#vertical development

We often talk about agglomeration economies in terms of their horizontal clustering within cities. But a new paper in the Journal of Urban Economics -- summarized here by Richard Florida -- has looked at the other dimension: the vertical clustering of economic activity within tall buildings. 

Here is an excerpt from Florida’s piece in CityLab:

Economic activity is also sorted vertically, with higher-profile and more profitable firms occupying higher building floors. Law offices are disproportionately represented on the highest floors, taking up more than a third of floor space above the 40th floor, compared to 12 percent of floor space between the second and 40th floors. Finance, insurance, and real estate take up roughly 20 percent of floor space above the 40th floor, compared to 23 percent between the second and 40th floors. Business services, engineering, and miscellaneous other industries are also more likely to take up more space below the 40th floor.

The other takeaway is that there appears to be a greater rent premium attached to higher floors (vertical movement) than for being located closer to the central business district (horizontal movement). This surprised me. But I also don’t have access to the full paper. Is the dataset just US cities?

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Summary

How often do you feel as though you aren’t making any difference to your life?

Einstein said that the definition of insanity is to do the same thing and expect a different result, therefore we must learn to change our behaviours in order to get a new result.

There are five steps to developing a new behaviour in order to get an excellent result.

1. The behaviour is a limitation, where you exhibit a significant negative behaviour that impedes any possible development or change. 2. The behaviour is underdeveloped, so you might practice the behaviour but not necessarily follow through with it 3. The behaviour is beginning to add value and you are starting to see slow but steady progress and change, but more consistency is needed for results 4. You consistently exhibit a behaviour and it has a high strength 5. Your behaviour has become a ‘strategic strength’ – you are seeing the results and promoting the behaviour to others

By progressing through these steps so that your behaviour becomes a strategic strength, you will then begin to see the effects of your behaviour and the significant changes to your life and to becoming your best self.

Transcript

If you want better results you have to change behaviours, you can’t do the same thing. It was Einstein that said the definition of insanity is to do the same thing and expect a different result or expect a different outcome – its just not going to happen.

Now in leadership and business they have been looking at what behaviours really affect stock price, what makes a brilliant leader but within each of those behaviours you can quantify how well that behaviour is showing up and there are five levels to that.

So I just wanted to share that with you because then you will be able to think about your own life and how your behaviours are showing up and whether there needs to be improvement or a focus in a different area.

If we take a standard example, a lot of people want to get in better shape, I myself that is something I am trying to do at the moment.

So I know there are different behaviours: I have got to try and eat right, I have got to get good rest, and I have got to go and workout. So one of the behaviours if I really want to be in better shape and get that outcome is to go to the gym. Now there are different levels I could be at in terms of that behaviour.

Level 1 we call a ‘Limitation’. So you exhibit some significant negative behaviour, which actually erodes that performance. So, if I was doing something that actually made it impossible for me to go to the gym and really stopped me in my tracks in being able to do that. So, say every evening I was going to bed way too late then getting up too late and not making time so I couldn’t actually have time to go to the gym, or I kept putting stuff in my diary when there was gym time, then that would be limiting because I am actually negatively impacting it.

Level 2, one step up from that is that it is ‘underdeveloped’. So you do use the behaviour but it is very rare. So if I knew I had to go to the gym 5 times a week for the level of shape I want to be in, and I was going maybe once a week showing up, or I showed up 5 times a week but I wasn’t really doing the workouts I was supposed to, you know Ill go and I was supposed to do 10 reps but I only did 7, or I was supposed to do 5 sets and I only did 3 – then that’s an underdeveloped behaviour so you are only at level 2 on this track in this framework for thinking about how well you are doing with the behaviours that are going to produce the result.

Then step number 3 is that you are starting to actually add value, starting to do things that make the behaviour at a basic level add some value to the outcome that you are trying to achieve. So if for example I am going 3-4 times a week then that behaviour is there in enough of a way that it is actually contributing to what outcome I am trying to achieve. But again still not at that consistent level. So its better than where it was when it was underdeveloped but it is still not quite at that level where it is in terms of a brilliant behaviour, so it is about increasing that consistency and that quality.

So you can have kind of a in between mode here of developing that strength. Level number 4 is if it is a strength, if it is a behaviour that really is enhancing that outcome. But there is a stage there in between of a developing strength. So you are starting to get into the routine of going 5 times a week to the gym in our example, then that might be a step between 3 and 4.

