We all have good and bad attributes to our personalities. One that I have come to accept and lately embraced with myself is my laziness. I am beyond insanely lazy. In fact so lazy that I will not care to remember things people say or things I do unless I know for a fact I will need to use the knowledge within a short future. There is a reason my mom calls me like twice to remind me if we are going to do something on an appointed day.

I say that I embrace my laziness but that is not to say that I just accept that it’s there and that I have to live with it. It is not saying that I like it either, but that I have come to use it to what I believe is my advantage, and especially come to find ways to work around it. You could call it tricks to make myself less lazy. One of those tricks is using a calendar, but another more important trick is what I want to talk about in this post.

Diversity is a keyword in my life. I like to do many different things, see different places and have many different experiences as all people do. But diversity is the opposite of focus, which I believe is key to doing things efficiently and well. To lead a good life one needs diversity, to accomplish and achieve one needs focus. Diversity and focus ties in deeply with my laziness. Being lazy is clearly counterproductive to being focused, but it helps me to be diverse. Laziness breaks focus and allows me to pursue other interests, but it also forces my brain to be occupied by just the important things. As I said: the laziness makes me easily forget that which I don’t really care about.

The laziness thus brings up two clear disadvantages in my life. Sometimes I need to be very focused for long periods of time and sometimes I need to remember things that aren’t necessary to my immediate survival and happiness, like meeting with my mother or other recreational and social interactions. It makes me happy but my brain doesn’t always deem it important enough to remember.

The remedy for loosing focus was very hard for me to track down, but I think I have found it. I found it trough experiencing real pressure from school and work where focus is crucial. The solution, while taking around 20 years to find, is really very simple and can be expressed in the word Extremism. Do everything to the max. Need that report written? Spend 15 hours straight writing it. Now this sounds very much like the reasonings of a procrastinator, and in part it is. To me, procrastination and laziness are synonymous. The difference is that the word procrastination suggests that the task is not one the procrastinator wants to do. I want to do many things but am just too lazy to actually do them.

I’ll give you an example of something I would not have accomplished without extremism and that is not, in my definition, procrastination. I managed to exercise daily for three months in 2009 because I did it to the max, making a challenge of it and working out an hour a day. When I’ve tried working out before with the regular twice a week schedule I end up breaking the schedule and finally quitting after just a couple of weeks. My laziness sort of pushes it out of my mind and makes me forget that it’s important to me, effectively making it unimportant for me. Extremism makes me accomplish things I would otherwise not pursue at all.

People tend to call me disciplined recently, which spurred this post. If they could see the real me, the 13-14 year old Fredrik that still lives inside me, or just see my room, they would realize that discipline is the wrong term to use. I am anything but disciplined. When you see someone spending 12 hours in school 7 days a week, discipline is usually the word that comes to mind. Extremism is the word that comes to my mind. I just know it has to be done and the only way I can do it is to the extreme or it wouldn’t be done at all.

Extremism also helps out with diversity. I have tried combining school and work in an effective manor, but I can’t do it without starting to feel worn out and like I’m not producing good enough results in either thing. But by doing things to the max I’m able to finish one thing in half the time, way ahead of schedule so that I am subsequently focused on the second thing. Extremism makes me in this case be able to do two things instead of just one.

Extremism is what keeps my life going sometimes, shutting of my brain except the one part that needs to focus on the task at hand.

I could continue this post for another thousand words just defining the difference between extremism and discipline. But then no-one would read it, so I wont. I hope I’ve managed to get some sense across of what it is that makes me be able to stay focused even though I’m lazy, and that the laziness actually helps me to unfocus and live.

Extremism is what makes me tick, not discipline.

Since I’m going to Japan for a year I’ve decided to study up a bit on my all-time favorite hobby and hopefully future career; entrepreneurship, specifically how entrepreneurship is viewed and how it is done in Japan.

