The $86,400 A Day Job

What if I told you about a job where you get $86,400 a day.  And – here’s the catch – you have to use it all in that one day or else you lose it.  Then the next day, you get another $86,400 to spend during that day with the same stipulation as the day before.  What would you think?  What if I said I didn’t see it on some get rich quick scheme forum on the net?

Before I tell you how to get this job, think a little bit about your strategy.  Would you spend it on cars, houses, and gizmos?  Would you spend it on experiences such as travel, vacations, and amusement parks?  What about investing that money for later returns?  Would you shop around for the best deal for your money, or would any old shop be fine?  Would you use only what you want and let the rest get chucked out?  Or would you spend every last penny somewhere?  Really think on it.

Do you have some answers?  Do you know what you would do?  Good – I’ll tell you how to get the job.

I first heard about this job several years ago from a talk show host.  I was a young Svenlet getting toted to or from school or extracurricular activity when I heard about it.  My dad would listen to talk radio in the car and expose all of us kids to the news and other stuff of the day.  When I first heard about it, I was giddy with fanciful thoughts.  $86,400 a day?  Heck, my parents didn’t make that in a year.  I would revisit this fantasy from time to time for many years.  When I first heard about it, though, the only things I thought of spending it on were Legos and video games.

Are you ready to get started?  You are?  Great!  You’ve got the job!

The job is your life.  Using the clever adage that time is money and an exchange rate of 1 dollar/second (inflation adjusted from the ancient Greeks), you can probably see the job more clearly.  Every day we are gifted 86,400 seconds to use as we see fit, but at the end of the day, we lose the seconds we do not use.

Now think back on the answers that you gave when it was a job with actual dollars.  Now think of the analogy of your life and how you use those seconds.  Do they match?  Most of us would agree that they don’t.  The reason is we don’t think about time as a currency. 

We take it for granted that we will have time to do stuff in the future, but don’t do anything today to make it happen.  It’s like saying you want to buy a million dollar house in the future, but don’t invest any of the $86,400 that you get every single day.

We tend to think about tangible things easier than intangible goodies like time.  So, let’s paint the analogous picture for the million dollar house with time as our currency.  The million dollar house could be something like writing a book or having a family.  Let’s say having a family.  In terms of time, it takes time to find a spouse, get to know the spouse, get married and make a home.  It takes time to make a baby (the fun part!), to incubate the baby, feed, dress, burp, change the baby.  It takes time to teach the child about good and bad, what is important, how to behave, how not to behave, how to control passions, and when it is okay to let them fly.  And if you have more than one child, there is more time committed to this family thing.  Many people take a look at the price tag and decide not to have a family.  At least not yet.  And then put it off until later, when there might not be a later. 

However, similar to real estate, a family is a time investment where we can reap huge returns over time.  Or lose the investment.  Same with money, using time has its own risks.  But without risk, you miss the reward.

Take a look at the writing a book example.  I’ve heard many people say that they wish they did something like writing a book or learning to play music or learning to paint, but decided not to pursue.  Why?  Well, the price was too much, and they didn’t want to invest the time into it.  I think that folks call that a speculative investment.

And similar to money matters, managing time takes practice.  The more that you use it, the better you get at things like spotting a deal, or using time efficiently, or investing for a superior return.

Also, there is no guarantee that there will be a future.  For example, the million dollar house could be sold before you raise enough scratch.  Or the price of the house could have gone up two- or three-fold where it is no longer attractive (also, I guess the price could have collapsed, but I’m wondering what that would mean in terms of time…).  Or you could get transferred out of your job.  That definitely puts a damper on things.  Does that mean we shouldn’t invest for the future?  No – it just means that we have to be happy with what we did with today not putting all of our time into being happy in the future.

And lastly, just like any job, you’ve got a boss.  And just like any boss, they’ll do a performance review and rate how well you did your job.  How well did you use that money?  How well did you use that time?  We’ll have to answer to the boss at some point.  The question is: will you get promoted, transferred, or fired?

God bless,

Sven

Doodles from the Cube, 11th ed.

I have been experimenting with adding color to my pen sketches with red pen accents.  What do you think?  Svetlana is partial to Van Gogh's badger (which evolved from a failed attempt at a cat).

Being Anything You Want

I was thinking very briefly on this just yesterday.  I’ve held this belief for a while, but only recently seen the evidence of its veracity.  And it is the idea of the self-made man or, more in the language of the point I want to make, that we can be anything we want.

