About Me
- Name: ioana
- Location: Bucharest, Romania
I experiment with myself and the world around me. I always seek for that small sparkle of what's real and authentic in things, people, nature...
…red nail polish -> I painted my toe nails in a rich elegant red
…womanish blogs -> my personal favorite for a little time wasting in the evening is GoFugYourself
…mind maps -> helps organize my ideas and action plans in an attractive and chic layout
…the way you make me feel -> I know, I know, it’s Michael Jackson and all, but it’s from the 80’, a time when his everything wasn’t falling off, and I have to admit I was secretly a sucker for him when I was little (sshhh!)
It seams I’m having a rather colorful week, but I should tell you it’s because whenever I’m low on energy I need to beautify and adorn my work with little details! Helps me trick myself into "productiviness" :)
Ps: I also want to make this blog more colorful, what nuances would you like to see on it?
But today, going through plans and objectives and end targets, I remembered why marketing really exists: to sell. And I also remembered why selling really exists: to create money, to bring wealth for the company’s shareholders. Not for the consumers, not for the employees, not for society, but for the shareholders! And I’m not trying now to put an equal sign between shareholders and evil, bad, wrong, or other appellatives of this kind. My own case proves this theory would be wrong taken in absolute, because knowing my company’s shareholders I can say I actually enjoy the idea of contributing to their profits, because I know for them is extremely important HOW we achieve that profit!
Nevertheless, take any corporation and find that there the shareholders are group of invisible people hiding behind a curtain – only the system, but you don’t know who makes the system or what its purpose is. If you work in such a company you probably don’t even know who owns it, you only interact with or know about the management. And you have a lot of systems, planning models, balanced scorecards, objectives and strategies that you follow and measure your success as team or company by. But in truth, the REAL measure of your success lies in the share’s value!
Of course things like sales targets, turnovers and profit margins are very important, but you know why? Because (usually) if you sell more, you have a higher turnover, which (again usually) means that at the end of the year of the company will register higher profits. The big-fat-juicy profits then turn into big-fat-juicy dividends that are cashed by your shareholders.
Ending now with the Economy part, I’m getting back to the whole idea of why all these really exist? To make money! So today, while going through all the theory again, I couldn’t help being bluntly struck by the question: BUT WHY? Why should we choose to live in a world where we spent most of our time making money (for other people, if I might add!)? Now…..I can see that look on your face saying: “God, she’s going all idealistic AGAIN!”, but bare with me as I’m gonna ask you this:
How many hours a day do you spend working?
I’d probably guess somewhere around 8-10 hours daily. Now also count the time you need to get ready to go work in the morning, and the time you need to actually reach your workplace. This should add some 1-1.5 hours every day. Huh, I guess you’re pretty tired at the end of such day, no? – so then you will also need 6 to 8 hours of sleeping. Sum up all these, and see that they take 15 to 20 hours of your time daily, which makes 75% of your every day available time! You know the conclusion, or should I say it out loud?
You only have 6 hours of real life per day!
All this time spent trying to make money, more money! You know, money doesn’t really have any value unless we give it some. It’s just paper and ink in the end, or some plastic card. The real value comes from our belief, our perception of value. If one day we don’t perceive them as valuable, money depreciates (take the US $ for example). Of course there are some more complex factors that influence this perception, but in the end it’s all about demand and offer. A perception of less value for currency creates a lower or decreasing demand, which in its turn will create an exceeding offer, leading to another decrease of value, and the circle keeps going…
I’m thinking now of all the reasons I want to make/have money: all the things I want to BUY. But if I would scratch down from this list every thing that I don’t REALLY NEED, only some food items would remain (and I’m sure I can cut some more of these, like chocolate :)) This is another artificial system we created for ourselves and we ended up controlled by: things that we create don’t really satisfy a necessity, but instead create a need and then subjugate us to satisfying it!