I’ve already ordered the book “Comparative Entrepreneurship: The UK, Japan, and the Shadow of Silicon Valley” by D. Hugh Whittaker but in waiting for that book I’ve started to try to gather up some information on the internet. The biggest problem I’ve had though is that most articles I can find online are quite dated, 5+ years old. I’ll try to summarize what I’ve found so far though.

The popular opinion of entrepreneurship in Japan is that it is hard, getting funding and finding venture capital seems to be have been hard in the past and incubators seem rare. When discussing the problem it is generally put into three categories; political, cultural and the Japanese perception on entrepreneurship. What I’ve found when reading is however that the future seems extremely bright. Japan has had enormous success in the past taking western concepts to adapt and improve them.

Cultural problems

To understand why the Japanese entrepreneurial market looks like it does I think you need to understand the Japanese working-culture. Until very recently, life-time employment was the norm at Japanese companies, meaning that once you got out of school and started working you kept that job until you retired^[1]. This system has been given up more and more during the recession of the 90′s and have been moving more toward a more dynamic workforce. Japanese companies have a strictly seniority-based wage system, so entry-level workers will all make the same amount of money regardless of competence or productivity. It is argued^[1] that this will prevent Japanese people from taking the risks of entrepreneurship when they can get a good salary and guaranteed increase in pay with time.

But I don’t see how this would really prevent people from starting companies. For me, entrepreneurship has never been a way to earn more money, I’ve always seen it as a sure way to make less money and work much longer hours, but with the possibility of changing something; peoples way of life, solving a common problem or revolutionizing the world!

A cultural and workplace related problem is however that if a Japanese person fails with his startup it is hard to get hired into the normal workforce^[1]. This is completely in line with the “The protruding nail gets hammered” mentality, you’re not supposed to do things differently. In different words, failure is more serious than it is in the west.

None of these cultural problems should make it difficult for a foreigner to try and create something in Japan though.

Political outlook

Japan has a history of most kinds of startups, from starting to-be industry giants in the 50′s to the equivalent of Microsoft^[2] in the 70′s. Everyone knows that after World War II, Japan had tremendous success starting up companies that liberally borrowed technology and concepts from the Unites States and made them even more successful. Until the 90′s this worked perfectly, but it seems as though they caught up at that point and was forced to start creating by themselves; something they were not set up to do.

During the 90′s government regulations were definitely stifling entrepreneurial activity, but they quickly realized that to be able to get out of the recession and continue their economic growth they needed entrepreneurs in all fields. “The government is beginning to recognize their importance and is easing regulations to give the ventures more room to maneuver.”^[3] A quote from BusinessWeek in 2000, so 10 years ago they already started making it easier for new companies.

Japan Venture Capital Association was started in 2003 with the purpose of getting better data on the venture capital market as well as help to develop and improve investment firms^[4]. This is something that has existed in the U.S. since 1973 and has been long needed. No doubt will it help change the Japanese VC market.

Similarly in an article describing the 2003 Venture Fair in Tokyo it said that “To start with, I counted no less than 14 different government-affiliated new business support organizations in the first row of booths inside the exhibit hall. [...] I confirmed that yes, they lend money to any qualified corporation in Japan, regardless of the nationality of the founder.”^[5] So it seems there are big changes taking place and it paints a picture that it is no harder for a foreigner than a native to start a business in Japan.

Japanese perception of entrepreneurship

I think the biggest cause for Japanese people to not start companies is not because of the workplace culture or because of the political troubles they would have to go through. I think it is because of the view Japanese people have of the entrepreneur. It seems that much of the entrepreneurial view is still based in starting a convenience store or restaurant. Which is not what I would call entrepreneurial at all. Japanese citizens still seem very cautious and don’t seem to be wanting to take risks.

The American view of an entrepreneur in my opinion is that of a pair of founders doing what they love to improve the world; it is almost a romantic thing. The Japanese view of an entrepreneur seems to be of someone who either wants to be free of the normal Japanese lifestyle or someone who wants to compete with the existing behemoth companies, the innovative part of entrepreneurship doesn’t take as big a role as it does in the west.