My point is this – what good we do in this life is of no thanks to us.  Whatever great things we do in this life, it is not because we are great.  It is because we did what we were supposed to do.  Conversely, whatever failings we had, it is not because we are a failure.  It is because we did not do what we were supposed to do.

There is this feel-good philosophy prevalent in the modern child-rearing approach that anyone can be anything.  “You can be anything you want, honey.”  It sounds nice and helps us sleep better at night when we tell our kids this, but I believe that its intention is wrong.

The intention of that philosophy is to instill in kids the idea that if they want something bad enough, they can get it.  If they want to be President of the United States – they can if they want it bad enough.  The fact is, the kid that wants to be President eventually wakes up and realizes that the dream died several years ago and that they failed on some level by not being President.  Yes, they failed, but they failed in a journey that they weren’t supposed to take in the first place.

But for most of us, we don’t even get the chance to wake up one morning to go to a dead end job and realize that we failed.  We’ve had grown-ups intervene before then.  They’ve been through this dream, fail, live your life cycle.  The dreams that you have as a kid don’t work out even if you want it bad enough.  So at some point they take it upon themselves to help us wake up and face the “real” world.  They teach us of more “practical” considerations in picking a career or finding a path, without real consideration of who we are as persons.  And we believe them because there is an amount of sense in it.  You need food.  You need a place to stay.  A car would be nice and working a bad job so I can go on vacation once a year sounds like a good plan.

No – I really think that the philosophy of “anyone can be anything” is not to teach kids that they can be anything that they want if they want it bad enough, but rather that they could have the skills to be anything – they just need to find what that anything is.  It is to encourage the child who doodles in class instead of listening to their teacher that being an illustrator one day is a real option in life.

Finding that “anything” is the goal in growing up and the practical considerations of life will be taken care of – it might take some creativity.

How about instead of looking at the kid wanting to grow into a magnanimous adult, let’s take a look at a mover-and-shaker of the world and work backwards.  Albert Einstein is a great example.  He’s unanimously regarded as a phenomenal genius in theoretical physics.  Did he have to work at being a genius?  Besides some mathematical training - no, it was ingrained within him.  He did not come from a pedigreed academic background or any connections other than those he had as a patent clerk.  The gift of genius was within him.  The reason that he became the ubiquitous Einstein is because he let his genius shine through.

Alternatively, Einstein could have taken the practical route and just stayed a patent clerk.  It paid the bills, why rock the boat?

But the point is this: Einstein’s genius was not because he wanted it bad enough.  It was there the whole time; he chose to let it shine through.  And, that is what we should do with our own unique gifts.

Not many of us will attain the same stature as Einstein, and that is fine.  Even by allowing our own geniuses to shine through, we won’t all be regarded as immortal geniuses.  I think that when we dream of what we want to become, we are interested in what our stature will be with regard to the rest of humanity.  We want to be this towering giant of prowess, when in fact, we would be perfectly happy being Joe Shmoe doing his thing to pay the bills.  Just because we are true to ourselves doesn’t imply fame and fortune will follow.

We were given these gifts (or lack thereof) by no power of our own.  Therefore, by being true to what we are, we should never be left wanting in what we need.  God made us the way that we are and He made us to be ourselves.  Why do we think that if we do what God made us to do, that we wouldn’t be able to survive?  Why would He make something destined for failure, when we have the assurance that He loves us and wants us to be with Him in heaven?

In the end, the only power that we possess is the power to use the gifts that God gave us.

God bless,

Sven

The Virtue of Just Showing Up

I heard a radio personality a couple of years back speak about how he has been going to the gym for years.  Considering that many people fail to commit to the gym so faithfully, someone asked him his secret for his longstanding consistency.  And his answer might come as a shock, but it really shouldn’t.  He said that he just kept showing up.  He made it a point to make it to the gym at a certain time and day.  And he always went, even when he didn’t feel like it.

I find the anecdote inspiring.  I see this as the central virtue of my journey from my job into unjobbing.  How?  By doing something every day to bring me one step closer to my unjobbing dream.

The journey to unjob requires a development of alternate skills and capabilities so that I can get paid doing something that I like doing.  In order to develop those skills to a professional level, I have to practice.  One way that I have been doing that is waking up around 5:00 so that I can practice writing by working on my book.  Right now, I am editing a book that I wrote a couple of years back and needs some real extra attention.  Some days, I don’t feel like it.  Some days I work on it and can only get through a couple hundred words.  But other days, I can get through over a thousand before I have to get to work.  Some days at the end of the session I feel pumped.  Others, I feel defeated.  But regardless, every day I get up and try again.

