These inspiring, sometimes frightening presentations detail how technologies from bionics to big data to machine learning will change our world for good or ill -- and sooner than you might think.
Topics range from bionics, virtual reality and facial recognition to driverless cars, big data and the philosophical implications of artificial intelligence.
Hugh Herr: New bionics let us run, climb and dance
Hugh Herr is a bionics designer at MIT who creates bionic extremities that emulate the function of natural limbs. A double leg amputee, Herr designed his own bionic legs -- the world's first bionic foot and calf system called the BiOM.
Herr's inspirational and motivational talk depicts the innovative ways that computer systems can be used in tandem with artificial limbs to create bionic limbs that move and act like flesh and bone. "We want to close the loop between the human and the bionic external limb," he says. The talk closes with a moving performance by ballroom dancer Adrianne Haslet-Davis, who lost her left leg in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings. She dances beautifully wearing a bionic leg designed by Herr and his colleagues.
Chris Milk: How virtual reality can create the ultimate empathy machine
This inspiring talk details how Chris Milk turned from an acclaimed music video director who wanted to tell emotional stories of the human condition into an experiential artist who does the same via virtual reality. He worked with the United Nations to make virtual reality films such as "Clouds Over Sidra," which gives a first-person view of the life of a Syrian refugee living in Jordan, so that U.N. workers can better understand how their actions can impact people's lives around the world.
Milk notes, "[Virtual reality] is not a video game peripheral. It connects humans to other humans in a profound way that I've never seen before in any other form of media... It's a machine, but through this machine, we become more compassionate, we become more empathetic, and we become more connected -- and ultimately, we become more human."
Topher White: What can save the rainforest? Your used cell phone
Topher White is a conservation technologist who started the Rainforest Connection, which uses recycled cell phones to monitor and protect remote areas of rainforests in real time. His extraordinary talk revolves around his 2011 trip to a Borneo gibbon reserve. He discovered that illegal logging was rampant in the area, but the sounds of animals in the rainforest were so loud that the rangers couldn't hear the chainsaws over the natural cacophony.
Resisting the urge to develop an expensive high-tech solution, White turned to everyday cell phones, encased in protective boxes and powered by solar panels. The devices are placed high in the trees and programmed to listen for chainsaws. If a phone hears a chainsaw, it uses the surprisingly good cellular connectivity in the rainforest to send the approximate location to the cell phones of rangers on the ground, who can then stop the illegal logging in the act. Through this means, White's startup has helped stop illegal logging and poaching operations in Sumatra, and the system is being expanded to rainforest reserves in Indonesia, Brazil and Africa.
Fei-Fei Li: How we teach computers to understand pictures
An associate professor of computer science at Stanford University, Fei-Fei Li is the director of Stanford's Artificial Intelligence Lab and Vision Lab, where experiments exploring how human brains see and think inform algorithms that enable computers and robots to see and think.
In her talk, Li details how she founded ImageNet, a service that has downloaded, labeled and sorted through a billion images from the Internet in order to teach computers how to analyze, recognize and label them via algorithms. It may not sound like much, but it's a vital step on the road to truly intelligent machines that can see as humans do, inherently understanding relationships, emotions, actions and intentions at a glance.
Pia Mancini: How to upgrade democracy for the Internet era
Argentine democracy activist Pia Mancini hopes to use software to inform voters, provide a platform for public debate and give citizens a voice in government decisions. She helped launch an open-source mobile platform called DemocracyOS that's designed to provide citizens with immediate input into the legislative process.
In her talk, Mancini suggests that the 18th-century democratic slogan "No taxation without representation" should be updated to "No taxation without a conversation" for the modern age. She poses the question, "If the Internet is the new printing press, then what is democracy for the Internet era?" Although it took some convincing, Mancini says, the Argentine Congress has agreed to discuss three pieces of legislation with citizens via DemocracyOS, giving those citizens a louder voice in government than they've ever had before.
Kenneth Cukier: Big data is better data
As data editor for The Economist and coauthor of Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think, Kenneth Cukier has spent years immersed in big data, machine learning and the impact both have had on society. "More data doesn't just let us see more," he says in his talk. "More data allows us to see new. It allows us to see better. It allows us to see different."
The heart of Cukier's talk focuses on machine learning algorithms, from voice recognition and self-driving cars to identifying the most common signs of breast cancer, all of which are made possible by a mind-boggling amount of data. But along with his clear enthusiasm for big data and intelligent machines, he sounds a note of caution: "In the big data age, the challenge will be safeguarding free will, moral choice, human volition, human agency." Like fire, he says, big data is a powerful tool -- one that, if we're not careful, will burn us.
Rana el Kaliouby: This app knows how you feel — from the look on your face
Technology has been blamed for lessening social and emotional connections among millennials, but what if it could sense emotion? In this talk, computer scientist Rana el Kaliouby, cofounder and chief strategy & science officer of Affectiva, outlines her work designing algorithms for an application used on mobile phones, tablets and computers that can read people's faces and recognize positive and negative emotions.
What good is that? el Kaliouby gives a few examples: Wearable glasses armed with emotion-sensing software could help autistic children or the visually impaired recognize particular emotions in others. A learning app could sense that the learner is confused or bored, and slow down or speed up accordingly. A car could sense a driver's fatigue and send an alert. "By humanizing technology," el Kaliouby concludes, "we have this golden opportunity to reimagine how we connect with machines, and therefore how we, as human beings, connect with one another."
Chris Urmson: How a driverless car sees the road
In this talk, roboticist Chris Urmson cites some of the dangers drivers face -- inclement weather; distractions that include answering phone calls, texting and setting the GPS; flawed, careless drivers -- as well as the staggering amount of time wasted each day by drivers stuck in traffic. The solution? Not surprisingly, Urmson, who has headed up Google's self-driving car project since 2009, says autonomous cars are the answer.
Urmson shows how driverless cars see and understand their environment -- the layout of the roads and intersections, other vehicles, pedestrians, bicyclists, traffic signs and signals, construction obstacles, special presences such as police and school buses, and so on -- and decide what action to take based on a vast set of behavioral models. It's a fascinating car's-eye look at the world.
Jeremy Howard: The wonderful and terrifying implications of computers that can learn
Jeremy Howard, a data scientist, CEO of advanced machine learning firm Enlitic and data science professor at Singularity University, imagines how advanced machine learning can improve our lives. His talk explores deep learning, an approach to enabling computers to teach themselves new information via set algorithms. A bit lengthy but fascinating, Howard's talk outlines different ways computers can teach themselves by "seeing," "hearing" and "reading."
Nick Bostrom: What happens when our computers get smarter than we are?
With a background in physics, computational neuroscience, mathematical logic and philosophy, Nick Bostrom is a philosophy professor at Oxford University and author of the book Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies. He is also the founding director of the Future of Humanity Institute, a multidisciplinary research center that drives mathematicians, philosophers and scientists to investigate the human condition and its future.
This metaphyshical discussion, reminiscent of a college philosophy course, explores how older A.I., programmed by code, has evolved into active machine learning. "Rather than handcrafting knowledge representations and features," Bostrom says, "we create algorithms that learn from raw perceptual data." In other words, machines can learn in the same ways that children do.
Bostrom theorizes that A.I. will be the last invention that humanity will need to make, and eventually machines will be better at inventing than humans -- which may leave us at their mercy as they decide what to invent next. A solution to control A.I., he suggests, is to make sure it shares human values rather than serving only itself
Today I’m extremely proud and excited to announce my next generation executive leadership team who will lead Cisco into the digital age.
