Economics @ Home © Volume 1 Issue 14

Patience

Those of you who frequent this site should know two very obvious things. First, my posts have been less frequent of late. Second, the layout and the look has changed tremendously.

There are several reasons for this change. As 2009 is drawing to a close, I am looking to end Volume 1 of Economics @ Home. With the new year, Volume 2 will begin with, hopefully, a vengeance.

Also, I am testing out this new look for the new year. I will also be changing my site name to EconAtHome.blogspot.com. So far, nothing is ready yet. Please don't get overexcited. The reason for the name change is so that I don't mix business with pleasure. A Walk to Remember will be reverted back to its old use, which is for personal blogging.

Economics @ Home will start anew on 1 Jan 2010. Why the need for such a change? On one hand, many things have changed in my life, and changed significantly they have. I have been working on several other projects as well, and this will be discussed further on another more auspicious day. Nonetheless, with so much going on, I have found it much harder to post regularly.

I read somewhere that the reason for the lack of performance is usually not because of the lack of motivation. Usually, it is due to the inability to remove the obstacles that are in the way. 24 hours a day can sometimes be too little. But now, I have readjusted my path and hopefully I will be able to sidestep whatever obstacles that I was facing before.

Going forward, there may be a few changes to Economics @ Home other than the outlook and the volume number. What started out to be an ambitious weekly newsletter has proved to be somewhat unrealistic at this point in time with my work commitments. If the earning potential of Economics @ Home has the ability to keep me fed, there would be no doubt that I will focus more energy on it instead. However, this is clearly not the case, and so, my work commitments still come first. So, for 2010, I intend to reduce the frequency of the posts to once every fortnight, still on Sunday. This comes as a very difficult decision because my honour, pride, and everything good is at stake when I lower my standards for myself. Trust me, it is still my goal to produce a weekly newsletter. I am in the midst of searching for a part-time author to fill in the gaps when I run into time hurdles. If you are interested in applying for he co-author position, please drop a comment or your contact in my C-box and I will get back to you as soon as I can.

I also intend to continue updating the Lean and Mean Machine. To keep the long story short, the Lean and Mean Machine is still very much alive. It has been somewhat dormant for the past two months because its sole client, i.e. me, temporarily ceased to use the services of L&M, so there was zero monetary activity for the company.

There has also been no change in terms of the stock portfolio of the company. You can bet that I will release a full disclosure for the year ending 31 Dec 2009 by the end of January. Hopefully I can get it done sooner, but of course, I like my margins of safety.

So with that said, I urge you readers to stay patient, and look forward to the new issues of Economics @ Home in Volume 2. Remember that the site will change from 1 Jan 2010. You will only be able to access the old issues from the new site.

More sneak previews will be provided as I finalize some of the finer details of the launch of Volume 2. Until then, I thank you for your continued support and I hope that you continue to follow Economics @ Home.

The NeXT Years: Steve Jobs before His Triumphant Return to Apple

I have posted a story about how Steve Jobs was fired from Apple and what he did after that. He subsequently returned to Apple as its CEO after a long detour.

Please check out my other blog for the complete story. I assure you that it is a story of a real fanatic.

Here is the link:

inspirational-doses.blogspot.com

Please feel free to comment.

I did not write the article, but as Picasso said,

Good artists copy, great artists steal

Greatness

Ever since I started working in my new company, I feel more and more like I am on the right track towards this path of "greatness". I am not so foolish to believe that I am great or will definitely become great some day. Nonetheless, today I discovered that in order to even be on the right path to greatness, the minimum requirement is to be a fanatic.

You have to be crazy about what you do. For example, there are people who eat football, sleep football and most definitely talk football. These people are destined to be great football commentators. However, being fanatic is only a necessary condition and is definitely very far from being sufficient. Perseverance is another irreplaceable ingredient. But that is a story for another day. I did blog about perseverance once (Perseverance). Maybe I will extend that another time.

Nonetheless, if you look at the people who have achieved greatness, well, let us begin with Galileo. He died trying to convince everyone that the earth was NOT flat. The name still resonates with the world of science today. Greatness is not limited to the field of science. Another familiar name would be Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The musical genius who cared more about music than his health. Technological geniuses, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs (of Microsoft and Apple fame), both of whom did not graduate from college, pursued their passion til no end. Steve Jobs was even fired from Apple (refer to Stay Hungry Stay Foolish), but started NeXT and Pixar even though he was already a millionaire by then. Why should he bother? Now, what about Warren Buffett? He is 79 years-old with an estimated net worth of USD39 billion (should be more if he had not donated the money to the Gates Foundation). Why is he still investing? He can retire and build a time-capsule with his money and fly himself to the next galaxy or do something exciting like that.

