The Story of Success

I’ve been out of blogging action, mainly due to this and also to a curious reluctance to go anywhere near WordPress’s Admin. An almost self-imposed blogging block, if you could call it that. Or less romantically, just plain laziness. My offline writing fared better though I have yet to run out of pages for my (oh so lovely) moleskine.

The reading has chugged along steadily, with more non-fic titles than the other kind. The latest two I’ve completed are Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind and Malcolm Gladwell’s The Outliers. Both are synapse-worthy reads, compelling in their presentations of ideas.

Pink proposes that the skills in demand for the future will require right-brain engagement instead of the left-brain intensive skills that are prized so highly now. In other words, abilities to do with creativity, empathy, design, symphony, play, meaning, and – best of all – story, are those that will be needed in the economy of the future, at least in “advanced” countries.

The more analytical, mundance, routine diagnostic and number-crunching work will all be highly competitive areas where there are plenty of good brains (good left-brains, rather) in countries like India that can more than handle the work. In other words, to provide value to the marketplace, you need to be more than just good accountants, lawyers, and doctors. Pink is not saying that left-brain skills are not needed, but that right-brain abilities need to be strengthened and brought into the “major league” when they’ve been unfairly benched all these years.

He includes some tips and follow-ups for you to strengthen your own right-brain abilities and become a more “holistic” thinker, and these include storytelling resources (intriguing!), mind-mapping pointers, and – even – resources for you to develop a sense of humour. (If sense of humour is necessary for success in the 21st century, then I am in a lot of trouble).

You can’t disagree with Pink about the competition that’s already abundant in routinised analytical work such as accounting, drafting of standard law contracts, programming and even reading of x-ray charts, tasks that are outsourced to varying degree to highly qualified graduates in countries such as India and the Philippines. What is sobering is that Pink labels the “Knowledge Age” as one that is on the way out for developed economies, with the Conceptual Age already upon us (this is sobering because this country is still grappling on the path to becoming a “knowledge society” and we are definitely unable to compete with India, China and Philippines in terms of providing the numbers of “left-brain” workers at the right amount of salary). In this Conceptual Age, it’s right-brain dominated abilities that will be needed. He goes so far as to say it won’t be MBAs that will be in demand but MFAs (Masters in Fine Arts).

While Pink includes the storytelling chapter,it’s Malcolm Gladwell who truly exemplifies the power of story in his book about people who have achieved extraordinary success in their lifetimes, the “outliers”. I have never been as smitten by a non-fiction book as I have by The Outliers. From the very first chapter when Gladwell dissects and tears apart the abnormally healthy statistics of a town called Roseto in Maine, he had me hooked on his stories and theories about success. And his central theory is that successful individuals did not make it purely on their own talent and hard work but that success is as much a combination of opportunity, background (yes, background – in a lot of cases, it matters whether or not you were born into a middle class or poor family), cultural heritage and even the year of your birth (not numerology here but common sense – if you are born in a certain era, you can take advantage of particular events and discoveries, such as the railroad boom and the advent of the computer).

He provides examples in the form of Mozart, Bill Gates, the Beatles, the contrasting lifepaths of geniuses like Chris Langan (an IQ reading that was ‘off the charts’) and Robert Oppenheimer (the atomic bomb creator), Jewish lawyers, Korean Air pilots and even his Jamaican mother. The stories are convincingly told and halfway through the book, he had me ensnared with his theory that a lot of external factors come into play in the making of a “success”. As Gladwell pointed out, the mighty oak tree cannot become a mighty oak tree if its trunk had been chopped, if sunlight had been blocked, if water was unavailable, and a multitude of other factors. How very true.

The theory I particularly liked (because it’s concrete and countable) is the 10,000 hour theory; that you can only be a master at some job or work if you have put in 10,000 hours or thereabouts of practise. Writers,  musicians (the Beatles practising at Hamburg), computer wizards (Bill Gates got early, privileged access to computers way before other kids did) and even lawyers who have become successful only became so after they had put in the time (and had the opportunity) to practise their craft. It is also this 10,000 hours that differentiate the merely good from the excellent. In a study he did of talented musicans at a top music school, he found that those who excelled invariably had been those who increased their hours of practice year by year. There were none among the top musicians who excelled without putting in the practice.