With the increasing pace and complexity of today’s market, it’s critical that our leadership team understands our customers, delivers results, brings diverse perspectives and experiences, and builds world-class, highly motivated teams. This is what will differentiate us as a much faster, innovative organization that delivers the best results for our customers.
We have been developing and attracting our next generation of leaders for many years, and I’m confident that this team is ready to lead Cisco’s next chapter. They know how Cisco works, what makes Cisco great, and how we can accelerate our current momentum. Some have been with the company for as long as I have or longer, a third have joined Cisco in the last 3 years, and others are new to Cisco.
They have the capabilities, accomplishments, and the values required to lead us into the future. Their combined vision, passion and authenticity, along with a focus on strategy, results, and innovation truly differentiate this team. These unique characteristics reflect the remarkable culture of Cisco that has motivated and energized me for the past 17 years.
Let me explain why each person is the ideal leader to move us forward.
Pankaj Patel, Executive Vice President, Development
Everything we do starts with our innovation. Pankaj leads Cisco’s 25,000 development engineers and the company’s $36 billion technology portfolio.
He joined Cisco through the acquisition of Stratacom and has since overseen Cisco’s innovation in the cloud, mobility, data center, security, collaboration, software and the Internet of Everything markets.
Over the last 2 years, Pankaj has led the transformation of Cisco’s engineering organization to drive focus and accelerate innovation. He is pioneering new ways of driving innovation at Cisco, including a new model of internal start-ups which he launched last year.
Kelly Kramer, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Kelly joined Cisco three years ago after 20 years at GE working across numerous divisions and countries around the world.
She quickly established herself as a business leader capable of partnering across and influencing the entire organization, particularly with her no-nonsense direct style.
She has driven a disciplined focus on our financial model and delivered on our commitments to our shareholders.
Her promotion to CFO 3 quarters ago was seamless, and she is extremely well respected internally and externally.
Rebecca Jacoby, Senior Vice President, Operations
Previously Chief Information Technology Officer (CIO), Rebecca has a strong track record of operational excellence, innovative problem solving, and partnering cross-functionally. Her leadership and talent development skills have resulted in some of the best employee satisfaction scores in the company.
She has elevated the role of IT at Cisco and positioned us as one of the best in the industry. She has exemplified Fast IT, enabling $5.4B of incremental revenue in the last 4+ years with just $400M of incremental expense. She did all of this while driving down costs by over 5% each year.
Her experience in development, operations, supply chain and IT make enable her to drive Cisco’s continued focus on profitability, accountability, and world-class operational excellence.
Her deep relationships with CIOs around the world make her extremely well respected across the industry and she was recently inducted into the CIO Hall of Fame.
Guillermo Diaz has been promoted to CIO reporting directly to Jacoby. Diaz, most recently Cisco senior vice president of IT—Connected IT, has been accountable for the company’s enterprise IT architecture, technology strategy, and IT services/operating model.
Francine Katsoudas, Senior Vice President, Chief People Officer
Fran is the architect of Our People Strategy and Human Resources Organization, focusing on how Cisco wins in the talent marketplace while creating a compelling and unique employee experience.
She accelerates company transformation through leadership, attracting and retaining the best talent and building a culture of passion and innovation.
Fran is committed to ground breaking HR solutions, analytics and new talent models.
Chris Dedicoat, Senior Vice President, Worldwide Sales
Chris joined Cisco in 1995 and has served as Senior Vice President of EMEAR for the past four years where he has led the region to solid growth in a very challenging market.
Chris has a keen understanding of technology and market opportunities, an ability to drive transformation while running the business, and an unparalleled ability to lead and motivate teams.
Joe Cozzolino, Senior Vice President, Services
Joe has extensive global General Management experience in all facets of the business including engineering, sales, & services. He has a competitive edge and in his own words: “hates losing more than he loves winning.”
He began his career more than 25 years ago as a Systems Engineer designing video voice on fiber optics. For the last 2 years, Joe led Cisco’s Service Provider Mobility and Video Infrastructure businesses.
Before Cisco, he spent 12 years at Motorola in various executive roles successfully growing new businesses undergoing technology inflection.
Joe has an Electrical Engineering degree from the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, and an MBA from Annie Maria College.
Hilton Romanski, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology and Strategy Officer
Hilton has been responsible for the ‘buy’ in Cisco’s “build, buy, partner, integrate” strategy for growth and innovation
He has led over $20 billion in acquisitions in 40 deals, including Sourcefire, Meraki, and Airespace and was named Deal Maker of the Year in 2014 by The Deal.
He has also led Cisco’s M&A and investment entry into the emerging markets by forming and expanding teams and activities in China, India, Russia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America.
Hilton oversees Cisco’s corporate venture investment portfolio, currently valued at $2 billion, one of the highest performing corporate venture capital funds globally.
In his new role, Hilton will lead CTSO and be chartered to drive strategic development and growth of Cisco by applying important tools to nurture technology disruption, build alliance partnerships, acquire companies, invest in start-ups, and engage the global marketplace of ideas to drive Cisco’s success
Karen Walker, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer
Karen joined Cisco six years ago from Hewlett-Packard, where she held business and consumer leadership positions including Vice President of Alliances and Marketing for HP Services, and Vice President of Strategy and Marketing.
Her 20-plus years in the IT industry have included senior field and marketing leadership roles in Europe, North America, and the Asia Pacific region.
Karen is a Board member of the I.T. Services Marketing Association and a member of the CMO Council North America Advisory Board, the Marketers that Matter Council, Advancing Executive Women (AWE) in Silicon Valley, and CRN’s 2013 Women of the Channel. She also sponsors multiple initiatives to accelerate female leadership within Cisco.
Mark Chandler, Senior Vice President and General Counsel
Mark joined Cisco’s Legal Department in 1996 when it had 12 employees; today we have a phenomenal team of legal, contract and compliance professionals of more than 400 people that is regularly ranked among the industry’s best.
Before Cisco, Mark was General Counsel at Maxtor, a Fortune 500 disk drive manufacturer, and at StrataCom.
Mark is a strong business leader with a keen ability to innovate, disrupt and provide tremendous input into our strategy. In 2010, The National Law Journal named him one of the 40 Most Influential Lawyers of the Decade and in 2013, American Lawyer numbered Mark among the “Top 50 Big Law Innovators of the Last 50 Years.”
Ruba Borno, VP, Growth Initiatives and Chief of Staff
Ruba will join Cisco from The Boston Consulting Group where she is a Principal and leader in the Technology, Media & Telecommunications, and People & Organization practice groups.
She holds a Ph.D. and a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan, and a Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering with honors from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
For the last seven years, Ruba has been advising enterprise and consumer technology executives on organizational change, increasing operational effectiveness, and accelerating business growth.
Ruba has been an Intel Ph.D. fellow at the National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center for Wireless Integrated MicroSystems, contributed to multiple peer-reviewed research publications, and is a supporter of Bay Area organizations tackling education and poverty challenges.
I am committed to investing in and developing Cisco’s extended leadership team over time. I plan to also look externally to fill several roles that will lead key growth initiatives in new markets. I am also committed to adding even more diversity of thought and experience over time, constantly strengthening both our bench and our decision making.
There are also a few individuals who have made tremendous contributions to Cisco who will be transitioning over the next few months. I am thankful for the years of partnerships I’ve had with these amazing leaders who will be leaving Cisco:
Wim Elfrink has served as Cisco’s Chief Globalization Officer since 2006 and opened Cisco’s second global headquarters in Bangalore, India. His leadership on smart cities and connected industries has helped define our vision for the next wave of the Internet, the Internet of Everything. Wim will retire from Cisco on July 25th and I want to thank him for his exceptional leadership and his passion for what is possible.
