Thought of the Day - Lottery Thought Experiment

[I wrote most of this around the end of June, when there was a $100m AUD jackpot on the lottery. After the draw I forgot to finish it, but in retrospect there are some interesting thoughts in here that are worth posting.]

I'm normally against gambling, on the principle that in the long run the house always wins. I don't deny that some people are lucky and beat the house, just that if it was likely to happen, bookies wouldn't stay in business long. Based on the above, I don't tend to gamble or play the lottery on a regular basis. But every so often, when there is an obscenely large jackpot I'll throw a couple of quid on the lottery. Normally I am left slightly disappointed, it is hard not to wonder 'what if I won?' before the draw. This time however I decided to put my occasional flutter to good use, win or lose.

Recently I have been having a hard time working out what on earth I want to do with my life. I've been thinking about it since I started uni and have yet to come to any good conclusions. There is a classic thought experiment that is supposed to help in this situation: What would you do if money was no object, if you could do whatever you wanted to do, if for example if you won the lottery? It is a little difficult to really get into that frame of mind, money will always matter, there are always too many options. The only time you ever come close to that mindset is buying a lottery ticket, anything is possible, if unlikely.

I'm sure no-one — other than maybe Bill Gates — thinks they would live their life the same if they won the lottery. I mean who fantasises about watching more bad TV, working a job they hate and being dissatisfied with life? Money isn't everything but having a relatively unlimited supply would change your perspective.


Anyway, my thought experiment was this: To indulge my 'What if I won?' thoughts and try to determine from those thoughts, what I really want to do. Rather than focusing on the specifics of having a vast amount of money, I directed my attention to the recurring themes of what I would actually do. I wouldn't say it was a complete success, but there were some interesting trends:

1. Read More - The one recurring thought in almost all of the possibilities was that I wanted to spend more time reading. Literally my first thought was, that if I won the lottery, I would take a pile of books to a cabin in the hills and spend a lot of time reading and thinking. In fact almost all of my fantasies involved reading in some way; from just reading, to building a huge library, to being able to have a 'reading week' every year like Bill Gates. It really seemed to be at the core of what I want to do. The irony being that at the moment I have lots of time to read, instead I sleep and watch bad TV.
With this in mind, I need to strive for a greater level of erudition.

2. Improve Companies - If I did win the lottery, I would still work, if only because it would drive me crazy if I didn't. The one thing I have loved in every job I have ever had, is having an idea so good it feels like an epiphany. Different ideas, thoughts and inspiration, just seem to join up and lead to an answer. They have been rare moments in the jobs I have had so far, but they are what keep me going. Most often these serendipitous ideas are for ways to improve a business, not just in an incremental way, but in a revolutionary way.
With this in mind, I need to focus on jobs with the opportunity to improve businesses.

3. Go To Business School - One of the stranger themes was that I would go to business school. Sure part of it would be because having won a lot of money, you would somehow end up involved in business. But I think the underlying reason is that, if money was no object it would be something interesting to do.
With this in mind I need to consider doing an MBA even if I have no interest in being a manager.

4. Live In The Mountains - Almost all of the location specific thoughts I had involved mountains, generally Alp/Rockies type peaks, but really any relief would do. I don't think I had a single thought of lounging on a beach on a tropical island or the sea. In all honesty, places that are too flat kinda freak me out.

With this in mind, I need to try to live (or at least holiday) in the mountains as much as possible.

5. Learn How To Survive If The Shit Hits The Fan - I think around that time I had been reading too many disaster books (The Stand, Emergency etc), so this was on my mind. However it is probably a good idea to do some preparation for the worst.

With this in mind, I need to ... do something ;-)

6. Travel To See The People I Like To Spend Time With - IM's and e-mail are fine when nothing else is on offer, but seeing people I enjoy spending time with should be the catalyst for travel that I have thusfar been lacking.
With this in mind, I need to make more of an effort to travel to see the people I enjoy spending time with.


