Tag Archives: goals

A Year in Review

15 Jan

It was a huge 2011 –

  • 5 different jobs across 4 continents and 7 countries (with telecommuting from another 2).
  • A career change from sustainable buildings into microfinance / small scale renewable energy
  • 95 blog articles (thanks for reading!) and a heap more articles published at Good Return and the Fifth Estate.

I learnt some big things –

  • Together, we can make sh*t happen. Everything around us was created by people just like us. So let’s do it.
  • Becoming an artist doesn’t just mean learning how to paint.
  • Have a mission. As Seth Godin so aptly puts it – plans are great, you need plans. But plans fail. (And if you suffer from a chronic illness, it’s important to know that a mission will outlast any plan which you may have had to put to one side – with a big thank you to a certain someone on this one.)

I learnt some interesting life skills –

  • Meditation works.
  • If you spend long enough in a place, people will occasionally start mistaking you for one of their own. And occasionally, you’ll mistake yourself for one of them.
  • Envy of any kind is pretty stupid. People always feel envy for people who are just above them, who manage to attain things just out of reach. But there will always be people much better off and much worse off than you. And if you are reading this, your lot in just about everything is pretty good.

I learnt there are some things which I would like to get better at –

  • Like eating more frequently (every few hours),
  • Reading a book every week or two, and
  • Listening more. This includes interrupting less – even those interruptions which are just in my mind. As Jacqueline Novogratz says: be interested, not interesting.

And I’ve thought about some of the big things I want to work towards over the coming year.

Perhaps most of all, I learnt I have many people to say thank you to –

  • To all the organisations I’ve had the opportunity to work with this year – in particular Good Return,
  • To those that have taken the time to tell me their story – through what can best be described as a “year of interviews”. I can’t thank the countless people that have given me their time enough – from Australia to Ghana, from managing directors to women taking out $500 yearly loans, from 3 year olds to 93 year olds,
  • To those that have taken the time to listen. Even though I don’t really get lonely, life on the road can sometimes be very exciting / miserable and in those moments there’s nothing like some who is willing to really listen while you are very excited / rant on. From those that listen often, right down to those that might have just listened once (like the Indonesian grandmother who I met in KL airport who smiled a lot when I talked and gave me a mint) – Thank you.

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Image: Some rights reserved by woodleywonderworks

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On having a mission – Part 2 (and on taking the first step)

10 Oct

Last week I posted on having a mission.

OK, so actually I posted on what the mission would be like. And how long it can take.

And how I wanted my first step to be about understanding.

1.       What does it actually mean to be poor?

I am struggling with the concept of purchasing power parity and poverty lines. And what the term “less than $2 per day” actually means.

So you wake up in the morning. You can only buy or grow food equivalent to the amount of food that you could buy for US$2 in the United States.

What does this mean for your day? What does this mean for your children? Your health? Your house?

I have been told that someone like me can never understand. Perhaps this is true. But poverty is also in my blood, in my family’s story-telling and heritage. Both sets of grandparents were exceptionally poor as children.

And besides, how can you even begin to fathom what is going on if you are not prepared to listen?

2.       What has been done about poverty so far?

I’ve been reading for a little while.

A couple of favourites – The Blue Sweater (Thanks Jo and At!). More than Good Intentions. And I just finished Mountains Beyond Mountains, recommended to me by the brilliant Alex and Josh.

Amazing, amazing, amazing.

I want to learn and see more.

3.       Why is it that people are still living in poverty?

Of course part of the answer to this question lies with the poor. Perhaps I will get some answers out of part (1).

But part of the answer also lies with those who are not.

I also just finished “The Life You Can Save” by Peter Singer. In essence he makes a very strong argument that it is unethical to not help the poor with just about everything you have.

And now.

Just on giving, some inspiration:

  • I have a friend (who doesn’t like his name) who gives 10% of his income every year to charity. (Post-tax I was told to tell anyone who asked). When asked by his girlfriend if he would stop giving money once they had a mortgage, he said something along the lines of this: “I don’t think poor people would care that I had a mortgage”.
  • Sasha Dichter’s generosity experiment – he said yes to anyone that asked him for money for a month.
  • The 50% League – to qualify members must have given away at least half their wealth, or for the past three years, half their income.

I want to understand why these are special cases, why it is that we do not give more.

I have spent a long time studying a very well off first world person who cared but was ambivalent about giving.

(For those of you playing at home, that would be me).

