A Few Lessons I Learned After Having Failed

A brave and thought provoking piece by Tyler Reed – Tech Entrepreneur & Speaker. We have to be willing to fail in order to progress but mostly those that do, don’t talk about it much.

Does Airport Security Really Make Us Safer?

Finally someone asking the question and doing the research, now lets hope some changes come? Next up for review: FICA and RICA? – Vanity Fair.

My wish for you this festive season is nothing

Apparently we are capable of processing 185 billion bits of information in an average lifetime. In a world of continual adverts, tweets, posts, TV, YouTube, timelines and plenty of other distractions I would hazard a guess that we are reaching the outer bounds of our ability to process all this ‘stuff’. This and the lack of quiet time has led some to declare the ‘death of boredom’, which may be a good thing since research shows that you really can be bored to death. If you have a smartphone, a console and TV in the lounge, a Kindle in your briefcase, PC in the office and an iPad in the bedroom, you never need to suffer a minute without stimulation.

It seems that the war within has been replaced by a war without, where patience has been sacrificed on an alter of self-serving, manifest in short-termism:

“The common thread running through all the causes of our economic tumult is a pervasive and persistent insistence on favouring the short term over the long term, impulse over patience. We overvalue the quick return on investment and unduly discount the long-term consequences of that decision-making.”

This is seen in how we treat the planet and its other inhabitants, the environment, the economy, investments and our own health.

The problem is that to solve some of the seemingly intractable problems we face, we require creative solutions and need some boredom to process our thoughts. The best ideas often bubble up when the outside world is not distracting, entertaining or scaring us.

So at this time, may you find time to check out, disconnect, reflect, spend time with loved ones, go within, be bored and refresh – next year could be challenging and we should be prepared.

“Boredom is paradise.it is the blessed absence of what the world offers as ‘interesting’, i.e., the lures of fashion, media and other people, which, you may recall, Sartre considered Hell.” Billy Collins, American poet

Interesting view on nothing

The importance of knowing nothing.

Fintalk – Index investing

Index investing: so obvious yet so few people do it – good to see financial advisors advocating it.

Are consumers still being conned?

News24 article which should read: “Do consumers allow themselves to be conned?”.

Finance for “green” projects

A SOUTH African entrepreneur has established what he claims is the country’s first “green” financing company solely devoted to funding sustainable projects.

via BusinessDay – Finance for “green” projects.

Ethical banking is not a contradiction in terms

Moneyweb article on Water Financial.

Green banking – SA’s first green bank

The message is starting to be heard: Financial Mail 27/10.

There’s Something Happening Here

Very thought provoking commentary on the protests around the globe:

When you see spontaneous social protests erupting from Tunisia to Tel Aviv to Wall Street, it’s clear that something is happening globally that needs defining. There are two unified theories out there that intrigue me. One says this is the start of “The Great Disruption.” The other says that this is all part of “The Big Shift.” You decide.

via There’s Something Happening Here – NYTimes.com.