There were also some trends that were conspicuous in their absence:
1. Buy a big house, fancy car, jewellery etc.
2. Live a playboy life with a bevy of beautiful women.
3. Give lots of money to charity.

The first two merely confirm that, as I suspected, most of the conventional trappings of money don't appeal to me. I don't feel significantly better-off now, than I did when I was earning half as much in my first job after graduating from university. While chasing money for the sake of it seemed foolish before. It is now more clear, that I am not interested in 'more money' as a goal.

That last one makes me seem like kind of a bad guy. Who could be so selfish, that on having the stroke of luck to win a vast sum of money, wouldn't help out charities. I think this stems from the fact that I don't trust them to use it well. I'm not saying charities deliberately squander money. I just question whether it is used most effectively in absolute terms, or if it is used in a subjective way to make donors feel better. If I was going to give money away, I would want to make sure it was going to have the greatest benefit. Weirdly one of my fantasies involved giving away the winning ticket to an acquaintance (un-named) and disappearing.


It was a nice thought experiment, but in reality it turns out on this occasion the house did win. I only matched 7 numbers across 6 lines. But I think that if I started living life as if I had won the lottery, I would be much happier.

Thought of the Day - Brilliant or Crazy?

Yesterday I finally solved my backup quandary, I got 6 free months of the premium version of Dropbox to backup 50Gb of data online. I received this for participating in Tim Ferriss's 'Tweet to Beat' campaign along with 33,000 other people. Running the numbers I realised that even if only 50% of the other participants take up this offer, Dropbox will loose out almost $1 million in revenue over the next 6 months. My initial reaction was; 'they're crazy' but it then dawned on me that they might actually be brilliant instead, taking the 'Freemium' model to the extreme.

Anyone who has used web applications should have experienced the 'freemium' model. There is a limited free version of the WebApp that is available, but as you use it more and more, there are then paid levels to allow you greater functionality. The theory being that you can get used to the service, input a heap of data, then you are tied in and likely to pay because of the amount of time you have invested. A more common model is the '30-Day Free Trial' which is similar, but you have 30 days of free use before you have to start paying.

These models are an excellent idea for both the customer and the seller. The customer gets to decide if the product is worth paying for and the seller can reach a wider audience because people like to 'try before you buy'. The downside is that increasingly customers are wise to tactic and may try to resist it. The seller hopes that in the 30-Days or free period, the customer uses the product so much that they are effectively locked in to paying for it by the end. I suspect more and more, that cynical customers are deliberately not using the full potential of the services to avoid this lock-in. I know my first reaction to a free trial or freemium service are to avoid using it too much for precisely this reason.

So how does this relate to Dropbox? Well i have been considering using an online backup system for a while now and have seen various options ranging from free to really expensive, however i was having a hard time deciding between them. There was no easy way to compare features, prices, security and usability, which resulted in decision paralysis; too many options, so i won't pick any of them. Dropbox is offered on a freemium model.There is a free version where you can store up to 2Gb of data and a premium version for $9.99 per month with 50Gb of storage. Unfortunately i suspect this model doesn't work very well in this situation. The full version is really designed for backing up all (or most) of your documents, which is a very different market from the free version, which is so small it is really just for temporary online storage of documents. Due to the fact they are targeted at different markets, I suspect the conversion rate from free to premium is fairly low, this is further exacerbated by the fact that 2Gb isn't much of a lock-in. The alternative would be to offer a 30-Day trial of the premium version, but as i mentioned above, people are wise to that tactic. Few people would bother uploading 50Gb of data to a service if they might not like it or want to move.

On the other hand, how about offering 6 months free? Well that's a different story, 6 months is long enough that it doesn't feel like a lock-in and well even if it is, you're getting $60 of service for free! In reality the lock-in is very high, even higher than the other models above. Once you've setup a system for backups, used it for 6 months and are familiar with the system, there is very little chance you will move when the free period ends. The customer wins; they get some 'free' service and the company wins because they have excellent differentiation in the market and superb retention after the free period ends.

