The untethered lawyer

Conducting a Character Home Tour Our neighborhood association encourages residents to conduct house tours once a year as a fundraiser. Eager sightseers normally came in couples. So as to not generalize interest between the various genders, I will simply use gender neutral identifiers and name the people interested in the architecture “wives” and those feigning interest in the tour “husbands”. We presently own a historic character home. Apparently, no one ‘has’ a character home due to the permanent nature of such a home and the ephemeral nature of owners. These homes have their own nature and personalities and you ignore them at your peril. My wife searched for a home that would allow us to merge our household and her parents. Her mother was elderly and had arthritis while the father cared for her. The home’s 12 by 2 inch fir joists easily accommodated the weight of four fridges, four washer dryers and three hot water tanks.     I accepted the delegated ta...

The Cycle of Life I went on my first real cycling adventure since turning 60. I really mean that I followed my wife to work on a bike. She has travelled to work like this for a couple of years now and she enjoys the opportunity. I admired her for being a commuting cyclist. She initially bristled at the term, so I explained that commuting demonstrates an admirable lifestyle choice. Commuting by bike seemed more real than merely cycling for pleasure or exercise. Real means to serve a particular purpose. Although exercise serves a purpose to maintain one’s health and fun and happiness becomes an end in itself. I was telecommuting on my laptop one fine sunny June morning when she suggested we both should go biking to her place of work. Now, bike commuting was the exact opposite of what I was trying to accomplish that day, but she threw in the non-negotiable ‘it’s something we could do together’. The request did not appear to be a relationship issue, but the wrong answer could poss...

Is there is more to life than just money? Although that may sound a bit heretical to some/most people, there are more things in life than simply money. Another criteria that we are trying to avoid when using the corporate model of life is the accumulation of power. This appears to the be the driving force for a number of individuals in business, and sometimes politics in thinking that you can get the most out of life through power. Either by creating it, or having other people give it to you. And, in a lot of situations, that is what it mainly boils down to; other people have to accept in giving power over themselves to you.

Getting an MBA in Life   Henry Thoreau said that the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. You can see in the eyes of the men and women that commute to work on a daily basis. They have been consumed by the work that that they do. Most are looking for a way out, or they wonder if there is something more to life.   The search that people conduct may appear to be somewhat aimless. They shift from new hobbies, sports, religions, partners in order to find what may be missing from their lives. This book does not profess to show you the secret meaning of life, but it will show you how to systematically find this out on your own.     Why a Business Model?   One might think that using a business model to one’s own life simply allows the problem to take control over a larger portion of your existence. But what if there were a way to try and apply what you have already learned to living a better life? Most people are involved in business in some...

How to Get Your MBA in Life The next phase requires synthesizing material and drawing together diverse facts and events to show patterns and relationships. This shows systems thinking at its finest. Once you take a part out to completely examine it, sometimes it no longer acts the same. This is a take off on the old saw of not seeing the forest for the trees. If the details take up all your time, you are missing the larger picture.   We can also look at cumulative impacts, which is a common application of an environmental concept. The construction of a road, the blocking of a waterway, the fragmentation of a parcel habitat, may have small incremental impacts. But taken together and you suddenly have reached a tipping point and the entire ecosystem could then collapse. So we begin to understand that we can look at certain decisions or facts in isolation, and they we can look at them in context of the larger picture to determine the full extent of their impact. ...

How to Get an MBA in Life If you have a pension plan, have you even tried to read it? Some might have it memorized and are counting down the days, the rest do not have an inclination nor the time to determine what this might provide.   And you know what this might mean. Actually arranging for an appointment with human resources and trying to figure out what is going on. This might take time that you do not have, but consider that you are reading the newspaper on a continual basis about people that have absolutely no connection with yourself, and you are not prepared to put in the time to read up about yourself. This is one of the times to reset your priorities. The second step in our path is to select and distill data. We have to cast off irrelevancies to get at the main issues of a complex subject. This is not as easy as it seems. You have to be relatively well read in a particular topic in order to determine what is relevant, and what is not relevant.   ...

