wolfe, Bonfire of the Vanities etc, wrote an epic book that is a modern allegory of the teachings of Epictetus)
Seneca on Trial: The Case of the Opulent Stoic The Classic Journal, Vol. 61, No. 6 (1966)
Rudius Media Book Club Discussion of Stoicism (led by Ryan Holiday)
Have you seen?
Tim Ferriss on TechCrunch’s Crunchbase
Tim Ferriss on Google Profiles
Tim Ferriss on MySpace
The Tim Ferriss Podcast, Episode 4: Ryan Holiday
The Obstacle Is The Way — The Tim Ferriss Book Club, Book #4
How to Travel: 21 Contrarian Rules
The Tim Ferriss Book Club Launches — Book #1: Vagabonding
How to Dominate Any Tradeshow, and Why Even Solo Entrepreneurs Should Try
XML Sitemap / WordPress Sitemap / Site Terms of Service / Powered by WordPress.com VIP
Copyright © 2007–2014 Tim Ferriss.
THE 4-HOUR® is a registered trademark of Tim Ferriss.
How Car Recalls Work
How Car Recalls Work
BY JORDAN GOLSON
06.11.14 |
2:26 PM |
PERMALINK
The 2015 Cadillac Escalade was recalled earlier this year because of an issue with the passenger-side front airbag. GM recommended that “occupants should not sit in the front passenger seat position” until the issue was fixed. 1,223 customers were affected. Image: General Motors
Recalls like the one GM is suffering through bring to mind fiery crashes, angry consumers, and publicity-seeking politicians. The reality is most recalls don’t stem from accidents and are settled pretty easily.
Cars have thousands of parts and things go wrong all the time—since the beginning of 2014, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has announced nearly 100 different recalls. There are rules in place to put things right. Here’s how that process works.
Drivers who find something wrong with their car can report it to NHSTA, whose technical experts take a look. If the agency receives enough reports (there’s no fixed number) about a particular problem, it takes action. That involves ordering the automaker to fix the problem safely, effectively, and for free.
Most recalls are spearheaded by automakers, which discover problems via customers, dealers, lawsuits, and their own inspections. Those defects don’t always affect safety. Sometimes a car just isn’t quite up to code for federal regulations or the automaker’s quality standards.
When an automaker initiates a recall, it’s required to notify NHTSA and file a public report airing all the dirty details, including how it discovered the problem, who is affected, and how it plans to fix things. That last bit usually means notifying customers and asking them bring their cars to dealerships for a free repair.
Because federal guidelines change slowly and old people still own cars, automakers must send those notifications as letters—in the mail!—to the registered owners of affected automobiles, then follow up with a postcard every three months for a year and a half to remind them to take care of the issue. GM can also send notifications through its cars’ OnStar vehicle diagnostics system and via a monthly “state-of-the-car” email that customers can choose to receive. If things are bad, dealerships and customer service folks may call owners to push them to come in for repairs.
GM spokesperson Alan Adler played down the fact that his employer has recalledsome 7 million vehicles this year. “We’ve added 35 investigators to our product investigation group,” he explained. The company is catching more issues coming through the system and ultimately issuing more recalls to fix them. It’s not that there are more problems now, it’s just that GM is noticing more. Great!
“There are some things we could [have done] differently,” Adler said, but the company is aggressively looking to improve. “We’re running issues to ground very quickly,” he said. “We’re not going to wait around for stuff to develop.”
Adler broke down how a recall moves through a big company like GM: Potential product issues first undergo an Investigation Status Review—basically engineers talking to engineers. If a problem is discovered, the Field Performance Execution Team gets into the action. It brings representatives from different departments to determine the logistics of making repairs, like how to get parts that may have gone out of production years ago. (For the ignition switch recall, GM has two production lines running full time to build new switch assemblies and hopes to have enough parts to fix the affected vehicles by October.)
