All posts tagged: reflection

Creative destruction

Published by ericaeyoung

Sunday morning I indulged in a peanut butter and condensed milk toast at Lulu’s in Shek O. It’s one of those unique east meets west delights that Hong Kong is famous for. Lulu’s used to be my regular, if basic breakfast spot when I stayed in Shek O. Now they have an espresso machine and avocado bagels on the menu. It was fascinating to explore the city after four years, on the lookout for all the ways both big and small that it has changed. You can now go straight from Admiralty to Lo Wu on the East Rail line, there’s a massive contemporary art museum called the M+, and a new 92km hiking route called the Tinworth Trail. Apparently they have also changed the bolts on metal railings throughout the city so they can’t be disassembled without a special tool. They are working hard to reinvent themselves after a tough several years, and I can’t help but root for them.Creative destruction is an economic concept that describes “the dismantling of long-standing practices in order to make way …

Change is the only constant

Published by ericaeyoung

It’s late Sunday morning and I’m sitting with a (decaf) cup of coffee on the sofa, re-reading my last update to all of you. It’s almost comical how many of the things that I shared have changed. While I don’t know if my mom still wears her Ethereum T-shirt with pride, I do know that I’m no longer working at Anthemis, rowing across the Atlantic, or able to work remotely from anywhere full time.What else changed? We finally made it to South Africa, just in time to see Grant’s niece Hannah walk for the first time. My brother moved in with his girlfriend Hilary, who is fabulous and an incredibly curious anthropologist. We kayaked in Washington DC and hiked in Atlanta with them this spring. I received “settled status” in the UK and lost my HK permanent residence. Thankfully, I retained my “right to land”, which means I can still live and work in HK without restriction. I have a hard time imagining a day when I’d take advantage of that right.After much reflection, Anthemis …

Where the time has gone

Published by ericaeyoung

Where has the time gone? It’s been a while since I last shared an update. Here’s my best attempt to account for where the time has gone…My family finally had the chance to meet in Portugal for Thanksgiving, which was wonderful! It was the first time I got to see my brother in 2 long years. After being nomadic for most of the pandemic, he has settled in Atlanta. My mom is healthy and as busy as ever. If you follow the crypto craziness (and know my mom), you’ll appreciate this quick story. While exploring the back streets of Ericeira, we stumbled across a small shop selling crypto t-shirts with different currency logos on them. The designer was beside himself when my mom looked at the shirts and said “No, that’s Polkadot, I want Ethereum“! Unfortunately, the new variant may impact our plans to visit Grant’s family in South Africa. He has a 1+ year old niece that we’ve never met and we haven’t seen the rest of his family since well before the pandemic began :/.As many of …

On forty

Published by ericaeyoung

Happy belated new year! Hope you had a wonderful holiday season, wherever you were. Grant and I celebrated my milestone birthday on the Salar de Uyuni in southwest Bolivia. At over 10,000 sq km, it’s the largest salt flat on the planet. It’s unique color, flatness and size make it ideal for taking photos that play with perspective. A couple of days in advance, we managed to find a hardware store in San Pedro de Atacama and explained to the owner in broken Spanish what props we were looking for. He rummaged through piles of dust-covered cardboard boxes and uncovered a set of metal house numbers. He even helped us find and bend hardware that screwed into the back of the numbers to stand them up. The results aren’t half bad!  How does it feel to be forty? Pretty fantastic. It’s been fascinating to look back on all the important personal events that have happened in the last ten years.  2019: I left the world of venture design for network science 2018: My team at Anthemis co-founded altbank and zevie, both of which have since …

Continuous participatory change

Published by ericaeyoung

This morning I’m sitting on the tiny, south-facing balcony of our flat with a coffee-filled mug with red letters that say “niet normaal”. Even though the balcony is overwhelmed by vines, I somehow haven’t managed to keep our mint alive. This is the third attempt to complete this update, trying to find a narrative thread through the last 12 months. While the phrase “continuous participatory change” is used as an approach to organisational transformation, I think it a powerful way to approach all of life. For most, change is difficult, uncomfortable and disorienting. More than ever, it’s also the only constant. Over the last year, I have been learning new ways to thrive in these conditions and navigate change.A habit I adopted last year is to ask myself questions from Changing on the Job, such as: “What assumptions about the world underpin my or others actions and opinions?”It has helped me reframe many challenging situations and identify some of my own blind spots. For example, I strongly believe that creating more connections within a network makes it more …