How to Get an MBA in Life   Everyone is understandably excited to get on with the more exciting part of business and life. And of course, I am talking about strategically planning. If you are not thinking, planning, acting and eating strategically, then you are simply wasting time. I have been told that during meetings, my humor was very strategic, and I was even pleased to hear it. But there are other things in life other than money and strategic planning, even though both are very important for various reasons.   Before we can enter the realm of strategy, we have to cleanse our bodies and sharpen our minds. This means we have to hone our critical thinking abilities. Once again, this seems like a bit of a cliché, and we would ask, what is critical thinking and why do we need it?   There are a number of definitions, but suffice to say that critical thinking is really any application of a system to examine an issue or problem. Our first step of eight ...

How to get an MBA in Life Once you have gone through the process of deciding what you want to be; physically, mentally, emotionally, or spiritually, you have to work on getting there. This would be where the rubber hits the road. In most businesses, they can establish their vision and what their business will be, but implementation is where they fall down. Implementation is the other half of the process. Some people might dismiss implementation as suggesting that the hard work is done once the mission and vision are set. But this is superficially dismissive. Keeping the faith towards your PVAM, that’s where most of the hard work lays.

How to Get an MBA in Life Now we have some basic theory, how might this work out in practice? How would you formulate a vision s tatement for yourself? This might require far more examination, but if you start with a basic statement, you could continue to refine it as you went further through the process. So, you would ask how you see herself, or how would you like to see herself in the near future. Your personal vision statement might state that you want.   The importance of this cannot be underestimated and it is important to give some thought to these matters. But merely thinking about them is insufficient. You have to write this down. This creates a permanent record of what you really intended and at least initiates the action process. Thoughts without actions are merely good intentions. Sort of like the New Year’s resolutions. Good intentions abound, but rarely are they implemented. Here we want to implement those intentions.   You...

How to Get an MBA in Life What are your major strengths and competitive advantages? These will be mainly determined by the upcoming SWOT analysis, but if you are confident that you know them already then you are good to go. Otherwise, after the SWOT analysis, you might be in a slightly better position to fill in your mission statement.   What are your responses to social, community and environmental concerns? You merely have to look around to see what sort of time you have been contributing towards these types of causes. If you have not been, how does this make you feel? If it makes you feel that you want to do something to change this, then you will later set this as one of your main objectives. Determining the approach can be left to the strategies you are going to be working on later.   Are extended family considered to be a valuable asset? One would hope that the answer would be yes, but it would not be the first time that an individual did not have ...

How to Get an MBA in Life What are the basic beliefs, values, aspirations, and philosophical priorities of your personal company? These are the largest questions you could ask about yourself, and forms the basic theme of this book. We cannot cannot suggest what these values should be, but it can provide you with a certain path to ascertain what these values should be. Under the next chapter, we will examine some underlying internal strengths and weaknesses to as part of a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis. However, some people already have predetermined a number of these criteria for themselves.   Determining your aspirations could be difficult at this time. Some people may not have any particular aspirations and are simply letting life happen to them. Aspiring to something else than what you are should be the main mission for every sentient being. We do not know what we are capable of until we try. This is not to say that we ...

How to Get an MBA in Life   You should then ask yourself as to what commitment you have towards economic objectives. If you have been a committed businessperson, undoubtedly this has been one of your highest objectives. You must then balance this with your personal life at the same time. Economic objectives can be seen as much broader than simply the amount of money declared on income tax return. There are numerous books on mutual funds and wealth accumulation. When it comes to retirement, these books would have the focus upon the amount of income that you require in order to retire properly. Of course the amount of income would also be dependent upon the assets accumulated in the meantime. Accordingly your economic objectives range from the amount of income per year, net asset accumulation per year or some other combination. From an economic perspective, you could be satisfied with your income, and you may wish to focus instead on expenses. Al...

How to Get an MBA in Life   What is the company’s (your) basic technology? Everyone starts off with the same basic technology, but through experience, work or perseverance, they hone their skills and their bodies into something better. Running for example requires a level of dedication dependent upon what you are trying to achieve. Of course your body continues to improve with the addition of education and training.  This education could come from formal schooling or texts. The best training and development of course comes from actual on the job type of experience. This is the type of technology that you should be striving for.