That data is passed to a Recommendation Group, which decides if it’s looking at a safety or customer service issue. From there, a safety recall moves to the Executive Field Action Decision Committee, with executives from departments including engineering, quality, powertrain, and manufacturing. It decides if there will be a recall, and how it will be classified. Once the collective mind is made up, GM has five business days to inform the NHTSA.
Then it hopes that all its customers get the repairs done.
WIRED.com © 2014 Condé Nast. All rights reserved. Use of this Site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement (effective 01/02/2014) and Privacy Policy (effective 01/02/2014). Your California Privacy Rights.
Google’s New All-Seeing Satellites Have Huge Potential—For Good and Evil
Google’s New All-Seeing Satellites Have Huge Potential—For Good and Evil
BY MARCUS WOHLSEN
06.11.14 |
6:30 AM |
PERMALINK
Building SkySat-1 in the clean room of Skybox in Mountain View, CA, in 2013. Photo: Spencer Lowell
The reach of Google’s online empire is hard to overstate. In a sense, the Google search engine is the loom through which the entirety of the public internet is woven. With tools like Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Docs, the company also handles many of our private online tasks. Using the data generated by these services to target online ads, Google has built a business that generates tens of billions of dollars a year.
Now, with the $500 million purchase of Skybox, a startup that shoots high-res photos and video with low-cost satellites, Google can extend its reach far across the offline world. Thanks to its knack for transforming mass quantities of unstructured data into revenue-generating insights, the unprecedented stream of aerial imagery to which the company is gaining access could spark a whole new category of high-altitude insights into the workings of economies, nations, and nature itself.
But this acquisition will also demand assurances from Google that it will incorporate privacy safeguards into its vast new view of the world. Already Google gets a lot of flack for tracking user behavior online. With Skybox’s satellites, Google may gain a window into your everyday life even if you don’t use Google at all.
Really Big Data
In his WIRED feature story on Skybox, David Samuels describes some of the stunning ways high-resolution images shot from space are being used to unlock secrets about life on the ground. One company is tracking cars in parking lots to create retail forecasts. Images of pits and slag heaps reveal the productivity of mines. Pictures of property damage from above can tell insurance companies whether a claim is valid.
“Many of the most economically and environmentally significant actions that individuals and businesses carry out every day, from shipping goods to shopping at big-box retail outlets to cutting down trees to turning out our lights at night, register in one way or another on images taken from space,” Samuels writes. “So, while Big Data companies scour the Internet and transaction records and other online sources to glean insight into consumer behavior and economic production around the world, an almost entirely untapped source of data–information that companies and governments sometimes try to keep secret–is hanging in the air right above us.”
In a statement, Google has said that, in the short term, it plans to use Skybox’s satellites to keep Google Maps up to date. And, in the future, the company says, it could use them to help spread internet access to remote areas, something that will help improve the reach of its existing services. But imagine all the other things Google could do turns its artificial intelligence expertise onto a constant stream of images beamed down from above.
One Skybox insider told Samuels that satellite images alone could be used to estimate any country’s major economic indicators. Take, for example, this Skybox case study of Saudi oil reserves measured from space. Now consider the insights that could come from marrying that visual data with Google’s Knowledge Graph, leveraging all the company’s algorithmic might. Google could learn all kinds of new things about the world.
Gold Mine in Uşak, Western Turkey. Photo: Courtesy of Skybox
Military-Industrial Ties
But it could also learn all kinds of new things about you. Skybox can take photos from 500 miles up with a sub-one-meter resolution of the ground below. That isn’t likely to sit well with privacy activists who already don’t trust Google. What does the right to be forgotten mean when Google can always see you anyway?
Skybox’s pedigree likely won’t help assuage anyone who likes a good conspiracy theory. According to Samuels, one of the company’s co-founders, John Fenwick, had previously worked as as a liaison in Congress for the National Reconnaissance Office, “the ultrasecret spy agency that manages much of America’s most exotic space toys.” A major investor had worked as an intelligence officer in the French army, while its CEO held previous jobs that brought him into close contact with the Department of Defense.
