June 2012 - Joshua Spodek

Blog / Freedom / Leadership / NorthKorea / Tips

Spending less improves your life

Preface: I started writing this blog about how cutting personal costs (of any resource, including time, money, energy, attention, etc) improves your personal life. Rereading it I realized it overlapped so much with what leaders can do in business, I'll tag it leadership too. Translating the post into business-speak I'll leave as an exercise to the reader. You can probably do it on the fly. People who know me in person know I work very little at a job -- like a day a week, sometimes more in crunch times, which happen once a year or so. When they hear I work so little, they first ask, usually indirectly, where I make enough money to live on. I view going this direction first as a…

June 30, 2012

Blog / Leadership / Tips

The bigger problems you don’t consider big deals, the more important people consider you

Does the title of this post not explain itself? People who know what they're doing stay calm under pressure. Things that bother some people don't bother them. People who don't know what they're doing freak out at little things. In money terms, if you don't have enough to live on, problems on the scale of a few dollars may bother you. If you have millions, problems of a thousands of dollars may not bother you. In terms of social and leadership skills, if you don't have enough skills to get a job done, small issues will bother you. If your skills aren't enough to live on, you'll have trouble every day. People won't want to interact with you or follow you. If you have great…

June 29, 2012

Blog / Creativity / Entrepreneurship

The U.S. has a “dysfunctional patent system”

The U.S. has "a dysfunctional patent system." Those aren't my words. They aren't the words of an ignorant person either. They are the words of U.S. Circuit Judge Richard Posner, one of the nation's most esteemed judges and faculty at University of Chicago. A patent dispute between Apple and Motorola prompted that description. Here's an article from a couple weeks ago -- Famous judge spikes Apple-Google case, calls patent systemÂ â€œdysfunctionalâ€ -- describing the case. Here's a recent article -- In bid for patent sanity, judge throws out entire Apple/Motorola case -- reporting that he threw out the case with prejudice. My thoughts I could write volumes on the problems with patents and copyright. The ideas have some merit and they probably once served widespread useful…

June 28, 2012

Awareness / Blog / Tips

Sharing what you love fills your life with sharing, love, and stuff you love

Sometimes it seems like everyone I talk to hears about burpees. I enjoy them. Doing them fills my life with the emotions they support -- friendship, freedom, and motivation. I talk to people about leadership, nature, science, curiosity, and so on. I tell people how I figure things out after I analyze things. All these things make me feel good. Sharing these things -- by sharing I mean communicating and behaving consistently with -- improves my life. For this post, you could substitute anything you want for the term love. Sharing what you value, find meaningful, makes you happy, brings you joy, rewards you, etc will give the same results for those things. Four results of sharing what you love First, when people know what…

June 27, 2012

Blog / Leadership / Tips

A tip for high-status behavior

A friend taught me a great lesson in how people with higher status behave compared to people with lower status. Here it is as a piece of advice What you can say in many words, say in few. What you can say in few words, say with a gesture. What you can say with a gesture, say with a subtle gesture. These words give great advice while describing the effectiveness of body language over words and subtlety over rambling. Next time you find yourself talking a lot, realize you're undermining yourself. Next time you're with someone whose status is much higher, notice their behavior. Notice yours when you have the higher status. Notice how people respond to you when you follow the advice. I bet…

June 26, 2012

Blog / Fitness / Freedom

Burpee overview

[This post is part of a series on my daily exercise and starting and keeping challenging habits. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] Yesterday I started to consolidate posts on burpees but when I realized it was the day after the six month anniversary of starting doing them daily, I wrote a six-month review, which ended up as a long post on friendship, freedom, and motivation. It reinforces that sharing what you love fills your life with sharing, love, and the stuff you love. As people who have read all my posts on the Model and Method know, a thing's value, meaning, and purpose…

June 25, 2012

Explaining China’s support for North Korea

I've had trouble explaining China's fortitude in supporting North Korea. A recent article by the former U.S. Ambassador to China, J. Stapleton Roy, explained it for me. His article also stressed that people and nations are behaving rationally in the region, however self-contradictory and irrational they may seem to those who don't understand their perspectives and motivations. I figured China supported North Korea in the Korean War mainly to keep a buffer between it and the United States military in South Korea. That perspective was on the right track, but just scratched the surface. Three devastating wars and invasions began from the Korean peninsula in modern times. As Mr. Roy states, The Korean Peninsula has posed a massive security problem for China for well over…

June 25, 2012

Blog / Fitness / Tips

Burpee six-month review

[This post is part of a series on my daily exercise and starting and keeping challenging habits. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] I refer to burpees so much I'm making a page to consolidate my burpee references (EDIT: now tomorrow's post). As I'm writing this, I only have three posts specifically on burpees (four when I post this, more evidence on how sharing what you love fills your life with sharing, love, and stuff you love), but I link to it a lot. Also, enough people I meet in person hear about burpees that it makes sense to link to this page from…

