Month: December 2018

I just figured out the goal.

Is to have people to depend on you.

The goal in life is to have people depend on you.

It’s weird and it sounds kinda whacked, but it’s true.

The goal in life is have people depend on you.

This means providing so much value to people’s lives that it actually makes their lives better and they become dependent on the value which you provide.

They become used to it.

Your extra efforts elevate them and it becomes a new status quo, a new equilibrium.

They become to need you.

If you’re running a business or leading an organization, you must work 10x of what everyone else works.

You must energize everyone.

You must feed everyone.

Eventually this energizes people into a new valence state.

They become dependent on your energy to maintain the state.

Every relation.

Employee vs manager.

Customer vs business.

Man and wife.

Your goal is to create dependencies so that relationships accrue in your orbit.

Audiences.

The goal is never about what you get.

It’s all about what you give.

By focusing on getting you orbit everyone else.

By focusing on giving, you influence by energizing others.

Giving. Activity. Action. Assuming maximum responsibility for as many people and things that your brain can accommodate. Continually stretch your level of influence over every detail no matter how small or large

Maximum responsibly.

Maximum activity.

In turn, you gain mass and increased gravity and energy.

The goal in life is to energize the world, so that it becomes dependent upon you.

I’ve been with my company eight months now. Looking back, I would have done things things differently. But I learned a tremendous amount. And once again, I thought I knew more than I did. And this continues to be the case.

When starting a new sales management role, this is how I would prioritize my activity.

Data Analysis

When I started this role, I was given messy overwhelming reports that I didn’t know what to do with. Half the reports had decent info, and half didn’t. It took me 6 months and taking a data science class to give myself the confidence to put in some sweat and clean the data and make sense of what my sales numbers were. This meant spending money to take a data science class and buying a few data science books. I’m still on track to learn python, but the two biggest benefits of my education have been developing a better understanding of excel and learning how to use Microstrategy to visual this data.

One I got the courage to look at my decent data and spend hours upon hours cleaning and annotating and organizing it, I was left with a brilliant archive of historical sales data with all kinds of customer information.

Sales Meetings

Get out in the field and meet as many customers as possible. Try selling the product. Present it. See what questions people are asking.

I did a lot of this, but because it took six months to look and develop available data, I was shooting in the dark, and targeting industries instead of specific customer types that are a good fit.

Take Responsibility

When I started this position I had no direction. I was given some basic technical training, but no sales direction, no value proposition, no marketing tools, no target customer list, nothing. I was told to sell.

Initially was initially overwhelming. I didn’t know where to start. My relationships with channel partners was dismal. There was annual turnover for the regional sales managers the past six years. No one did shit. I had nothing to go on.

So I decided to just go on sales calls. I cold called and got rejected and made a fool of myself. But I learned a lot. About my products, about my customers, about the market.

But after six months I still was struggling to make sense of the job and make progress.

Along the way I kept reminding myself that my success is my responsibility. No one else is responsible for whether I sink or swim and excel. It’s my job. My my directors, not the marketing team, not product managers, not the factory. It’s entirely my job.

This paid off, because when I learned to take full responsibility for my success, I began to work harder, and smarter, and complain less, and enjoy life more.

I taught myself what I needed to do to succeed. Learned the products, the market, the processes. I did the work. I crunched the data.

Leaders know the way, go the way, and how the way.

If it’s meant to be it’s up to me.

What also happened was the responsibility I assumed began extending beyond myself to my organization. I thought big, and began sharing my insights and creations with the rest of the team, and it’s created a ripple effect. It’s added value.

That’s the other thing I kept thinking:

Try not to become a make of success, but rather become a man of value.

That changes perspective quite a bit. I began thinking of not what I could get, but what I could give.

It’s made me more charitable, more inspired, and more of a team played. I am a giver. I don’t worry about getting anything in return. The activity and work I’m doing is an investment in myself, my knowledge and my career.

Science is basically collecting and analyzing data. Scientists are just data scientists.