Gladwell goes on at length also about cultural heritage (cultural baggage in some cases) and I could not help wondering if some of what he posits could be applied in Malaysia to ramp up performance and results among certain segments of students (males in particular) in our public universities. Certainly, Gladwell highlights cultural heritage that help (the work ethics of farmers in China) and those that hinder (Koreans’ obsessiveness with societal hierarchy and all the rules that some with it), and also presents studies where obstructive cultural baggage was successfully removed (Korean Air pilots).

The Outliers is enjoyable and fascinating though I am not convinced that the theories provided are rigorous enough to withstand proper empirical scrutiny. Still, it’s a book that makes your mind travel through paths it’s never travelled before, and that’s (almsot) always a good thing.

By chance, Gladwell, dubbed “the rock star of non-riction” (he reportedly received a $4m advance for The Outliers and is also on a lecture tour in Britain), was recently interviewed by The Independent UK. I like to highlight his take on meritocracy in the US:

The touring Gladwell will take questions at the end of each lecture, so you might prod him on why British people should be surprised by this book’s premise; ours being a society where there may still be some correlation between success and the class you are born into. Really interesting, though, is the hole Gladwell punches through the hoary stereotype we sometimes hold about America – that by contrast, it is a classless meritocracy.

“Both countries stack the deck in favour of certain people over others,” he begins. “They choose to stack it in different ways. Americans do perhaps use more subtle mechanisms for doing so. But there is certainly an Ivy League caste system here that rewards and promotes kids by virtue of having gone to a small set of colleges and entry into those colleges. While it appears meritocratic, in large part it is not. You get there because your dad went there or you are a jock of some kind.”

That, and his book, will make you view “succcess” as not quite the simple equation you once thought it was.

Filed under: Books, Reads , authors, bedtime reading, Books, Daniel Pink, Malcolm Gladwell, reading

If I Were A Book…

(Photo by delviking, Flickr.com, lifted from Mirage Bookmarks’ The Most Interesting Bookstores in the World)

…this is where I would want to be housed.

Even as a (very human) reader, the photo above makes me want to hop on a plane to Portugal. It’s of the Lello Bookstore in Portugal, regarded as one of the most beautiful bookstores in the world. The bookstore opened in 1906 for one of Portugal’s most influential publishing houses. The Livraria Lello has been selling books since the late 19th century. The building was designed by Francisco Xavier Esteves (the architect who introduced the use of reinforced concrete for civil buildings in Portugal), and with a design described as “neo gothic”.

What I am in love with is the curvaceous, sinewy staircase, and the view of books from the second floor….

(Photo by stukinha Flickr.com; lifted from Mirage Bookmarks’ The Most Interesting Bookstores in the World)

There is a reverential air to books, when housed in such a splendid building. In this day and age, where so many of what should be considered sacred are are maliciously brutalised, wilfully ignored or rudely trespassed, scenes like the Livrario Lello tell of order and beauty. That could be the appeal of libraries and bookstores: they are places where choice is abundant, but where order is enforced, rules and regulations comprehensible and obeyed, where peace is the norm not the exception, and everyone is highly respectful of other people’s rights and space. Idyllic, in other words.

If I do get to travel to Europe again, it would definitely include a tour of bookstores and libraries.

Filed under: At the Stores, Books, Personal Note , Books, bookstore

He Makes Me Want to Write

It is February the Fourteenth, at that hour of the morning when all the children have been taken to school and all the husbands have driven themselves to work or been dropped, steambreathing and greatcoated at the rail station at the edge of the town for the Great Commute, when I pin my heart on Missy’s front door. The heart is a deep dark red that is almost a brown, the colour of liver. Then I knock on the door, sharply, rat-a-tat-tat!, and I grasp my wand, and I grabbed my wand, my stick, my oh-so-thrustable and beribboned lance, and I vanish like cooling steam into the chilly air.. (Harlequin Valentine, Neil Gaiman in Fragile Things)

Here I am, having gone through Neil Gaiman’s Smoke and Mirrors for the second time and re-reading some stories from his Fragile Things. There’s no other author who inspires me to write quite like he does. There’s one particular story in Fragile Things that never fails to make writing seem like such a fun enterprise.  

That story’s “Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Secret House of the Night of Dread Desire”. The story’s as quirky as the title, and Gothic with a capital ‘G’. A clever tale where the worlds of fantasy and reality (ours, that is) are inverted; the protagonist is a wannabe writer (even in Gothland, they exist, apparently) who lives in a world of ghouls and shrieking women, but who yearns to write fantasy with fantasy being our boring world of toasters, work, strained relationships and hurried breakfasts. It’s humorous, whimsical and – for me, curiously inspiring. There’s also a lesson-nugget embedded, delivered by that fixture of gothic tales – the drawn, humourless, seemingly bloodless but always faithful butler.  