Padmasree Warrior is a highly respected leader who most recently served as Cisco’s Chief Strategy and Technology Officer. She is well known across the industry and the globe, and has been a champion internally for innovation, strategic partnerships, investments and mergers and acquisitions. Padmasree has led the success of many of our strategic partnerships and will remain with us until September to help finalize some of our key partnerships for the future. I am grateful for the impact she’s had on Cisco and her commitment to helping us finalize these important alliances.
Edzard Overbeek in his role as Senior Vice President of Cisco Services has been an incredible partner to me for many years. He has made the decision to leave Cisco after 15 years at the company and leadership roles in every region around the world. Edzard has agreed to stay on through the transition as a strategic advisor on key disruptive strategies that he has shown great passion for while at Cisco. His vision and energy will ensure his success in his next venture, something I hope will be closely connected to Cisco.
We are so fortunate that these leaders are able to remain with us in the near-term to finish key projects and ensure a smooth transition. I believe this is a testament to the Cisco culture as well as their commitment, service, and leadership.
Going forward, my new team will define and build the next chapter for Cisco together. I’m extremely confident we will move even faster, innovate like never before, and pull away from the competition. This is an incredible team with a diverse set of experiences, expertise and backgrounds to accelerate our innovation and execution, simplify how we do business, drive operational rigor in all we do, and inspire our amazing employees to be the best they can be.
This new leadership team, along with the deep talent and passion of all of Cisco, gives me absolute confidence that we will lead, and our customers will win. I’ve never been more excited to build our future together.
Somewhere along the growing up years, we all learnt to equate success with how much we earn. Media played it up by discussing salaries of C-Level executives, fresh hires who landed a whopping first salary. HR professionals made it further difficult by treating salaries like trade secrets and warning you to keep the magic figure confidential. Payscale made a business out of this by creating an online Compensation & Benefits information portal. Water cooler conversations after annual increments are around the rumours of “who got what”. Your salary can either be a source of joy or sorrow till you know someone else’s. Sometimes in a weak moment, you share that number with your best friend or colleague. You get the drift - this is serious stuff with so many emotions running high. Why then is salary a closely guarded secret? Can we do otherwise?
To answer the first question, it is necessary to understand the process of salary fitments for a job. This process is not an exact science and it is based on the process of evaluating jobs. Job evaluations aim to make a systematic comparison between jobs and assess their relative worth. Job evaluations set a basis for deciding the monetary value that is accorded to the job. The prices of similar jobs in the market are then compared and a decision to price a job is made. This is where it begins to get fuzzy. For one, organizations decide where it wishes to price jobs with respect to the market. Further, the salary for a job is not a single number but a range of salaries from minimum to maximum. This helps take care of subsequent salary increases made to the job holder. It also means starting salaries can be fitted at any point in the range. So employees joining a particular job can have different starting salaries based on what they earned in the previous job and how they negotiated when they joined the company.
The biggest reason for maintaining salaries confidential is to mask the pay differences between those performing the same job. Answering queries and grievances on pay disparity is an HR Manager’s nightmare. While relative value of differing jobs can be explained, pay differences in the same job cannot be explained rationally. Further, for differing jobs too, market price for niche skilled jobs or emerging jobs (where no historical salary data is available) is based on perceived value or business need for the skill. Here jobs are priced as per buying capacity of the organization, demand / supply of skill set. Explaining the salaries of such jobs to other job holders can also be tricky and here again keeping it confidential helps. Pay increases in most organizations are based on performance and though there are rules followed to accord increases, it may far from being objective in the eyes of the employee. Firstly, the issue of correctly determining performance levels has to be addressed. Then the decision to provide increases to ensure that pay differences for the same job are ironed out are to be made. Pay differences also arise between employees who are hired from the market compared to those who have grown to a position from within the organization. Unfortunately, it is costlier to buy than to build or it is perceived that those who grow within don’t mind lower salaries in exchange of developmental opportunities. Explaining all this to an employee can become very tough and the easier route seems to be keeping the information confidential. Radical transparency may just open a can of worms!!
That however, may be far from being true. The Great Places to Work Institute has through its research and data from millions of employees ascertained that trust is the foundation of a great place to work. Transparency is one of the key drivers of trust. It kills the rumour mill, and thus removes the distractions, fears, and negativity that saps concentration. Trust brings with it more agility, helps bring forth feedback; it makes talking about difficult things and challenges easier. It opens the doors to better functioning, improved productivity. The biggest case for being transparent in employee salaries is that it opens the doors for a higher level of trust in the organization. It also brings in more accountability in those who administer salaries right from the business leader who approves the salary to the recruiter who makes the offer. It calls for a systematic process to make salary decisions and an ability to explain differences.
Among companies who have adopted this policy to their benefit, is Buffer, a social media management company. Buffer is the creator of an application (by the same name) that is designed to schedule posts to Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. One of the core values at Buffer is “Default to transparency” and in line with this value, salary information at Buffer is open to all. You can read more about Buffer’s salary formula here.
In today’s world, we have become more open to sharing more of ourselves through social media. We live in an unprecedented age when we consume more information than our ancestors. Our children, born into such a culture and who will be the employees of tomorrow wish to be more informed about matters affecting them . Organizations of tomorrow have the choice of being early adopters of new and disruptive policies to make the workplace more relevant for the new workforce.
I mentioned in my previous post Nick McKeown, uber smart Entrepreneur and Professor at Stanford, gave what I thought was the finest presentation of the week at the Open Networking Summit hosted in Santa Clara this week. As I wait to board my plane back to the East coast, here is a more detailed recap of the presentation and what I took away from it…
Nick McKeown arguably gave the most well thought out and intellectually engaging presentation of the week. In my opinion, it was the best I saw. He painted a picture that should have been done in the key note on Tuesday. McKeown started by looking at IBM and the closed nature of the mainframe and PC business back 20-30 years ago. It was a closed industry and innovation was slow until the x86 instruction set was developed. This allowed others to build operating systems and even more to build applications rapidly increasing the pace of innovation in this market. Quickly, we saw pictures of BFRs (Big *** Routers) on the screen that may have been a Cisco CRS-1. I couldn’t tell from where I was sitting, but the goal was to compare this big router to IBM and their legacy closed model. One vendor provided the ecosystem of hardware, OS, and applications riding on top.
Is this why innovation has been lacking in networking? Maybe. McKeown talked about the architecture that could change this.
Enter OpenFlow. Enter Software Defined Networking (SDN). This is where the x86 instruction set always comes up as an analogy to OpenFlow. From here, many can probably speculate on what was said over the next few minutes. It was nothing more than has been talked or blogged about for the past 18 months. Yes, it is understood OpenFlow can separate the control and data planes, a network OS can be created (more than one of them), and applications can be written to interface on top of the network OS as easy and quickly as they are built for iPhones and Android devices. Okay, maybe not that easy!
The next few slides went on to depict on how strict HW/ASIC and software development is within their respective industries. It showed the rigorous processes entailed and how important it is to get it right before going to production. Do you really want to deploy a defective ASIC? The costs associated to that could be catastrophic. Numbers ($$) were then shown on how large the industries are for development and testing. They were upwards to $10B. Then we saw sample numbers on how many books, papers, and classes there are for these at Universities. I don’t recall the numbers for each, but they were large. Dare you ask about the industry of testing in the world networking? No money, no papers, no books, and no classes*. We saw a slide that stated a few things network guys do when issues arise – ping, traceroute, tcpdump, etc. some primitive commands and functionality. But, think about it, how do you really troubleshoot? There are methodologies used by experiencing network engineers, but no automated tools, right? Is this sufficient for us? Have we really become “master’s of complexity?” Quite possibly, yes.