I can only think of one reason why these people are successful. They are simply fanatics in their very own fields. They are just so crazy about what they do for a living that no matter what adversities they faced; death, illness, age, being a college dropout, or being fired from the company you founded, if you are crazy about what you do, you will definitely be on the right path towards what the abovementioned people have achieved.

You can call this attribute other names such as passion, love, interest, but those are just milder words for what they do for a living. Imagine if you forcefully prevent them from doing those activities, they would simply go berserk.

So, with this, I urge you to be crazy about what you love doing. Be a fanatic! You'll most probably end up being great, or at least, on the right path.

Effectiveness

So today I learnt something so crucial that I must share with all of you before I forget. I only wish that I have the full article for you to read, but it comes from my workplace and I have no way of sharing it with you unless you have a subscription to the i Capital newsletter.

I must admit that I am guilty of assuming that having a brilliant mind is an achievement. Maybe for all my life, I have been striving towards that. Today, I feel proud to say that I was rocked to the core. I cannot remember the exact contents of the article but what really struck me was the question, "How do you make yourself effective?".

Now the article admits that there is no shortage of brilliant minds and able people in this world. What separates the good from the great is their effectiveness. The difference is in the "doing". All this may not come as a surprise to you. In fact, it was probably common sense.

It is probably very difficult for me to elaborate my feelings when I read the article. However, now, I feel a sense of responsibility and pride in executing my ideals instead of plainly expounding my ideals on everyone. Forgive me for being so naggy in the past. Hopefully it's not too late for me and more importantly, for you to "Just Do It"!

Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish

So my project and my life as we know it begins :) I have posted my first, and hopefully not last inspiring contribution which I sincerely hope may move even the smallest molehill. Please visit my other blog:

inspirational-doses.blogspot.com

I hope that you will enjoy the reading and video.

Eat Your Own Cooking

Since the beginning of time, actions have spoken louder than words and it is because things are easier said than done. Lately, I have been talking a lot but not actually doing. Who am I kidding? Only myself. Everyone around me seems to buy into what I preach.

Who trusts a cook that does not eat his own cooking? Most people would have known by now that I am currently self-employed. By that, I mean that all income and expenditure are borne by yours truly. As I have told some of you before, in some parts of the world, I would be classified as unemployed. Who am I to argue with that?

It will be foolish to assume that I have been biding my time killing mosquitoes but of course unwise to believe that my time is optimally occupied. While I keep myself productive for the most part of the day, there is also a certain lack of challenge in my life. This has been continuing for a while now, in fact, for too long. What is worse, it has continued for so long that I don't even remember what real challenges are like.

Just the other day, I repeated the words of wisdom that I have taken for granted for a long time. Long have I preached that it is challenges that bring out the best in people. Have I been avoiding challenges of late? That would be very unlikely. Nonetheless, the opportunity to challenge myself again has once again arrived at my doorstep. It is time to let the best be brought out in me. It is time to eat my own cooking.

Inspirational Doses

These are troubled times. Doom and gloom has become such a cliched phrase. Nonetheless, troubled times call for great heroes. If you have read carefully on the side bar on the right, you would have noticed what I wrote about heroes. They are just normal people who acted extraordinarily under ordinary circumstances.

I choose to dedicate my blog to all the troubled people in this world during these troubled times. If my capacity would enable me to share an inspirational story to motivate you, I would. Given my dire circumstances, I look to all you faithfuls to share your stories with me, and with everyone who visits my blog.

Please send your stories to inspirational.doses@gmail.com

From today onwards, I have created a new site under inspirational-doses.blogspot.com to cater for all the inspirational stories you can provide. Of course your stories may or may not be edited for public viewing and originality is encouraged. I really look forward to being inspired and motivated by you. Thank you in advance for your contributions.

For those of you who have totally missed what I wrote in the side bar, here it is in full font size :)

There comes a time when life simply refuses to grant you a breather, puts you down in the hollows and in many occasions drive you towards madness. I hope that you can indulge in my sharing and cherishing of the little things in life that provide us with that glimmer of hope to go on, to pass this day, in hope that tomorrow, we will be called upon to answer our calling. You see, "heroes" are not born extraordinary people. They are ordinary people, given an extraordinary circumstance and acted extraordinarily. This may happen maybe once in your lifetime, and for that one time, you will know that "life" as we call it, is forever worth living.