By being persistent, even if results aren’t consistent, I will eventually finish.  My last book took about a year of working in the morning in a semi-consistent fashion (I also worked on music and other stuff – but it was always 5:00 in the morning).  When I look at the individual days, it doesn’t feel like a lot and when I am working on it I don’t feel like I am getting anywhere.  It can be quite discouraging.  If I did not feel that I should give writing a fair shot, I could see myself giving up on it a while back.

Similar to the gym, we get better the more we practice.  Whenever anyone first starts lifting weights, they start out light and get tired easily.  Again, there is the temptation to despair and give up.  But, by consistently going to the gym and lifting weights, they develop strength and toned muscles that they never knew they had.  Creative work is nothing different.  With my music, I am making it a point to always work on developing my writing by having a steady stream of projects.  For example, I have decided to write music for all 150 Psalms.  That is going to take a while, and will take maybe the rest of my life.  I plan on working on these in between other projects, but it gives me something that I can consistently practice my writing.

This virtue of just showing up also helps keep my perfectionism in balance.  By working on persistently producing and developing my tools, I am less worried about a subpar result.  I think a great example is this blog.  As I am writing this, I don’t feel like it is that great of a post, but I am doing it anyway.  Why?  It will make me a better writer in the long run.  It teaches me to be persistent even when I don’t feel like doing it.

So, even though I am an advocate of just showing up, I haven’t been great at following it here (hence I had to pull some “guest” posts from me back in 2012).  The part of just showing up that makes it work is that you have to have a time and place for you to show up.  If you don’t know when or where to show up, how can you?  I realized that recently with my prison pen pals.  I kept falling behind in writing to them because I didn’t have a consistent time to write to them.  I used to able to do a lot at work no problem.  But now, work is busy (and interesting) and I have an obligation to give my all to that work.  So, that puts me at a crossroads with the blog and drawing.  If I am going to keep doing the blog and working on my drawing, I need to set that time and place.  That will be my goal for the weekend – find my time and place.

In order for us to make any changes to our life, whether they are habits, or jobs, or…whatever – we need to make a consistent effort by just showing up.

God bless,

Sven

What is Success?

The last post was a blast from the past about the importance of failure.  Today's post is another essay I wrote in 2012, but this time about success.   Enjoy!

"What is success to you?" This was a question posed to me one day during an interview lunch. I have been interviewing for actuarial positions for the last six months and I thought that I had run across all of the interview questions that I could imagine. This one caught me by surprise, because I knew that if I answered honestly, I would be hurriedly shown the door.

Before I finish this brief story, lets take a look at how this is an open-ended question. What is success? Well, I went to dictionary.com and found some definitions:

1. the favorable or prosperous termination of attempts or endeavors.
2. the attainment of wealth, position, honors, or the like.

There were three other definitions - two used the word successful (circular reasoning?) and the third was obsolete. So I left those out.

Armed with these definitions, how do we define success for ourselves? Applying the first definition might be morbid - but worth a shot. Let's see...the definition of success for me would be the favorable or prosperous termination of myself. Most probably my life. Essentially, success would be what my life would be like at its termination such that I find it favorable and/or prosperous. OK for me, that would mean living a life of doing good for others, developing my God-given talents, and being the best husband/father/grandfather/etc. that I could be. In short, a successful life here just means that I am in heaven when I am dead. I have little care for the things that others care about in terms of temporary pleasures of this world. I would not have a TV if my family would allow it.

I don't think that a response down that path floats in the corporate world. I presupposed that they cared little for my view of the afterlife. Furthermore, conversations like that make some people nervous.

OK, lets try the second definition. Success for me would be the attainment of wealth, position, honors, or the like. So, I guess, this would mean, what titles or wealth would signify that I was a success? OK, if I answered honestly, I would say that me working in my little studio for the rest of my life would be a success, given that I provided for my family. I don't want accolades, wealth and the like. I want to do what God called me to do, and that is it. FWIW, my dream job is actually not attainable...a monk.

That definitely would not float in the corporate world either. So, how do I answer this question?