*Feel free to check the slides when they are posted for the exact numbers and examples presented by Nick McKeown. There is a chance I got something wrong as I’m writing from memory.
**Master’s of Complexity – this is in quotes because it’s a phrase being quoted now quite often from Schott Shenker from his presentation at the last ONS.
Over the next section of his presentation, McKeown went on to show some pretty in depth slides on value that can be provided to the network by having a centralized control plane. Equating back to hardware and software regression testing and development, his focus was on automated debugging tools and testing, proactive and reactive, for a Software Defined Network. Before I go on, I’m going to quickly summarize a feature on Cisco ASA appliances to help in making the case for what Nick McKeown went on to say.
If an ASA is deployed and there are packets being dropped, one popular tool is to use Packet-Tracer for debugging. Packet Tracer analyzes a synthetic packet that an admin generates the details of (source ip/port, des ip/port) from when it would enter the ASA until it would exit, and since the device knows the order of operations of applying certain policies, it goes through certain checks such as applying NAT policy, applying ACL, etc. So, as one can imagine, this uncovers out of order ACLs or you can uncover mis-configured NAT policies, etc. This has become a pretty important tool to have in Cisco ASA environments.
Have you ever thought about having similar functionality in a switch or router? Sounds interesting given the amount of even more complex configs you’ll have on L2/L3 devices ranging from long and complex routing policies, filters, NAT, PBR, QOS, etc. Do we have that functionality today? Not that I know of. Regardless, McKeown is thinking bigger, much bigger. Imagine you have this Packet-Tracer functionality NETWORK WIDE – that’s right, network wide. Imagine wanting to test how a change may affect the network campus wide or enterprise or debugging an issue where a packet doesn’t reach its destination. Within a SDN, this becomes possible. This was actually eye opening for me in terms of looking at the product development and testing of software based solutions. His team at Stanford is already well underway on developing these types of tools for the Stanford campus network. Imagine specifying a flow in a simple UI, clicking submit, and the output quickly showing where the dropped packet is in a muilt-node network. The output may show the error is with the ACL on Router 5 port 3. Well, you really don’t have to imagine this because you can go to Stanford and see these types of developments.
This was just a glimpse of what McKeown spoke about and is one of the industries that he thinks will significantly increase as SDN adoption begins to gain wheels. Unfortunately, this isn’t good news for me and who I will call “traditional” network folks. When asked by a participant if this type of automation for testing, development, and debugging will “wack” us, you heard a light chuckle from the audience, but believe me, everyone wanted to know Nick McKeown’s thoughts. He answered honestly saying he sees an overall increase in jobs in the network industry, BUT, there will be less admins/engineers needed to maintain and operate networks.
The large surplus of jobs will be in software and application development for network systems. This is of no surprise for those who have been following these trends. It will be interesting though to see how it plays over the coming years (don’t worry, it’s not weeks or months!). The network engineer of yesterday could very well become the PBX phone guy of the late 90s early 2000s. These network guys will adapt new skills such as programming and system administration or find the company that won’t adopt new technologies to try and stay in their comfort zone.
What will I do? Who the heck knows? Maybe I’ll take on writing full time. Just joshin' with ya, this is a great new opportunity for Integrators and Partners to add value for their customers as well!
On a side note, I’m not going to lie; it felt pretty good for people to recognize me by this blog while walking around at the ONS (everyone was wearing badges that had your name and the company you represented). It wasn’t many, but a few, and it was indeed still very cool. Glad to see people are actually reading this thing =).
Being a father means more than providing all of the physical needs in life, it also means having the responsibility to teach his son the most important lessons in life that will help him become a better man.
So, in order to prepare your son for manhood and give him the knowledge that will help him through many common situations in life, consider these top 10 things that every father should teach his son:
Self-discipline. Whether it is for education, work, or fitness discipline is one of the most important lessons to teach your son. Knowing how to work hard, motivate himself regardless of the situation and having the willpower to push through tough situations will greatly help him become strong.
Confidence. A solid handshake and confident personality is one of the very definitions of manhood. Having confidence is simply a way to show yourself and others that you are a strong and capable person who can handle most problem or task that may come your way.
Responsibility. One of the great lessons in manhood is taking responsibility for yourself and your actions. This will not only reinforce your self-respect but also gain respect from others. Being responsible for every choice and action builds character and builds an image of trustworthiness for others.
Independence. One of the markers for reaching manhood is being able to do things on your own. Teaching your son early what it is like to be independent will help him become a resourceful man. Learning through experience and trying things on his own will build his character. It will also provide him with real world knowledge that can help him in every avenue of life.
Humility. Just as confidence is important in manhood, so is humility. A good balance between the two creates a strong leader who can succeed in many ways in life. Confidence alone will not build good relationships with people but by combining humility, people will naturally gravitate to you.
Manners. Just as every child is taught the importance of manners, they must continue on through manhood as well. Manners are important in every situation, whether it is in business or even casual affairs. They define people in terms of their class and sophistication, but also in the way a person shows others respect.
Respect. Reaching manhood means earning respect from others for having the qualities that deserve it. Respect is honoring someone for the good qualities they have and showing them their importance in life. Teaching your son to respect others while also demanding respect from their actions and manly qualities is a way to help them grow up to be well-rounded individuals.
Sensitivity. Although some may think sensitivity is a weakness for men, it's a quality that every man should have. It is a way of showing compassion and taking a softer approach to situations that require it. It is a quality that all greatly loved leaders have, which is why so many respect and follow them.
Honesty. An honest person is one who is comfortable with themselves and has confidence in their actions. An honest man has an honorable manhood, which is something that every man should consider to succeed in life.
Finesse. One of the top qualities that all men should have is finesse. It involves having the proper skills to handle difficult situations in a careful and calculated way. A successful man will always have some level of finesse to help him through the times in life that may seem difficult.
While not all of these skills are easily taught, the best way is to teach by example and reinforce actions with important lessons. With these ten important lessons, your sons will be prepared for manhood and the experiences that come along with it.
Saudi Arabia, the Middle East’s biggest economy and the world’s largest oil producer, is running out of its black gold. Some estimate that the wells will run dry as early as 2030. That’s a huge deal. Oil revenue reached $312 billion this year and accounts for almost half the economy and 90 percent of export revenue. It also makes the kingdom the Persian Gulf’s economic powerhouse.
That’s why diversification is no longer a luxury. Opening its notoriously insulated stock exchange to foreign investors and investing in solar power, poultry, dairy, petrochemicals and innovative technology — these are the threads stitching together the kingdom’s safety net. Here are the companies leading the way forward:
SABIC
The Pitch: Global petrochemical leader
Size: $103.4 billion market value
CEO: Mohamed Al-Mady
Recent Moves: Recently crowned the Middle East’s big-biz king, SABIC is among the world’s largest petrochemical companies. Petrochemical usually means plastics and fertilizer, but SABIC is looking ahead with a host of new polycarbonate technologies, like solar panels, a film for touch screens and the first polycarbonate automobile wheel. Though it’s rolling back European operations, it’s venturing eagerly into the U.S., attracted by the shale oil boom. And with Saudi Arabia about to crack open its stock market to foreign investors, non-oil multinationals are poised for global prominence. Expect SABIC to receive the most lavish treatment from foreigners.