Investment and exits

“Although the country is the world’s second-largest economy, it has generated only $3 billion a year, on average, in venture funding, for about 3,000 investment deals annually. [...] In the U.S., by comparison, startups get funding to the tune of $30 billion a year over deal volume of about 4,000 investments. Silicon Valley’s venture funds and their compatriots enjoy returns three to four times higher than Japanese funds.”^[6] The lack of investment is seen as a problem, but according to Michael Korver^[7] there is money to be spent and the interest to spend money is getting larger.

Angel investing is really starting to take hold^[8], but Japanese companies for some reason do not produce as high return on investment as western companies, something that’s been holding the investment market back. Other problems that almost fall into the political category are problems such as going public with your company. “Onerous listing criteria also make it extremely difficult for young companies to go public. It takes twice as long as in the U.S. — so investors have a longer wait to recoup their money.”^[8]

With an aging population unsure about their future and the future of the social security and pension system, the Japanese people are the richest people in the world. “After all, the average Japanese household sits on the world’s largest pool of savings — $116,000 per family at last count — yet interest rates are near zero, and real estate and stock prices are still 65% below their peaks of 10 years ago.”^[8] The unwillingness of Japanese people to spend and invest is a large socioeconomic problem in Japan, one that impacts the startup funding market as well.

There are essentially two exit strategies for companies, i.e. to sell the company and cash out. One way is private equity transaction, where another company or group of people buys the company. The other way is to do an initial public offering (IPO) on the stock-market; in other words to “go public”.

“The problem is that the market for private equity transactions in Japan is small. In other words, companies here simply don’t acquire each other as frequently or readily as they do in the United States, for example. [...] While it’s true the market for private acquisitions here in Japan is small, that’s primarily because the supply side is limited.”^[7] I already mentioned the difficulty of going public with your company, so if you’re looking to be a serial entrepreneur; making an exit through private equity seems to be your best bet. The reason why Japanese entrepreneurial activity is low is probably because of the mindset that you start a company and then run that company in hopes of being able to let your children inherit it. That is simply not how things are done in the west, while serial entrepreneurship is not by any means the standard in the west either, we don’t really start companies in order to be able to give our children a company when we retire.

The future

If anything, the future of the Japanese entrepreneurial venture is bright. There’s starting to pop up entrepreneurial events such as startup week^[9] and other networking meetings of that kind.

In connection with Waseda university, a kind of incubator that helps you with Japanese market feasibility studies and writing your business plan was started in 2002. “The Waseda Business Excelerator (WBX) was launched in 2002 to help non-Japanese high-growth ventures develop successful businesses in Japan, thus promoting global, technology-based entrepreneurship.”^[10] Here you get to stay for 6 months to a year and get help from MBA’s and the university.

I think this is exactly what is needed to improve the future of the Japanese startup. A mix between incubators and angel funds like the fantastic American company Y-Combinator.

I think there is a lot of talent in the Japanese people for creating new things, innovating and solving real problems. But I think the biggest problem is that the view of entrepreneurship is so different there from the U.S. This does however create a bright future for a westerner looking to start something new in Japan. I think that a foreigner looking to innovate and give the Japanese economy a boost can be welcomed with open arms.

In short, the feeling I get from U.S. venture capitalists and incubators is that they invest in people. Ideas are dime a dozen and the important thing is the entrepreneur, the entrepreneur is the one who has the ambition and the drive to make the idea a success.
In the U.S. there is a sentiment that I agree with very well that there are people who just are entrepreneurs, they are the happiest when they get to solve problems and try to change the way we think and live, the ideas are just what the entrepreneurs get to work with.