How I invested 8760 hours in 2017

Published by ericaeyoung

Inspired by Kunal Gupta’s How I Invested 2504 Hours post, I decided to perform my own audit for 2017. My goal was to compare how I actually invested my time to the ideal 24 hours I imagined back in 2016. This way, I could decide if I wanted to change my time allocation for 2018 and implement habits to help me do so. Back in 2016, here’s what I outlined for a typical day: Sleep and restorative (sleep and naps) – 7 hrs / 30% Creative and productive (content creation, workshops, culture) – 7 hrs / 30% Eating and social (meals, coffee, drinks) – 5 hrs / 20% Active and physical (exercise, walking, sex) – 3 hrs / 12% Quiet and reflective (meditation, reading, bath) – 2 hrs / 8%  The results. All in, I was able to account for about 80% of my time in 2017. Of that time, a third was scheduled, a third was unscheduled estimates and a third was sleep. While the math is obvious, it was still surprising to internalise that spending …

Intensive UK course

Published by ericaeyoung

It’s been almost 24 hours since I returned home from the 3 Peaks Challenge. While I’m still processing the experience, there is one concept that became a recurring theme throughout the journey. In the Art of Possibility, Zander says “You can always grace yourself with responsibility for anything that happens in your life. You can always find within yourself the source of any problem you have.” It’s not about taking more than your fair share of responsibility for any given situation, but understanding in what ways you contributed to it. Of the many lessons the experience taught me, it certainly helped me to internalise that concept.To quickly provide some background, the national “3 Peaks Challenge” involves summiting 3 specific UK peaks within the span of 24 hours. The 3 peaks involved are Ben Nevis in Scotland (1345m), Scafell Pike in England (978m), and Snowdon in Wales (1085m). The total vertical climb is about 3000m and the hiking distance is 42km, or roughly the length of a marathon. You can do it independently during any 24 hour period, but it’s popular to attempt the challenge on …

A new year, a new tool

Published by ericaeyoung

It seemed fitting to spend New Years in the home of an accomplished clockmaker and ironic that not a single handcrafted-clock accurately announced the arrival of 2016. What the home lacked in terms of punctuality it made up for in English country charm and wood-burning warmth. It was the perfect place to quietly reflect on an eventful 2015 and prepare for the year ahead. In the company of a very reflective friend with a well-developed set of personal development tools, I attempted to glean some wisdom and adapt his methods to fit my goals.Until now, I had only two simple processes that I employed to reflect on my year and set future priorities. For the last 6 years I’ve kept track of my happiest moments and tried to identify any patterns, trends or shifts among them. I also regularly set personal themes to guide my actions over a set period of time, which typically lasted 3 months to a year. My friend introduced me to the idea of using radar charts to rate aspects of life on an …

Hong Kong vs. London

Published by ericaeyoung

As I begin to type, I’m chowing down on a slice of chocolate, pear and cardamom cake at an adorable cafe next to my flat in Bethnal Green. Turns out cardamom is trending in London this year and I’m taking full advantage. As I’ve said many times over, my time in London is an opportunity to both indulge in things unique to this city and look at Hong Kong in a more objective light. On that note, some initial comparisons:Hongkongers are spoiled with fantastic, cheap public transport. It’s not that London doesn’t have an extensive system or that a car is necessary to survive (like almost all US cities), but the options are not nearly as efficient and consistent here. On top of that, they are significantly more expensive. My daily commute by train in both cities clocks in at about 15 minutes on one line with no transfers. In Hong Kong it cost me HK$12.6 (£1.04) and I can’t remember a single delay in the last year. In London I spend £5.8 (HK$69.58) per day …

Intellectual gluttony

Published by ericaeyoung

Recently I returned from an amazing experience that can best be described as summer camp for adults. 140 of us were nestled in the Alps for 4 days of crisp mountain air, delicious French fare, engaging discussions and a seemingly endless supply of alcohol. Our gracious hosts were the Anthemis team, the leading financial services advisory and venture investment firm. The annual event, called Hacking Finance, is an opportunity for them to exchange ideas and build relationships. They organized thoughtful discussions around the future of work, internet of things, venture design, among other trending topics. If you ever get the opportunity to participate in something similar, please don’t hesitate!It was inspiring to meet thought leaders from the industry in a place that provided so many opportunities for meaningful interactions. The stimulation was almost overwhelming because the casual chats were often as intense as the structured ones. I immediately felt at home, which confirmed a suspicion that the Anthemis CEO and I both had. It’s about time that I move out of traditional product development into a more …