Glowork
The Pitch: Leading the kingdom’s startup revolution
Size: Acquired for $16 million by SAS Holdings
Founder: Khalid Alkhudair
Recent Moves: To kick their country’s oil addiction, Saudi leaders have launched hundred-million-dollar venture funds and incubators nationwide. The goal? A knowledge-based economy by 2025. The pre-eminent career portal for Saudi women is a poster child for the kingdom’s startup offensive, not to mention female workplace empowerment. Glowork’s market is potentially tremendous: A third of women are unemployed, and because most of them are college educated, they represent a real opportunity cost. And a government cost, too, because the jobless receive $800 a month from the government — a total of $1.6 billion down the drain, according to Alkhudair.
An oil exploration rig operated by the Saudi Arabian drilling company Saudi Aramco near Abqaiq, Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Aramco
The Pitch: Jolly green oil giant
Recent Moves: The Saudi government is planning an ambitious solar renaissance — the kingdom wants its energy mix to include 23 percent solar by 2030 and 39 percent by 2050. With lots of sunshine, low-cost funding and abundant space, Saudi Arabia has already developed one of the world’s cheapest solar models. Saudi Arabia might be the site of a perfect solar storm.CEO: Khalid A. Al-FalihSize: 9.5 million barrels of crude oil production daily; 54,000 employees
Saudi Aramco is poised to helm it. The state-owned behemoth and undisputed world petroleum champion was once valued at $7 trillion, almost half of the U.S. GDP ($16.8 trillion in 2013). The coming oil crunch has it staking a claim in solar and other alternative energies.
Although progress toward solar salvation has been slow, Aramco is still investing heavily in other potentially revolutionary alternative energy solutions. This month, it spearheaded a $30 million investment in San Francisco-based Siluria Technologies, which plans to produce low-cost gasoline from natural gas — for $1 per gallon.
Almarai
The Pitch: Moving Saudi Arabia from fuel to food
Size: $10.4 billion market cap; 16,000 employees
Founder: Prince Sultan bin Mohammed bin Saud Al Kabeer
Recent Moves: The region’s largest food company is in the right place at the right time. Saudi Arabia is the world’s largest importer of broiler meat, mostly chicken, to the tune of 875,000 metric tons in 2013. Domestic competitors like Almarai are ripe for growth. Already, poultry production is on the rise in the kingdom and is expected to swell 52 percent by 2018.
Almarai is showing other signs of international ambition. In partnership with PepsiCo, it launched a $345 million investment in Egypt this June, and its CEO has stated he plans to boost that figure to $560 million in five years. The funds will go toward a new juice factory, a 5,000-cow dairy farm and expanding existing facilities for Egyptian beverage firm Beyti. Drink and eat up!
Strategy begins with your deciding exactly what you want to accomplish in the key areas of your business life. Once you know your goals in each area, you can then decide upon the best steps you can take to get there.
The GOSPA Model
You can use the GOSPA Model as a guide for strategic planning. These five key thinking tools form the basis for successful business operations.
Begin With The End In Mind
The first letter, “G” stands for Goals. These are the ultimate results that you want to achieve. Your goals are the end targets that you aim at throughout your business year or planning period. Your goals are your sales, profits, growth rate, market share, or percentage of return on assets, equity, investment or sales. Goals are always measurable. What are yours?
Steps on the Staircase The second letter, “O” stands for Objectives. These are the steps you will have to
take to achieve your goals. They are like the rungs on the ladder to get to the top. Your business objectives can be specific rates of return from advertising, levels of sales of certain products and services, number of items shipped and billed, monies collected and cost levels for certain activities. A lower defect rate or a higher sale amount per customer can be objectives on the path to achieving the main corporate goals. What are your interim objectives?
How to Get There
The letter “S” stands for Strategies. These are the different approaches that you can take to achieve your objectives and reach your goals. For example, achieving a specific level of profitability will require producing and selling specific quantities of products or services to a specific market in a specific way. There are many different ways to go about accomplishing these objectives. The way you choose is your strategy, and may determine the success or failure of your enterprise.
Do you produce, market, sell, deliver yourself, or do you outsource some part of the process? Do you sell direct, via retail, direct mail, catalog or Internet? Do you charge more, charge less, up-sell, cross-sell or discount? Do you enter certain markets and abandon others? What is your strategy? Is it working?
Planning For Success
The letter “P” stands for Plans. These are your blueprints for achieving your goals. Your plans are composed of step-by-step lists of exactly what you will do, day by day, to get from wherever you are to wherever you want to go. Plans are always broken down by sequence and priority. Some things have to be done before others can be done. Some things are more important than others in achieving the goal or objective. When your plan is organized by sequence and priority, you can accomplish much more in less time.
Business life consists almost entirely of projects, one after the other. A project can be defined as a multi-task job, a job made up of many small jobs, each of which has to be done properly to complete the larger task. Your ability to plan, organize and complete multi-task jobs, ever larger and more complex, is the most important single element of your success, in any field.
Develop a Bias for Action
The last letter in the GOSPA process, “A”, stands for Actions. These are the specific tasks that you are going to complete to carry out the plans to implement the strategies to accomplish the objectives to achieve your goals. Every important task must be clear, measurable and time bounded. It must be assigned to a specific person who is qualified to perform the task correctly, on time and on budget. What gets measured gets done.
There are seven steps you can take every day to increase your employee's productivity, performance and output. These seven steps, practiced until they become ingrained habits of thought and action, will enable you and your employees to double productivity, increase your income, and move ahead faster than almost any other things you can do.
Step One: Set clear, specific, written goals for each important area of your life. Make them measurable and time bounded, with deadlines and sub-deadlines. Make plans for their accomplishment and work on your key goals every day.
Step Two: Think on paper. Make a list of activities for each day, before you begin. The best time to make a list is the night before, the last thing before you end the workday, or before you go to bed at night. This allows your subconscious mind to work on your list as you sleep, often giving you ideas and insights for greater accomplishment when you wake up.
Step Three: Set priorities on your list before you begin. Apply the 80/20 Rule and select the top 20% of your tasks to work on.
Use the ABCDE Method as well. Go over your list and write an A next to your most important tasks. Write a B next to your second most important tasks. Write a C next to your unimportant tasks. Write a D next to tasks that you can delegate, and an E next to tasks that you can eliminate. Do this before you begin working.
If you have more than one A task, organize them as A-1, A-2, A-3, and so on. Do the same with your B tasks. The rule is that you never do a B or C task if there is an A task still not completed.
Step Four: Practice creative procrastination on your list, and in your work. Since you are never going to be able to do everything on your list, you are going to have to procrastinate on some tasks. Decide in advance to procrastinate on those tasks of little value or importance. Otherwise, you will unconsciously find yourself procrastinating on tasks that can make a real difference in your life.
Step Five: Select your most important task, your “A-1,” and discipline yourself to start on that job first thing when you begin work. This task is often worth more than many, if not all, of the other items on your list.
Step Six: Practice single-handling with your most important task. Once you have started work on it, resolve to work at it non-stop until it is complete. Concentrate 100% on the one job that represents the most valuable use of your time. Discipline yourself to persist without diversion or distraction until it is done.
Step Seven: Develop a sense of urgency, a bias for action. Move quickly at your work, and throughout the day. Pick up the pace. Develop a faster tempo in everything you do. Get going and keep going quickly.
The faster you move, the more work you get done, and the better you feel. The more you do, the faster you learn and the better you get. The faster you move, the better you get, and the more you get done, the greater will the contribution you make, the more you will get paid, and the faster you will be promoted. By moving faster, you will put your whole life and career onto the fast track.
