Keep on Running

I say something big and bold, I might even shout to myself: "Moral integrity is something to be celebrated!" it feels so right, and yet I pause for a moment.

"Well... I guess if you aren't part of the ruling class? If you aren't a politician, if you aren't one of the most untrustworthy people on the planet, then moral integrity is something to be celebrated?"

But then I think a little further.

"Oh wait, many celebrities don't posess any real moral integrity. Having divorces to sell magazines. Their entire job revolves around lies, scandals, the gossip which drives that great media machine. So maybe, as long as you aren't part of the ruling class, or a celebrity, moral integrity is something to be celebrated?"

Still thinking, door after door opens up.

"Oh, wait. Businessmen are often unethical, betraying the moral framework contructed in their youth in order to persue a profit. Joe Hockey protested against the abolishion of free university education, and look at him now. Okay so, moral integrity is something to be celebrated as long as your aren't: a politician, celebrity or businessman? Right?"

Dissatisfaction.

"But that doesn't work either! Just looking at France, two generations ago they were banning short skirts, and now I guess they're banning long skirts? Banning people covering up their skin? I swear showing skin was considered immoral not too long ago, in fact to some it still is. So maybe moral integrity is celebrated if you aren't part of the popular opinion? Or a politician? Or a celebrity? Or a businessman?"

Morality, modesty, what do they actually mean?
Jufnitz - Reddit.

Do you see the problem here?

People talk about goodness, as if it's an immovable code of laws, standing strong against the winds of time. And yet, time and time again we see that morality can be warped and altered.
Just as ideas live and die, so too can morals and ethics

Like whispers on the back of a butterfly, they flutter amongst the masses of opinion. All it takes is a destabilising event, a gust of wind, and the whole operation plunges into the ground.

With this thought in mind, and this perception: "Morality is fickle." Entrepreneurialism is just a little bit more terrifying.

What are you really trying to do? Create an ethical product. Create something which will change the world? Do something good? Entrepreneurialism isn't just about the idea, but the implementation.

Your freedom is limitless.

Anything you do can be seen as ethical.
Anything you do can be seen as immoral.

Just imagine, you have a bright idea to improve the quality of society in every way. You can increase productivity, lower the government's spenditure on healthcare, improve the education system and reduce poverty and inequality. Just imagine how that idea would be received? Everybody would do it, it would become a trend which would sweep the entire world! And it did. In the 1930s eugenics was an integral part of government policy in most developed nations on Earth.

And then the war began.

The creators of this bright idea were were shunned, dismembered and left broken and bleeding in this new, post-war world.

This morum-mutatio, this drastic shift in morality, is not rare. And neither you nor I are safe from its effects. Any and all of our ambitious projects, any attempts at touching the silver coulds of success, come with the deep rumble of this sleeping demon, a soft reminder that at any time we could be crucified for the ideas we hold.

The birth of Rashidun and the spread of Islam.
The definition of morality in Arabia was changed for ever.
Wikimedia Foundation.

Maybe we should all handle our morals lightly? Maybe we should be ready to sprint away from contention?

Or maybe we should hold our ground?

I personally believe, in the end, if you aren't doing it because it makes you feel good, whatever that could mean, then that rumbling demon will eat you alive.


Morality is fickle. You freedom is limitless. Beware the morum-mutatio. And keep on running.

Lethargic Prince

A 'Successful Life' calls for work. Work in the early mornings before the sun has even risen. Work late at night when the world should be quiet. Any trashy online article about success lists things such as perseverance and taking action.

Ever since I was little, I was given the number 8. A magical value for the amount of sleep which will allow you to perform at your best. Every night since, I have tried, so very hard, to achieve this number and beyond. Sometimes I get home late, and find myself in my bed drifting off to sleep minutes past 1am. I comfort myself. I need only wake up at 9am. I must have more than 8 hours of sleep.

Recommended Sleep Chart
- National Sleep Foundation

This number is addictive. A cage. Only when my anxiety is drowned out with drink or physical exertion do I have the capacity to perform with less than 8 hours sleep. Only when the real world drifts away can I wake up feeling refreshed, not knowing the time of day.

Or maybe it is the excitement. Days go by and nothing is really invigorating. Sure I go out, have fun with my friends, but fun is not something which needs to be earned. I can sleep all day and still have 'fun'. I can still subsist, nothing really cares if I'm well rested, or lethargic. Only I can care.

And so here in lies a problem.

Excitement gets get me out of bed, regardless of my 8 hour addiction. Entrepreneurship should be exciting, it is exciting. And yet, I just can't do it. It is as if, what excites me in the morning is completely different to what excites me during the day.

I have tried countless measures. Left my windows open, set really loud alarms, gotten my parents to smash on my door and yet nothing works. Nothing works because, in that moment, I don't want anything to work. In the early morning I am a different person.

So now there is a war. Night Sam v Day Sam. A terrible battle between the Lethargic Prince and the Ambitious Duke. There has to be a way to resolve this fight without a costly war? And there is.

The Duke has something the Prince never acquired. A capacity for ideation, research and creativity. What would a minimum viable product for my terrible sleeping habits look like? A thought? A process? A physical object?

After much deliberation, research and ideation, I have found something wonderful. And I'm not the first.

It's cheap, sustainable, actionable and solves the problem in a novel way. I bring you, the Jolt. The idea has been around for a while. As soon as you gain consciousness in the morning, you spam. Yes that's right, contract all of your muscles at once, in one sharp motion. Suddenly your mind clears, and you can more easily get out of bed.

This Jolt hijacks a neural pathway which is also the case of a terrible mental illness some people face. Known as a hypnic jerk, affected individuals feel a falling sensation as soon as they are about to sleep, due to mixed up muscle single interpretations. This hypnic jerk is enough to keep someone wide awake for ridiculous amounts of time.

