Cracking the Real Estate Code is an excerpt from Freakonomics, which I am enjoying thoroughly.
So on the sale of your $300,000 house, her personal take of the $18,000 commission is $4,500. Still not bad, you say. But what if the house was worth more than $300,000? What if, with a little more effort and patience, she could have sold it for $310,000? After the commission, that puts an additional $9,400 in your pocket. Yet the agent’s additional share - her personal 1.5 percent - is a mere $150. So maybe your incentives aren’t aligned after all. Is the agent willing to put out all that extra time and energy for just $150?
Just a quick catch up on stuff I’ve enjoyed lately:
- I just finished reading The Tipping Point by Malcom Gladwell. I’m late to this game, but I highly recommend the book. Even if you’re not interested in marketing per se, the lessons in the book will help you look at things in a different way. That’s always a good thing. I was also tickled when the tipping point notion was referenced in an episode of Numb3rs, which is not a bad show at all, btw. Malcom’s Blink is in my queue, too.
- Right now, I am reading Freakonomics, which I picked up after seeing it on Kottke. I’m already enjoying it a lot, as it has touched on a couple examples related to the ones in The Tipping Point, but from a totally different angle. There’s a Freakonomics blog that may be worth watching.
- I’m still marinating in A Whole New Mind. I can honestly say that it has impacted the way I approach certain situations at work. This is a good thing. The author, Dan Pink, also has a blog related to the subject matter of the book on his site
- I caught Velvet Goldmine on the TiVo. Wow. I really loved it. I suppose it could put you off if you’re not down with the boy-on-boy lovin’, but I enjoyed the heck out of it. (As noted before, I’m a total sucker for almost anything with Ewan McGregor in it.) I might even consider picking up the soundtrack.
- Then there’s the Matisyahu. Man, that guy makes me happy.
- I am also digging the Kaiser Chiefs album.
OK, that’s it. Carry on.
Surveys: Young adults searching spiritually
They are often tarnished with labels like “self-absorbed” and “materialistic.” But young adults are actively engaged with spiritual questions, two new surveys suggest, even if they are not necessarily exploring them through traditional religious practice.
One of the lessons in A Whole New Mind (which I have finished and highly recommend, btw) is that material abundance in Western cultures is leading to a sort of spiritual awakening. Since the average suburbanites no longer needs to focus all of their energy on feeding the family, they have more time and money to devote to philosophical introspection and therefore are on the lookout for people/things/services aimed at their spiritual side.
While these surveys seem to confirm that notion, I don’t really see anything surprising here. You’re supposed to explore the ether when you go to college. It goes hand in hand with leaving the nest. There’s nothing new about college freshmen experiencing (or striving for) an “awakening” when they first start reading Kerouac, Nietzsche, Castaneda, or whatever.
It’s the way things always worked, I thought.
Hypomanic? Absolutely. But Oh So Productive!
At some point, almost everyone encounters them - restless, eager people, consumed with confident curiosity. Researchers suspect that their mental fever shares some genetic basis with that of bipolar disorder, known colloquially as manic depression, a psychiatric disorder characterized by effusive emotional highs and bouts of paralyzing despair.
In recent decades, scientists have found that bipolar disorder is widely variable, and that its milder forms are marked by hypomanias, currents of mental energy and concentration that are less reckless than full-blown manic frenzies, and unspoiled, in many cases, by subsequent gloom.
I used to be convinced I was ever so slightly bi-polar, but I’ve mellowed with age. I miss the hypomania, and I suppose I still have flashes of it from time to time, but luckily the down-swings have become little more than a lack of “inspiration” these days.
Related Reading:
Hezzy and I often joke that she owes it to me to become rich and famous. It would only be fair payback of the time I supported her while she went to grad school, etc., right?
Well, if you believe WIRED, she may be poised to become the next breadwinner in our household after all: Revenge of the Right Brain
To flourish in this age, we’ll need to supplement our well-developed high tech abilities with aptitudes that are “high concept” and “high touch.” High concept involves the ability to create artistic and emotional beauty, to detect patterns and opportunities, to craft a satisfying narrative, and to come up with inventions the world didn’t know it was missing. High touch involves the capacity to empathize, to understand the subtleties of human interaction, to find joy in one’s self and to elicit it in others, and to stretch beyond the quotidian in pursuit of purpose and meaning.
The article is adapted from A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age by Daniel Pink.
Sounds interesting to me. Now if only I could get back in touch with my artistic/poetic self, I might actually be in good shape… 
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