There are four essential elements of marketing. These are: Specialization, Differentiation, Segmentation and Concentration. You must implement and execute effectively in all four areas to survive and thrive in your business. A lack or weakness in any one area can lead to underachievement and even the failure of the enterprise.
Decide Who You Are and What You Do
Specialization requires that you focus on specific products or services, specific markets or specific customer needs. You must fight the temptation to try to offer too many products and services to too many customers in too many areas. You must specialize, both in your own mind, and in the mind of your customer.
What is it exactly that your product or service is designed to achieve, avoid or preserve for your customer? What are the core competencies or proprietary methods or technologies that enable you to specialize in this area? What specific problem or need can you solve or satisfy for your customer? And of all the different results you can get with your business, where do you, should you, could you specialize?
All Marketing Involves Differentiating
You differentiate your product or service by determining and deciding exactly in what way, and how, you are going to be superior to your competitors. I’ll explain this process in detail in a later chapter. It is the key to business success and high profitability.
Choose Your Best Market Segment
The process of segmentation requires that you clearly define the exact customers who can most benefit from what it is that you do better than anyone else. This requires rigorous customer analysis to determine who your best potential customers are today, and who they can be tomorrow.
High Probability Customers
Concentration requires that you focus your vital resources of time, talent and money on marketing and selling more and more to your very best potential customers. Sales efforts directed to your highest probability prospects yield the highest possible return on your activities. Based on your decisions on specialization, differentiation and segmentation, where should you concentrate your marketing and selling efforts?
Reevaluate Continually
All marketing strategies eventually become obsolete and stop working. If your sales are down for any reason, it may be time for you to revisit your answers in one or more of these four areas. This can lead to your developing a more effective marketing and selling strategy, one that works in today’s market.
Remember, today the answers have changed with regard to your market. Changes in customer demand, competition or other market forces may require that you change your area of specialization, your area of differentiation, your ideal customer segments and your areas of focus and concentration. You may have to change more than one of these at the same time.
In 1906 there was an Italian economist named Vilfredo Pareto. One day Pareto noticed that every year, 20% of the pea pods in his garden produced approximately 80% of the peas.
This got him thinking about economic output on a larger scale. Sure enough, he began to find that in various industries, societies and even companies, 80% of the production often came from the 20% most productive faction.
This became known as the Pareto Principle, or what is now often referred to as the 80/20 Principle.
The 80/20 Principle states that 80% of the output or results will come from 20% of the input or action.
The 80/20 Principle has historically been most popular in business management situations. Businesses often found that roughly 20% of their customers brought in 80% of their sales. They found that about 20% of their sales reps closed 80% of the sales. They found that 20% of your costs led to 80% of their expenses.
In terms of time management, they often found that 20% of their time created 80% of their productivity, and that 20% of their employees created 80% of the value.
The examples go on and on. And of course, nobody was actually there with a yardstick measuring out exactly 80% and 20% for all of these items, but the approximate 4-to-1 ratio popped up constantly. Whether it was actually 76/24 or 83/17 is irrelevant.
The 80/20 Principle became a popular management tool that was used widely to increase efficiency and effectiveness within businesses and industries.
It’s still widely taught today.
But few people thought to apply the 80/20 Principle to every day life or the ramifications it could have.
For instance:
What are the 20% of your possessions you get the most value out of?
What do you spend 20% of your time doing that gives you 80% of your happiness?
Who are the 20% of people you’re close to who make you the happiest?
What are the 20% of the clothes you wear 80% of the time?
What’s the 20% of food you eat 80% of the time?
Chances are these are easy questions for you to answer. You’ve just never considered them before.
And once you’ve answered them, you can easily focus on increasing the efficiencies in your life. For instance, the 80% of people you spend time with who only add 20% of the pleasure in your life (spend less time with them). The 80% of crap you use 20% of the time (throw it out or sell it). The 80% of the clothes you wear 20% of the time (same thing).
Identifying the 20% of the food you eat 80% of the time will probably explain whether you keep a healthy diet or not and how healthy it is. Hey, who needs to follow a diet? Just make sure to switch to where the 20% of food you eat 80% of the time is healthy.
When I first considered how the 80/20 Principle applied to my own life, I instantly realized a few things.
A few of my hobbies (television shows and video games) accounted for 80% of my time only brought me 20% of my fulfillment.
I didn’t enjoy a few of my friends who I spent 80% of my time with (hence I was not happy in my social life).
80% of what I spent my money on was not useful or healthy for my lifestyle.
Recognizing these things eventually inspired some hefty changes in my choices and my lifestyle. I dropped video games and television for one. I made efforts to identify other friends to spend more time with, and I paid more attention to what I bought with my money.
And of course, the 80/20 Principle can still be applied to productivity at work.
What tasks do you spend 80% of the time doing that bring in 20% of the returns (i.e., checking email over and over, writing memos, taking a long time to make basic and unimportant decisions, etc.)?
What is the 20% of your work that gets you 80% of the credit and recognition from your team or boss?
And finally, you can apply the 80/20 Principle to your emotional life and relationships as well. What are the 20% of behaviors that cause 80% of the problems in your relationships? What are 20% of the conversations that create 80% of the intimacy with your partner?
These are important questions that most of us never even consider.
It doesn’t occur to us that there’s an efficiency to every aspect of our life, to everything we do. And not only is there an efficiency, but we have control and influence over that efficiency. It’s something we can take responsibility for and improve.
What changes could you make in your life today based on the 80/20 Principle?
One of the most obvious answers, of course, is possessions. It’s highly likely that 80% of what you own brings you a small amount of your pleasure or happiness. An obvious place to start 80/20’ing yourself is with all of that extra stuff laying around.
Obviously, the 80/20 rule is not necessarily a rigid dictum to live by (don’t let the 80/20 rule become the 80% that gives 20% of the results!). But think of it as a tool, a lens to view aspects of your life through. Sit down and think about it, maybe even write it out. You’ll likely be surprised with the realizations you come to.
“I spent my 20s recklessly, but your 30s should be when you make a big financial push. Retirement planning is not something to put off. Understanding boring things like insurance, 401ks & mortgages is important since its all on your shoulders now. Educate yourself.” (Kash, 41)
The most common piece of advice — so common that almost every single email said at least something about it — was to start getting your financial house in order and to start saving for retirement… today.
There were a few categories this advice fell into:
Make it your top priority to pay down all of your debt as soon as possible.
Keep an “emergency fund” — there were tons of horror stories about people getting financially ruined by health issues, lawsuits, divorces, bad business deals, etc.
Stash away a portion of every paycheck, preferably into a 401k, an IRA or at the least, a savings account.
Don’t spend frivolously. Don’t buy a home unless you can afford to get a good mortgage with good rates.
Don’t invest in anything you don’t understand. Don’t trust stockbrokers.
One reader said, “If you are in debt more than 10% of your gross annual salary this is a huge red flag. Quit spending, pay off your debt and start saving.” Another wrote, “I would have saved more money in an emergency fund because unexpected expenses really killed my budget. I would have been more diligent about a retirement fund, because now mine looks pretty small.”
And then there were the readers who were just completely screwed by their inability to save in their 30s. One reader named Jodi wishes she had started saving 10% of every paycheck when she was 30. Her career took a turn for the worst and now she’s stuck at 57, still living paycheck to paycheck. Another woman, age 62, didn’t save because her husband out-earned her. They later got divorced and she soon ran into health problems, draining all of the money she received in the divorce settlement. She, too, now lives paycheck to paycheck, slowly waiting for the day social security kicks in. Another man related a story of having to be supported by his son because he didn’t save and unexpectedly lost his job in the 2008 crash.