“Data Science” is this like.. buzz word. I took a class this past semester. I feel like it’s just being applied to businesses and so now it’s getting trendy, and beyond Excel Spreadsheets.
Like businesses are collecting more data than ever through their ERP and CRM software.

It’s no longer basic records keeping and accounting. It’s leveraging data points to visualize a story of a business and its mechanics and character and health and trajectory.

I played with Microstrategy a lot the past month. Really cool data science tool. Free too.
But data is like so damn important.

You’re blind without it.

Collecting data is important. Identifying the right data to collect. Then analyzing it.
Maybe everyone is this chat is like duh mike.
But there are these crazy tools. Having data is not important. It’s using tools to identify the relationships within the data that reveal the inner workings of activity

Data is generated by activity. Collecting information over time and storing it in accessible ways. I feel like my statistics classes were kinda worthless. I took a statistics and probabilities class. And then an economics statistics class.

Both were just like memorizing formulas to apply to data sets. You were tested on knowing which formula to apply to a question and data.

But that shit wasn’t helpful. I forgot it immediately. I remember some abstract fundamentals it taught.

But there was little obvious crossover to the real world. Or maybe I’m just an idiot.

We’re in the 21st century. Like data is in tables, in spreadsheets, stored on computers.

I did learn a fair bit on excel as an economics major, but I should have been taught some computer languages like SQL or R or something or python or something that’s powerful.

Something practical.

Generating K-means? Bayesian modeling? Optimization modeling? Cluster analysis? Regression? Model? Ensemble models? Forecasting? Outlier detection?

Instead in economic theory classes they teach you these god forsaken formulas to memorize and apply to convoluted abstract questions. Very limited data sets.

Which in the real world, is all you’re working with. You’re building up from raw data sets. Your boss hands you data and says: your job is to make sense of this and make smart decisions. Or your business spits out data and you’re like: how on earth do I determine a signal from the noise?

I’m not even talking about dirty disorganized data and the process of cleaning and scrubbing to make it intelligible to analytic tools.
I feel like an education should teach you ways to make sense of noise, of lots of data, to spot patterns, to apply tools that reveal patterns.
In theory it does that
I feel like it just missed the computer technology tool side of it
All Maths and science subjects should have a heavy emphasis on data computation and analysis
Okay. We have a pen and paper. We don’t have to use our hands or a pen and paper.

Not we have an abacus.

Now we have a calculator.

Now we have a computer.

Like. Use these things.

Why walk when you can ride a bike? When you can drive? When you can fly???

Now, I’m not saying english or philsophy or other humanities classes are a waste. I am a big fan of the humanities. I feel like peer discussion is crucial for contextualizing their cultural and social significance. My philosophy studies would not be the same if it weren’t for my professors and peers. I also think Vandy had a phenomenal philosophy department. I feel fortunate. It made me a better thinker, better at critical thinking, at asking questions. English classes too.

But I am super disappointed by the current atmosphere of the humanities… this critical theory element that’s infiltrated… its cancerous. And it actually makes people dumber.

But, in a perfect world, exposure to the hunanities is crucial for a well balanced mind.

I just wish there was a greater emphasis on practical tools analytic tools. Not just formulas.

Formulas are abstract models representing relationships within a conceptual scheme. It takes a fuck ton of mental work to apply abstract generalizations to the concrete particulars of our daily problems.
Our brain is a computer, but for all it’s horsepower, it’s largely operating unconsciously. Our subconscious has enormous computational power. It makes zillions of calculations and inferences to guide our behavior.

But most of that power is inaccessible to our conscious experience.

This is why technology is so powerful.

(Greek word “techne” meaning art. Derived from Indo Proto European root word “tetk” meaning “create, produce”)

Technology allows us to leverage the this power. It’s intimately tied to science and mathematics.The fundamentals of reasoning.

Modern and Analytic philsophy is particularoy fascinating: Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza, Locke, Hume, Kant… then the guys who expanded mathematical logic like Russell, Moore, Frege.

They all explored the basic justifications of reason.

I understand at first glace philosophy does not appear explicitly practical.