So why doesn't everyone do it? Firstly the company will still have to pay for the storage space, the bandwidth and other overheads that are going to be there. Furthermore they have deferred a large portion of their income for 6 months which is a bit of a cash flow no-no. Also if you offered it to everyone, 6 months is long enough that unscrupulous people would find it worth exploiting. Effectively you are betting the farm that having extremely high retention will benefit the business in the long run.

So is this deal genius or madness? Only time will tell, though after thinking about it i am now a little worried that cashflow might put the company (and all my data) under ...

Thought of the Day - Right Brained Computing

First it was widley belived that machines couldn't replace people at making things (pottery, textiles etc), then the industrial revolution happened. While the machines would never be quite as good at making some things (hand-crafted is still seen as a good thing) they do most of the making in the world today.

More recently it was thought that machines couldn't replace people doing knowledge based tasks that required left brain thinking and again they have been proved wrong again. If a computer can win at chess, properly programed it can probably replace a person doing anthing relying on procedure, decisions and memory. This is still progressing and there is still a gap where people are required.


Is the way forward to leap-frog people working on automating the left brained activites and start trying to automate more right brained work?

I suppose this is where researchers in artificial intelligence are going but is there a simpler approach? Does a computer have to be able to think and be self-aware to create? If a million monkey's at a million type writers will eventually come up with the works of shakespeare and a computer can do the same work in a considerably shorter period of time, is it not just a matter of selecting the best version. As the old saying goes; "ideas are like a**holes, everyone has one", surely this means that creativity is simply selecting the good ideas from the bad.

Thought of the Day - Joined Up Writing

Do you remember early in school, you mechanically printed out line after line of individual letters to learn the shapes? Then one magical day your teacher let you join them up to form adult writing? Well when i was 14, i decided that my joined up writing was so illegible, that to have a chance of passing exams, i would have to start printing again. Not just printing, but printing in block capitals and that is the way i have written for the latter half of my life.

In fairness it has served me well, i learned to print quickly enough to get down the salient points in an exam in the requisite time. The printing was legible enough that i'm fairly sure that the examiner understood what i was getting at and i passed the large majority of exams. More recently due to the IT revolution, about the only thing of consequence that i have had to handwrite since university exams was an application to MI5 and even then i printed in block caps (which i'm sure annoyed them no end - graphology be damned!).

It shouldn't come as a surprise to me then, that i am now no longer capable of cursive script. Sure i can join up block capital letters pretty well and jot out individual lower case letters but i can't write like i should be able to. I can't avoid starting every letter with an full-size capital; Imagine Every Word In A Sentence Written Like This, only worse. Even more disturbingly i can't write lower case letters in a consistent fashion at all, i can scroll out a couple but as soon as i lose concentration i slip back into block caps.

I suppose there are two questions; in this increasingly digital world, should i care? and given that my cursive script was so bad back in the day, could i even write legibly in cursive with practice?

Thought of the Day - Christmas Business Book Reviews

Well i succeeded in my goal of reading 5 books during my 11 day Christmas holiday, 6 in fact, if you count one i read just for fun. So i thought i would do a quick roundup of what i read, some i have already posted 'book notes' on and some will require a second reading before i can do that. So without further ado:

Plugged In by Tamara Erickson [2008]
A book on how to find the right job and succeed in work as part of Generation Y (born 1980 - 2000).
My Thoughts: An interesting book with some very good observations and useful generalisations. Though it did lack some of the more specific strategies i was hoping it would provide. It would be a great book to read if you were leaving college and looking for a job. I found it interesting that in most respects i am Generation Y but i have some Generation X tendencies.
*** 3 out of 5

Personal Development For Smart People by Steve Pavlina [2008]
A guide on personal development using a logical framework.
My Thoughts: I started reading Steve's blog 3 years ago on a recommendation from a friend. I was initially drawn in by the inspirational articles, which unlike most other personal development sites had a slant towards the rational and geeky. Unfortunately as he has developed over the years, he has moved towards a more new-age viewpoint and this book is heavily influenced by that direction. Don't get me wrong there were some interesting ideas in it, however i had read most of them in his blog prior to the book.
** 2 out of 5