The point was clear: save early and save as much as possible. One woman emailed me saying that she had worked low-wage jobs with two kids in her 30s and still managed to sock away some money in a retirement fund each year. Because she started early and invested wisely, she is now in her 50s and financially stable for the first time in her life. Her point: it’s always possible. You just have to do it.
2. START TAKING CARE OF YOUR HEALTH NOW, NOT LATER
“Your mind’s acceptance of age is 10 to 15 years behind your body’s aging. Your health will go faster than you think but it will be very hard to notice, not the least because you don’t want it to happen.” (Tom, 55)
We all know to take care of our health. We all know to eat better and sleep better and exercise more and blah, blah, blah. But just as with the retirement savings, the response from the older readers was loud and unanimous: get healthy and stay healthy now.
So many people said it that I’m not even going to bother quoting anybody else. Their points were pretty much all the same: the way you treat your body has a cumulative effect; it’s not that your body suddenly breaks down one year, it’s been breaking down all along without you noticing. This is the decade to slow down that breakage.
The key to salad is to laugh while eating it.
And this wasn’t just your typical motherly advice to eat your veggies. These were emails from cancer survivors, heart attack survivors, stroke survivors, people with diabetes and blood pressure problems, joint issues and chronic pain. They all said the same thing: “If I could go back, I would start eating better and exercising and I would not stop. I made excuses then. But I had no idea.”
3. DON’T SPEND TIME WITH PEOPLE WHO DON’T TREAT YOU WELL
“Learn how to say “no” to people, activities and obligations that don’t bring value to your life.” (Hayley, 37)
After calls to take care of your health and your finances, the most common piece of advice from people looking back at their 30-year-old selves was an interesting one: they would go back and enforce stronger boundaries in their lives and dedicate their time to better people. “Setting healthy boundaries is one of the most loving things you can do for yourself or another person.” (Kristen, 43)
What does that mean specifically?
“Don’t tolerate people who don’t treat you well. Period. Don’t tolerate them for financial reasons. Don’t tolerate them for emotional reasons. Don’t tolerate them for the children’s sake or for convenience sake.” (Jane, 52)
“Don’t settle for mediocre friends, jobs, love, relationships and life.” (Sean, 43)
“Stay away from miserable people… they will consume you, drain you.” (Gabriella, 43)
“Surround yourself and only date people that make you a better version of yourself, that bring out your best parts, love and accept you.” (Xochie)
People typically struggle with boundaries because they find it difficult to hurt someone else’s feelings, or they get caught up in the desire to change the other person or make them treat them the way they want to be treated. This never works. And in fact, it often makes it worse. As one reader wisely said, “Selfishness and self-interest are two different things. Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind.”
When we’re in our 20s, the world is so open to opportunity and we’re so short on experience that we cling to the people we meet, even if they’ve done nothing to earn our clingage. But by our 30s we’ve learned that good relationships are hard to come by, that there’s no shortage of people to meet and friends to be made, and that there’s no reason to waste our time with people who don’t help us on our life’s path.
4. BE GOOD TO THE PEOPLE YOU CARE ABOUT
“Show up with and for your friends. You matter, and your presence matters.” (Jessica, 40)
Conversely, while enforcing stricter boundaries on who we let into our lives, many readers advised to make the time for those friends and family that we do decide to keep close.
“I think sometimes I may have taken some relationships for granted, and when that person is gone, they’re gone. Unfortunately, the older you get, well, things start to happen, and it will affect those closest to you.” (Ed, 45)
“Appreciate those close to you. You can get money back and jobs back, but you can never get time back.” (Anne, 41)
“Tragedy happens in everyone’s life, everyone’s circle of family and friends. Be the person that others can count on when it does. I think that between 30 and 40 is the decade when a lot of shit finally starts to happen that you might have thought never would happen to you or those you love. Parents die, spouses die, babies are still-born, friends get divorced, spouses cheat… the list goes on and on. Helping someone through these times by simply being there, listening and not judging is an honor and will deepen your relationships in ways you probably can’t yet imagine.” (Rebecca, 40)
5. YOU CAN’T HAVE EVERYTHING; FOCUS ON DOING A FEW THINGS REALLY WELL
“Everything in life is a trade-off. You give up one thing to get another and you can’t have it all. Accept that.” (Eldri, 60)
In our 20s we have a lot of dreams. We believe that we have all of the time in the world. I myself remember having illusions that my website would be my first career of many. Little did I know that it took the better part of a decade to even get competent at this. And now that I’m competent and have a major advantage and love what I do, why would I ever trade that in for another career?
“In a word: focus. You can simply get more done in life if you focus on one thing and do it really well. Focus more.” (Ericson, 49)
Another reader: “I would tell myself to focus on one or two goals/aspirations/dreams and really work towards them. Don’t get distracted.” And another: “You have to accept that you cannot do everything. It takes a lot of sacrifice to achieve anything special in life.”
A few readers noted that most people arbitrarily choose their careers in their late teens or early 20s, and as with many of our choices at those ages, they are often wrong choices. It takes years to figure out what we’re good at and what we enjoy doing. But it’s better to focus on our primary strengths and maximize them over the course of lifetime than to half-ass something else.
“I’d tell my 30 year old self to set aside what other people think and identify my natural strengths and what I’m passionate about, and then build a life around those.” (Sara, 58)
For some people, this will mean taking big risks, even in their 30s and beyond. It may mean ditching a career they spent a decade building and giving up money they worked hard for and became accustomed to. Which brings us to…
6. DON’T BE AFRAID OF TAKING RISKS, YOU CAN STILL CHANGE
“While by age 30 most feel they should have their career dialed in, it is never too late to reset. The individuals that I have seen with the biggest regrets during this decade are those that stay in something that they know is not right. It is such an easy decade to have the days turn to weeks to years, only to wake up at 40 with a mid-life crisis for not taking action on a problem they were aware of 10 years prior but failed to act.” (Richard, 41)
“Biggest regrets I have are almost exclusively things I did *not* do.” (Sam, 47)
Many readers commented on how society tells us that by 30 we should have things “figured out” — our career situation, our dating/marriage situation, our financial situation and so on. But this isn’t true. And, in fact, dozens and dozens of readers implored to not let these social expectations of “being an adult” deter you from taking some major risks and starting over. As someone on my Facebook page responded: “All adults are winging it.”
“I am about to turn 41 and would tell my 30 year old self that you do not have to conform your life to an ideal that you do not believe in. Live your life, don’t let it live you. Don’t be afraid of tearing it all down if you have to, you have the power to build it all back up again.” (Lisa, 41)
Multiple readers related making major career changes in their 30s and being better off for doing so. One left a lucrative job as a military engineer to become a teacher. Twenty years later, he called it one of the best decisions of his life. When I asked my mom this question, her answer was, “I wish I had been willing to think outside the box a bit more. Your dad and I kind of figured we had to do thing A, thing B, thing C, but looking back I realize we didn’t have to at all; we were very narrow in our thinking and our lifestyles and I kind of regret that.”
