Thank the next happy friend that you think of. Each happy friend increases our chances of being happy by 9%. An extra $5,000 in income only increases our chances by 2% so each happy friend we have is worth about $22,500

And check your profile picture on Facebook. People who smile for their profile picture have 15% more close friends than the rest.

As my mother says, smile and the world smiles with you, frown and you’ll frown alone…

The research shows that the ‘degrees of separation’ effects weaken to nothing after three or four levels (so your friends, their friends and even the friends of your friend’s friend are likely to have an impact on you) – that’s a whole bunch of people you’ve never even met!

So: Who are your closest friends?

The other night, I was playing pool and sunk a ball that I didn’t expect to sink – in fact, it was so surprising that I asked myself, “How did I do that?!”

But it’s even more obvious when I look at a website that I like. Sometimes, I’ve been known to look at the source code to try to figure out how they did that.

And the cool thing is that when you ask that question, you get smarter.

Maybe you’ll actually figure out an answer, maybe not. I still have no idea how I sunk that ball in the corner pocket at the other end. But the experience of being exposed to uncertainty – The Power of Ambiguity – helps you get smarter.

A recent study published in Psychological Science had people look at the surreal work of author Kafka and film director David Lynch, and found that afterwards, people were better at seeing subtle patterns. Read more about this in Science Daily or the NYTimes.

This is another great reason to visit the art gallery. Another good reason to watch art house movies. And a great excuse for me to continue staring at the complex building sites around here.

Experience the surreal. Have a look around. And when you see something strange, or someone does something unexpected, be grateful – it’s an opportunity to make you smarter.

And thanks Kellie for tipping me off to this

And that’s a bad thing.

Because being fat makes your brain shrink.

In a recent study, the brains of obese people looked 16 years older than their real age; the brains of overweight people looked “just” 8 years older. And that makes a big difference!

Especially when it seems that the areas of the brain where the tissue was most lost were the parts that do decision-making and memory work.

Recently I have been spending more time than usual in the gym. Lying down at the end of a pilates class last Monday, it occurred to me that we often try to decide between training our bodies and training our minds. As if the two are mutually exclusive.

So you might remember the “sporty types” and the “smart kids” at school didn’t tend to mix too well.

Yet, can we really train the body without training the mind? After so many years of karate training, I recognize some of the thought patterns that I access habitually from time to time. The way I breathe, the way I walk, the way I behave when I am out with friends. My physical training directly and substantively impacted the way I think.

My education likewise influences the way I exercise. Continually looking to understand the root causes and how to make things work better leaves me looking for more elegant and efficient ways of undertaking exercises. Even when I’m just “supposed” to be following along, I tend to find myself looking for better ways. And, I’m pleased to say, sometimes it helps!

Not all activities will give you the same benefits. But do consider the sort of mindset that you are being exposed to when you are exercising. Is it bringing you closer to your personal genius? Likewise, when you are exposing your mind to thoughts, ideas and strategies that seem professional or intellectual, be willing to ask yourself how it’s affecting your body.

Because training your mind trains your body… and when you train your body, you train your mind.

Event: Saturday, 8 August, 2-5pm

As we explored last time, to really be great at anything takes a lot of deliberate practice. Not just playing around, but focusing on getting better – training yourself to perform at higher and higher standards.

But how can you do that if you’re trying to do everything at once?

This Saturday, we’re going to explore the Alignment of Genius. We will start with exploring why Alignment is so important, examine what sort of Alignment you’ll need to get what you’re after, and then figure out how you can better set yourself up to win.

Most of us really want to experience certain things. For you, it might be ‘happiness’ or ‘success’ or ‘love’ or ‘achievement’ – or something totally different. Then, you’ll have certain ways to experience that ultimate outcome. Maybe you’ll use your career. Maybe your relationships. Maybe your hobbies. You would have developed those roles and picked up those “vehicles” over the years, based on your personal experiences and opportunities.

And you would have daily habits and routines too. Some of which would support you; others of which might be getting in your way.
So just imagine if you could get your habits, routines and daily behaviours supporting the most important roles in your life, so that you can actually get what you really want.
Instead of having these habits that take you nowhere and missing the things that you need to be doing every day to get to where you want to be?

We’ll explore this in much greater detail this Saturday afternoon.

Now, we have only 12 places available for this special session, at 200RMB each. When you register, I’ll let you know the venue details, but we’ll be in central Shanghai.

I really hope that you can join us.

Sometimes they missed the target. Sometimes they were trying too hard. But the usual problem was that they were too tense. And when you’re too tense, the harder you try, the slower (and worse!) everything works.