June 24, 2012

Impressions of China

Shanghai's Hongqiao Railway Station is big, clean, and welcoming

Blog

Impressions of China

I've been meaning to record some thoughts on China, having been working here cumulatively maybe a couple months, mainly based on observations around Shanghai. I'm not trying to imply particular insight, just what struck me. People tell me I look at things differently than most, and in insightful ways. They wiped out most physical and architectural remnants of their history, apparently with the goal of modernizing. Their cities are all modern -- mostly more modern than America's -- but you see almost no buildings older than twenty years old. I was surprised in Shanghai when a friend described hundred-year-old buildings as old. Her country goes back thousands of years and mine a couple hundred, yet my city's old buildings are older. France is the most…

June 23, 2012

The terracotta army

Blog

The terracotta army

Today I visited the amazing terracotta army near Xian, China, which they bill as the eighth wonder of the world. I also had some geeky fun you might enjoy reading about after the pictures. I haven't read the Wikipedia page on it yet, but from what I understood from I understood from our guide, who didn't speak English so my co-worker had to translate, an emperor about 2,200 years ago had an army of about 2,000 life-size terracotta warriors, horses, chariots, and more made, which he buried with himself when he died. As best I could tell, in the intervening 2,200 years, nobody knew it was there. A farmer found some sign of it while digging a well in 1974. Archeologists dug up the rest.…

June 22, 2012

Xian!

Art / Blog / Creativity

Xian!

Business brought me to the lovely city of Xian, not that far from Shanghai. My hosts brought me to a central area they covered with LEDs, I guess for tourists. I couldn't help take pictures to post here. It was borderline garish, but just this side of too much. I don't know if the pictures capture it. It almost felt like daytime at night. The city lit up a whole area with statues, pillars (wrapped in LEDs I couldn't help by overexpose in the pictures), municipal and art buildings, etc. Lots of people were enjoying themselves. Anyway, if you are near Xian, visit. Tomorrow I'll post on the famous terra-cotta army, also not far away. A couple friends who visited here told me to visit…

June 21, 2012

Blog / Leadership

Learning social skills helps your life more than almost anything

Two nights ago I walked with a friend past an exclusive resort she told me had a stunning rooftop infinity pool overlooking the city (pictures here). Entrance required getting a minimum $400 room. Instead I talked to a few people, got invited up, and we enjoyed the pool and view as invited guests. (I still had to swim in my boxer shorts because how was I supposed to know I was going to end up there, but that only added to the fun.) Recently I got invited last-minute to a friend-of-a-friend's birthday party at a private club. There was no time to put my name on the list. Besides I'm a single guy, something clubs generally don't like. Then I talked to the door guy,…

June 20, 2012

Durians!

Durians!

I just visited a street lined with fruit stands serving durians. They sell other fruits -- including mangoes, mangosteens, jack fruit, dragon fruits, and others -- but only serve the durians at the tables. If you haven't heard of or eaten durians, here are some pictures. You can see they are unusual -- sharp on spiny on the outside, looking like guts on the inside -- but the smell makes them unique. Here is a description from Wikipedia The edible flesh emits a distinctive odour, strong and penetrating even when the husk is intact. Some people regard the durian as fragrant; others find the aroma overpowering and offensive. The smell evokes reactions from deep appreciation to intense disgust, and has been described variously as almonds,…

June 19, 2012

Blog

Proof you can change even very important beliefs in an instant

Clients and nearly everyone I talk to about it consider changing beliefs one of the hardest things to do. Changing beliefs voluntarily is fundamental to the Method, so I help people develop the ability a lot. Experience has made me pretty good at it, at least compared to my ability in the past. Based on how much I used to argue, I don't think I started with any particular advantage in this area, so I think whatever I could do anyone else can too. The value of being able to change beliefs I forget if I mentioned it here, but a psychologist who studied intelligence once told me she considered flexibility in beliefs and models one of the most important components of intelligence and many…

June 18, 2012

On creating emotions

I was talking to a friend who felt mildly depressed about learning to manage your mood. She had read my friend's story I posted recently about changing his emotions. (As an aside, I have to rank his experiment among the most effective practices you can do to learn to manage your emotions.) I talked to her about how most of my clients can change their environments and behavior easily. To change your environment you can hang out with different friends, change your job, get rid of your tv, etc. To change your behavior you use willpower -- even if they don't think they can change long-term, they at least realize they can go to the gym once. We spend most of our time working on…

June 17, 2012

Blog

Persistence pays off, so does treating people like people

Sometimes plans get crazy and they can be hard to get to work. I find persistence pays off, as does treating people like human beings and going out of your way to recognize their efforts. Anyway, I'm proud for pulling off a last-minute travel challenge. The me of a few years ago probably wouldn't have been able to pull it off. It began with finding out I had two days unexpectedly free. I checked online for cheap flights to travel to meet a friend I haven't seen in a while. Found them, but the flight left in a few hours. Tried to buy them. Site kept giving an error and wouldn't sell the tickets. Called the local office. Stuck on hold for ten minutes or…