We spend so much time like a hamster in wheel, padding like crazy to nowhere! I had a hamster while a child, a furry adorable little thing that ran and ran on its little wheel for days in a row. I wondered sometimes if he actually knew that there isn’t an end point, that he would just run in circles to waste his energy. Funny thing one day my little rebel somehow managed to climb his wheel instead of paddling inside it, and so escaped his bowl! You know what happened from that day onwards? He never ran inside the wheel again, but always used it to escape his round little bowl!
And if a little hamster can do it, I’m damn sure so can we! Let’s LIVE then, not WORK, but BE, CREATE, LOVE, EXPLORE, TRAVEL!!! Not MAKE MONEY, but PASSIONATELY BUILD, INSANELY IMAGINE, and CHILDISHLY ENJOY!!
Now I live in a pretty cool “technologized” space, even though I wouldn’t exactly call myself a technology addict. It’s just there are some simple necessities I can’t live without: my two mobile phones, my laptop, internet, digital music, messenger, blogs, ebooks, etc. etc. Some of these things haven’t even been in my life since a few years ago, and some of them have changed their shape, role and use with time. Just last year I used to carry around a cool mp3 player, which I sadly lost in the subway (I still ache for it!). But I soon found no use for another one, because I have all the music I need on my phone, I can store huge amounts of it (bless memory cards!), I can radio, I can download, and I can also use my phone as a phone :)
I know this doesn’t sound so “ubertecho”, but consider that I’m old school in many ways. I grew up without TV, internet, and I heard the first song on a phonograph! Yes, a phonograph, like the one below:
This was kinda antique even back in ’85, but living in a communist country also implied a severe lack of technology for the average people. When my parents first bought a cassette player it was a huuuge celebration. And that wasn’t even cool-slick-designed cassette players, but it looked practically like an ugly rock with some buttons:
CDs…I first saw one when I went abroad, and was amazed by their look and storage capacity, but I couldn’t use any, because you couldn’t find CD players in Romania then, and the ones abroad were waaaaaaaaay over our budget capacity!
But summing up my plunge in the past, I realized last week how much our lives and lifestyles have been impacted by the progress of technology. And if I look now at new generations to come, they have a totally different starting point, and live a completely different way than we used to. Take my 8 years old brother, he already owns a mobile (I got my first on my 18 anniversary), he comes home from school and plays computer games (I used to go out in the park), and even though he just learned to read and write he knows how to use a computer!
What will be in 5 years? Or in 10? When Rares spoke of the future trends and made us aware of the information overload we’re already being subdued, of how people are now mostly communicating with each other over internet messenger. I felt shivers down my spine imagining this tehno-world that will come, ney, that is already here. Speed and multitasking taking over books, coffees with friends and basically gadgets replacing human interaction.
I decided to plunge more into the “futurology” dictionary and I share now the results of my homework:
- I discovered Futurologists are not some psycho-overtly-imaginative people that come up with crazy gadgets or even crazier theories, but are management consultants! Yes, baby, this is a whole serious business! They make predictions and forecasts on the moves of the market, consumers, risk and competition. That sound common sense, doesn’t it?
- There are a lot studies about the future focusing on the very human elements that I was so afraid will disappear. For example sound investigations are being made on learning, happiness, and how progress impacts and develops them. I spent some time on Elliot Masie’s blog about Learning Trends, it’s refreshing to be reminded that progress does help!
- Scare has always been a constant is human history. I (and surely many others) might fear of waking up in a world where information is over-pouring in my head, or where friendly talks are replaced with friendly messenger chats. But scare and fear are no reason enough to fight progress! Can you imagine that at one point glasses were viewed as evil (the evil eye, muhaha), and that contact lenses are actually based on a sketch from Leonardo da Vinci? The reason why they didn’t have them back in the 16th century, when he designed them, is fear. I can imagine some of my grandchildren asking the same questions about our fears of the current progress..
And as a last reminder: by the time you have finished reading this, the future will have come, gone, and is now history!