Journey by Dmitri Dawkins

Brown Dog on a Beach

// March 20th, 2012 // No Comments » // Life

On Sunday I went to Boston beach in Portland Jamaica. As I sat on the beach by myself, I began to think about life. There was a brown dog who seemed to be a resident of the beach. He looked pretty well fed, I mean, world famous Boston jerk scraps are available 24/7. He would walk around, relax under the huge almond tree and seemed perfectly at peace. I thought to myself, most of us are worrying about getting back to work tomorrow, paying our light bill at the end of the month and saving enough for retirement. Why?

I won’t continue rambling into who knows what, I will just share what I realised on the beach:

Sometimes we complicate things. It’s always unnecessary. Sometimes people do it to add self worth, or to feel important. Some do it because they are bored with life. Who knows how many reasons there are. Fact is people need to stop doing it.

The struggle is real, but not that real. I find I do this alot, constantly put myself in positions to push harder. Not to say we must not always try to achieve more, but sometimes mentally we get so used to this push push, that we just make things hard for ourselves. Sometimes it is ok to take it easy, to not worry, to just be at rest. We all need it at some point. My uncle calls this the sufferer mentality, my mother calls it madness. The point is, break free from your cycle.

Finally, focus on the value of life, not what you do in life. I think that’s pretty self explanatory.

Until next time…….

BTW I know this is a pretty boring read without pictures. Hush.

Talent or Hard Work?

// November 30th, 2011 // No Comments » // Life

Recently I got an email with this article and comments. I thought it would be interesting to share and get the views of others:

I read this interesting study on whether talent or hard work counts for the most in achieving success. of course, hard work won out over talent. Here are some excerpts:

People of great accomplishment tend to be highly intelligent. Yet, the view that creative geniuses accomplish more on account of their inherent ability does not stand up. When intellectually gifted children were followed up in middle age, their creative achievements were astonishingly small according to a celebrated study by Lewis Terman. High intelligence may be necessary for creative accomplishment but it is clearly not sufficient. Achievement in most creative fields calls for a lot of work and effort. Mastery requires many years of single-minded pursuit. Music and performance arts are something of an exception where child stars emerge much more quickly thanks, presumably, to specialized talents with which they may indeed be born given that musical ability runs in families. For most other endeavors, achievement is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration.

The concept of genius is nothing but comforting fiction. For it helps explain why most of us do not achieve at the highest level in our chosen field: we are not geniuses. The trouble is that there is little compelling evidence in psychology for any such latent superiority. The concept of the genius may be comforting to the rest of us. Yet, it remains a fiction. 

But the following excerpts on IQ and financial success were also very interesting:

An interesting article by the economist Garett Jones of George Mason University on “National IQ and National Productivity,” essentially shows that a nation’s intelligence level is associated with a number of important economic outcomes. (Me: hence what is happening in Ja. with our educational abyss within the general population.) In the article, Jones stresses that “policymakers should include measures of national average IQ when reporting a nation’s level of human development” as at present no nation appears to do so. He also points out that one way of raising a nation’s IQ level is to allow smarter immigrants into the country. (Me: This is not a new concept, for years company’s have sought the brightest employees that they can get to increase their growth and profitability. Look at Apple. Or even IBM, worldwide as here in Ja., which has kept IBM relevant.)

Now psychologists Heiner Rindermann of Chemnitz University of Technology and James Thompson of University College London have published a paper in the journal Psychological Science on the concept of “Cognitive Capitalism: The Effect of Cognitive Ability on Wealth, as Mediated Through Scientific Achievement and Economic Freedom.” The authors examined cognitive ability datasets from over 90 countries to show that average IQ is essentially the decisive factor of human capital and that it is really the top 5% of a country’s population – or the smart fraction - that largely impacts a nation’s wealth. The authors write that “Cognitive ability influences wealth through its effects on high achievement …” (Me: that is high achievers are generally smarter people. As the first paragraph says: People of great accomplishment tend to be highly intelligent.)

Dr. Rindermann told me that because the modern cognitive demands of work and everyday life are growing, essentially “wealth has become cognitive wealth,” and in particular “high ability wealth” or the smart fraction of the population is what matters.  It is the absolute ability level of this fraction of the population that makes the difference (to a country’s wealth).

The article then goes on to speak of China — with a larger ‘smart fraction’ of people — as compared to the USA and the inevitable outcome.

Do you agree?

A sound pioneer’s resonating chords

// March 7th, 2011 // No Comments » // Cool Stuff, Life, Technology

An article published in The Jamaica Observer on my Grandfather, Leslie Galbraith:

LIKE many others, I have been following with considerable interest the reminiscences of Leslie Galbraith in fellow columnist Mark Wignall’s Sunday space about the part he and others played in the development of electronic sound reproduction in Jamaica.

As we are aware, the sound system is an outgrowth of radio, which, in its early incarnation, used vacuum tubes to snatch modulated magnetic radiation from the ether and convert it into a form the human ear can detect.

Read more: http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/columns/A-sound-pioneer-s-resonating-chords_8469303#ixzz1FvD8d81B

The true ROI of Social Media

// February 9th, 2011 // No Comments » // Social Media Marketing, Technology

Earlier I was having a discussion with @iniQiti on Twitter about the true ranking of social media efforts. He was telling me how his 3rd party twitter rankings were high and it helped build SEO (Search engine optimisation) for his twitter account. I disagreed with his trying to rate it via SEO or follower ratio or number of tweets, because I believe social media is about interaction. Thankfully Gary Vaynerchuck (@Garyvee) sent out a tweet featuring the video below which confirmed what I was saying:

What grades your social media efforts are interactions, how useful your tweets or facebook posts are, how it helps people, how it relates to others. Social media is building a relationship, with your friends, other personalities and brands. If your social media efforts do not help, or build relationships, then why bother? Now some people will add that hey, they are just trying to broadcast information  useful to their followers, this is also building a relationship because your followers then begin to trust you for quality content and in some cases understand you may not be able to reply specifically to them. The fact is trust, in social media people trust you for your content (opinions, blogposts, videos, photos, news, etc,). Changing or adjusting your content for better rankings or seo is not the aim, the community is the aim, build your community, word of mouth is a better recommendation than any search engine.

In all of your efforts, reporting, etc remember people first, ask yourself, are you helping someone or are you just pushing out useless content on a daily basis? It doesn’t matter if you have x amount of followers if they are bots, or you have no interaction, find your niche and provide for it.

Wear Sunscreen

// November 16th, 2010 // No Comments » // Life, Tools

Ok so first off I apologise for my lack of content over the past couple weeks. The good thing is I have recorded everything and so I will flood the site with it soon

I heard this song for the first time earlier and felt I had to share this with everyone. I hope it changes your life!