It mostly teaches you to perceive more than meets the eye. To question assumptions.

Studying philosophy is less about learning to know.

It’s more about learning that you don’t know.

Which is super helpful in life, because you learn to ask more questions in order to identify the limits of your understanding assuming, so you don’t make decisions based on erroneous or partial or inaccurate information/beliefs etc.

Economics was not practical at all. And it barely taught me tools of reason. It was purely an intellectual exercise.

It seemed like a good idea. It’s kind of businessy. I figured prospective employers would find it a attractive
In hindsight I regret not studying physics or engineering.

Reallly wish I studied physics or engineering in hindsight. But thats why I’m studying it now.

These days?

Work and read and write, tbh. A few hobbies, electronics recently. Hang out with G. And some errands.

Occasionally go on a weekend trip. Explore California nature. A road trip. Visit a city.

My life as an adult is very different than I imagined it.

I don’t socialize much. Not regularly anyway. Not that I wouldn’t enjoy more socialization. But I don’t know many people out here. And I’m picky. I could have more friends, but I’m not sure I’d enjoy my life any more. I prefer a certain kind of person, spending time doing certain kinds of things. I like new experiences. Exploring. Adventuring. Learning. I traveled quite a bit in my 20’s, so I’m not as itching to randomly fly somewhere or do crazy things.

At this point in my life, I’m focused on my personal and professional development. There are professional challenges that consume me. I think of the time and energy spent as investments in my future. Late nights and weekends working and learning about how to be better at my job and profession will pay dividends while my colleagues or peers just do the day to day minimum.

You could characterize my free time as an obsession with accumulating knowledge and understanding. About the world or myself or my profession or industry or whatever.

I am doing whatever possible not to be ignorant, to possess as much insight as possible, and produce results.

It’s all about results. I have goals, and I want to accomplish them.

Nothing else seems to matter.

My family lives 3,000 miles away. I mostly feel disconnected from them. They’re good people, but different. And the distance is hard.

I have girlfriend who is a good companion.

Other than that, what do I have?

I’ve have hobbies and what not. But that’s just a supplemental learning activity, and break from other obsessions.

I’d like to incorporate working out again, but more cardio focus. I have a fear it’ll become an obsession. So it’s been slow to develop that relationship with exercise again. Probably irrational. But maybe rational.

What do I do with weekends?

Work and read and write and some hobbies and cook food with G. I’ll go see her perform now that the ballet season started.

I don’t do much. A lot of time alone.

Sometimes I wish I had more companionship. More friends. But then, like I said, I’m picky. And I actually enjoy my solitude. I enjoy my personal time.

The thing about this lighthouse picture, is that it’s real. This photograph is a single unadulterated perspective. Perspective as in, the gaze of the lens.

We perceive through a tiny sliver of perceiving senses.

The photographer was able to capture detail that would otherwise be imperceptible to our fleshy eyeball by taking multiple exposures, thereby accentuating the faint background light from the universe that our eyes are not attuned to see.

The portrait is real.

He layered these exposures together, of the same portrait, to produce depth in perceivable light.

Our eyes and a single picture from a cameras image sensor can’t capture the range of intensities simultaneously.

It’s like depth of field, but for light intensity

And sure, he likely blended the exposures together to make them appear seamless

But the structure of the photo is not manipulated, is what I’m saying.

The beauty is that the universe exists in that form, beyond the horizon of earth, all the time.

It’s so faint that our eyes cannot perceive its light. But it’s there. The entire universe, and it’s trillions and trillions of stars, are in the sky all the time, shining on this earth.

Astrophotography is incredible. It’s a form of astrophysics research, in my opinion.