That’s not to suggest there’s anything nefarious about Skybox or its intentions. It’s hard to get anything into space without entreé into government and military circles. But Skybox CEO Tom Ingersoll told Samuels that the government is interested in his company’s imagery. “In the end,” Samuels writes, “the government will likely commandeer some of Skybox’s imaging capabilities under terms similar to those imposed on other vendors.” With Google now involved, that begins to sound a lot like the NSA commandeering the internet servers to spy on U.S. citizens.
Skybox or Skynet?
Even if a network of high-powered imaging satellites could give Google the power to track an individual from space, it probably wouldn’t. Setting aside any legal or moral constraints, there’s just no percentage in it. Monetizable insights of the kind that would interest Google or companies willing to pay Google for access to that data are derived from observing patterns and populations, not individuals. As geeks of all varieties are fond of pointing out, n=1 is a terrible sample size.
If Google finds ways of using these satellites that ends up making users’ lives more interesting and convenient, most people are unlikely to object, just like revelations of NSA surveillance haven’t exactly dented Gmail’s market share. But people may find the idea of Google looking down from the heavens on their physical selves more discomfiting than peering through their browsers at their virtual personas. After all, putting an all-seeing Google eye in space gives a whole new meaning to “do not track.”
WIRED.com © 2014 Condé Nast. All rights reserved. Use of this Site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement (effective 01/02/2014) and Privacy Policy (effective 01/02/2014). Your California Privacy Rights.
Wednesday, June 11, 2014
Monday, June 09, 2014
Obama is driving the country to ruin
MICHAEL GOODWIN
OPINION
Obama is driving the country to ruin
By Michael Goodwin
June 7, 2014 | 10:22pm
Photo: INF Photo
MORE FROM
MICHAEL GOODWIN
Hynes is the poster boy for NYC political corruption
Hillary is playing the victim card — again
Times' anti-cop agenda is all the slop that's fit to print
Albany politics holding up tax credits for parochial school parents
Neighborhoods paying the price for allowing cops to be sued
If you think of the United States of America as a store, its recent decisions and scandals resemble a sale, perhaps a fire sale. Or maybe even a “Going Out of Business” sale.
The list of dramatic markdowns is breathtaking. They include trading away five murderous terrorists for a likely Army deserter, an open invitation to tens of thousands of illegal immigrants to cross the Mexican border, and a decision to recognize the terrorist group Hamas as part of the Palestinian government.
On the home front, environmental regulations will cost thousands of coal miners their jobs and drive up the cost of electricity for millions. The ObamaCare mess is hardly resolved, and the Veterans Affairs scandal keeps getting worse. The acting agency head reported the deaths of 18 more vets who were kept off the official waiting list in Phoenix.
Ticking quietly in the background is the mother of all threats — an Iranian nuclear bomb. That ticking grew louder last week as the ayatollah mocked our nation by standing in front of a banner that proclaimed, “America cannot do a damn thing.”
Technically, he’s wrong. It’s not that we cannot stop the mad mullahs’ march. It’s that President Obama has taken the military option off the table, and without it, Iran has nothing to fear. Our impotence was a choice.
Add to the combustible mix the expansionist moods in Russia and China, and the series of events recalls an observation by the late economist Herb Stein. Speaking in another context, he said that, “If something can’t go on forever, it won’t.” That sums up the current sense of the nation as a whole.
What seemed for years a steady and slow decline increasingly feels like a headlong race to the bottom. America is careening downhill, and a crack-up appears inevitable.
Modal Trigger
It is no coincidence that the deal with the Taliban to release five terrorist leaders from Guantanamo brought the first threat of presidential impeachment from a respected member of Congress. GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said that if Obama tried to release others without lawmakers’ approval, it would lead to “people on our side calling for his impeachment.”
That is the nuclear option, and there is good reason why it has been so rarely invoked throughout history. And yet the intense fever gripping Washington, largely created by Obama’s go-it-alone approach, needs to be broken. The country simply cannot continue to remain the beacon of the free world if we are consumed by our own dysfunction and distrust.