In Japan I get the reverse feeling, that ideas are worth more than people. It is shown in the way they think that entrepreneurship is a way to become free of the drudgery of normal salaried life-time employment. It is also the way Japanese companies currently work. People are considered plentiful and they don’t seem to spend much time trying to really find the most creative and productive worker, they blindly trust that the best schools will churn out the best employees; which in my opinion is seldom the case.

I am positive about the Japanese entrepreneurial atmosphere because it seems to be on the verge of changing and is certainly developing more to the American way of thinking. Much of this development might already have happened, since I can’t seem to find that much new information. The book I’ve ordered is written in 2009 so hopefully that will shed some light on recent changes.

Sources

[1] http://www.atimes.com/japan-econ/DF21Dh01.html
[2] http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.05/jsoft.html
[3] http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_10/b3671011.htm
[4] http://www.japanentrepreneur.com/200303.html#2
[5] http://www.japanentrepreneur.com/200301.html#1
[6] http://www.forbes.com/2009/05/29/japan-entrepreneur-conference-markets-rebuilding-global-markets-venture.html
[7] http://www.japanentrepreneur.com/200303.html#1
[8] http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/may2001/nf20010511_940.htm
[9] http://fumijp.blogspot.com/2009/12/entrepreneurship-in-japan-and-startup.html
[10] http://www.janbo.gr.jp/eng/2002/waseda.html

Abstract

With this blog post I intend to argue for an hypothesis about the benefits of extended solitude. I will try to quantify these benefits and propose an experiment to test whether my argued hypothesis is true.

Definition

To be able to efficiently talk about solitude we must first define the word and its meaning. Solitude is obviously about being alone – but more is required than simply being alone in my definition of the word. One must be isolated from regular communication and daily routine. It is permissible to talk and communicate with ones close-standing friends and relatives, but not in a frequent manner and most of all, not at will. Communication with people you know can not be whenever you want, it has to be at some occasion where downtime is experienced. The reason behind this is that you should not be able to simply communicate your thoughts to someone else for a discussion about the subject, your thoughts must stay with yourself and you must you yourself go through the entire chain of thoughts and sort things out for yourself. So in summary; no frequent communication, no regular daily routine and physically separate from anyone you would know.

Hypothesis

I contend that putting yourself in a situation of extended solitude will have a much beneficial effect on your capability to have deep thoughts, relax to a greater extent and do things you would otherwise not deem yourself to have time to do.

Deep thought In every day life, I seem to dismiss a lot of thoughts because they are simply to large to think about. In a recent article from Pete Michaud, it is proposed that thinking large – and thereby deep, complex or otherwise more important and evolving – thoughts is impossible because of the restriction imposed by short-term memory. He suggests that to maintain a train of thought large enough to be important one must write it down. While I fully agree with his statement that large thoughts must be written down for us to have the capacity to process them, I do not agree that only large thoughts are important, this is however besides the point.

I suggest that putting oneself in complete solitude and with no clearly defined task ahead of you, one will have the possibility to explore these deep and large thoughts in a more thorough manner. One should of course bring a notepad to such a period of extended solitude because of the previously mentioned reasons.

The illusion of time While a daily routine is maintained and a person is in a familiar setting, I believe that we observe time differently than if we are in an unfamiliar setting doing things we would not normally do. I don’t think this argument would stand out as odd to anyone, it seems to be a well agreed upon statement. I suggest that the different view on time can in many cases be a much negative effect of daily life. We will think that we have much less time than we in fact do, we will easily make excuses to not to do something because we knows the schedule ahead very well and we are stuck in a mindset where we only see the next thing on the schedule as important. In a familiar setting, we might also easily fall into patterns of laziness – again a quite obvious statement.

In order to break all these “bad habits” – I as most others believe that we must go to an unfamiliar location and do things we would not normally do. While this change of setting and routine will counter many of the negative effects stated above, I believe that to gain true efficiency, as opposed to the statement that “you do not have time”, you must be in a state of previously defined solitude as well as have a loose unscheduled structure on your tasks. The words efficiency and unscheduled structure do not often coincide in the same sentence, for obvious reasons. But I am talking about efficiency within a very narrow set of tasks.