June 16, 2012

“Extremes” usually aren’t

Awareness / Blog

“Extremes” usually aren’t

I've written before on the persuasive but specious rhetorical trick that goes something like John is very conservative about these things. Mary is very liberal. Me, I'm practical and... Do you sense that you're probably going to agree with what the speaker next says? Extremists like John and Mary are difficult to deal with. People reject extreme views out of hand. You don't want to be like that, do you? Being practical makes more sense, doesn't it? The speciousness is subtle. I'll point the flaw out in a second. When you get it, you realize what the other person is doing and how to protect yourself from their influence when you don't want it. You'll start to see people doing it all the time. The…

June 15, 2012

Blog / Freedom / Tips

Not envying others, without complacency

Do you ever wish you made more money or had more power, fame, free time, or something else others have and you don't? Maybe you look at Brad Pitt or Oprah Winfrey and think, I wish I had what they do. Then you get stuck realizing you don't and feeling sorry. I've found the problem isn't their having something and you not having it. The problem is you wishing you had it and not realizing their situation fully. More precisely: your thoughts are making you feel bad, not the external world. Getting tangled in thoughts of comparing yourself to them by standards that don't work for you bring you down. What to do instead? Here's a thought process I found myself in yesterday that I…

June 14, 2012

Blog

The values of different fields

For no particular reason I decided to try to think if each field had values and if each set of values was unique for each profession. I don't know the value of this exercise, but it was fun. I noticed that some values worked with nearly every field, like service, integrity, and some obvious ones that apply any time someone works for another. By the way, I'm listing the fields' values at their best, by their standards, so I can include fields like drug dealer and hit man, with the caveat that I'm describing how they see themselves, not how others see them. Each field can embody values at their worst, by somebody's standards somewhere. Fields at their worst, from another's perspective, seem to me…

June 13, 2012

Awareness / Blog / Freedom / Leadership

Living by your values

A client asked about something in his personal life. He does things one way that most parts of society do differently. To be clear, his way harmed no one and was in no way illegal, but he was concerned that people who learned about it might freak out. Sorry I have to keep the details to a minimum, but we all recognize his situation is universal. We all have things we do a certain way that society/family/school/church/government/etc does differently. A great thing about the internet is that we can easily learn that millions of others also do it that way, even if we can't meet them in person. You can't anticipate or change other people's expectations before you meet them. Like everyone, you also have…

June 12, 2012

Art / Blog / Leadership

Leadership lessons from method acting

Leadership and acting have a lot in common. Both crafts require practitioners to be aware of and to manage their emotions and those of people around them. They evoke different emotions -- leaders generally don't try to get people to cry and actors generally don't get people to work weekends -- but their crafts overlap nonetheless. I've linked to Inside the Actors Studio before and I'll keep linking to them. I'm in the middle of watching the host, James Lipton, interviewed by the great comedian (and apparently friend), David Chappelle for the 200th episode of the show. I'm only half through the episode and I'm already seeing the parallels and learning from them. They show some deeply personal clips of the emotions and techniques to…

June 11, 2012

Blog / Entrepreneurship / Leadership

Difficult lessons in leadership

You learn leadership through experience. I've had occasion to recall some of the most challenging and educational experiences of my development. I'm not proud of them. I wish they had never happened. But they formed me as much as anything. The painful experiences I co-founded Submedia in the late 90s. By the early 2000s we had nearly run out of money and were having trouble paying our debts. My PhD in physics, however useful for some things, hadn't prepared me for running a business. Neither did a childhood with little business training. Loneliness I don't know how my best attempts at leadership looked to others, but looking back, I think the best way I imagined to solve the problems was to work harder. I didn't…

June 10, 2012

Blog / Leadership

America’s infrastructure, leadership, idealism, and getting the job done

I've been talking to my American friends overseas about differences between the U.S. and the countries they're living in. Top on the list are infrastructure and what the government does for the people it represents. I think government services rank so highly because when you get to know them, people tend to be the same everywhere. They usually know differences in food before they go. After the people you notice what you have to pay for or not. And once people get used to services like trains, health care, internet, and such included with their taxes, they notice their absence when considering returning to a country where such things cost a lot. I just spent a few days with two American friends in Seoul. You…

June 9, 2012

Awareness / Blog / Freedom / Nature

What is progress?

Almost daily I face what I see as the key misunderstanding between how to lead your life to everything you want from it and how to follow what society tells you to. If you're lucky the latter will bring you what you want. You're guaranteed to produce for others, but you may never create what you want for yourself. By contrast, the former -- leading your life based on your values, meaning, and purpose, which are based on your emotional reactions (what motivates you, how you motivate others, etc) -- will always lead to a rewarding life, always great by your standards, no matter how things turn out. People call growth progress and by growth they mean the material outputs of society, which may be…

June 8, 2012

My cousin — Olympics bound?

News on my mom's side is that her sister's grand-daughter -- my first cousin once removed -- is winning competitions in her first year at Stanford. Here's an interview after she came in second at the NCAA Division I Outdoor Championships yesterday. Remember the name Brianna Bain. P.S. For those who read my Roots post, she descended from the same seventeenth century puritans.

June 7, 2012

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