“Less fear. Less fear. Less fear. I am about to turn 50 next year, and I am just getting that lesson. Fear was such a detrimental driving force in my life at 30. It impacted my marriage, my career, my self-image in a fiercely negative manner. I was guilty of: Assuming conversations that others might be having about me. Thinking that I might fail. Wondering what the outcome might be. If I could do it again, I would have risked more.” (Aida, 49)
7. YOU MUST CONTINUE TO GROW AND DEVELOP YOURSELF
“You have two assets that you can never get back once you’ve lost them: your body and your mind. Most people stop growing and working on themselves in their 20s. Most people in their 30s are too busy to worry about self-improvement. But if you’re one of the few who continues to educate themselves, evolve their thinking and take care of their mental and physical health, you will be light-years ahead of the pack by 40.” (Stan, 48)
It follows that if one can still change in their 30s — and should continue to change in their 30s — then one must continue to work to improve and grow. Many readers related the choice of going back to school and getting their degrees in their 30s as one of the most useful things they had ever done. Others talked of taking extra seminars and courses to get a leg up. Others started their first businesses or moved to new countries. Others checked themselves into therapy or began a meditation practice.
As Warren Buffett once said, the greatest investment a young person can make is in their own education, in their own mind. Because money comes and goes. Relationships come and go. But what you learn once stays with you forever.
“The number one goal should be to try to become a better person, partner, parent, friend, colleague etc. — in other words to grow as an individual.” (Aimilia, 39)
8. NOBODY (STILL) KNOWS WHAT THEY’RE DOING, GET USED TO IT
“Unless you are already dead — mentally, emotionally, and socially — you cannot anticipate your life 5 years into the future. It will not develop as you expect. So just stop it. Stop assuming you can plan far ahead, stop obsessing about what is happening right now because it will change anyway, and get over the control issue about your life’s direction. Fortunately, because this is true, you can take even more chances and not lose anything; you cannot lose what you never had. Besides, most feelings of loss are in your mind anyway – few matter in the long term.”(Thomas, 56)
In my article about what I learned in my 20s, one of my lessons was “Nobody Knows What They’re Doing,” and that this was good news. Well, according to the 40+ crowd, this continues to be true in one’s 30s and, well, forever it seems; and it continues to be good news forever as well.
“Most of what you think is important now will seem unimportant in 10 or 20 years and that’s OK. That’s called growth. Just try to remember to not take yourself so seriously all the time and be open to it.” (Simon, 57)
“Despite feeling somewhat invincible for the last decade, you really don’t know what’s going to happen and neither does anyone else, no matter how confidently they talk. While this is disturbing to those who cling to permanence or security, it’s truly liberating once you grasp the truth that things are always changing. To finish, there might be times that are really sad. Don’t dull the pain or avoid it. Sorrow is part of everyone’s lifetime and the consequence of an open and passionate heart. Honor that. Above all, be kind to yourself and others, it’s such a brilliant and beautiful ride and keeps on getting better.” (Prue, 38)
“I’m 44. I would remind my 30 year old self that at 40, my 30s would be equally filled with dumb stuff, different stuff, but still dumb stuff… So, 30 year old self, don’t go getting on your high horse. You STILL don’t know it all. And that’s a good thing.” (Shirley, 44)
9. INVEST IN YOUR FAMILY; IT’S WORTH IT
“Spend more time with your folks. It’s a different relationship when you’re an adult and it’s up to you how you redefine your interactions. They are always going to see you as their kid until the moment you can make them see you as your own man. Everyone gets old. Everyone dies. Take advantage of the time you have left to set things right and enjoy your family.” (Kash, 41)
I was overwhelmed with amount of responses about family and the power of those responses. Family is the big new relevant topic for this decade for me, because you get it on both ends. Your parents are old and you need to start considering how your relationship with them is going to function as a self-sufficient adult. And then you also need to contemplate creating a family of your own.
Pretty much everybody agreed to get over whatever problems you have with your parents and find a way to make it work with them. One reader wrote, “You’re too old to blame your parents for any of your own short-comings now. At 20 you could get away with it, you’d just left the house. At 30, you’re a grown-up. Seriously. Move on.”
But then there’s the question that plagues every single 30-year-old: to baby or not to baby?
“You don’t have the time. You don’t have the money. You need to perfect your career first. They’ll end your life as you know it. Oh shut up… Kids are great. They make you better in every way. They push you to your limits. They make you happy. You should not defer having kids. If you are 30, now is the time to get real about this. You will never regret it.” (Kevin, 38)
“It’s never the ‘right time’ for children because you have no idea what you’re getting into until you have one. If you have a good marriage and environment to raise them, err on having them earlier rather than later, you’ll get to enjoy more of them.” (Cindy, 45)
“All my preconceived notions about what a married life is like were wrong. Unless you’ve already been married, everyone’s are. Especially once you have kids. Try to stay open to the experience and fluid as a person; your marriage is worth it, and your happiness seems as much tied to your ability to change and adapt as anything else. I wasn’t planning on having kids. From a purely selfish perspective, this was the dumbest thing of all. Children are the most fulfilling, challenging, and exhausting endeavor anyone can ever undertake. Ever.” (Rich, 44)
The consensus about marriage seemed to be that it was worth it, assuming you had a healthy relationship with the right person. If not, you should run the other way (See #3).
But interestingly, I got a number of emails like the following:
“What I know now vs 10-13 years ago is simply this… bars, woman, beaches, drink after drink, clubs, bottle service, trips to different cities because I had no responsibility other than work, etc… I would trade every memory of that life for a good woman that was actually in love with me… and maybe a family. I would add, don’t forget to actually grow up and start a family and take on responsibilities other than success at work. I am still having a little bit of fun… but sometimes when I go out, I feel like the guy that kept coming back to high school after he graduated (think Matthew McConaughey’s character in Dazed and Confused). I see people in love and on dates everywhere. “Everyone” my age is in their first or second marriage by now! Being perpetually single sounds amazing to all of my married friends but it is not the way one should choose to live their life.” (Anonymous, 43)
“I would have told myself to stop constantly searching for the next best thing and I would have appreciated the relationships that I had with some of the good, genuine guys that truly cared for me. Now I’m always alone and it feels too late.” (Fara, 38)
On the flip side, there were a small handful of emails that took the other side of the coin:
“Don’t feel pressured to get married or have kids if you don’t want to. What makes one person happy doesn’t make everyone happy. I’ve chosen to stay single and childless and I still live a happy and fulfilled life. Do what feels right for you.” (Anonymous, 40)
Conclusion: It seems that while family is not absolutely necessary to have a happy and fulfilling life, the majority of people have found that family is always worth the investment, assuming the relationships are healthy and not toxic and/or abusive.
10. BE KIND TO YOURSELF, RESPECT YOURSELF
“Be a little selfish and do something for yourself every day, something different once a month and something spectacular every year.” (Nancy, 60)
This one was rarely the central focus of any email, but it was present in some capacity in almost all of them: treat yourself better. Almost everybody said this in one form or another. “There is no one who cares about or thinks about your life a fraction of what you do,” one reader began, and, “life is hard, so learn to love yourself now, it’s harder to learn later,” another reader finished.
Or as Renee, 40, succinctly put it: “Be kind to yourself.”
Many readers included the old cliche: “Don’t sweat the small stuff; and it’s almost all small stuff.” Eldri, 60, wisely said, “When confronted with a perceived problem, ask yourself, ‘Is this going to matter in five years, ten years?’ If not, dwell on it for a few minutes, then let it go.” It seems many readers have focused on the subtle life lesson of simply accepting life as is, warts and all.
Which brings me to the last quote from Martin, age 58:
“When I turned forty my father told me that I’d enjoy my forties because in your twenties you think you know what’s going on, in your thirties you realize you probably don’t, and in your forties you can relax and just accept things. I’m 58 and he was right.”