There was a presupposition to the question, that I had a plan for my success, some golden idea of what sort of honors, titles, and the like that I want. They, I believe, wanted to see where I wanted to see myself in their company based on my answers to their questions. I believe that was their end goal.

In the end, I gave some canned response - something to make it look like I would be a good corporate zombie. And in the end, did it work? Probably not. I did not get the job and it may have been because of the response. More probably it was due to other things as well. But it did open my eyes: if my goal is to be self-sufficient in an artistic career (music, writing, or otherwise), then I need to work towards that end. That may mean doing other work until it gets started, or go full-steam ahead now towards it.

Failure IS an Option

I wrote the following essay back in 2012, but I think it's good stuff and deserves a spot here on EYKIW.

Failure.  The sin of wasting time, energy, and money on uselessness.  The sin of falling short of expectations.  The sin of falling short on results.  Failure.  It is one of the greatest insults of modern man, the pariah of our society.  Even if we have a slim chance of failure, we still balk at the chance to chase our dreams.  The last thing that we want to see in the mirror is the word failure pursed on our lips.

The fear of failure is everywhere.  Whether it is big life-changing risks, a change of hairstyles, or not getting enough courage to ask the cute guy or girl in class to a date.  If we shy away from taking a chance, we will not be rejected.  But, we will never get a chance to fulfill our dreams or even experience the bitter taste of failure.  You know, failure is not that bad - there is actually a lot of good that comes out of failure.

That is right - a lot of good coming out of failure!  There is so much that we can get from putting our heart into something and failing.  At the very least, it shows that we are not scared to try; we are not scared of trying to make a difference.  We learn from failure - the cadavers of failed ideas are great ways to learn and do better on the next attempt.  Also - even though we may fail, our failure may eventually be seen as a visionary masterwork over time.

One of the greatest mottoes (editors note:  holy crap!  I did not know that the plural of motto had an e in it) that I have run across with life is this:  we only have one shot at life.  We can't go back in time or give life another shot.  We only have one and then we die.  And I hear some of you say, "So, don't screw up!"  Let's take that reasoning to an extreme and play out our life.

If our goal in life is not to screw up, then that means we will only take on risks that are nearly impossible to fail at.  What does that mean?  Generally speaking, I believe that we would then stick to well trod paths of life.  We would not take on paths less taken or paths altogether not taken.  For example, this means if we wanted to write a novel, and we knew not a well trod path to writing that novel, it will be left undone.  Why?  Too much of a risk of failure.  No one we know or too few we know have done it.  Basically we train ourselves to believe that the most fantastic of real lives are not really real - novelists exist, but they are not normal people like me.  I wonder how often the next greatest American novel was not written because of this fear of failure?

Let's say that we had a dream that we wanted to pursue.  For the sake of illustration, we have this dream of producing a rock opera based on the musical failings of pop-icons.  Title:  Death by Bieber.  We pursue our dream and make it happen - and guess what - it fails!  Ticket sales were poor and the critics came down hard in the reviews.  Nothing much to salvage on this project.

So, that was all wasted time, right?  Not at all!  We learn quite a bit by just completing something.  Part of it is the intricacies that hide behind the silver-lined dream: looks nice on the outside, but it can be hell on the inside!  We could learn that we were not cut out for it.  And that is fine.  You can say honestly, at the end of the day, that you gave it a shot.  How many people just wished that they had followed a dream but ultimately never did?  At least you gave it a shot - and there is satisfaction to be had in trying.

You could also learn the more obvious from a failure:  this does not work!  And that is good too because if you feel that you like doing the work, you can put forth the effort to try again - tweak it or start over again.

Another thing that happens with a few "failures" is the eventual title of being visionary.  This happens often in art and music.  My favorite example is Igor Stravinsky's Rite of Spring.  The music was harmonically adventurous with plenty of use of dissonance for musical color.  It was a piece of music so far out of the norm - that it was too much for the people of 1913.  So much so, that at the premiere of the ballet, a riot broke out.  That's right folks, a riot in the concert hall!  Now, Rite of Spring is hailed as one of the most quintessential pieces of 20th Century music.

What would have happened if Stravinsky played it safe?  It is hard to say, but I am sure that the musical world would be much less enriched because of it.  I have found inspiration in my own work from this piece.  Other examples of this visionary failure would be Nikola Tesla and JS Bach.  Although some of their genius was appreciated during their life, the total contribution of their work to art and science was not fully known until well after their death.  They were not necessarily failures, but neither were they given the full credit they deserve in this life.