Using optics and imaging sensors to collect energy vibration data from our universe

Revealing the physical structure of the universe, of nature

Grammar is like etiquette
I think before mass communication technology, grammar was vital in order to communicate effectively.
Grammar is essentially the rules of engagement
Grammar mattered more the broader your influence
Because you had to engage with a wider variety of people
If you have poor grammar, I think you become unintelligible to those outside your tribe
“Why does it matter how I say it if you know what I mean?” I can imagine these towny folk saying
But when they get outside their town, no one knows what the fuck their saying. It’s almost unintelligible to others who have good grammar, who know how to speak.
I read great thinkers of past and their grammar and syntax has an impeccable universality to it, so long as you are comfortable with their formal grammar.
Many layman are not, and thus knowledge is hidden from them, from others
Grammar is etiquette. It’s rules of speak. How to communicate effectively in the arena of speech.
When you enter, and you don’t know the rules, you suddenly don’t know how to communicate.
I doubt anyone with a solid understanding and training of grammar has problems speaking with anyone using their language
Just like knowing legal jargon gives the power of the law to you
I ask myself how mass communications technology has influenced grammar, and changed the expectations for the rules of communication, and proper speech etiquette
It appears that the interconnectedness makes communicating easier than ever
Our communication doesn’t suffer from temporal constraints. We can speak to people effortlessly in real time.
I think our grammar and the rules of speech etiquette have been diluted in the process
No one needs to learn grammar.
It’s as if culture more broadly is developing a folk speech
Towny speech
I’m not sure this is a good thing or not.

On one hand, everything seems more accessible. We can engage with more people and more ideas.
But I wonder as a whole, if this organism of society is reaping the rewards of this?
Will people read the words of this generation and feel their wisdom, as we do when we read texts from the past?

Will there be idiosyncratic universality ensconced in nuanced prose that transcends time?
Or will it be unintelligible, simple, and flat?
Does this make sense?
I think of why grammar was important. Why did people study it?

Because you’d be a grunting, muttering animal without it.

You’d be able to communicate to those in closest proximity, because there are non verbal understandings that develop over time through conditioning, but everyone else would be beyond ability to communicate.

It’d be frustrating.

Grammar trains the speech to speak syntactically, with language that follows a logic that is universally accessible to anyone who also knows the grammatical rules

It’s not enough to know words.

Words are noises indexed to perceptions about the world. The more nuanced the words, the more familiar you are with a set of perceptions.

There is nothing intelligent about possessing a host of words. You can simply make noises and point. Change the inflection and point again.

Grammar is the relationship between words. It is the logic that reveals the order in our experience.
Reading naturally impresses syntax into the mind, and trains the mind to grasp and internalize grammar
But the quality of the reading will determine the quality of the syntax that’s impressed upon you and acquired

It’s like social media and the language of mass communication culture has removed any need to reflect and implement grammar.

We text and tweet and post and blog it’s bits and pieces— and it’s just like noises. Everyone is in close proximity. We hear it all and communicate in urges.

There is no proper speech.
What are the consequences of this?
Does it matter?
If a social breakdown occurs, if the mass communication begins to collapse, will we be equipped to communicate with one another as a society?
Sounds stupid I know.
I’m imagining what would happen if an atomic attack melted all electronics infrastructure, wiping all software and communication ability away.

What would we do?

The word grade is from the latin word gradiens, meaning steps or walking; advancing, going.

Last week I got into a car accident before class, so I didn’t go to class. I woke up early the next day and had a full day of  meetings that lasted late in the evening, until last call at the bar with sales colleagues. 

I got sick on Thursday and spent the weekend with a raging fever and chills and sobbing sweats. Yesterday I downed a handful of ibuprofen upon waking and felt well enough to attend nine hours of laser measurement training. Today I had a full day of meetings and, while I type, I can still feel my wellbeing recovering. 

Contentment seems so close, but also so out of reach. I can accept my circumstances, and be happy. But that doesn’t improve my circumstances.

I can reject my circumstances, and work myself into a manic state of deluded euphoria. And the thought of progressing makes me happy, the idea that this activity is causally improving my circumstances. 

However, if activity does not improve my current circumstances, I find myself in a grave situation, one of self deception, and I ask myself what other realms of self deception I’m a participant.

