Growing up, I always believed anything could be accomplished through “sheer will.” Most childhood challenges for me fortunately related mostly to school work so it was easy to see the linear relationship between time spent and output. As I grew older, I began to wonder if “sheer will” was enough, especially as I entered into more and more competitive academic environments where my peers were smarter at certain subjects than I was or at least knew better ways of doing things. 

I started to wonder if there were just simply shortcuts I didn’t know about or if I should do something with a more obvious proportional or exponential outcome from effort. Thankfully, that belief in “sheer will” persisted, and I’ve come to realize that anything worth doing in life is hard and many people just give up, which means it’s a whole lot easier to win for people who are just persistent. Often times, this has been why I succeeded when I probably shouldn’t have.

I’ve always struggled to find the right term for this characteristic since “sheer will” somewhat ignores the external pressures and challenges and focuses on your own drive. Recently, I’ve stumbled on a worthy contender — it’s “grit.” It captures well the hardships you need to go against to succeed. A recent Fast Company article does a good job defining someone with grit as possessing:

• A clear goal
• Determination despite others’ doubts
• Self-confidence about figuring it out
• Humility about knowing it doesn’t come easy
• Persistence despite fear
• Patience to handle the small obstacles that obscure the path
• A code of ethics to live by
• Flexibility in the face of roadblocks
• A capacity for human connection and collaboration
• A recognition that accepting help does not equate to weakness
• A focus and appreciation of each step in the journey
• An appreciation of other people’s grit
• A loyalty that never sacrifices connections along the way
• An inner strength to help propel you to your goal

Apparently, having grit is the top predictor of success according to a University of Pennsylvania study, which makes me feel a lot better for having relied on this characteristic so much to get through life. You can actually quantify this characteristic by taking a grit test devised by the study. Try it! If you don’t do well, I’m sure that can change over time through enough effort and persistence ;-)

Interesting take on gift giving by a behavioral economist:

Behavioral economics has one more lesson for gift givers: If your goal is to maximize a social connection, don’t give a perishable gift like flowers or chocolates. True, people enjoy them, and you don’t want to impose by giving something more permanent. But what are you trying to maximize? Is your goal to avoid imposing on them or for them to remember you?

An interesting new study suggests that the poor have more to think about in terms of trade-offs which costs them financially.

From Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: 

“Which road do I take?” (Alice)

“Where do you want to go?” (Cat)

“I don’t know,” Alice answered.

“Then, said the cat, it doesn’t matter.”

“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.” 

I’ve come to realize that the hardest and most important thing in life is to figure out what you want, the rest is a lot easier. Once I have something to orient my actions towards, I can make plans, go forth and do. Until then, I feel paralyzed by indecision since I don’t know how to decide what is the best action to take. 

What you want has to be very specific to be useful. It’s not enough to say “I want to be happier” since there are so many ways to be happier that you still don’t know what to do. You have to decide what specifically would make you happy. That way when a good opportunity comes by, you will recognize it immediately as what you need to succeed and can act on it. Otherwise, plenty of good opportunities will pass you by which you don’t know how to use since you don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish. 

So if you ever find yourself unsure of how to decide where to go or what to do, it might help to ask yourself what you want first.

Steve Jobs in PBS’ “One Last Thing” (via lilzet)

(via jayparkinsonmd)

Recently, I received a nice postcard from a friend who was explicitly trying to prop up her favorite dying US agency — a beautiful, thought though likely futile effort. It made me wonder about the future of businesses that primarily operate offline.

The Internet through the spread of email has permanently disrupted the main business of the US Postal Service, and the uptick in shipping packages to homes from e-tailers hasn’t quite made up for the lost business. That fact surprises me as I consider my recent Black Friday experience seeing many retail spaces remaining empty, big box stores appearing desperate, and online stores doing better than ever. The future of retail feels like it will be largely online with offline delivery for anything that doesn’t have to be consumed or used immediately. Such a future feels a little bleak when you try to imagine all the empty street windows. 

That said, I don’t think that could really come to pass since some equilibrium will be reached. I have started to wonder what would keep retail spaces filled and bustling with business. I’ve come up with five ways this would be possible:

1. Experienced based retailing. I believe either offline retailers are going to have to be like Walmart or be like Apple in the future. They won’t be able to charge a 20-50% markup on a pure commodity shopping experience; instead they must produce an amazing retailing experience or they must simply have cheaper prices than the Internet has to offer. 
2. Pop-up retailing. Internet companies have already begun this season tocreate pop up stores in cheap, empty retail spaces. These pop up stores enable online stores to have a real world face.
3. Online Sales Tax. Federal enactment of such a tax would remove the uneven playing field that sites like Amazon enjoy right now. This would certainly help make offline prices more comparable to online prices.
4. Better Online-to-Offline Advertising. If there was a way to use the Internet to better market and direct customers to offline locations, then bricks and morters would have a chance. Right now, most online advertising focuses on online-to-online conversions (something I’m trying to change through PaperG).
5. Advertising retailing. It’s possible that retail spaces will get so cheap that they become effectively three dimensional advertising spaces. Brands can rent out the space and fill it with their goods supplemented with representatives to answer questions. 

Some or all of these will likely to come true. I hope so because I would hate to live in a world of empty windows.