How to get an MBA in Life   Where does the company compete? By company I mean you of course! This question might make you assume that there is someone out there that is prepared to take over all of the thankless tasks that you already do. No one is prepared to do that, so you may rest easy. But there may be some competing or off setting activities that could prevent you from achieving your Personal Vision and Mission (PVAM). Here we are talking people who might try and detract you from what you are trying to achieve. We are assuming that these people did not make it into your list of potential customers or somehow else into your PVAM. This could also include nastier competitors such as disease or accidents. If you are in a high-risk profession, or have a high-risk genetic disposition towards a disease, then this is something that you have to deal with up front. A genetic disposition towards diabetes would compel you to take into account certain aspects of your diet to make su...

How to Get an MBA in Life   We can now turn to how this might look towards a mission statement. Who are your customers? This may seem a bit obvious, but it can be quite involved at the same time. You are definitely your best customer. You deal with yourself fairly on a daily basis. No room for false advertising here since you carry around your own personal value proposition around your waist. If you started to think about yourself as your own best customer, then you might start to treat yourself somewhat better. All of those shoddy food products you have been binging upon for years all of a sudden start to look like a raw deal. However, you do have secondary customers including your significant other, spouse, children, parents, friends and co-workers. These are the people that are immediately impacted by your primary customer. How you treat yourself, ultimately impacts them. What are the company’s major products and services? This is really dependent upon which b...

How to get an MBA in Life   Taking this approach, you might want to simply consider a smaller vision statement to address your physical activity, or lack thereof. In business terms, you might be considering to strategically position yourself to enter a new area, or perhaps re-enter a new area that you left some decades ago in order to follow-up some thing that seemed to carry a greater priority. Therefore, a small vision statement on how you see yourself would be someone that remains active in all respects resisting where possible and retiring where necessary. This seems to be a bit of a daunting task, but it need not be. You do not have to reinvent your entire life in order to obtain your MBA. Like everything, starting small and working your way would be the best approach. A company might look at its entire set of activities in order to develop a mission and a vision. Alternatively, it might only look at a small portion of its activities in order to reposition itself. ...

How to get an MBA In Life   C ustomers Leonardo da Vinci dealt with numerous customers including Kings and other patrons. His main customer always appeared to be himself. He possessed an insatiable curious approach to life with the development of an unrelenting quest for continuous learning. His art and science continuously overlapped as he sought new ways to bring his art to the public. This included new engineering skills, chemical composition of paint and forging technique for his bronzed sculptures. Products or services Once again his products and services were boundless. However, for all his painting skills, he did not complete many paintings. He started several, but perhaps his interest waned as he proceeded with other projects. His service to humanity was unmatched. His thoughts on science could have revolutionized the field then, but most of his works were not published until later. Markets   When it comes to markets and competition, we ar...

HOW TO GET AN MBA IN LIFE Once you have decided to recreate yourself into someone that could start the next renaissance age, how and where could you do this? Generally, companies consider this to be their mission statement, which asks, Who are the company’s customers? What are the company’s major products and services? Where does the company compete? What is the company’s basic technology? What is the company’s commitment towards economic objectives? What are the basic beliefs, values, aspirations, and philosophical priorities of the company? What are the company’s major strengths and competitive advantages? What are the company’s responses to social, community and environmental concerns? Are employees considered to be a valuable asset of the company? A company would then try to incorporate the answers to these questions by developing a mission statement to include these criteria. Let’s look at Microsoft for a moment at the time of this ...

HOW TO GET AN MBA IN LIFE   A personal vision statement asks the most important question about you. A vision statement for a corporation would establish how the company views itself. A personal vision statement asks a similar question about how you see yourself. For thousands of years, men and women have been asking themselves what is the meaning of life. However, for a vision statement, you should ask yourself what it means to be truly alive. So you have to ask yourself, how do you feel about your own life? If you read your own obituary, would you simply carry on and read about the more interesting person in the column beside you? If the answer is yes, then perhaps you should readdress your priorities. So how does one create a personal vision statement? This does not necessarily have to relate to yourself, but could also relate to the environment around you. Martin Luther King did not have a vision for himself, he had a dream on how the world should be, and he wor...