Sometimes I tell myself that patience is what matters most. To be patient. That you sow in the spring and reap in the fall, that the bamboo blossoms once but every thirty years. Patience and nurture. Steady care. 

But I find myself in a bleak state. I am not sure I will ever be happy. It’s a sad reality I find myself wrestling with. A reality I am tempted to sabotage and ruin in order to make manifest, and prove myself right. Or at least, not doubt if I am wrong or not. 

What do I want? 

I want to not be alone. But I’m not quite sure I can allow myself that pleasure. 

I want wealth. But the path seems so uncertain. Is the path clear, and I just lack the courage or faith to pursue? Or is the path non existent. Do I believe in possibility?

So I vex and pine. I lose sleep. I preoccupy. My intention is strong but blunt. Why do I doubt my value? Why do I sabotage? Where is my path? When can I step forward and completely disregard hesitation and doubt? Where is my faith?

This weekend, while my body was writing in pain and discomfort, my mind similarly coiled and knotted. It was hellacious turmoil for seventy two hours. Laying in bed, with the heat on full blast, shivering. I closed my eyes, wrapped in blankets, in layers of clothing, and tried to escape the mental torment. It seemed entirely linked, this bodily fever and this mental suffering. 

I closed my eyes and envisioned death. I envisioned dying. I envisioned taking my own life, the steps and moments right before I confronted death. I imagined the various reactions I would have. The moment I stepped off the rusty golden gate bridge and fell face first towards the churning waters below. I wondered how I would fall. Would I embrace the moment of death, eyes open? Would I extend my hands above my head as if to reach for deaths embrace? Would I close my eyes and let my thoughts seek comfort before they become permanently muted? Should I dive, like a swan? Does it even matter? 

I think of driving along the side of a mountain, and suddenly give in to the urge to drive off the cliff, right off the road, right through the metal guard rail. I imagine the initial jolt as my SUV smashes through the metal barrier and frees itself before falling down, tumbling over, and crashing violently. I visualize the entire sequence of events, taking note of the cracked glass exploding in my face, the feeling of my stomach rising as I fall toward the earth. I imagine being fully conscious as my body smashes against the car interior like a rag doll as it rolls down the cliff, and the airbags violently deploy with little safety effect. 

I imagine myself rising one morning from bed. Eyes snapping open. Laying there motionless, staring at the ceiling, for hours. Maybe its late, maybe its early. Either way, this is the day I decide there is nothing left of me attached to this world. I slide my legs over the side of the bed, bury my face in my hands, and rise. I retrieve my belt from my jeans crumpled on the floor, walk over to the pull-up bar in the hall, slide the belt around the bar and create a noose. I slip my head through the noose and secure it on the bar. I exhale. It’s a peaceful exhale. An exhale I imagined my childhood friends made when they hung themselves. Not an anxious exhale with reservation. A peaceful exhale with resolve. And with that I drop myself and the noose slowly begins to cradle the weight of my body. I close my eyes and the blackness turns to red as my face swells and begins to tingle with pins and needles. I go numb in my face, and then the black turns to red and suddenly there is nothing. Maybe violence, maybe pain, but I am unconscious, so the reaction is little more than a temporary torture before my body succumbs and becomes inanimate. 

These are my dreams. Or nightmares, depending if I can come up with better alternatives. 

Be helpful

Be grateful/thankful

Be gracious and smile

Listen more than you speak/ask questions

Be punctual

Be proactive

Never criticize, condemn, or complain

Give people the benefit of the doubt

Don’t try to change people/ change your approach

I need to rest my mind. My head is throbbing. Aching. And its not physical pain, its psychological. There is a tightness to my existence. I can feel it extend into my chest, and restrict my breathing. 

Today is Sunday. I have a reading tomorrow for my creative writing class. 

Repetition is more important than duration for making an impression on the mind. To learn, repeat short strokes at regular intervals. Even better at irregular intervals. Exposure, bit by bit, will ripen understanding. 

The subconscious mind is the seat of all power. 

What am I doing with my life. I still don’t know. 