In the introduction, Gaiman (one of the few authors who seems to have a rollicking time conjuring up stories for the rest of us) remembers how the story – which he wrote twenty years ago – was rejected by publishers. It was only two decades later that it was rewritten and published, first in a gothic anthology, and subsequently included in “Best of” Anthology Collections. It was the Best Short Story in the 2005 Locus Award.  

Fiction is subjective….and writing it is never as much fun as it seems. Anyway, here’s a state of bliss towards which all writers strive, even without ghouls and monsters and a mad, shrieking Aunt Agatha in the attic.  

The quill went scritch scritch across the paper, and the young man was engrossed in what he was doing. His face was strangely content, and a smile flickered between his eyes and his lips.

He was rapt.
(Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Secret House of the Night of Dread Desire, Neil Gaiman in Fragile Things)

Filed under: Books, Personal Note, Writing , authors, Books, fantasy, neil gaiman, reading, Writing

Just An Update

President Obama

So, you know, America has a new President who was ushered into the White House with celebration, anticipation and fervent hope. Around 1.8m people attended his inauguration, a record, I understand, and tens of millions more watched around the globe. I missed most of it, with regret, but am more keen to know what he is going to do about Palestine and Iraq. His ordering the closure of Guantanamo as well as his call to halt brutal interrogation techniques (but not all of them – just the “most severe” ones) is welcome but he has also green lighted missile strikes on tribal areas in Pakistan. Will Islam still be equated with terrorism under President Barack Obama, who spent part of his childhood in a village in predominantly Muslim Indonesia?

This list of his first 100 hours gives me some hope still that the new President will inject compassion, objectivity and humanity into the US’s foreign policy, although his silence over the deaths of Palestinians (many more over a thousand) has been deeply disappointing.

The Year of the Ox

Over on our shores, it’s holiday season again as we welcome the Chinese New Year. It’s the Year of the Ox this time around, the animal being quite a fitting icon for the stoicism and perseverance necessary to weather the tough economic climate. I’m realising that more of my Chinese friends have less reverence for this time of year, with a few even working through the holidays instead of returning for the traditional family feast. Wherever you choose to greet the New Year, Gong Xi Fa Cai, to all who celebrate. Here’s a very short tale where an ox “saved” the Austrian town of Salzburg from invaders, not by heroics but simply by being present:

To say that the humble “ox” played a pivotal role in European history might to some appear rather strange, but to the people of Salzberg, this beast is a symbol of courage in the face of adversity.

In the 1500s, an enemy army took over the city of Salzburg, Austria depriving the inhabitants of food and drink. Their cupboards bare with nary a bit of food left, the people were practically ready to surrender until they found a lone ox roaming the streets. They paraded the beast in front of the invaders to prove that they were not hungry. Then, during the night, they painted it black to show that they had more than enough livestock for the people to survive. Completely befuddled, the army retreated, leaving the people of Salzberg in peace.
(from Squidoo)

 

And click here for another story, this time from the Arabian Nights, of The Ox and The Donkey.

My Reading

At the individual level, I’ve done quite a bit of reading over the past month, and am glad for it though I wish the writing will catch up. I’ve completed Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book (a creative delight!), Stephen King’s Just After Sunset (too mild), Clare Wigfall’s The Loudest Sound and Nothing (beautifully written), David Sedaris’s  When You Are Engulfed in Flames (hilarious), Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist (second reading – it resonates more this time around), Jonathan Kellerman’s Gone (you know, I believe my reading tastes have changed; the story wasn’t as engrossing as I had expected it to be) and William Zinsser’s On Writing Well (I recommend this highly).

Right now, in my book “basket” are: Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father (so far, he is proving to be as eloquent in writing as he is in speech), Francine Prose’s Reading Like a Writer (I could not resist this beautifully matt paperback and what it promises for the reader and writer), Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger (for its anticipated irreverence and humour), Robert Schlessinger’s White House Ghosts (am honestly stuck on “W”, however hard I try to move on), and John Pilger’s Freedom Next Time (it gets too depressing in one continuous dose but it provides the necessary reminder that we world citizens need of the injustices wrought by governments). I have also stuffed an old book (I realise that I have a whole shelf of writing books, actually, populated since my teens), The Writer’s Digest Handbook of Short Story Writing, which – ahem – is supposed to get me to write better short stories. But I’ve to sit down and complete my tales first. Particularly before the 31st March closing date for the MPH-Alliance Bank Short Story Writing Contest, which I, uh, intend to, sort of, I think, perhaps, enter.

