Brian Keng

  • Seth Godin Posts

    This guy just keeps pushing out insightful stuff, I don’t know how he does it (although I do have a few suspicions).  Here are three quotes from posts in the past week that really struck a chord with me:

    “The math is magical: you can pile up lots of failures and still keep rolling, but you only need one juicy success to build a career.” 
    Failure, success and neither

    “Isn’t it absurd to focus so much energy on ‘practical’ skills that prep someone for a life of following instructions but relentlessly avoid the difficult work necessary to push someone to reinvent themselves into becoming someone who makes a difference?”
    Accepting limits

    “Here’s the lesson: the ardent or insane pursuit of a particular goal is a good idea if the steps you take along the way also prep you for other outcomes, each almost as good (or better).”
    One in a million

  • Another Look at the Financial Crisis

    “What caused that? Firms ceasing to be partnerships is the beginning of it. A Wall Street firm that is investing its own money, the people inside it, it’s their money that’s at stake, are going to behave very differently from people who are a public corporation who are using shareholders’ money.”

    “No partnership would have ever allowed itself to own billions of dollars of AAA-rated CDOs backed by subprime. It just wouldn’t have happened, because they would have scrutinized it in a different way. Nobody will say that on Wall Street or say that’s true. They’ll say, “We’ve behaved just as we would as if it was our own money.” But they don’t. Nor would you expect them to. It’s amazing how powerful incentives are.”

    “Two, the business got intellectualized in the 1980s. The proximate cause of the intellectualization was the Black-Scholes option pricing model. But just generally, it got more complicated. And so as it got more complicated, it got harder and harder for normal people to understand it, and easier and easier for smart people to persuade dumb people to do things they shouldn’t do, and easier and easier for smart traders to disguise what they were doing from their bosses because it’s so complicated.”
    Michael Lewis Interview, BusinessWeek

    Bigger isn’t always better.  Smarter isn’t always better.  More complex isn’t always better.  I like math and equations except when they’re not needed.  Now if only we were all as smart as Einstein when he said: “Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.”

  • Click-through Culture

    “We’re creating a culture of clickers, stumblers and jaded spectators who decide in the space of a moment whether to watch and participate (or not). Imagine if people went to the theatre or the movies and stood up and walked out after the first six seconds. Imagine if people went to the senior prom and bailed on their date three seconds after the car pulled away from the curb.”  Driveby culture and the endless search for wow, Seth Godin

    He’s hit the nail on the head.  I think it stems from the fact that there is almost no transaction cost associated with the interweb for a user.  No cost = no effort = no meaning.  If one of our goals is to make some sort of meaningful impact on people, trying to cater to these types of people is not your best bet.  Instead, seeking out people who are willing to make that extra effort to read your entire post or to pick up the phone is a much better solution.  It takes time to find these people but it’s never too late to start.

  • Buffet on CNBC

    http://www.cnbc.com/id/35641059

    If you’ve never seen Buffett speak or read anything about him, this is definitely a good crash course.  He covers a wide range of topics in this three hour long interview.  After watching him, it’s easy to see why he’s so successful.  He’s incredibly intelligent and he has a unique ability to distill complex ideas into simple aphorisms that anyone can grasp.  The former is common enough, the latter is much more rare.  He may not really deserve the title “Oracle of Omaha” but he definitely is someone worth paying attention to.  Enjoy!

  • Improvisation

    “The first rule of improv, is that you agree with improv.”

    Have you ever been in a situation where you’re trying to make a joke, or poke fun at something but someone takes it literally and states exactly why you cannot do it for scientific or logical reasons?  This is a classic sign of someone who doesn’t get improv.

    Now, I’m definitely not an expert, or even a novice, or even qualified to write this blog post but if I know only one thing it’s this basic rule of improv: always accept everything.  It just makes things go smoother.  Someone said a joke?  Don’t refute it, build on it, that’s what makes it funny.  Think about it.  When you think back to really funny moments with your friends, what is a common reason?  A running joke.  Not one that lays still like an obese dog.  One that has legs and knows how to use them.

    This makes sense not only from a theoretical point of view but it is also confirmed by the fact that they teach this in improv class (I know this thanks to my brother).  Apparently, a common game they play is “Yes, and…”.  Where you have to keep the story going by always agreeing (“Yes”) and then adding to it (“And”).

    So next time you hear a joke and get the urge to use logic and reason, just remember the first rule of improv.

Top Posts

A Little Bit of Slope Makes Up for a Lot of Y-InterceptJuly 25, 2015
Scott Adams’ Financial AdviceJanuary 25, 2015
A Slot Machine RiddleDecember 11, 2012
You can't outrun a bearApril 9, 2016
Lucky or smart?July 28, 2013

Past Posts