But the fourth level is to have it be a strength – so you consistently use a behaviour and it has a high impact. So this is where you are so good at demonstrating that behaviour in terms of business that it is starting to have an impact in other areas of the system. So you could think that in your own life if you are working in such a way on whatever result it is, so lets take the example of getting in better shape – if you are being so good with your nutrition or so good with your exercise that other people are actually starting to notice it then that is a real strength because it shows that it is working for you and it lets you start to effect others, your friends might be like wait what are you doing? How are you losing all this weight? How are you getting in such good shape? So you are actually impacting the system you have. Or in your family if you start a new programme to manage your emotions better and other people do it because of you, you start to have little impacts in your circles and the only reason that is important is because it is nice that it is making a difference but it also helps you quantify where you are in terms of the behaviour because that only shows up when you are doing it and getting the result for yourself.

Then level 5, where you are at the very top, is it becomes a strategic strength. So this is where you consistently are using the behaviour and where it is high impact and you are actually actively promoting it to other people. So if you are in a business environment you will be building systems to demonstrate that behaviour. In your own life you could be almost educating your friends and proactively saying ‘Oh try this - I have had these great results for me, how about you try this?” and making it simple for them to try it – getting them along to the gym with you and sharing a new sleep routine that’s really helped you with your resting, that’s when it becomes a strategic strength.

So how do you apply this in your own life?

Well, what you can do is you can write down your outcome, start listing the important behaviours that you know contribute to that outcome, and then just make a little table 1-5, and just tick where you are in terms of each behaviour, what level do you think you are at.

So we will put a link to a download where you can actually have a sheet you can download and you will be able to do this and track in terms of how you are doing with your own outcome, because if you have got all levels 5s or 4s you will be moving much more rapidly towards your outcome and getting the results you want because you have got the behaviours in place, than if you look and you see you are only at level 1 or 2.

The other thing you can do is you can get that sheet, fill in the outcome and actually ask someone else to rate the behaviour. Now, you have got to be careful with this of choosing the right person, but this will give you a much more objective view of how you are doing to get that result.

Now if you can you get somebody who has already got the result you want, because then you get great feedback about are you doing the things you need to do to get the outcomes your want.

So I could give my sheet to somebody who has got the result I want of being in really good shape, and they could actually tick how they think I am doing when I tell them what I have been doing and then Ill get much better feedback.

And they may also add new behaviours that you haven’t even thought of.

So if you do that and you get your behaviours up to the levels 4 and 5, you truly can be brilliant every single day.

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Summary

Relationships are some of the hardest things we do, and the key to relationships is trust and this can be tricky to build.

However by understanding what trust is built upon, this can increase and improve the relationships we have.

The key to relationships is trust and the centre part of trust is understanding, but what we must understand is the four specific elements to trust itself.

The four elements are:

Connection: understanding the importance of regularly connecting the other person in a way that is meaningful to them

Understanding the other persons motives or mindset: by doing this you can get an idea of who they are and what makes them tick

Delivery: for you to be trusted it has got to be built on you consistently delivering on what you promise in a way that matters to the other person

Style: Although we all have individual style in how we react and deal with various things in life, by explicitly discussing your different styles you can gain further understanding on each other and instead of clashing, the different styles can compliment one another

Through developing and truly understanding these four elements of trust, you can have stronger more trusting relationships within your life.

Transcript

For a brilliant life, an important part of that is to have brilliant relationships. The key part of relationships is trust, and the centre part of trust is understanding.

But really understanding what?

It is such an important part of life but we don’t give it that much focus.

Trust is built, or broken, through the developing the understanding of four specific elements.

The first is ‘Connection’

Understanding the importance of regularly connecting to the other person in a way that is meaningful to them. What you can do here is you can focus on regular contact, what are the shared experiences you have, how do you create fun and positive events or social environments where you can build trust with the person. Because this gives time and space to build empathy, so that is a core pillar of trust.

The second pillar is you need to understand their motives or mind set

By understand another persons mindset or motives, you get an idea of who they are, you start to tune in to what their values are, if you understand their upbringing you will trust them much more because you know why they react and respond in the ways they do so it is much more predictable and you can have much more understanding and connection if you have that second pillar.

Here what you can do to really learn those things is you have to tune in more, you have to listen to them more intently, you have to actually ask them what happened as a child, what was their upbringing, what were their life experiences? It is really about getting to know them on a personal level, and it comes down to understand what makes them tick.