Scientists believe that the hypnic jerk could be "an archaic reflex to the brain's misinterpretation of muscle relaxation with the onset of sleep as a signal that a sleeping primate is falling out of a tree. The reflex may also have had selective value by having the sleeper readjust or review his or her sleeping position in a nest or on a branch in order to assure that a fall did not occur."

View from CN Tower, Toronto
Photographer - Reuschp

In analogy, the Lethargic Prince is really scared of heights, and any tall place will make him weak. In the early morning while he walks along the castle walls, have an assassin push him close to the edge and demand he surrenders. The Ambitious Duke will take control, and you will have you kingdom back.

I have only just discovered this wonderful wake-up routine, and I hope to use it now and into the future. I will continue to fully develop my strategy and never wake up at 12pm ever again.

Motivate the Existent

Like any ambitious entrepreneurs, or perhaps like any arrogant younglings in this modern society, my business team made some assumptions.

Our soon-to-be product, a gamification platform aiming to engage people with real-world issues through competition, was designed before any research was done! Oh the shame! The researchers shiver in their sleep! But we pushed through, and as expected, our results confirmed our assumptions, allowing us to steam ahead even faster. However, while our results answered some questions, it also made us think, and ponder and question once again. Gotta love science eh?

Our experiment was simple, we presented people with twelve subtly different cards, all images of a ranking system, with the participant ranked in the middle between two friends. We would ask the participant to order these cards into three piles based on how motivated or demotivated the different representations of their score made them feel. Some cards were realistically scaled, some were unrealistic. Some cards had lettered ranks, extra information and showed the average score for the entire world, some cards showed none of this. This diversity was designed very carefully, and what we found was interesting, though not that surprising.

Card "B" an unrealistic, yet appealing way to be ranked.

The most motivating card was the one with the most goals.  Card “B” as shown above contained the participant’s score up top, with each person on the ladder also possessing their own rank, the lower the rank the better. I suspect this card was chosen because of the diversity of information and the ability to visualise the future feelings of success in many ways. The rank below the participant’s name was connected to its own goal, the goal of becoming first. While the visual position of the participant on the ladder compared to their friends was its own goal as well. Many people who participated in this experiment also said that adding the world average into this particular representation would have made it more motivating. This effect seems to be deep rooted in our psychology.

We speculated further and created a simple rule: People are more motivated by extra possibilities for positive comparison.

The rank, the comparison to friends, the score, the city average, and even the world average, all give people the capacity for positive comparison. But this doesn’t stop a depressed pessimist from finding the demotivating factors in card “B” (as some anecdotal data we collected has shown), though they are unlikely to play the game in the first place.

This image is amazingly pessimistic. Disorientating and demotivating.

Looking back I realise that this is the way I motivate myself. The times when I am most willing to continue something, is when I can see the detail in where I stand. Just this week, the microbiology lecturer showed us a breakdown of how students scored overall. And while some people, especially those who failed, would be disheartened, with my 'decent' performance I found my mantra shifted, I was comparing myself to others in the room, I felt good, but I also felt like I could improve. I wanted to 'win'.

This is not true for all people. Card "B" while overwhelmingly popular, is just that, 'popular'. Motivation, we have found, is deeply rooted in past experience. When I performed this same experiment on a passer-by at my local shops, he did not place any cards into the motivating pile. When I asked him why, he simply replied "Games ruined my life." So I smiled that awkward smile, and thanked him for his time. At least I learned something, and didn't give this poor chap mobile-game-Vietnam flashbacks in vain. People vary far more than we expect. Maybe that should be rule 2?

With that now in mind, we have a whole second set of data to gawk at! The demotivators!

Card "L" a minimalistic card. Enough said.

Card "J" a disturbingly realistic card.

Makes you think about your place in the world.

Or not, I don't really know.

The most demotivating cards were card “J” and card “L” shown above. But each seems to be demotivating in its own way. Card “L” is simply the opposite of card “B”. Lacking in almost all detail. This representation of the participant’s score is not even that, not even a representation (it is not realistically scaled). Such a lack of detail makes it impossible for people to visualise their goals, to imagine what it would look like or feel like to improve.

Card “J”, however, is an interesting case. It is a realistic representation of scores in the world, but it also, only includes the world average. While we can only speculate, I feel it has something to do with existentialism. There is so much space between you and your apparent goal, you cannot help but feel a little bit overwhelmed with the task at hand when looking at this card. Even Forbes suggests that you should start small. This card forces you to look at the big picture as it is.

This speculation, if I’m right, leads to some interesting concepts about philosophy, and entrepreneurship. Being an entrepreneur is not just about being an opportunistic, business-minded individual, it is even more heavily characterised by the motivation entrepreneurs can draw upon in order to accomplish their goals. There is a reason why many of the biggest problems humanity has ever faced, and is currently facing, are not being tackled by entrepreneurs alone.

Of course entrepreneurs try their best to solve ‘problems’ such as income inequality, but their lack of an existential view on the issue, or perhaps an existential view’s lack of motivational potential, leads to these talented people chasing after shadows. Trying to tackle inequality by educating a minuscule number of people will not solve the problem of a privatised and monetised education system, or stop capitalism’s desire for an ignorant, impulsive population. (Check out this delicious right-wing propaganda for more details!)

But how can we have the best of both worlds? The large scale change with the small scale motivation? That is where Catch (our business) hopes to succeed! By using the motivating qualities of card "B", we hope that more people will be ready and willing to solve the real problems humanity faces, now and into the future.

But will we succeed? Another question, another fun little experiment, I almost can’t wait!