Now I want to study what it means to give.

4.       What I should do next

This is going to take a little time.

Would it be better to go back to well paid work and give away most of my salary?

Maybe it will be best to forget the mission and just not ever fly again? I could give the money away AND reduce the most significant part of my global carbon footprint.

And just on that, how is the environment and flexitarianism going to fit into all of this?

The plan, so far at least

On what it means to be poor, I’ll be travelling across the Asia Pacific for the next year with Good Return surveying microfinance clients for our renewable energy product. In the Philippines that means taking out a 6 month loan for a AUD$40 solar panel and LED light.

On what has been done so far, I’m going to read more (book suggestions very, very welcome).

And on why it is that people are still living in poverty, I am going to start to learn what it means to give. I’m still hashing this out, but I’m thinking over the next 12 months I am going to:

  • Spend some time saying yes – Sasha Dichter style. (Here is one right now – “Yes”).
  • Give away a substantial sum to charities which work with poor communities.

I am definitely going to need help on the last one – more on this and how I came up with the figure next week.

And on what to do next?

Hah! I’m still taking it day-by-day.

–> You can now also read Part 1 and Part 3

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Transitions (or, exhaustion + devastation + airports = remarkable thinking)

10 Sep

There is something about leaving a country which you have lived and worked in, and straight away moving to another one.

This year I have done this so many times I am starting to lose count. Already I am at 7, and I think that I will have 3 more before the year is out.

(For the travel hackers amongst you, I think my year is going to look something like this: SYD-MAU-ACC-ATH-ACC-SYD-ILO-KTM-SFO-PNH-CGK)

At the beginning of the year I kept asking people who moved around a lot what the hardest thing about travelling was. I thought maybe I would get tired of living out of a bag, or that I would miss my family, or my close friends, or you know, zucchinis.

I didn’t think it would be the transitions.

I am not upset to be without roots this year, in a way I feel like I have been without roots my whole life.

But somewhere in the transition of picking up everything to put it back down into a new place, my body seems to go into a state of shock.

I usually cry on the plane. When I went back toSydneyfor 3 weeks I felt bizarrely numb for a few days, in a way I could not explain to people. It was just plain weird. And then everything came crashing down and I cancelled all my plans, instead spending a weekend inside with my brother, staring at a wall.

(Don’t worry, insane amounts of partying still happened, just later on).

I think part of the reason for this is the last week before I leave anywhere is totally packed – catching up with friends, finishing off projects, getting through all the “lasts”. I am usually utterly exhausted by the time I leave. And the first week in my new country is always relatively quiet.

So it goes from super intense to super quiet, and the realisation of what I am doing hits me. Where exactly am I? What exactly is it that I think I am doing? Am I crazy?

Not to mention the the thought of all the amazing experiences that I have left behind. The people I will probably never see again.The fragments of language and expressions that I have learnt. And the weird nuances of culture that you only get from being in a place.

(In Mauritius– being in a meeting where three languages are spoken at once. In thePhilippines– the flamboyant culture. In Ghana–the MASSIVE religious billboards. And in Nepal– the relaxed attitude to privacy).

The flip side is that this outpouring of emotion has brought on some of the best ideas that I have had this year. I have written beautiful poetry. Come up with business ideas. Followed up on hard things which I really needed to do. And formulated all of the things which are most exciting about this year. Including achieving all my goals for this year in 7 months – and they were not small.

Call me crazy, but I can only conclude that there is something remarkable about the combination of exhaustion, devastation and airports. Alone, they are just irritants – but with their powers combined…?

My brother reminds me of often of my own words:

“I don’t mind being upset, because I often do my best thinking when I am upset”.

As I prepare myself for the shock that will be leaving Nepal for San Francisco, I am going to do my best to take solace in these words.

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On reading other people’s favourite books

25 Jul

One of my goals this year has been to read some of my favourite people’s favourite books.

Over the year I’ve developed a few caveats to this:

-          It has to be a favourite book that you think I will like reading. No high level academic research compilations in an area I’ve never studied/worked. (Although, more than happy to read your best beginner’s suggestion).

-          If you can’t decide on a favourite, just tell me one that you liked that you think I will like.

-          You can only pick one. (Although depending on the choice, I reserve the right to come back for more).

I did this because my brother spent a fair amount of time reading all of my favourite books and seemed to enjoy it.