And ps, one of my goals this year is to read the late Roberto Bolano’s mammoth “2666“ though goodness knows if I’ll get to finish it before 2010 rolls around. Here’s a link to the The New Yorker’s 2666 Reading Challenge.

Filed under: Books, Personal Note, Reads, World, Writing , barack, Books, library, reading, US, Writing, year of the Ox

Good Yarns at Great Prices

I grew up on popular fiction; the words of Stephen King, Agatha Christie, Tom Clancy, Patricia Cornwell and Jeffrey Deaver paved my reading journey for years before I stumbled into the avenues of more “literary” works where words are not just conveyor belts for stories but are artistic details in their own right. I still, though, love a Very Good Yarn, and more times than not, popular fiction serves the shot more immediately than its literary sister.

And so it is that on a recent excursion to MPH in Bangsar Village 2 over the weekend, the racks of some older but good quality fiction titles caught my eye and tugged me back to my reading roots. At RM10 for three, they proved irresistible, and will tide me over until the wallet allows for the latest Jeffrey Deaver and Patricia Cornwell.

Now, I am once again on Alex Delaware’s couch (and car and lonely apartment) as he solves an LA murder of a beautiful young actress wannabe (did I mention LA?) by getting into the minds and lives of some twisted souls (“Gone“, Jonathan Kellerman, 2006). I shall also be revisiting James Patterson and getting introduced to someone other than the brilliant and famous Alex Cross (“Step on a Crack“, James Patterson, 2007), and will find out for the first time if Jack Higgins can equal Tom Clancy or John LeCarre in international intrigue and conspiracies (“The Killing Ground“, Jack Higgins, 2007). At RM10 for all three works from these famous authors, I walked away with a fantastic deal.

All I have to do now is to find a way to get by on more Story and less Sleep.

Filed under: Books, Personal Note, Reads , Books, jack higgins, james patterson, jonathan kellerman, popular fiction, reading, Reads

Reading as Refuge

I did not plan to write this but Kenny’s piece and this article have converged with my own thoughts, and now they overflow.

What gets me there each day passing each day doesn’t change though, no. Words. They kept me sane and they’ll save you too.

Words. Just words.

Kenny Mah, A Deconstruction of Daisies

Over the past few months, I’ve looked forward more and more to quiet times with good coffee and a good book. There is relief from the cruelty and malignancy of the world found in the pages of the books, in the words crafted by other people, and the worlds conjured by them. Through the rows and rows of black type, meaning seeps back into life, bringing with it reminders of beauty and worth and goodness.

It is no surprise that I should turn to reading for refuge. As an only child, books were my constant companions. I did not mind being by myself (contrary to the belief of those around me that only children must crave the company of other kids) as long as the space I was in included books. Growing up, and finding unexpected - and fragile – pleasure in friendships, books became sources of inspiration, ambition and adventure. Growing older, books frequently restore my faith in humanity.

Billy Thompson, in his essay “Soulbroken“, claims books to represent still unopened doors and windows that real life may have shut forever:

Growing up is eliminating possibilities. Who I am is as much what I am not and what I will not be. That’s not meant to be a dour take on things; growing up, I mean really growing up, acting the part and filling the role, is an accomplishment, its own reward. But with it comes mortgage payments and home repairs and a car note with car repairs and insurance and gas and not-yet-born-but-planned-for children and their braces, tuition, etc., and so on. I was going to live in a one-stoplight town and then in New York City and on an island where I would lead snorkeling trips. I was going to live in a western city and a foreign one; and I’ve always wondered what it’d be like to live in Tornado Alley. I was going to join a band and the NBA and go teach English to kids in the Far West. I was going to drink more and drink less. I was going to be an actor. I was going to do nothing but do it somewhere else where it’d be something. Etc., and so on. As it is, I am a technical writer, by which those aforementioned bills, with the help of my wife’s salary, are paid. So, a technical writer I’ll remain. Because once amongst your responsibilities, there is no going back to being tether-free. You can always start again, as it were, but you can never really start over.

That’s what creates the void books fill. In them all possibilities still exist and I can live with them and in them.

Me, I find comfort in words – some more than others. The world may be at war around me and deliberate malice may abound, but as long as I can still find pleasure in the beautifully crafted phrase and humour in elegant plays of words against one another, living can still, somehow, go on.

