Joe's World

The best way to start an essay is to throw paint on the wall. Although, not in a reserved kind of way. Better to approach the infantile kindlings of knowledge huddled within you, with the seriousness and exuberance Helen-Keller might afford, splattering paint blindly in all directions, with only the slightest memory of what color you are painting, and who's interior design is ravaged in its entropic path.

One of the reasons David was so successful as a warrior later in life in pilliaging and overtaking his enemies, was that he was a little boy when he defeated Goliath. All enemies afterward were simple to him because they were not 9 feet tall. But he overtook Goliath not by fighting him on his own terms. Sun Tzu advocated never to let your enemy define the terms of battle. David won using a sling and a stone.  Our desire for experience is an excuse to wait until we feel "ready" to ask the girl out, to transfer to a new school, to apply for a new job. But when a child tries something new it's because "if they don't know, they'll give it a go." Ask yourself: what's the real difference between experience, and the desire to feel prepared? Is my external practice what changes my internal identity, or does the internal direct the external image?

What are Millenials looking for? If you're going to hire a millenial, one that follows innovation as much as yesterday's rules, you need to know how we think. We like variety, and know we can get it. We don't like staying in one place. That's why we have laptops. We really are seeking a vibrant environment that gives room for growth long term, but short term indications of our ability to even change to new careers within that industry are perhaps more important. Because after all, our BAFTA is, "why should I work for you anymore when I can do it myself?" If you really want to know if we'll stick around, try using this innovative video game invented by a former Whitehouse staffer and ventured by Mark Cuban, which determines if potential hires are really a good fit based upon the intangibles. In other words, millennials will be playing your game, and we won't know which boxes we're checking, because it's such a good time. And even if you su...

In review for a closing music school exam, my professor introduced a new concept: cultures outside the West are more accustomed to adding rhythms together, rather than subtracting beats from a "measure." The measure represents our tendency to think of people with different views and identities as volatile, and causes a virulent reaction to our own sense of self-identity. Whereas, adding rhythms together reflects the capacity for cultures to develop many sub-sets of identities within them, such as many ethnic groups in China having completely different dialects, but still governed by one country.

Once, I asked a girl why she was crooning at a baby along with a group of spectators, even though she told me she didn't think this one was cute. "Because everyone else is doing it."

The Peter Principle holds true not because bosses are dumber, but they have realized that what they don’t know is not as important as focusing on what they need to know . If you want to improve your position, it doesn’t matter how pretty you make a worthless task, if it’s taking time from the most important ones which are truly priorities.