Also, since finishing uni I’ve had a hard time figuring out what to read next. I thought this would solve this problem AND might be a good way to get to know people better.

Now I don’t want to say WINDOW TO PEOPLE’S SOUL, but….

Here are a couple of thoughts from the ones I have read so far.

The Uttermost Place on Earth (E. Lucas Bridge)

This book is about the first European settlers to the very southern tip of South America. It traces their experiences over time – what they ate, how they lived, when they interacted with locals. How the adventurous father in the family, the first pioneer, used to cry when reading sad stories to his kids.

The middle section brought along a sense of humour. Like telling the readers about a group of pioneers who shared one alarm clock that would wake the group before dawn. Except when a prankster in the group kept setting the time back, thereby forcing the start of the day to the middle of the night.

Turns out even pioneers like to have a laugh.

The sense of humour faded towards the end however – along with my patience – as it became one seemingly irrelevant story after another.

I didn’t finish it, but it still made me laugh!

(The person I recommended it said I might not like it – I’m sorry!)

Eat, Pray, Love (Elizabeth Gilbert)

This book  is the favourite book of so, so many people. I know it is such a cliché now, but it did change the way I think. Not least the thought that it is ok to pray and hope for things, despite not being religious. “You are a part of the universe and entitled to participate in its actions”.

Gilbert used humour to make me start thinking about meditation in a more serious way. (A good beginner’s guide here if you are interested). She goes to a monastery to meditate for 4 months. And she complains about not being able to control her mind. To which a monk responds “It’s a pity you are the only person in the world that has ever had a problem with meditation!”.

And this thought on the concept of ‘soul mates’ is profound: “People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that’s what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that’s holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you’ll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with your soul mate forever? Nah, too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then they leave. And thank god for it.”

The Omnivore’s Dilemma (Michael Pollan)

This book is just crazy amazing. Read it.

Put simply, the title of the book refers to the ‘analysis paralysis’ that omnivores have to deal with. This is due to sheer quantity of choices that omnivores have to make everyday.

I’m going to try not to ruin it for you – but the book is split into three parts. In the first, Pollan tries to follow a fast food meal all the way from the farm to his mouth. Then he does the same for a fully organic meal (and gets right into the debate of small scale versus large scale farming). And finally, my favourite, he creates a meal from food he has foraged.

So I have this ‘thing’ where I fold down the corner of the page in a book if there is a particular concept I like, or a particular turn of phrase (I stole this from a great, great friend of mine). No turn overs in the first third. It was interesting, and I felt like I learnt a lot, but I did not find it particularly striking.

Onto the second section on organics. On large scale farming – again I felt like there was a lot of detail I already knew, but I did like how Pollan phrased it. Things that I was suprised to learn from this section – countries have banned the use of chilean nitrate because it uses child labour and small farms are more productive at outputting crop (the problem is in the transaction costs).

Then on to small scale organics farming. Here Pollan introduces Joel, a small town organic farmer. I must say, I totally loved Joel. What an awesome character in the book! So spirited! I loved the analogy from Pollan about how Joel wanted to be Luther rather than Lenin – how he wanted to give people an alternative rather than work to ‘overcome the system’.

Pollan also spoke a little about Joel’s father, who rode a bike to work every day because he didn’t want to buy foreign oil during the Arab oil emargo. This reminded me of how I really admire people that make a stand like that and stick to it.

My friend Ross Harding has this vision of a future powered entirely by renewable energy and he is going to promote it by sailing a yacht (wind power) around the world, starting from Mexico. But he was in London and felt conflicted about starting his journey by flying to Mexico. So, he is took a 19 day container ship to Mexico. Which has about 50 times less impact than flying.

Next Pollan got onto a brilliant analysis of the ethics of slaughter and eating animals. Plenty of fold downs of the book in that section. He spoke about how at Joel’s farm they don’t slaughter everyday – so that the slaughterer’s don’t become immune to the impact of it.

And finally, the meal from foraged food. Again I don’t want to ruin it, but this section of the book was UNBELIEVABLE. I’d never even thought of foraging before. The stories of the mushroom hunters? How he tried to get sea salt? And it ended up being toxic? Hilarious. And the motions of going through and killing the pig? I totally felt like I was right there. I was on the edge of my seat READING A BOOK.

And then the ending. All I’m going to say is I cried. And cried.

It was so beautiful, the whole thing.

And that’s how a book should be.

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If you have any suggestions I’d love to hear them!