And to tie into what is happening in the world today: how do you think that this economy is going to get off of life support?  It is not going to be people doing the same ol' thing.  We need creative energy to find new avenues for development and economy.  We need people not to be afraid to fail - now more than ever.  We need people to take that step away from that "safe" job for their own sake to take a chance to make a difference.  We need those unemployed to see the opportunity to take a chance on their dreams.  That is the only way we can get out of this mess: take a chance at failure.

...Oh and BTW, the first attempt at this post was a failure.  I had to rewrite the whole post!

Doodles from the Cube, 10th ed.

At the Monastery of Our Lady of the Holy Spirit in Conyers, GA

Standing For Your Beliefs

I kind of left the last blog post in melodramatic fashion with this epic choice that lies before me.  Typical, I did not leave many details and reasoned that the only option was to pray to God for His guidance in the matter.  Once you get to that point, it is somewhat scary and you begin to feel that you are just never going to get an answer.  You find your best coin and get it ready to flip it.  You call heads.

And then, when you least expect it, you get an answer.  Not only when but how.  Wow, oh wow, we got an answer.

To give a little bit of flavor to the situation, I currently work as an actuary in a position that is a little more than manual processes and keeping up with a rather antiquated status quo.  There is not much (if anything) in terms of innovation and in need of intuitive insights.  I am beginning to think that this is typical of Corporate America.  But what the work lacked, it made up for in time for me to do my own thing - both at work and outside of work.

Now, the opportunity that I was looking at would be different.  It would be in a field that I like, and plenty of work to build and use my intuitive sense on a daily basis.  It was what I could see as my best bet at being happy in Corporate America.  But, would I have as much time to pursue writing, music, and other purely creative endeavors?  I didn't know, but I was sure to ask.

So the choice was: stay in subpar work environment and leverage time for creative endeavors or pursue meaningful work in Corporate America at the possible expense of creative endeavors.  Wow - it looks clearer when I put it that way!  But the thing is, I deferred my choice to God knowing that He knew what was best for me.  Did He make me to be an actuary?

The answer to my dilemma came when my wife dropped this bombshell:  about five minutes from my prospective work there was a landfill that housed nuclear waste from the Manhattan project (you know, when they were making the nuclear bomb in the 40s).  That wasn't as much a problem as the next bit.  Less than a thousand feet from the nuclear waste dump was a subterranean fire - you read that right, an underground fire, and it was approaching the nuclear waste.  There is no telling what will happen when the fire does reach it, but it will probably spread radiation all over the place.

Given reports of high infant mortality, higher incidence of cancer in the area, the answer was clear.  There was no way that I would be at peace there, worrying about the safety of my family.  So, I had the rather awkward job of telling my recruiter that I would not pursue the opportunity, that I could not feel comfortable about moving near a place like that.

Oddly enough, that awkward part of telling them no right then and there was the most difficult thing.  I have a tendency to think against the grain, but acting against the grain is harder.  I am quite empathetic, so I project the feelings of judgment and rejection on others, even those that I have not met.  I was on the phone for twenty minutes with my recruiter who was trying to reason and persuade me to reconsider.  It would have been much easier emotionally to just do the interview than to go through the turmoil of turning it down before I interviewed.  This was on Friday, and only now, Monday, am I on a better emotional balance.

But I learned some things through this experience: 

1. God's plan is for us to be here for right now.  This might be a couple of months or couple of years.  
2. The time that I can leverage from my work now is a blessing and that I should use it to the full while I'm here.  I may never been in an opportunity like this again.  
3. It reaffirms that God hears prayer and answers them, as long as we work at listening with an open heart.  If I was not open to the possibility that this might not be the opportunity for me, I don't think that I would have made the sound decision to keep my family safe.  
4. And lastly, making a decision on your beliefs that makes you look like a kook is never easy, but you will get better sleep in the long run.

God bless,

Sven

Where Are We Going, and How Come?

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.

I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end.

Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.

But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you and I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing.

And I know that if I do this, you will lead me by the right road although I may know nothing about it.

Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death, I will not fear, for you are ever with me and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

-          Thomas Merton, OCSO

Monastery of Our Lady of the Holy Spirit, Conyers, GA

The above prayer was the subject for a wonderful cross-stitch that hung on the wall outside of the retreat master’s office/confessional at the Monastery of Our Lady of the Holy Spirit in Conyers, Georgia.  Whew what a sentence!  Anyway – I think that they also had little prayer cards they gave away at the gift shop as well.  I’ve read it and prayed it many times.  And in times of great perturbation, I received much solace in this prayer.

