Thursday, September 14, 2017

Systems thoughts

When I was much younger, I thought being president would be an occupation that would be cool. My dad said it was dumb to want to be president. He said people go broke running for it and that everything in your life gets amplified to the point family and friends don't have privacy.
Why is being president so attractive? Fame and power have the negatives. People have exposed themselves as being deranged in their dislike of certain political entities.
I've come to the conclusion being President is goal-thinking. If I want to be rich and famous like the president, a systems approach would be simple to implement and adjust accordingly.
A year ago, I stumbled upon Scott Adams and his book How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big. It basically affirmed a number of my beliefs that have evolved since high school.
Whenever approaching a system, a vague improvement is better than an absolute goal. I used to do an annual SWOT of my family. I had a management class in grad school, and SWOT was one of the things covered.
In my systems approach, I pursued jobs that fit my needs. My strengths were that I can do most things, but my weaknesses revolved around child care being more expensive than certain jobs would afford, thus working around my wife's schedule made most sense. Opportunities were getting raises and more part-time hours, while threats were elements of living paycheck to paycheck.
My wife never truly adopted my systems approach, so I guess my lack of persuasion was a weakness and threat to my endeavour of being debt-free, and all the benefits of being debt-free
Life changes, so SWOT changes. My kids are now older and my mom now lives near us and is able to help watch my kids. I have more flexibility to work hours during the day.
Back to being rich and famous, my personality is such that I don't really like being around crowds of people. Systems approach would suggest I work on the connections I currently have and let those connections expand organically.
Obvious connections are neighbors and co-workers in addition to existing friends and family. Find common points of interest and develop conversation accordingly. Keep everything simple and avoid areas of controversy.
People are usually conversation starved, but be aware of their time and your potential to be a pest. Five minutes is long enough to annoy people, so keep things short and allow for more conversation next time you see your acquaintance. Avoid diarrhea of the mouth. Twitter thrives because 140 characters is quick and easy, thus allows following seem reasonable. People will drop you on Twitter if you tweat too much and bore or offend them.

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