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Why I left a job I love (or, the value of still not knowing)

23 May

I have wanted to work in developing countries since forever. I don’t know why, I can’t really explain it, other than to say it was one of the things that kept me up at night.

(In the words of Steven Pressfield: I had no choice).

But when I finished university I had a boyfriend I adored, no money and a fantastic job I totally loved in Sydney. I wasn’t ready.

Four years on and I was single, about to be promoted and still not ready.

I could feel the draw of what I wanted tugging at the edges, but I just was not ready.

I never thought I’d say this: Anthony Robbins changed my life.

In Robbin’s book Unlimited Power (yes I know, best title EVER), he takes his readers through a goal setting exercise called “Limitation Disengage” (yes, yes, it gets better).

The first time I did this exercise I came out with a whole heap of useful information about how I wanted to be a professional surfer. (Especially useful for someone who has never graduated out of the beginner category in any sport).  Being a surfer had never, ever kept me up at night. I had no idea where this came from. I laughed at myself.

I just was not ready.

The second time I tried it, something happened. I came out with a heap of interesting ideas. Stuff that really did keep me up at night.

I realised I wanted to work on things that I could see were real. I wanted to actually see things get built, to see how people really did things.

I wanted to spend time one step closer to the process.

I also did not want to spend my entire career working for people at the top of the food chain – the likes of the big banks and law firms. (This is despite totally respecting these people. These people will probably contribute more through their income taxes then I EVER will through my work).

I wanted to see what I could do to work directly for those at the other end.

Enter Mohammad Yunnus

I did a heap of reading. And found Yunnus’ Banker to the Poor.

I have never had a book make me cry so, so much. But this crying was not just out of sorrow. Many times I cried out of joy.

It showed me microfinance in a way I’d never seen it before. It showed me its humility – the way it said to people that they themselves knew what was best for their lives. It showed me how I’d be able to see how the smallest businesses operate, how it is that they do things.

A long period of thinking, reading, job applicating (!) and speaking to people led me to what my potential contribution could be. My experience with renewable energy coupled with my desire to travel to work overseas.

So I’ve taken a job with Good Return, starting in exactly one month. I’ll be rolling out a microfinance program involving solar lanterns throughout South East Asia for the following 12 months.

That’s it. That’s all I know so far.

So, you want to learn?

I know what my brother is going to say – there are no “take aways” from this post. And I know that’s what people want from blogs. They want to learn.

Well, what can I say?

Stay posted.

I’m still learning.

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(1)    I am told if you are interested in microfinance and only want to read one book, make it this one. It is brilliant, informative, simple and funny.)

(2)    One of my favourite extracts from Yunnus’ Banker to the Poor (apologies for its length):

I was walking along a village road alone to get to our branch after attending a centre-meeting. After a while I met a young man (around 30) who was walking along the same road. He greeted me, I greeted him. We walked side by side.

“Are you with Grameen Bank?” he asked. “Yes”, I said, “but how do you know?”

“I saw you at the centre-meeting in the village. My wife is also in the group.”

This immediately changed my relationship with him. I became interested in him. He told me his name was Joynal. He was an agricultural labourer. His wife Farida had joined the Grameen Bank eight months earlier, and they had a little daughter of five.

“Farida works very hard to make sure she pays back every single weekly installment on time. She has not missed a single instalment yet.”

“Did she have consent before she joined Grameen”

“She did. But in the beginning I was not sure I was doing the right thing. Then the other women in the village were also joining Grameen. She kept asking permission. Finally I gave in.”

“Are you happy that she joined? Or looking back to you think it would have been better if she did not?”

“No, no, I am happy that she joined. She used to complain that we didn’t have enough food, but now she does not complain. We have enough for the three of us”

For me this was like getting good grades in the final exam. I was pleased that things were working well. Both Joynal and I kept walking silently.

The long silence was broken when Joynal spoke out in a negative tone: “There is one thing, however. I used to enjoy beating my wife. But the last time I beat her I got into trouble. The women in Farida’s borrowing group came to be and argued with me and shouted at me. I did not like that. Who gave them the right to shout at me? I can do whatever I want with my wife. Before, when I used to beat my wife, no one said anything, no one bothered. This is no longer going to be true. Her borrowing group threatened they will get really mean if I beat my wife again.”

I tried to console Joynal:

“Well, maybe it is time you left your wife alone. After all, she is working very hard. She needs your support. You can find something else to do to release your tension.”

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