You probably know somebody who tries to do everything but not getting anywhere. They are doing this project and that project but end up just running into brick walls. Not always – sometimes they might have wins, but things just aren’t working together.

Like a restaurant that tries to be the cheapest and offer five-star service: It just doesn’t work. Either the service will suffer, or the food, or the environment – and often all three! You need to focus and you need to get everything aligned.

Genius demands alignment!

Dispositionism means that each individual exhibits a range of behaviours that are selectively reinforced and thence evolve into habitual responses and patterns of thought. Those initial behaviours are "determined" by elements of social conditioning, genetic factors and an element of chance. Some individuals with little talent are able to overcome this difficiency by a combination of great external stimulation and perhaps an amount of luck. Equally, those with great genetic potential, and outstanding environmental influences may fall down through chance occurrences.

Let us examine some examples. John Stuart Mill is best known as the one who brought Utilitarianism into everyday usage. Many who have learnt of Mill’s theories and ideas have overlooked his extraordinary upbringing. Quite simply, Mill received one of the most intensive and extensive educational and mental development programs that has ever been known.

John Stuart Mill thus provides an example of how powerful external stimulii may be in the development of a great mind. Would Mill have been successful in his path had his father not taken such an interest in his education? Nobody can really say with any degree of certainty. However, we can be sure that the foundation of intellectual development that placed Mill 25 years ahead of his contemporaries positioned him uniquely, and ensured that he would at the least be an outstandingly average individual.

In all we can see a variety of factors contribute to the development of a genius. It is difficult to say that this is really the way human beings operate in an experimental sense due to the difficulties in eliminating chance. However, this certainly provides a model for interpreting and understanding the development of great minds – and the failure to do so. While we can not predict with absolute certainty do to the intrinsic random nature of the chance variable, we can certainly improve the odds of nurturing great minds.

Daniel Smith

Surely she knew that there were some people who won, and others who lost?

And she did: She just didn’t believe that the skills could be taught. At that point, I decided to probe deeper. I don’t konw why: I could have simply presented to her countless evidence showing that we can help people increase their level of thinking and subjective experience of life. Instead, I probed further. Then I realised what was driving her doubt: she was scared. The intelligent, successful professional woman, was scared! As we spoke further, it seemed that she was scared of challenging herself and her world, and scared that somebody might tell her that there could be a better way. Perhaps because that would mean that she no longer had an excuse to be angry ten times a day!

I had almost forgotten how most people think. Most people think that life is hard, that success comes only after sustained struggle and a pinch of good luck. Whereas, I know that the real world is created in our minds, then manifested in reality.

Anything that you desire, you can have. Indeed, anything that you demanded, you already have. Those things that you didn’t really need, you didn’t get; not because you didn’t have the capacity to get it, but because you didn’t pay the price that you needed to pay.

What is the price? It depends upon what you want. But when you identify what you want, you can also identify what you need to do to get it; you can create a plan for creating what you want.

No matter what it is, the most important step is to know your outcome. When you know your outcome, retain it clearly in your mind, and resolutely move towards its fulfillment, you will either achieve your objective, or decide not to pursue that outcome.

That being said, sometimes we don’t really know what we want. How many times have you thought that you wanted something, yet didn’t really want it in the end. A friend of mine ‘wanted" to have a job as a commercial lawyer, working long hours under high pressure and making a lot of money. Yet, the closer that she came, the more that she realised that to do so would rob her of what she really wanted. To get what she "wanted" would mean that she would lose her connection with her loved ones, have less time to spend with her partner, and be forced to adopt beliefs, values and behaviours contrary to the way that she saw herself.

Know thyself

Ask yourself: What do I really want? And when you get the first answer, challenge yourself to go one step further, towards the deeper issues and underlying desires that often drive our superficial wants.

The closer you come to knowing yourself, the closer you will be able to align your desires with your dreams, and the more effective you will be in pursuing whatever objectives that lay before you.

So who are you? What do you really want? Do your drams really align with your desires? Sometimes we don’t realse immediately that it’s time to change… and sometimes it can be very difficult to change. But, in time, you know that the more accurately you know your destination, the faster you will be able to get there.

Many people criticise the goal-directed life. Yet, everybody is goal directed in some way. The only difference is that not everybody knows their objectives! Certainly, you should strive to enjoy and experience all the wonders and pleasures that the beautiful world in which we live has to offer. Yet, don’t be confused – don’t be hypnotised – by the trappings of the physical world. You know what you really want: you want to be happy.

What that means is for you to discover.

