JustinIdea - Justin Ricaurte's Personal Blog

A Philosophy of Gray

I know in many instances it is more efficient and effective to place all of your bets on one strategy, especially when working on a start-up company with limited cash.  Although when going about life, I find it interesting how people like to be one thing instead of adopting a bi-pole philosophy.  If you approach life from only one angle, then you will surely be able to capitalize on all of the opportunities that present themselves along that angle, and you will become more specialized at that view.  But at a point, the amount that you gain from that angle no longer matches the energy and effort you put into it.  You will also miss other opportunities that present themselves and it will be harder to make yourself flexible to meet new situations.

I've adopted a philosophy of gray, where I work on using both poles at the same time to maintain my flexibility to react to new situations as they present themselves.  I work on keeping these poles in constant competition and cooperation, so that I can mix and match them as necessary.  For example when solving a problem, I work on deducing the core problem that everything else seems to hinge on, then finding through induction how changing this bit many different ways may alter the system.  This is both an art and science as the questions you need to ask for a given situation are not set in stone and the path to exploring it zig-zags a lot.  There are also many dependencies that you need to account for when solving these problems.  Granted, sometimes this strategy does not work as there might not be a core problem, and in those situations I work on finding a tool set that does.

An analogy for a philosophy of gray is to view everything that you are and can do as a tool.  For example, I'm an ENTJ, the field marshal.  This doesn't mean that I always act like all of these traits.  Sometimes I seclude myself into a cave, other times something I see sends a feeling of passion through me, or I might sit back and watch what is going on in the world.  Instead of saying this is all I am, why not view each letter as a tool?  Sometimes being surrounded by people is the best way to regain my energy, other times a good book will do.  Sometimes I need to judge quickly, other times I need to take a step back and smell the flowers. 

This entire thought process came to me, because of how many self-help books there are proclaiming how you should lead your life a certain way - granted if I wrote a book about this I'd be in the same league, haha.  A friend of mine has been reading a lot of these books and is convinced that

1. that the world is moving in a direction where it will require you to be right-brain dominant to lead.
2. and conversly, being left-brain dominant will not allow you to become a leader in the world of the future. 

I argued that he'd be most valuable if he was both right and left-brain dominant and knew when to use each of them to his advantage.  Without a combination of logic and creativity, it's more difficult to ask the tough questions and generate spontaneous ideas that you can back-up with documented research.

I personally enjoy the flexibility that being gray allows. :)

ALPFA National Convention

I got back to Seattle from a trip to the ALPFA National Convention last night and must say the convention was awesome!  Having 2400+ Latinos from the business world at Disney World in Orlando made for awesome networking, friends, dancing, and after parties! :)

The convention started off Friday night with a Salsa Competition that I took part in with my friend Nerelys.  The first time we had danced together was last Wednesday, and it showed a bit on the dance floor by the judges comments, haha.  Saturday was pretty slow until the reception that night with salsa dancing following immediately afterwards. 

Sunday was a lot of fun.  I was on the University of Washington KPMG Case Competition team, and we gave our presentation on a fictitious company called InfoMemo that needed to raise $15 million from investors to do the marketing and sales for a hybrid pda/laptop it had developed.  I worked on applying what I've learned from reading Logic+Emotion and Presentation Zen.  The part I presented was the Financial Analysis section, and I received a lot of compliments for the two, colorful tables I had (the case competition was mostly for accounting students, so lots of text and big quotations tended to be the norm). [link to  slideshow]

One thing I learned during the presentation was that you can use your nervousness right before you present to your advantage.  People will tell you that if you sense your heart rate increasing that you should take a couple of deep breaths to settle down, although I've noticed this tends to decrease your energy level during the presentation and make you less animated.  I've given quite a few presentations, but right before it was handed-off to me, my heart rate doubled and I became pretty nervous.  I took one deep breath, noticed it didn't do anything, said "screw it", and gave my presentation.  By not trying to calm myself down, I believe my presentation was much more animated than it would have been, due to the combination of adrenaline and extra oxygen in my body. 

Sadly, we didn't end up making the finals for competition, but this did allow us to go out and dance the night away, without worrying about waking-up at 6am (3am Seattle time, my usual bedtime).  Monday night, we went to Epcot for the case reception, mingled with the other college students, and were able to watch the fireworks display outside on a private boardwalk.  The one thing I wish they would've added was a dance after the reception, because it was a perfect time for all the students to get to know each other, and good quarter or half of them were under 21 and not able to take advantage of the club scene at Pleasure Island.

Tuesday was the grand finale with a career fair in the morning and a gala at Epcot at night.  I was surprised at how quickly many of the recruiters asked you what kind of position you wanted with them, instead of getting to learn about you more.  About half of them asked me within the first two sentences they spoke to me.  Not being interested in getting a job, I instead told them about how I'm working on Mavenry.  For a couple of the companies, I was genuinely interested in learning more about their products and services, and I was further surprised that none of them pitched me about their services after I told them I was working at a start-up.  You would think they'd like the idea of someone paying them, instead of them paying someone else, *shrug*.

The gala that night was a blast!  The program went a little longer but it was a lot of fun being able to meet a table of people from E+Y and Silicon Valley.  Towards the end, we were able to go out and watch the fireworks display again on a private deck.  This time it seemed we were much closer and the fireworks aimed more directly at us.  I get excited when I see well orchestrated fireworks displays and felt a bit giddy inside at the sight of it.  Once inside, we saw a couple more awards handed out, some prizes given away, and then it was time to dance the night away (for my fourth time, haha). 

I can't wait until I'm able to travel more and attend conventions and conferences like this more frequently.  It's awesome when you're able to meet so many smart, determined, fun loving people in one place.