Impeachment is one way to try to resolve a political crisis, but as former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy argues in his new book, public opinion is a vital ingredient, and it is missing. Titled “Faithless Execution,” his book’s subtitle, “Building the Political Case for Obama’s Impeachment,” is based on McCarthy’s claim that the legal case is solid that Obama has violated his oath to execute the laws faithfully.
That’s an arguable point, but even to concede it means nothing because the Democratic Party has been so cowed into supporting Obama, regardless of what he does, that there is no chance to make the political case.
Indeed, we have reached this crisis largely because centrist Democrats have failed to stand up against Obama and demand more moderate policies.
Leaving aside occasional grumbling from party elders, he gets almost unanimous support from every Dem in Congress for every piece of his radical agenda. Evidence shows that one of his most pernicious practices, using the IRS to punish conservative groups, grew out of congressional demands from liberals. While that doesn’t excuse Obama’s role, it does demonstrate that his party has enabled and encouraged his improper conduct.
THE RESULT IS THAT THE CONSTITUTIONAL SYSTEM OF CHECKS AND BALANCES HAS BEEN GUTTED AS DEMOCRATS ACT AS AN AMEN CHORUS FOR THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH.
The framers put a high bar on impeachment, and merely attempting to draw up the articles is viable only when there is a bipartisan consensus that the president’s immediate removal is necessary. We are a long way from that consensus.
Still, something has to give. And unless Democrats begin to put duty to country over loyalty to Obama, America as we know it is headed to a point of no return.
Pol-pal unions wal the shots
After reading the City Council letter demanding that Walmart stop giving money to city charities, it’s easy to conclude the council members are misguided, mistaken or just plain nuts.
They may be all of those things, but they are something else, too: They are union puppets who have sold their souls for votes.
The 26 council members who signed the letter — a majority of the entire body — claim that Walmart and the Walton Family Foundation are trying to “find a foothold in New York City” by buying “influence and support.”
Shrinks would call that projection — accusing others of your own sins. Or maybe it just takes a sellout to know a sellout.
Whatever its motives, Walmart is doing something good with its philanthropy and ought to be applauded.
It announced that it distributed $3 million last year, including $1 million to the New York Women’s Foundation, which offers job training, and $30,000 to Bailey House, which provides support to low-income residents with HIV/AIDS.
Faced with such generosity, council members demanded that it “stop spending your dangerous dollars in our city” and added: “That’s right: this is a cease-and-desist letter.”
Tsk, tsk. The issue is that unions don’t want Walmart’s non-union competition, and the scandal is that local pols blocked the company from opening a single store in the five boroughs. Never mind that New Yorkers would benefit from new jobs and low prices on a wide array of products.
Almost as shameful, Mayor de Blasio voted “present” on the issue. Asked by reporters, he declined to take a stance on the letter.
Apparently he wants to confront inequality only when it means keeping unions happy. Otherwise, the poor can take a hike.
Salute to the heroes of D-Day
The importance of the D-Day invasion cannot be overstated, but its meaning becomes more easily understood during times of global chaos, such as the one we live in now. The 70th anniversary, then, captured both the magnitude of the unmatched operation and the stakes that led so many young men to bravely face the German guns.
To fully appreciate their courage, make yourself a promise. Promise that, before you die, you will go to Normandy. Promise that you will stand on the beach, climb into the bomb craters and bunkers and that, most of all, you will walk quietly through the cemeteries, which hold the remains of 9,386 Americans.
My promise is that you will never regret your visit, nor will you ever forget those brave souls.
Goop in the water
Gwyneth Paltrow says water has feelings. I say she’s all wet.
FILED UNDERBARACK OBAMA, DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS, GUANTANAMO BAY, ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS, OBAMACARE, TERRORISTS
© 2014 NYP Holdings, Inc. All Rights Reserved
TERMS OF USE | PRIVACY | YOUR AD CHOICES
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)