Even if you do that and you have got the time and connection and you understand the motives, there is the third pillar, which is about:

Delivery

This is where your responsibility really comes in. For you to be trusted, it has got to be built on consistently delivering on what you promise in a way that matters to the other person. You have got to focus on being reliable, on doing what you say you are going to do – how obvious is it that trust gets eroded when you say you are going to do something but then you don’t. Just think back to experiences in your life when someone has promised you something and then they have gone back on that promise, how much trust did it erode in you?

It is also about going out of your way, being available, doing that extra thing that you don’t have to do, but you do it because you want to build this relationship, you want to increase the trust.

Now, those three pillars can be there but then the fourth one is where a lot of people can slip up on. Just because you have got those other things it doesn’t necessarily mean you are going to have trust because the fourth pillar is about:

Style

If you have a different style to what the other person has, then even when you deliver on those other three pillars, that can cause friction and it can cause problems with the trust unless it is explicitly brought to the table.

So you can think about what choices and behaviors can get in the way of building trust with a person?

It is kind of like when you get personality clashes, people may want the same thing, understand the same thing, know the same person, but if they have two very different ways of approaching the same problem or the same topic, then it can feel like the trust is getting eroded because it feels very different.

There are ways to over come this.

The first thing is that you can explicitly talk about it. If you do that and surface those differences in style, then what you can start to do is you can start to value the difference.

How boring would life be and the planet be if everybody was the same and all preferences were the same, it is these differences that really make it an exciting, wonderful place to be, and that’s what makes it possible for you to focus and be passionate about the things you are passionate about.

If everyone was the same we would all have to be generalists and we would all be half good at things rather than really doing the things we enjoy.

By us having a style difference that means they could actually compliment you. Noticing how you do act differently to them and then dealing and managing that conflict can make something much more powerful and can completely transform the levels of trust you have.

But it is important to realize that building trust requires attention to all of these elements. You cant just do one piece and expect there to be trust because you may have friction in the other areas.

So the question is, what ingredients need attention?

Where have you been focusing your efforts?

Have you been giving enough time to the person you want to build trust with?

Do they understand your motives? Do you understand theirs?

How reliable are you being?

Can you work through these style differences?

If you ask yourselves these questions, and then surface the answers with the person you want to build and deepen trust with, it can completely transform your understand of one another which means you will deepen the trust, have better relationships and if you do that that will transform life because relationships are some of the hardest things you do.

So if you get that right, then you truly can be brilliant every day.

Please comment and share because ... well it would be awesome. 

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Transcript

Imagine you could have brilliant ideas every day. Imagine you could just snap your fingers and you had that idea that transformed that meeting that all your team got behind, the answer to the question on the exam, the strategy that was going to beat the competition. Now, when was the last time you had an idea, that brilliant idea just cut through everything? But more interestingly, the question is, where was that idea two seconds before you had it? Was it in your left foot? Was it in your hand? Was it in your shoe? In your handbag? I mean where was that idea? Why did it come through then so that it was something you could grasp, and something you said, “Guys, let’s do this. This is the way forward.”

Well, if you’ve seen our “How to Have More Energy” video, you know about the importance heart rate variability has on energy, but it’s also critical to brain function. What research shows is that the more heart rate variability you have, the better regulation you have of both cognitive and emotional function. So that’s one way to be smarter.

But at Complete Coherence, we’ve been working with athletes and executives for the last 15 years, and we’ve got an extensive database that, as we’ve been doing research into, actually it’s not just about how much you have, it’s also to do with the pattern. And the pattern is critical, so it holds the electrical signal going, the pattern going from your heart to your brain.

And so, just let me take a step back for a second about why this pattern is so important. There was this famous neuroscientist called Karl Pribram, and he was interested in how the brain stored memory. And so he did some experiments on mice where he would teach them how to run a maze, and then he would start chopping pieces of their brain off or inhibiting it. And then what he found is that he could get rid of most of the brain, but they could still remember how to run the maze.

So he came up with this theory called the Holographic Brain Theory that said that he thinks the brain stores memory in a similar way that holograms do. So the way holograms store data is, if you’ve got a hologram of an apple, and you break it in half, you don’t get two halves of an apple. You actually get two smaller apples. Because there’s enough of the information stored in what’s called the interference patterns to be able to recreate that image.