Filed under: Books, Personal Note , Books, reading, words, Writing

Saved by Starbucks

Note: This is another of my not-a-review-but-a-collection-of-thoughts kind of note

I don’t know how I missed this book the first time around, given how addicted I am to overpriced coffee.

Published sometime in the third quarter of 2007, the book tells the story of Michael Gates Gill, a once high-flying ad executive who lost his job after more than 25 years of slog, and who – wonder of wonders – got desperate enough to accept a job in Starbucks where his new Boss, Crystal, is not only an African American female but is also half his age. A fifty plus guy working under a young lady boss of a different ethnicity is not exactly head-twisting stuff in this day and age but it’s a remarkable turn of events for a “son of privilege” like Michael Gates Gill, son of New Yorker columnist Brendan Gill, who had everything from school to grand piano to first job handed to him on a silver platter.

The author, I suppose, must be commended for being quite honest about all of his mistakes and prejudices, though his air of naivete does make you wonder whether it’s all real. I give him the benefit of the doubt and choose to believe his change of heart and newfound happiness behind the bars of a Starbucks outlet in New York.

The excerpt below is at the beginning of the tale, when Michael revisits his childhood home and finds himself longing for those comfortable times again.

How far I had fallen from those happy times. I had come a long way from my childhood, when money was never mentioned. I was now nearly broke.

Turning away from the comforts of the past, I looked for some comfort in a latte. One of my last remaining treats. A Starbucks store now occupied the corner of Lexington and Seventy-eighth, where during my childhood there had been a pastry shop. In my depressed daze, I did not notice the sign in front reading: “Hiring Open House”—not that it was the kind of sign that I would have noticed anyway. Later, I was to learn that Starbucks has hiring events at different stores every week or so in New York. Managers from other stores in the area come in to interview prospective employees. Looking back now, I realize that the good fortune that had left my life returned the moment I chose to step into the store at the corner of Seventy-eighth Street.

What does smack of commercialism is his raves about Starbucks. However much I love coffee and appreciate Starbucks for being here in Malaysia to serve up RM8.50 lattes and RM12.50 frappucinos, I can’t imagine it to be the workplace heave that Michael has made it out to be. A lot of its employee policies sound great – healthcare benefits, study loans, a conscientious effort to locate its staff closest to their homes, an entrenched culture of mutual respect and open communications - but perhaps they got the raves from Michael because his former place of work treated him so unfairly. When you’ve been mistreated, kindness, fairness and courtesy gain higher currency in your eyes.

Starbucks photo from Barneto.net

If you give in – yes, give in – to the book and its message, it is a heartwarming tale of how a fair and positive work environment can do wonders for an employee’s morale, confidence, performance and general sense of well-being. It also fosters incredible loyalty, as the Starbucks “partners” demonstrate. In the store, Michael also finds out what it feels like to be in the minority in terms of race and age (he’s white, and he’s one of the oldest employees), and it’s clear that he thinks the world of Crystal, his new Boss. What’s touching is how much he’s willing to learn from his much younger colleagues, and how much of his own past ego he’s willing to let go. Now that is unusual.

This is not a book to read for its writing but for the tale that it tells. It’s a nice story, made meaningful because it’s true but made suspect because it raves just too much about Starbucks. Take the lessons offered – that life is full of surprises, many of them nasty, but that it’s still possible to deal with change and be happy – and soak up the myriad things you would learn about Starbucks (it provides a chart for displaying pies and cakes and has a system of calling out beverages ordered for its baristas). The story is also a sobering reminder of the yawning gulf that exists between the haves and the have-to-work-for-it groups.

It’s only in America, I suppose that a high-flying ad executive could be fired, broke, divorced, humbled, renewed, and then land a rich movie deal through the whole experience. Yes, that’s right, Tom Hanks has secured the rights to this story, so it’s likely that Michael will be the richest Starbucks barista very soon. B

Well, given the recent troubles the chain is facing, Michael’s story and Tom Hanks’s visual dramatisation, could be just what it needs to heat up its business once more.

As for the author – well, all I can say is, well done. And in the spirit of Christmas and the New Year, let’s all take whatever inspiration we can find to make our lives brighter, bigger and better. Whatever time that we have left in this world, let’s make it good.

Merry Christmas, all, and Happy New Year.

Filed under: Books, Personal Note, Reads, Work & Productivity , authors, Books, coffee, how starbucks saved my life, michael gates gill, movie rights, not-a-review, reading, starbucks, tom hanks