My Jewish roommate hums to himself for hours upon hours a day, humming songs or melodies or just making humming noises to himself. I’m not sure if he’s aware, or its a therapeutic, a coping mechanism, like an oral fixation but with humming fixation. In my room, it resembles a low chant. It robs me of silence and concentration, but its harmless enough that I do not have the courage to ask him to stop. 

Identifying the driving force behind Keyence’s success

During the past ten years Keyence Corporation’s stock has increased from $67 a share to over $600 per share. Since 2014, Keyence has grown revenues from $265.01 billion to $526.85 billion, increasing sales 20% on average year over year. Keyence is listed by Forbes at #33 for the Top 100 Digital Companies and #38 for the World’s Most Innovative Companies.

I was fortunate to work for Keyence for about two and a half years selling industrial automation devices, and during my time there I was awestruck by the collective productivity and “Keyence Magic”, that I made a conscious effort to study the fundamentals of Keyence’s business model by learning everything about the organizational structure and sales processes and identifying the values and priorities that made them successful.

Continue reading “What is Keyence Magic?”

For me, the distinction between the humanities and the sciences is been one of values and methods.

The spirit of science and analytic disciplines does not come with values. It doesn’t come with a set of assumptions. It doesn’t have an agenda. There is no ideology, ideally. Logic is passionless. It is rational. It is mechanical. It must put feelings and beliefs aside and work out problems with dispassionate reason with the aim of clarity, or eliminating dissonance. It notes all it perceives, takes stock of the facts of the world, identifies areas of conflict and dissonance, and aims to rectify them through hypothesis. By essentially giving educated guesses and seeing if the logic of the given assumptions supports or denies the guess. Analytics just works with what is given. It’s methods. It’s formalized processes.

In the humanities, there is no end, no logical conclusion. Studying the human condition is a meditation. It is more about wisdom. The humanities examine the human condition through the lens of literature, through philosophy, through culture, through history. It seeks the answers to: what is man? Who is man? Why is man? What drives man? What is important? What is significant? What should be cherished? What should be protected? What is good? What is bad?

The humanities provide the moral framework to guide collective agreement toward optimal ends. The humanities synthesize human past behavior in order to develop an ethical value system. This value systems informs mankind as to what questions need to be asked, and what questions need to be answered to continue progressing.

In my mind, humanities are important for formulating the right questions. The humanities study the arc of civilization and human evolution and ask what questions are worth answering.

The humanities is an art for identifying what is universally human. It reveals the essence of humanity. It provides vision.

The sciences are primarily concerned with developing methods for answering these questions. They seek to build our problem solving power. They execute with logic and reason. They don’t let the heart get involved, they don’t let bias sway conclusions and justify self serving rationale. Science is work. It is labor. It is building experiments and testing and failing and repeating. It is execution. It is justifying methods by checking and double checking.

So the humanities ask questions.

Sciences provide the answers.

The best minds occupying both worlds have a balance.

You cannot be a great scientist without asking great questions, without understanding the significance of good questions.

You can master the methods, and become an expert calculator. But a calculator can’t solve problems without inputs. A great scientist must not only be able to solve problems, but know which problems are worth solving.

Unfortunately, I see our culture solving problems of no value. Great minds going into finance, entertainment, advertising. Developing methods for mass manipulation and control. Building Byzantine systems that take us where?

Likewise, I think the humanities can become an incoherent self gratifying vanity project. Lazy and self indulgent. Ego centric. Not aspiring to higher inconvenient truths.

It fails to add value when it fails to reach for what is universal.

So I dunno.

I think everyone should study both with equal vigor.

Arts and sciences are equally important.

I don’t want a society mindlessly working and solving problems that are unimportant for progressing mankind. Accepting whatever values are dictated by those in authority.

And I don’t want a society that’s completely consumed by feeling. And never testing the utility or veracity of these feelings and visions.

Don’t get me wrong. I think as a society we’re also doing amazing things with science and technology. More stem isn’t necessarily bad. Just not at the expense of our soul.

It’s important to know where we came from if we want a better idea of where we’re going.