As much as we think that we are the masters of our own destiny, the fact is that we just aren’t.  We cannot even begin to hope to understand the myriad of perils and blessings hidden in each moment of every day.  And if we soldier on with only our own understanding, we are sure to miss some perils and gain some blessings – but not everything.

I began this journey with the clear purpose of shedding my corporate exoskeleton and embracing an unjobbing life.  As I have waded through, I see that the water is murkier than I first thought.  There are so many ways to quit Corporate America, or to unjob, or to finally be who I am – and it is that latter goal that I have to follow.  What good is “sticking it to the man” if it fails in my very purpose?  And what if my real purpose is to be in Corporate America and that I haven’t found my niche yet?  I could really be selling myself short if I don’t pursue the right opportunities.  But on the flip side – maybe it will be devastating to further pursue Corporate America.  Maybe by taking that new shiny job, I further ensnare my soul and waste precious life, even if I did with the intention of freeing my soul.

I am coming up to a fork in the road.  I feel underworked and overpaid where I am.  I feel that I have a lot of time on my hands, that I feel shouldn’t be there.  Is that a blessing?  Or a curse?  I have these pangs of guilt when I am not fully worked in my work place, sort of like I am cheating the company.  But on the other hand – I finish everything plenty on time and at a quality at least as high as my colleagues.  I ask for more work, and I still only get table scraps.  So, I write.  Or draw.  I work on the work that I feel I must do – the work that the creative Sven must do in order to survive in the hopes that one day, yes one day, I can just be creative.

On the horizon looms an opportunity in Corporate America.  I am interviewing for a company for a position that is right smack dab in a field of study in which I am most interested.  Although the surface looks promising, there are several unknowns.  It will be a 15 hour drive away from here – 7 hours closer to my family of origin though.  It is in a city that is well known as one of the worst cities to live in in the US.  Given my incredible work-life balance here – tipped way over to the life side – am I going to hope to get a better deal?

Or is it possible that I will fall back in love with being an actuary given that I’m doing the right thing in the right place?  I don’t know.  None of these questions do I know answers to, and what’s worse – I don’t even know how to begin.  That is where the Thomas Merton prayer comes in.

In the end, I want to be  what God made me to be.  Nothing more.  Nothing less.  I landed into this profession after a period of intense prayer and I have to say that it has been a blessing in many regards.  Either taking this job or staying where I am is fraught with possible blessings or curses.  All I know is that I want to do God’s will and I pray that He makes it abundantly clear, because in the end, I have no hope in being who I truly am without Him showing the way.

God bless,

Sven

Doodles from the Cube, 9th ed.

Intuition: The Sublime Gift

I was doing my copy-editing thing for the actuarial magazine, when lo and behold, I was gifted two articles about innovation in the actuarial profession.  I thought that it was quite providential given my renewed interest in creative and innovative actuarial work.  So I took to reading the articles with gusto in the hopes of something to light a fire underneath me.

After reading through them looking for obscure grammatical mistakes, I was disappointed.  I mean innovation should be right up my alley right?  I love looking at things in a new way.  But each article fell flat on their promise of renewed innovation because they were basically puff pieces written to bolster the author’s own image.  But besides the ego stroking on the part of the authors, I sensed a misunderstanding of intuition and how that feeds innovation.

What I got out of the pieces is that innovation can occur if one follows a process or provides enough motivation to create.  One article alluded to the innovative process in some book that he read and how he applied the process to a project at work.  And he wasn’t short of words to describe how well it worked.  The second article was about how a CEO introduced the use of competitions into the company culture in order to facilitate innovation.  Although both addressed innovation, they both conspicuously lacked how intuition plays into innovation.

Take for instance the first article which reduces innovation to following a process.  He equates innovation with the output of some sort of a rote process, some sort of machine that creates innovative insights.  To be fair, that might be a route to innovation.  Having a process to get you to think about things differently might produce innovation.  However, that is not the only route.  Intuition, the gift to be able to infer relationships almost out of thin air, is not a conscious process.  Intuitive folks can innovate and build on their own esoteric insights to create innovation with little, if any, methodology.  It just makes sense and they often may not know exactly why it works.