Relax I believe that relaxation comes from being able to do whatever you want. If you are in the act of performing a certain task like reading a book and get that kind of thought you want to explore, relaxation comes from being able to put down the book, pick up the notepad and explore that thought. This is opposed to the way I live my daily life where reading that book is most likely mandatory and I need to get it finished as soon as possible. I maintain that being in a state of solitude will make your brain work differently. Knowing that you are “allowed” to put the book down and explore a thought without any negative effects will make you more likely to have that thought. Another benefit of solitude would in this case be that it is the ultimate form of doing whatever you want. If you are not put in a state of solitude you might have to think about the effects of your behavior on others. This is also why there must be no regular communication in your solitude because it would impose a schedule on your time, making your brain less free to drift and more restrained in thinking about when and where it is.

The experiment

To test the hypothesis that solitude will make you more efficient, have deeper (and productive, not simply pointlessly introspective) thoughts and more relaxed there is nothing to do but try it out. To this end I have constructed an ultimate scenario in which to test this hypothesis, fulfilling all my conditions of solitude as well as facilities to heighten your relaxation as well as your ability be completely unconstrained in every way.

I propose that to have the perfect circumstances to test my hypothesis one should travel to Hurghada, as illustrated in Figure 1. I have specifically chosen the Shedwan Golden Beach hotel as the destination for this test. It lives up to the conditions of the definition of solitude while it has all the facilities to enhance your ability to relax. Facilities such as a heated pool, jacuzzi, several bars, a fitness center and a buffet restaurant. If one can not relax, focus on thinking and get loosely planned things like reading done here, I suggest it can not be done anywhere.

Possible flaws

As any hypothesis, I have simply constructed a model to the best of my experience. Naturally this model is an approximation of reality and as such it might approximate some aspects better than others. The possible flaws I see with this is the instinctively contradictive statement that one can be “absent-minded” and allow oneself to set things aside to explore a thought and still do your main task more efficiently. I contend that this effect can be attained by the fact that all your time is the time you spend doing this task, as opposed to the regular 8-12 hour workday where one will usually waste the rest of the time of the day. There needs to be some balance of thinking and reading if one is to get much reading done, but I suggest this balance is quite easily attainable. There is also a possible and probably great risk of the solitude leading to useless introspection, instead of productive introspection. Being alone for extended periods of time has a tendency with human beings to lead them into a false sense of “being right”. If exposed too much to your own world view without input from others, one can convince oneself that anything is true, no matter how crazy it really is. This is a bug in the function of the brain and I think it can easily be avoided by keeping the extended period of solitude to less than a week or two.

Do I intend to execute this experiment?

Yes, yes I do.

After the final exams for this period I will be going to Hurghada (as illustrated in Figure 1) and spend one week in the jacuzzi. With a book.

What I hope to attain My goal of this trip is threefold. Test the above hypothesis. Read the books listed below. Fill a couple of pages of my Moleskine with some thoughts I have been walking around with the last couple of months and hopefully get some coding done on a project that I will be doing in April next year (which I suppose is to be publicly announced pretty soon).

Appendix A – Books to read

I’ve already read about half of the first and third books, so the page-count totals at around 1500. It’s an absurdly high goal, but what the hey. If you’ve read this long; you’re probably not that adverse to reading anyway so you probably thinks it’s OK! ;P

Well our time is almost up here in this.. indescribable place. And the bad feeling of having to leave is certainly creeping up on me. It really has been a wonderful time and even though we didn’t get to see as many “new” things as the last trip, we have gotten a fantastic experience.

I feel we have gotten more of a feeling of how it is to be here when you’re a bit more used to it, and it’s still not boring me! Not one bit. The first time around of course it’s going to be awesomely fun, but the second time around could have turned out to be boring just because we’ve already seen it all once. It did not turn out that way!