Daniel Smith

Separation of Powers in Education: A pillar of the Rule of Law is the separation of powers between the legislature, the executive and the judiciary. In the same way, I believe that such a separation would benefit education. Let us have one body that defines the desired learning outcomes, another body responsible for assessing performance against those outcomes and a separate domain for those who prepare the learners for the assessments offered. This would necessitate clear and specific definitions of the desired learning outcomes that would – I believe – be facilitated through cognitive competencies.

Cognitive Competencies: What is an MBA worth? What about a law degree? Heck, what does it mean to get an “A” for maths? Much education is focused on measurements devoted to delivering a matriculation score – a measure that has enough superficial validity to permit discrimination between students. Yet they usually don’t mean very much.

Learning outcomes are so ill-defined that we resort to relying upon the tacit knowledge of our educators to transform them into something useful. Fortunately, this has worked adequately. However, with increasing competition, it is about time that we replaced this centuries-old process with a measurement of the mental operations that we want to see developed. Firstly for the sake of the students: Let them focus their energies upon correcting their mistakes rather than spending endless hours not really knowing what they need to work on. But also for our society, so that we can fast-track prodigous learners towards more suitable challenges and more effectively direct the energies of our teachers and our students.

Selective Reinforcement of Spontaneous Behaviour: My concept of ‘genius’ is that individuals exhibit a large range of behaviours, some of which are reinforced; reinforcement leads to the development of clusters of skills that tend to work together to create talents and, especially when developed early, the development of an identity that works to offer a sustainable advantage.

For example, I learnt to perform split-attention tasks and to work quickly when I was doing my homework on my lap inside my tidybox in primary school (since if I did ‘homework’ at school, I didn’t have to do it at home!) – a spontaneous behaviour – and kept doing it because the first few times I received the reward (free time) without punishment (being told not to do it – as I was later, though largely ignored having experienced the reward!). Very small shifts yield massive long-term changes…

I am considering writing further on these, though have been thinking or writing about them since at least 2003. Let me know if you’re interested… I like encouragement

Daniel Smith

Speaking to a group in a way that is impactful, interesting or informative may take skill…
It may take practice…
Doing it well might even take some talent.
… but it’s just not that difficult!!!

Communication skills aren’t just a “Status Skill“: They’re a life skill. This is one of those things upon which the very quality of your life depends… it’s not like being able to roll a sushi or sail a yacht or play the grand piano in the foyer of a fancy hotel – although all those are cool – but rather one of the most pervasive and impactful domains of skill development that exist.

The very quality of your life comes down to the quality of your communication skills… with others, but also with yourself.

When I was a kid, I was skinny and weak. Now, I could have transcended my personal insecurities and come to accept myself exactly as I was (and all that) – or I could just learn how to fight. So I got a black belt in the form of karate that wikipedia refers to as “simplified street fighting” or something (and yes, I still wear the gold Bushido Cross that I was awarded).

When I started a company, I didn’t think I knew what I was doing. And I was right. Now, I could have struggled and fought my self-doubts and denied or faced my fears until I finally proved to the world that I did know what I was doing. Or I could just get an MBA.

You can deny or ignore the cause of your insecurities and fears if you like… but sooner or later I find that I have to either get the sheet of paper that will tell me that now I “can”, or I need to do the thing that proves that I “can”.

It’s no better than transcending your fears… it’s just another option
Oh… and I love Shanghai’s snow…

Daniel Smith

“it’s procedure”!!!!!

Maybe wasting your time is “procedure” for some, but I like to not be one of those people… but it got me thinking about motivations. I realised – as I was speaking with the MBA-educated meeting convener – that she was motivated by fulfilling the criteria (going through the motions or just doing stuff), rather than actually achieving outcomes.

It really got me annoyed for a few minutes… until I got curious.

I noticed that some people sincerely believe that life is accomplished by going through the motions… it’s more than the difference between being efficient and being effective – I’m really talking about alignment. I’m talking about the importance of getting your actions and outcomes aligned with your overall direction or vision, and consistent with your values.

So where are you at? What are your values? How aligned are you? How aligned is your organisation?

There are now more than a hundred billionaires in China – and the youngest was born in the 1980s! And you can bet that they are lean, focused and disciplined to get profit… and profit is where you are better aligned to deliver value than your competitors. Fundamentally, that’s why capitalism can work so well… it rewards and challenges us to create ever-greater value.

In a world of hypercompetition, free design (as it is once you get to scale) and a boundary-less world alignment is everything… to deliver alignment you have to design it, necessitating self-awareness and the determination to understand your underlying values.

Because if you don’t, you can be sure that someone else will.

Daniel Smith