Inspiring creativity

A long (ANZAC day) weekend always provides perspective here in Melbourne Australia. Below is the weekly dose of “Monday Morsels,” topics that I know are important to developing your skills in business & performance as an individual.

Lest we forget —

Inspiring creativity —

For days when I’m finding the grind particularly hard I always turn to jjjound or Casey Neistat, when I need to get into a mood to create product, strategy, processes, or anything really. The work from Casey is particularly inspiring because he’s focused on creation not consumption.

Bubbles & profitability —

I’ve shown my distaste with the obsession Silicon Valley drives for valuations and growth over profitability. Well someone finally said something, and it was Bill Gurley. But you could have read a distilled and similar point made by Joshua Brown earlier. The key point that an entrepreneur/VC/anyone involved in business should ask is — why are you doing this?! It should be greater than just starting up, cashing in and selling out.

Am I offending you? —

The Melbourne Comedy Fest finished over a week ago. I’ve always been a fan of dark comedy from the likes of Louis CK and George Carlin (RIP). Nautilus had a recent article on what advantages dark comedy provides (other than laughter) — including forced new perspectives. Although initially hard to take, these perspectives can provide future resilience to harsher (emotional) situations. Resilience is an essential tool in the emotional toolbox, evidently when you run a business or startup.

Understanding emerging technology —

I don’t ever attempt to be a forecaster in markets or technology, Warren Buffett said that “forecasts may tell you a great deal about the forecaster; they tell you nothing about the future.” Understand technology trends is important for allocating resources and capital effectively. Being fond of checklists & critical thinking, I found Alex Danco’s “Emergent Layers” the most systematic framework in identifying emerging technology. It’s a new set of articles (four in total), but surely one that shouldn’t be missed.

Humbling perspectives -

I wasn’t in Japan when the earthquake happened in 2011, and Australia is not prone to them, so my perspective of them was nil really. Reading this article will truly humble you, and also realise the potential for the “Really Big One” on the Pacific North-West of America.

If you’re enjoying Monday Morsels please forward this to a friend and suggest they sign up for the weekly dose!

Thanks for reading! Have an awesome week.

Jordan Michaelides