Thinking Out Of The Box

On my recent trip back from the US to India, we transited through Hong Kong. I decided to spend a day with a friend of mine and he came to pick us up at the airport. He is a wonderful person and we walked to his car as he was going to take us back to his house. I realized that we were walking towards this beautiful sleek Tesla Model S. I was intrigued not having seen one before at close quarters. It was such a sleek model. As we walked towards it, all of a sudden, the handles lit up and extended out. Prior to that, they were totally flush with the car. When we got in, they retracted again. As we began to drive into the city, there wasn't a sound in the car. I started asking him questions about the model and he said that it gave about 270 miles range on a full charge. It had a 17" high-definition touch screen right there in the front with a built-in web browser, Wi-Fi and Internet connection and even more. He said, "Would you like to see where all the Tesla cars in the world are?" He pulled up a screen and there they were; all the Teslas. You could just go to a particular city and see where every Tesla car was. And beyond that, to see where the charging stations were. Just a wonderful experience! We went into a mall later and were able to charge the car.

As I walked away from this experience, I thought about Elon Musk and the way in which he has revolutionized thinking, 'out of the box' thinking, in a short span of time. Look at him – University of Pennsylvania, Wharton's School of Business, then went to Stanford to do his PhD and lasted all of 2 days. He left there to pursue the dreams that he had. He has built an empire. Today, his net worth is $17.4 billion, at the age of 46. An enormous fortune, incredible wealth – just the ideas that have come from him have been mind-blowing.

Dream On

This past week, a short little video I had made a couple of years ago resurfaced on Facebook. I had posted it 2 years ago and a cousin brought it back up. In this video, my wife Sheila and I, along with our children, had gone to see an aunt of hers. In the course of the evening, this aunt began to sing some of the older songs from her generation, on the verge of being forgotten by ours. It was wonderful to hear her singing all these songs and that was when I took this video. At the end of the evening, I hooked my iPhone to the computer, worked with it a little bit on iMovie and then put it up on Facebook. I also looked into burning a CD through iDVD and giving it to some of the other relatives who might enjoy it.

Looking at this video and the number of people who have been blessed by it, I was reminded of what Steve Jobs once said about iMovie. He said, "Using iMovie makes your camcorder ten times more valuable (p. 381)." Basically saying that we often take pictures or movies but then don't know what to do with them. I'm not talking about now, but about 3-4 years ago. He said that what iMovie did was "allowed people to be creative, to express themselves, to make something emotional." So true! It allowed me to be creative, to express myself and to hang on to something that had great emotional content.

Dream On - Strategically

The other day I was sitting in my office and made myself a cup of coffee. It's a daily ritual for me, one that I really enjoy—fresh coffee, percolating through the machine, the aroma filling the office… J I had an appointment in a couple of hours and so I was dressed for that. I very gingerly picked up my cup of coffee and sat down, putting the cup carefully down on the table. As I leaned forward to take my first sip, I held the cup away from me so that nothing would spill on my white shirt. The next day while sitting at home enjoying a cup of coffee, I realized that I hadn't gone to any of the extra pains that I had taken the previous day in drinking my coffee. I just sat there in my home clothes, not really concerned whether I spilled anything on myself or not – I just enjoyed the coffee!

As I reflected on these two scenarios, I realized that "intent" was at the very centre – to be very careful on the one hand, and a lack of it on the other. On the one hand, clearly wanting to make sure that nothing spilled because I was going into a meeting, and on the other hand, not bothered at all, just a 'qué será, será' kind of attitude.  Without intent to be careful or to do something, we are very much like people without a rudder. We just let the wind take us where we want; it really doesn't matter. Yet, life is not lived that way. Life is lived with intentionality -- taking the oars in our hand and steering our course, not letting ourselves be carried around by the vagaries of wind or weather.