The Back Of The Napkin by Dan Roam [2008]
A book on the power of using simple drawings and visual communication.
My Thoughts: An interesting book, particularly if you have never done; art, graphic communication, presentation skills or six sigma training. Unfortunately i have done all of the above, which means most of the book was a refresher course. I have always been a very visual person and this reinforced my view that if something needs explained a picture is a good way to do it. Where i did find it particularly useful was in explaining why visual communication is powerful and providing a framework for visual problem solving.
**** 4 out of 5

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell [2008]
A book looking into difference between the myths of success and actual causes of people who are exceptionally successful.
My Thoughts: As with Malcolm Gladwell's previous books (The Tipping Point and Blink) Outliers is a very compelling and easy read. Unlike its predecessors, it has some interesting social commentary highlighting ways that the current system can be improved for the betterment of society. It is also one of those books that i suspect may have a profound bearing on how i live my life going forwards.
***** 5 out of 5

Pro Blogger by Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett [2008]
A book on how to successfully make a living from blogging.
My Thoughts: An interesting read, though i didn't really learn anything that i didn't already know. It would be much more useful for non-technical individuals that have read, but never written, a blog. A lot of the advice is common sense, the remainder is available online and can be found relatively easily. Where the book does succeed is putting structure to that advice, which can be used a checklist if you plan to start a blog with aspirations of making money from it.
*** 3 out of 5


Something i hadn't noticed until i wrote this down is that all of the books i read were published in 2008. Random given that i didn't set out to do that and have many unread books that were published earlier.

Book Notes - The Back Of The Napkin

The Back Of The Napkin by Dan Roam [2008]

Summary:
A book promoting the use of pictures and diagrams as a communication medium. It outlines why visual communication is effective and how to make your visual communications more effective. It contains a framework for selecting the most appropriate diagrams for certain situations as well as a framework for problem solving.

Notes:
Page 4: Reminder, develop an 'elevator pitch' for every project or idea.
Page 15: Six Problem Clumps:
1) Who/What
2) How Much/Many
3) When
4) Where
5) How
6) Why
Page 37: Process Of Visual Thinking:
1) Look - Collecting and screening
2) See - Selecting and clumping
3) Imagine - Seeing what isn't there
4) Show - Making it all clear
Page 57: Rules For Better Looking:
1) Collect everything you can
2) Lay it all out where you can look at it (literally lay it out)
3) Establish fundamental coordinates (use; Who/What, How Much/Many, When, Where, Why, How, as axes)
4) Practice visual triage
Page 72: Common Precognitive Visual Attributes:
1) Proximity - close things are related
2) Colour - hints at groupings
3) Size
4) Orientation - perpendicular angles are best
5) Direction - perceived movement (arrows etc)
6) Shape
7) Shading
Page 84: How = Who + How Much/Many + Where + When
Page 94: You can use the 6w's in order to Show as well as See.
Page 107: SQVID Visualisation breakdown:
1) Simple Vs Elaborate
2) Quality Vs Quantity
3) Vision Vs Execution
4) Individual Attributes Vs Comparison
5) Delta (change) Vs Status Quo
Page 108: You can either progressively go through all of the SQVID steps (idea focusing) or you can work out what balance of each extreme is the most important for the audience (audience focusing).
Page 131: The Three Steps of Showing:
1) Select the right framework
2) Use the framework to create the picture
3) Explain the picture to someone else
Page 134: The links between seeing and showing:
1) Who/What - Picture/Portrait
2) How Much/Many - Chart
3) Where - Map
4) When - Timeline
5) How - Flow Chart
6) Why - Multivari Plot
Page 141: Diagram linking the ways of showing with SQVID.

Quotes:
Page 13: "Any problem can be made clearer with a picture, and any picture can be created with the same set of tools and rules."
Page 133: "For each of the six ways of seeing there is one corresponding way of showing. For each one of these six ways of showing, there is a single visual framework that serves as a starting point."