And so the brain works in a similar way, but just like in hologram, if you shine a light bulb through a hologram, you get this kind of fuzzy picture of an apple. It’s kind of diffused. Whereas if you shine a laser beam through it, what you get is this beautiful, clear, crisp image of the apple.

And so the brain works in a similar way. That pattern that is going from the heart into the brain, if you’ve got this chaotic, always changing heart rate signal, this electrical signal, you get this diffused activation in the prefrontal cortex. Whereas if you put the coherent sign wave electrical signal through it, it’s like putting the laser beam through, it creates a much more focused activation in the prefrontal cortex, and that’s where the idea comes from.

So if you really want to be smarter, it’s time to get to grips with your heart rate variability, to get controlling it, because that is what will make the real difference. And if you do that, that’s how you can be brilliant every single day.

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Summary

How to have more energy is something most people would like to know the answer to but many people don't really understand the question. This isn't your usual advice about sleep and eating right. To have more energy you need to understand what energy really is and how it is quantified in the human body. The best proxy is heart rate variability because it is a measure of the body’s ability to react to environmental stimulus, and is the biggest predictor of all-cause mortality.

If you have chaotic heart rate variability it is the same as driving a car stopping and starting and constantly changing the speed. You will burn more fuel and have less energy. Conversely if you are cruising along you will be more efficient. The same is true of your Heart Rate Variability. Turning it into a coherent pattern will improve your energy.

The fastest way to transform your heart rate variability from chaos to coherence, and therefore how to have more energy is through breathing rhythmically.

Transcript

How do you have more energy? The first thing is, you need to know what energy is. Now this isn’t some question, like some ethereal question about energy in the universe. This is scientifically, what is your energy and where does it come from? And so, we have all this physiological energy going on in our bodies. So we think about energy in terms of how well we use that energy. How efficiently is our body processing that energy?

You can almost think about it in terms of how your car burns fuel, or gas, if you’re from the states. So when you’re driving, and you’re in maybe the city or the town, and you’re going 20 miles an hour, and then you might brake and then accelerate up to 30 and then 40, You using a lot more miles a gallon than if you’re just on the highway cruising at 50 miles an hour. Because it’s that stop, start, stop, start, stop, start. Well it turns out, the human body, it’s pretty similar.

One of the best determinants of our energy, our biological energy, is called our heart rate variability. Now, heart rate variability, what that is you look at your heart beating, and you see that heartbeat and it has the little spike that goes ping, ping, ping, before it goes buuuuh, as it always does in those hospital shows. But those pings, they come at different times.

So one might come at—the time between one and another might come at .75 of a second, and the next one might come at .83 of a second, then .92 of a second, or .96, and that is varying. And if you take that time and then average it out to what it would be over a minute, if you kept that for a minute, you get different heartbeats per minute, and that variance which is always changing is heartrate variability. And because it’s always changing, it’s just like the way your car uses fuel.

So if it’s changing and all of a sudden you get two heartbeats right next to each other and you average that out over a minute, well that’s your heart rate has gone up in between those two beats, from 60 beats per minute up to 120. And then if it goes back there’s a long pause and it goes back down to 40, then it goes up to 80, and there’s loads of this variance and going all over the place. You’re going to be burning more energy.

So if you can smooth that out and not get these great big pings and spikes and troughs all over the place, then that’s how you can have more energy. And the way you do that, is you need to get something to get conscious control over. It’s not that you’re going to have to be a yogic master, we’re talking about controlling the electrical signal that goes from your heart around your body, But you don’t have to sit in a cave for 20 years figuring out how to do this. You need to know exactly what to do with your breathing.

So there’s a very specific skill with lots of different steps to it, but the number one thing you can do to regulate your heart rate variability, is to breathe rhythmically. Because breathing rhythmically will allow you to set a specific pattern in your heart rate variability, so it makes the distance between them more regular. And then, to develop a deeper understanding and better control over this, we’re actually going to leave you a link at the end of the video so you can show, you can learn how to get real control over this so that you have even greater energy.

The number one thing that will make the biggest difference is controlling the rhythm of your breathing. So just choose the rhythm whether it’s five second in, five seconds out, six seconds in, six seconds out, start to breathe rhythmically. You will improve your HRV, which is a great determiner of your energy levels, so you will have more energy. And with more energy, you’ll have more capacity to do more of things that will make a difference, and to be more brilliant every single day.

