Friday 13 February 2009

Tri-fecta



Love
Work and Play form the base layer of the lives we live, Your destiny is inextricably linked to the balanced combination of all three.

Lets examine each one in respect of the others...

Love - When you love something you'll automatically find yourself spending a disproportionately large amount of time doing it. Now at first this would be considered as playing. However after a short while you realise that there are imperfections in your love, this figures in all sorts of formats, people objects music sport career, you name it. With this revelation you make the concerted effort to work hard and eliminate the flaws (Perfection)

Work - you start a job or activity in which you HAVE to work. You may not find the work particularly fun to begin with but you decide to excel. Before long you begin to obsess about what you're doing, the hours get longer and longer and you find yourself carrying this object job person wherever you go(thats if you dont get bored and quit), some might even call this love. Because attention breeds affection the more time you put in the less laborious the task appears, sooner rather than later you begin to play with the object.

Play - when you were a child the first and arguably only instinct you had was to play. Play with toys objects food sticks stones, whatever you could get your hands on basically. As you play with these objects however you learn about them, their characteristics and nature. Hard, soft big small hot cold etc. This tells me that deep within us our curiosity to learn is best fulfilled in a playful format. Once again playing with something elicits spending time, that time brings back the attention to affection equation leading to love and the story continues...

Now let us examine a real life example
Michael Jordan (naturally) is considered by most to be the greatest basketball player ever, let us examine some of the things he considered valuable

"Even when I'm old, grey and can not play I will still love the game"

"I've always believed that if you put in the work the results will come, I don't do things half-heatedly b'coz I know if I do, I can expect half-hearted results!"

"Just play, have fun and enjoy the game. Let your heart educate your mind"










Wednesday 4 February 2009

D.N.A 2.0


Web 2.0 has taken the world by storm, amongst many features by far the most influential has been the provision of a universal creative platform. No longer do people HAVE to belong to a professional class in order to have their intellectual property produced on mass.

What does this have to do with D.N.A...?

Well I believe pretty much the same thing occurred to human beings when Jesus came and died on the cross, the significant moment being when the bible was translated and mass produced. No longer did people have to rely on what the pope, patriarchs and priests had to say, now they could create and believe that which the Holy Spirit enabled them to. 

What are the implications of this...?

Well... studies have been undertaken by Dr J Neilson, on the effects of web2.0 on people. He illustrated a phenomenon known as the 90-9-1 rule, I was first introduced to this rule by my mentor with reference to Daniel Pink (author: Johnny Bunko). In a nutshell this rule states that 90% of users are spectators/lurkers, 9% sporadic, while most of the input is done by only 1% of users. 

I have witnessed the exact same equation in my day to day life, firstly in the church I attend of about 250-300 members (now pay attention to the figures).
Every Sunday there comes a time during the service where the congregation is given the opportunity to testify of God's goodness in their life. In total during my 3 1/2 years I have personally witnessed about 20-30 people coming up to share, only 2-5 of which have come to the front more than 10 times. One of two conclusions can be drawn from these results
  1. God is only blessing a select few "special" members of the vast congregation
  2. The 90-9-1 rule is in effect! 
Another incident occurs within the basketball team I'm currently coaching, we have a squad of about 20+ players. Approx 6 of these individuals have consistently turned up to every game, training session and meeting we've ever had. And only 2 of them consistently practice and actively engage in the process of self-improvement outside the scheduled training times. This again tells me that the 90-9-1 rule is very much in effect.

So how does this relate to me...? 

well that question is yours to answer, i personally have simply decided to be in the 1% grouping in absolutely everything i do. The greatest challenge has not been the decision itself but the implementation of it thereof. To summarize in three words 
creativity Creativity CREATIVITY