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The Last Frontier – A Sufi Journey
The Last Frontier – A Sufi Journey by Reshad Feild If thou wilt be observant and vigilant, thou wilt see at every moment the response to thy action. Be observant if thou wouldst have a pure heart, for something is born to thee in consequence of every action.– Mevlana Jelalu’ddin Rumi Like a lot of…
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Summary: Dhandho Investor – The Low Risk Method to High Returns
Mohnish Pabrai couldn’t figure out how on Earth the Patels – an small immigrant community that only arrived in the US a few decades ago with barely any assets to their name – managed to acquire $40bn worth of American motel and hotel assets. He came to realise that the answer is in their approach: low…
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Digital Escapism – What are We Running Away From?
Shantaram & underlying anxiety In the epic story, ‘Shantaram’, Gregory David Roberts talks about the constant anxiety he experienced in his everyday life. He was, after all, Australia’s most wanted man at the time. Since Gregory was on the run, his constant anxiety was hardly surprising: it was likely that at any time he could…
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Language as a basis for strategy
The connection between language and strategy Starting about 300,000 years ago language was used by groups of early human males to overthrow the alpha male of their group. According to Richard Wrangham, a researcher of anthropology, primate groups differ from human groups in that, typically, a group of primates has an alpha male with subordinate males.…
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The Bitter Feeling about Timeless Places
One of the qualities about something being ‘timeless’ is that it is slightly bitter – so says Christopher Alexander in his book, ‘The Timeless Way of Building’. I wondered what he meant by that – I found it peculiar especially since many of the other qualities seemed understandable (alive, comfortable, free, exact, etc). But I…
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Bureaucracies
A nice and short article here about Weberian bureaucracy. https://faculty.babson.edu/krollag/org_site/encyclop/bureaucracy.html It gives some historical perspective about how (and why!) bureaucracies formed – evidently with positive intentions in response to the prior feudalistic modes. Many bureaucratic tendencies remain in companies still today, but without the human memory of what we had prior to that, nor the…
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The East India Company and the Origins of Corporate Risk Taking
The East India Company became one of the largest companies that ever existed and controlled half of all world trade at one point. Its beginnings (and its eventual success) are based on the innovation of risk taking: The company existed for over 400 years and its original intention was to import spices from Indonesia. In 1599, the…
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The Zurich Axioms: A Summary through the Lens of Antifragility
The Zurich Axioms are based on the axioms that Swiss bankers have used to increase and preserve wealth over generations. I decided to look at the axioms through the lens of antifragility and with coaching principles in mind in order to better understand how to apply them. It’s all very well reading the axioms and…
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Applying Governance and Constraints to Jira to Increase the Potential for Agility
Customisable software is a double-edged sword. Whilst flexibility means that we can customise a piece of software to the unique needs of an organisation (and even to various unique needs within an organisation), the downside is that too much unaligned and unconstrained customisation, increases the risk that a chaotic system ensues. This is particularly problematic…
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New Book: “Escaping the Dopaminferno” and Reimagining Books
Escaping the Dopaminferno – dopaminferno.com Over the past year, Matt Gwyther and I have been tinkering away in the background! After we did our first dopamine detox we carried on reading, exploring, collecting quotes and tweets, following references, talking to people, taking their recommendations, watching talks and podcasts, making notes, etc etc. And then ……
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IKEA Hack Platform Bed
Ikea hack platform bed Ikea Hack Platform Bed made with ikea Kura beds and birch ply I’ve used three Kura beds. The tops have been cut off. I drilled into the frame to make the screws flush so that I can place the frames together. I reinforced the frames with upright supports using the leftover…
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The Persistence of Children
Yesterday afternoon we were mucking about on a wooden pirate ship next to a river. I was there with my daughter (5 yo) and a friend and his son. The two kids were playing happily on the top deck. My friend and I decided to try and get our kids off the boat. We tried…
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Capacity for Adaptability
Whilst watching a documentary about reindeer herders in the Siberian Taiga, the narrator said that the nomads have a ‘high capacity for adaptability’. It might just have been a throw-away comment, but it made a lot of sense and I wondered about it afterwards. Was it true? It was more than being adaptable. What was…
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Journeys to the Ends of the Earth – Trading in East Africa
In a delightful episode of this series (Journeys to the End of the Earth), the photographer, David Adams, joins a crew of dhow sailors as they sail along the East African coast trading from port to port. They have no compass nor maps to rely on, and sail without motor and electricity – just using…
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Some Problems sort themselves out
Not every problem needs to be dealt with straight away. Sometimes, they don’t need to be solved or sometimes some dithering is no bad thing. I remember once when my daughter was very young. We needed a gate to put on the stairs to stop her crawling and falling down the stairs. I was round…
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