The second article also has some merit.  Some people do well when there is a contest; they are motivated either by the esteem of their peers or some material prize.  That motivation might be enough for people to “risk” thinking differently if it gives them an advantage.  But the issues with contests are that they need to be judged and entries deemed better or worse in order to determine a winner.  In so doing, everything is in the eye of the judge and what could be preconceived notions on their part as to what a good idea could be.  A truly innovative idea might be beyond the judge’s comprehension and then deemed worth less than a more “conventional” innovation.

But the point about competitions is that some folks thrive in a non-competitive environment.  Intuitive individuals only need time and space to be able to produce phenomenal results.  The fact that an idea is implemented or given consideration is often reward in and of itself.

It is possible that the reason that intuition was not given mention is because it is not a popular concept.  Why?  Well, because not everyone possesses intuition, which is detestable in the modern world’s eyes.  The fact that we cannot be anything that we want to be with or without extraordinary instruction through school is seen as a slight to the modern institution of civilization.  The fact that no matter how grand of a carrot (or Cadbury Crème Egg!) that we give people, nature cannot change.

And indeed we are not the same.  Deep down we are all different and it does not matter how much schooling (basically a rote process) or motivation (even competition) one receives, we cannot change whether someone has the gift of intuition or not.  I believe that innovation for all of humanity would be best served if we accepted the fact that some people have intuition and are best fitted in the world of innovation, while others serve best as implementation of innovation.  The well of innovation exists for any industry or sector, or anywhere – we need to open our eyes to where those well springs are and let them flow.

God bless,

Sven

Head In The Clouds Meets Feet On The Street

Anyone who has been following this blog knows that I have a tendency – a strong tendency – to live with my head in the clouds with little recognition of the fact that I cannot fly.  I like to talk about how things should be or where I would ideally like to be or where I would ideally fit.  I began this journey under the assumption that I needed to be an unbound creative person outside of Corporate America.

But doing that work for its own good is not sustainable.  I can’t do that as a job for very long before destitution sets in.  Even so, there is a strong temptation to bet the farm and throw the chips into the wind (as long as they aren’t Pringles!) and see what happens.  The starving artist stereotype exists for a reason.

Because I have children and a wife that depend on me, that put a damper on my self-imposed destitution and created motivation to sacrifice in order to provide for others.  So I have to connect my head in the clouds with my feet on the street.

I had a realization not long ago (I think that it was before this nasty flu/cold bug that we got in March).  I know that I have been talking about not really being an actuary or not feeling like I am an actuary; I’ve been presenting myself as a frustrated freespirit trapped by Corporate America because of my needs and the needs of others.  But maybe that isn’t totally accurate.

I got into actuarial science because it touted itself as a career for creative people; you needed to be creative in order to solve these problems.  And, when I look back at it, I realize that I have had opportunities like that and they have been good for me.  I liked doing them, and I did well.

A recent-ish event at work helped illustrate this point.  We had a complicated issue come up that required a little bit of “outside of the box” thinking.  Not much really, but it was a situation that just did not come up before so everyone in my group was intimidated by it.  So, seeing the opportunity, I spearheaded the mini-project in order to come up with a solution.  It required building a mini model to see what the effect of the new situation was, and I had a blast.  Well as much as one can in a cube – but I did enjoy building the model and sharing with my colleagues.  To my surprise, it was well received, and we were able to implement the mini-model.

What this illustrated to me was simply that I shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater as far as actuarial science is concerned.  At least not yet.  Maybe there still is a place out there where I can be fulfilled doing actuarial work – or at least like what I am doing.  Maybe this bug to unjob is really an emotional reaction to poor emotional relations with the current work that I do, not the work I could be doing.  Maybe if I liked what I was doing at work, then I would be more content to keep being an actuary and be content with music and writing as a pure creative outlet on the side.  Maybe…

But that is the whole thing – this is a journey.  And when I began this journey, I knew that I had to find a path to fulfillment.  In the scientific process that is called the “purpose” of the experiment.  Then, I stated my “hypothesis” that unjobbing is the route to fulfillment.  So, having only this hypothesis, I started the journey to unjobbing.  It is possible that my hypothesis is wrong, but as long as the purpose is fulfilled, I’ll be happy.  Ultimately, that is what I want to do – fulfill the purpose that God gave me. 

And in order to do that I have to be honest with myself - I need to make sure that my head in the clouds is connected to those feet on the street.

God bless,

Sven