Please like and share with friends because we could all use a little more energy

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Summary

There is a big difference between horizontal learning (skills, knowledge and experience) and vertical development. Think of learning as adding more apps and development as upgrading the operating system.

Just as we cannot skip iterations in technology it is the same with human beings and their levels of development. Within each line of development there is a specific sequence of stages that people go through with ever increasing sophistication. This is because each level transcends and includes all of the previous ones.

Knowing which level you are at and what is next can help accelerate your development because it helps to make it an object of your consciousness. Fundamentally development is about making what you have been subject to and making it an object.

This episodes explores those building blocks of brilliance we call levels.

Transcripts

This week I want to talk about the building blocks of brilliance. And what I really mean by building blocks, in other words you could say levels or stages kind of, how do you build up this person, this fuller person, human being that really is brilliant in all these different lines, as we’ve discussed before. So you can develop in different ways, in your values, in your maturity, in your physical energy. But within one of those lines, you actually have to go through building blocks. You have to start at this level, and you have to go to the next one, and the next one.

And if you look at psychology, or look at child development, or adult development, you’ll see that there are specific things that we go through. So we start at this level, and then there’s a sequence. You can always expect that this one comes next, and then there’s one after that, and one after that. And you don’t just jump from here to there.

It’s like when I started playing tennis, you don’t show up and all the sudden you can hit; the forehand, the backhand, the kick serve, and everything. You have to start—ok first you’d learn how to throw the ball up, then you learn how to hit slides, then you might learn how to do the fancier kick serve. And you’ll have it the same in your life. Whatever skills or other experiences you’ve developed, you’ll have gone through specific stages to getting a greater level of mastery in each of those. And that’s all levels up.

A clear example of this is in children. At first, when they’re first born you know, children, they’re just there. Their brain hasn’t been fully formed yet, but you know they’re going to go through a specific sequence of stages. First of all, you have the physical self. You know you’ll see babies putting their toes in their mouth or biting their fingers. They’re literally trying to figure out where their body ends, and where the world outside of them begins. So they’ll bite their finger and they’ll realize, “Ooh yeah, that’s me,” because they feel the pain. Then they’ll bite the table and they don’t feel anything, “Oh ok, table’s not me.” So they get the physical self.

Then maybe around two years old, you get this beautiful moment where the emotional emerges. So for the first time, the child looks in the mirror, and before that time, they don’t realize that that’s them. But all of the sudden, there’s this moment when they see it and they go, “Oh wait, that’s me. I move my right arm and they move their right—that must be me.” They’ve developed their emotional self. But the problem here is that they don’t understand that their emotions are not the world’s emotions. So if they’re hungry, they’re crying and, “Why aren’t you crying? We’re hungry, we need food. You should be hungry too.” So that is a particular sequence. No baby will ever go to the emotional self before it gets to the physical self, so that is another level.

And beyond that, they then start going into the concrete self. They start to realize there are specific roles and rules. You know they start playing these games like cowboys and Indians, or you play nurse, I’ll play the doctor. And unfortunately you see this in businesses as well you know. People don’t develop that far so you play CEO, I’ll play CFO. And so that’s why sometimes you see leaders that might be 40 on the outside, but are only 14 on the inside.

And so these are what the building blocks are of your own brilliance. So in these different lines that you want to develop, whether it’s your spiritual lines, your values, your maturity, there are these stages that human beings go through. And we don’t skip a stage or a level. We go through that specific structure, and knowing that path can help you know what the next step is. It gives you more of a chance to really know what it should feel like, and so that allows you to then develop and accelerate quicker. Because really, all development is when you’re able to make what used to be subject to you, object. So when you’re currently at one level, you’re kind of in it, and everything’s going on around you, whether that’s your values, or your maturity, you don’t see it because it is you. But then as you develop up to the next level, you can actually notice that because you can objectify it, you can notice what were the limitations, what were the choices you made, because of that particular level of development you were at.

So the question is if we know that these structures are in place and these levels to go through, what is your next level? And what can you commit to that can help you in your journey? So you know, there is a next step for you in whatever line you choose, of where you can move forward and you can accelerate your development, by choosing what is the next level that you’re going to go to. And instead of just thinking about this, leave us a comment. Put it down in writing what that is, and make a commitment to it, because that will really help you have more of a commitment to making that transition up to that new level. And in doing that you’ll increase your perspective or your values or whatever line you’ve particularly chose. And that means you’re on your way to being more of what is possible for you and that means you’re on your way to being brilliant every single day.

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