Hacking the Good days…

Eyeball does not equate revenue and consumers get bored quick if your product does not provide meaningful experience.

Ning, a feature-rich social-networking site recently announced that they are phasing out free services.  The website actually has been well received by its user base, with 2.3 million user-created Ning Networks and more than 45 million registered users. According to the Guardian, despite the $120m venture capital backing, Ning does not appear to have made a profit.  Having engaged users is great, unfortunately it is not enough to sustain a business.  Companies need to invest early and enough in coming up with sustainable, if not, innovative monetisation strategy as well.

Bebo, on the other hand, is now facing up to the fate of either being sell-off or product closure.  One apparent reason of Bebo’s downfall is the lack of investment,

At one point, we had 40 engineers when Facebook had something like 2,000.

Bebo is also compounded by the threat that their target demographics (early teens) are notoriously fickle in curating their online brand experience.  4 years ago being on Bebo was hip, now, it’s possibly tacky, as Danad Boyd’s research with American teens on MySpace and Facebook perfectly captures this demographic’s ambivalent attitude towards social media,

Then, I met Kat, a white 14-year-old from a comfortable background.  We were talking about the social media practices of her classmates when I asked her why most of her friends were moving from MySpace to Facebook.  Kat grew noticeably uncomfortable.  She began simply, noting that “MySpace is just old now and it’s boring.”  But then she paused, looked down at the table, and continued.

 ”It’s not really racist, but I guess you could say that.  I’m not really into racism, but I think that MySpace now is more like ghetto or whatever.” – Kat

Important lesson to learn for business is that the key to sustained business success is to keep your brand relevant to your target demographics.  Getting to the top is not easy, but staying at the top is even a bigger challenge.

A good friend of mine has been complaining about her wrists that hurt so bad she has started visiting the physios regularly – and she’s only in her twenties!  That made me think, how many of us (who sit in front of a computer all day) are constantly suffering from back pain, shoulder pain and wrist pain?  I hope you’re not one of us, but if you do, I hope this blog helps.

I have started doing yoga about 6 years ago, and have been a total convert only a couple of years ago when I learnt how to relieve any kind of strain and pain by going into certain poses.  I also wrote about the main benefits of yoga for geeks in particular.

But as action speaks more than words, I feel oblige to share with as many of you all my favourite stretches for relieving pain around the wrists and shoulders, so easy that you don’t even go into a class to try!  But of course, boring reminder here, when there’s any extreme discomfort or sharp pain, make sure you check with you GP.  Otherwise these are great little exercises to give yourself a little impromptus massage.  I have linked all exercises back to their source, but I have added my own personal comment to bring out the maximum effectiveness of each stretch.

Enjoy!

1. Basic Wrist Stretch (ninja mask’s optional!)

This one is so simple that you can do it while you’re sitting in front of your desk.

• Remember to sit properly with your both feet parallel hip-width apart
• Inhale as you extend one arm (or if your neighbour colleagues don’t mind, both), remember to tighten your fingers and arm muscles, that way you can feel the the stretch more intensely
• Exhale while you stretch up, on the next inhale point your wrist up
• Exhale, return to neutral (hands pointing to the side)
• Inhale pointing down, exhale return to neutral
• For the creative type – feel free to use this exercise to focus on the breath and try to maintain longer exhale than inhale, that way you clear your mind and come back with more good ideas (sans the caffeine and hello good night sleep!)

* also take time to notice you *are not* slouching – imagine an invisible string pulling yourself up from the tip of your head.  No, I’m not trying to imply that you’re the sock-puppet mucking around on Wikipedia, it’s just that in the long run slouching messes up with your spine alignment and exerts prolong pressure in the wrong place.  And that can really, really hurt, now we don’t want that, do we? :)

Great for wrist relief!  Once you get into the hang you can start introducing variations, such as rotating your wrists clock-wise and anti-clock-wise, also great for relieving the tight tendons around the wrists.

2. Counter shoulder stretch

Knowing my blog’s audience, I am tempted to make this pose more macho sounding, like, Couching Tiger pose.  Right. ;)

As you know, but probably not often think about, that our shoulders are composed of highly intricate joints, muscles and tendons and we tend to stuck them in the same position whole day (arms 90 degrees typing/mouse maneuvering).  By now with all the damage done, you are probably like me – a quick test here -  if you reach your left arm above your shoulder to the centre back and right arm from below up, do your hands touch touch one another easily?  On both sides?   heh.  After years of trying (definitely not hard enough), I still can’t do that on my left side.

If you are like me, you’re going to *love* the couching tiger stretch,

This pose should bring immediate relief to upper back and shoulders, as well as relieving strains on the arms.  Also it clears the head a bit, too.  And if you’re good in holding your spine steady and lock your knees, you can get a great hamstring stretch too, great for the cyclists.

Finally!  I’ve been building up to this funky one!

3. Funky hamstring-lower-back stretch:

I love this one when I start feeling sleepy – and it’s so easy to sneak into an empty meeting room when you feel stale, uninspired, or just having bad shoulder strain!  Easier done than how it looks, too, I promise.  Not to mention having all the blood rushing to your head, guess how I quit my coffee addiction slowly and steadily?

Hope you like the stretches, and feel free to share if I have missed something obvious.  Now time to show some love to your shoulders, wrists and lower back… and let me know if these poses work for you!

One of those days you sit in the park with a friend that clicks with you, and you start talking like Plato (or Plato-wannbe) ;).  My mate and I were talking about what makes people lucky.  It reminded me of a scientific research I have read and it’s a fascinating finds – there are actual significant differences in personality traits that contribute to people’s perception on their luckiness.

So this psychologist, Richard Wiseman, devised an experiment to test his two groups of people – one group consistently counts themselves as lucky, and the other group as unlucky,

I gave both lucky and unlucky people a newspaper, and asked them to look through it and tell me how many photographs were inside. On average, the unlucky people took about two minutes to count the photographs, whereas the lucky people took just seconds. Why? Because the second page of the newspaper contained the message: “Stop counting. There are 43 photographs in this newspaper.” This message took up half of the page and was written in type that was more than 2in high. It was staring everyone straight in the face, but the unlucky people tended to miss it and the lucky people tended to spot it.

It is shocking to see that the ‘lucky’ group tends to remain oblivious to the ‘lucky’ opportunities right in front of them.  I like how Wiseman puts a positive spin to the research outcome – being lucking is actually a *skill* that you can learn:

Unlucky people often fail to follow their intuition when making a choice, whereas lucky people tend to respect hunches. Lucky people are interested in how they both think and feel about the various options, rather than simply looking at the rational side of the situation. I think this helps them because gut feelings act as an alarm bell – a reason to consider a decision carefully.

Unlucky people tend to be creatures of routine. They tend to take the same route to and from work and talk to the same types of people at parties. In contrast, many lucky people try to introduce variety into their lives. For example, one person described how he thought of a colour before arriving at a party and then introduced himself to people wearing that colour. This kind of behaviour boosts the likelihood of chance opportunities by introducing variety.

Lucky people tend to see the positive side of their ill fortune. They imagine how things could have been worse. In one interview, a lucky volunteer arrived with his leg in a plaster cast and described how he had fallen down a flight of stairs. I asked him whether he still felt lucky and he cheerfully explained that he felt luckier than before. As he pointed out, he could have broken his neck.

So the keys are ICP: Listen to you Intuition/Instinct, be Creative, and stay Positive.  Wish you all luck and please do share with friends who find themselves lucky and more so those who don’t!

Special thanks to another good friend of mind who builds this MiniMotivation hack: keep refreshing it for more positive vibes.  I feel lucky already. :)