But I plan my departure from this country with one experience missing – one that I wanted, but didn’t know how to get and haven’t gotten. The experience of how it would actually be to live and study or work here.

I want to know what young people complain about with Japan, I want to know what old people are complaining about with Japan. From knowing the complaints of the people, I can decide if they are complaints that actually matter to me and if I would complain about it too if I lived here.

I want to know how people live here, what all the apartments look like on the inside, how easy it is to get rich and how easy it is to get poor.

I want to know what the health care system is like, what insurance people have and if you get ruined if you get an illness requiring you to be in a hospital for a long time.

I want to know what kind of vacation I can expect and what kind of salary to expect as a Master of Engineering Physics fresh out of school. I want to know what kind of vacation and what kind of salary to expect after 10-15 years into my career.

It seems easy to get lost as a salaryman among the millions of salarymen, it seems almost impossible to “climb the ladder” and to earn a reputation.

I want to know what the political system is like, if people care about politics and how they show their care.

I want to know about issues that matter to me, like personal integrity and welfare.

Until I know these things, Japan will always only be a fantastic place for vacations to me. I can’t logically decide if it’s good or bad to live here without these facts, but of course — my heart tells me it’s good.

Since a couple of weeks back Emma and I have been using PASMO. Here is the definition according to a subway station guide.

PASMO card is a convenient prepaid transportation card that contains an integrated-circuit (IC) chip, allowing the user to enter the subway by simply swiping the card over a PASMO reader located on the ticket gates. The card is rechargeable and can be used over and over. It also can be used interchangeably with the East Japan Railsway Co.’s (JR) Suica card. In addition to using your charged PASMO card to ride the subway or bus system, you can use it to pay for items purchased at stores and vending machines. The PASMO card can also be used for purchases wherever you see the Suica logo.

So this is why I really love PASMO! You just beep the card at the ticket gates in the subway when you enter and when you leave and it deducts the correct amount from your card.

You buy the card from a vending machine and there are basically two versions of the card, one that is connected to you personally and one that is not – so everyone can use it freely. If you choose to personal card you have to provide a passport when buying it, the advantage of this being that if you loose your card you can reclaim it with the amount that was left on it.

So here we’ve got a card that you can use to pay for stuff really fast, it literally takes milliseconds for the purchase to go through, and a lot of convenience stores like AMPM takes PASMO, so it can actually be used as a replacement for cash.

I like credit cards and I don’t like carrying around lots of cash in my pocket. But there is a very large downside to credit cards, if someone gets a hold of your card they have full access to your entire bank account until you have time to block it, which if you don’t notice that it’s gone or if your robbed and they steal your phone too, can be a pretty long time.

With PASMO you only keep it charged with a reasonably small amount at any given time, the maximum amount allowed to store on it is (I think) 30 000 yen. So if it’s stolen or you loose it, you can’t loose very much, just like cash. If you have the personal card you still have the option to block it as well. So you’ve now eliminated one downside to using a credit card.

The second big downside to using credit cards is time, you have to take out your card, swipe it (and hope the magnetic strip isn’t wiped, something that happens quite often) and then wait for confirmation. Every store has to be online to check that the card is valid and all that. All of this takes huge amounts of time, and banks usually charge the store a small amount for each card-purchase they handle (at least in Sweden).

With PASMO, you simply keep the card in your wallet and put it up against an IC-reader and radio frequencies does the rest. Everything is over and handled in milliseconds, because the IC on the card keeps track of how much money is on there (I assume). I don’t know how hard it is to hack, but I assume here as well that it’s pretty damn hard because if people were doing it, they probably wouldn’t have the card.
The reason I don’t think they store the charged amount in a central database is that it would require every vending machine in every street to be online and that seems unlikely.

So, PASMO is the perfect blend of the safety of cash with even greater ease of use than a credit card. It’s simply fucking awesome.