What Nordic Business Forum taught me

Hello again. This week was not as busy as last week. There was still plenty of interesting things that happened during this week. I read an awesome article about Search Engine Optimization (also know as SEO) and wrote about it in my last post. This week we held our #mazdastudentchallenge presentations and I watched live stream of Nordic Business Forum. Both of the events were really special in their own way. I am really happy that I chose to study at Laurea. For the first time of my life I actually enjoy studying! Writing a blog hasn't been difficult to me but making it look good was difficult to me. Luckily my girlfriend is really good with visual stuff and she taught me how to modify blog's design. After all she is soon to be architect and also a blogger. If you're interested to see what her blog looks like, here's a link to it. Miia's blog.

Let's start with the easier to digest stuff. I tried my best to make this blog look good, but oh my how bad I was. Almost all of the pictures where broken after few hours and everything looked quite boring. Miia took my computer and showed me few tricks and I quickly understood what I was doing wrong. We modified the design and searched for other people's blogs for inspiration. It is a lot easier to do something when you know what you want it to be like. I finally knew what I wanted this blog to look like and now things are just starting to roll. On the right side you see brief information about me, and links to my social networks. Feel free to follow me or add friend request on those sites.

We held our #Mazdastudentchallenge presentations along the other students and it felt great. As I wrote before, I don't like to speak in front of other people, but I liked to present our ideas. I was happy with our results since there was only three of us but I was truly amazed by other groups. Other groups had some other ideas that we had in our mind, but there were a few groups that had so good presentations that you'd believe they were "only" school projects. As fine as the day was, it wasn't nearly as joyful as my Friday. 

Amy Chua, the tiger mother

On Friday I went to Technopolis to watch Nordic Business Forum Stream. I was a bit lazy and managed to get there just before Amy Chua started to talk about "triple package". Clock was almost 12:30 when I got inside and saw my new digicoaches Viveka and Maija. I saw people with laptops and notes on the table while I was taking my breakfast smoothie from the bag. I brought with me a notepad and a pen just to be sure I wouldn't miss out on taking notes if something interesting comes up. Amy Chua started to talk about how she was accused of being worst mother ever after she published her book "Battle hymn of the tiger mother". I was stunned. "...Huh? Tiger mother? THE tiger mother?" That topic is part of our family. My mom read about that book from Helsingin Sanomat when it was published. She forced me to read the article (not the first, nor last time). Neither of us have read the book but the topic is something that is important to us. She has always tried to push me because I learn things fast but only if I am interested in it. I needed pushing and that is the reason why tiger mom is superior to other moms. Tiger moms motivate her children by reminding to do homework or signing kids to music lessons. Tiger mom's goal is to provide her children as good of a life as possible. One might say that I am talented in some things, but I am so lazy that without my mother's pushing I might not be the person who wants to learn more everyday. We still talk about tiger mothers and we even talked about Amy Chua's speech. 

About her speech. She talked about how three things combined would lead to success. When measuring success the mostly used as measurements in western countries are money, education, happiness and health. She said that all the successful people have these three attributes: superiority complex, insecurity, and impulse control. She told that Steve Jobs is a classic example. When Jobs had just established Apple, he said to his business partners that Apple will become the biggest brand ever. That was a lot of talking from a young man who was still working from a garage at that time. Insecurity is not always a bad thing. Think about those people who have nothing to loose. They have everything to win. They will do everything to get acceptance from others. Success is a great way to get acceptance from other. "I'll show them" is a famous phrase used by people how are disappointed, angry and insecure. Impulse control is the last part of the package. I find it impossible to understand how anyone could be successful without impulse control. Chua told about the marshamallow test which I also wrote about in this post. Those people who have great impulse control are more able to plan things in the long run. I found her speech entertaining, but after some thinking I am not sure anymore if I agree with her. She told that 2nd generation of immigrants would be more successful in life than other people. I find it a bit weird, and I can't even remember if she had any studies to point on. All the speculation she had about the triple package was valid in USA. Things have always been really different in the west side of the Atlantic Ocean. 

Chua's speech had some things that made me think. She said that according to studies, impulse control can be learnt. 25 minutes work and 5 minutes rest is the optimal time if you want to be most productive at work or anywhere else. Impulse control is something that I have been reading about. Daniel Kahneman wrote a book "Thinking fast, and slow" where he tells why impulse control is difficult and when it is time to take a breath and think slow. There are lots of different kind of cognitive bias that will make you do bad decisions if you're making fast decisions. When finding conflicted information, we tend to believe the source that tells us what we already think is the truth. This is called confirmation bias. It is difficult to be objective always. When we face difficult questions such as what kind of car should I buy, or trying to calculate 17*24 by using mental calculation, we either do a quick decision and give emotions a lot power or get frustrated. If you want to know what is the difference in fast and slow thinking: What is the capital city of Spain? (fast thinking) What is the answer to 17*24? (slow thinking). Try to calculate it and you will realize how much energy it takes just to think. No calculator or paper. Impulse control is not exactly the same as thinking slow but they have a lot in common. I will write about Seth Godin's and Tony Hawk's speeches in next post.