Top 5 of 2016 - A Crobs Abroad Year in Review

Glasgow, Scotland, UK • December 2016 • Length of Read: 2 Minutes

The general consensus seems to be that 2016 has been a pretty shit year and rounding up some of the world events that have taken place over the past twelve months, then, yes, I could see why people may think so. There have been a seemingly mounting number of terrorist attacks; political upheavals; refugee crises; Olympic debacles; doping scandals; and a string of celebrity deaths including David Bowie, Prince, and, most recently, Leonard Cohen.

The truth is, though, we are still living in one of the most peaceful times in history. The reason that we are all seeing the world as this horrible place full of death and destruction is due to the vanishing information communication gap. Nowadays, if something ‘bad’ happens, no matter whereabouts on planet Earth, the media will make it their duty to spread this over every mobile app, newsfeed, and website they possibly can. They are all about the fear mongering, because that it what sells. In reality, it’s not that these attacks and tragedies are on the increase, it’s that previously we were just oblivious to their happening. I'm not saying that 2016 is without its flaws, I'm just saying that it needs to be put in perspective.

Personally, I think 2016 has been a fucking great year.

I rang in the New Year by shooting assault weapons at an old military rifle range in Vilnius, Lithuania. Here, I befriended two crazy blondes who would change my life more than they will ever know. During a manic period at work, I managed to sneak away to Copenhagen, Denmark with them before launching my first paperback book, Crobs Abroad: A Scot’s Misadventures with a Backpack. To celebrate this, and my 25th birthday, I then hit up Reykjavik and New York City for a summer holiday.

A trip to Vienna, Austria in July gave me the chance to catch-up with two friends who I hadn’t seen since living with them in Maastricht, The Netherlands four years prior. It also sparked a deeper connection with an Italian girl I’d met in Riga, Latvia over eighteen months before. The pair of us would go on an autumn road trip through the Balkans and then meet again in Prague, Czech Republic for a winter getaway. These trips combined to form my second publication, We Ordered a Panda: Tales of City-Hopping around Europe.

It’s sometimes those experiences closer to home, though, that really shine through and my weekend spent camping in the Wimbledon queue to get tickets for Centre Court has to be the surprise package highlight of 2016 for me. We met some great people and I can’t wait to do it all over again in the future. It’s something that could very easily become a tradition.

The year rounded off with me leaving my job, packing my life in a rucksack, and starting a world tour down under in Sydney, Australia. Over the course of 2016 I’ve visited 10 different countries, crossed off 7 bucket list items, and created lifelong memories and friendships.

Yeah, by my accounts, 2016 has been a pretty fucking great year. Here are the Top 5 experiences:

• Firing Assault Weapons at a Rifle Range [Vilnius, Lithuania]
• Camping out in the Wimbledon Queue [London, UK]
• Bathing in the Blue Lagoon [Reykjavik, Iceland]
• Visiting Time's Square [New York, USA]
• Being Reunited with my ERASMUS Buddies [Vienna, Austria]

Thanks for reading and let's make 2017 even better ;)

What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?

Glasgow, Scotland, UK • November 2016 • Length of Read: 4 Minutes

It’s a question that every child gets asked. A question that fills them with excitement and sets their imaginations running wild. And whether it comes from a teacher, a parent, a peer, or even an overly fussy distant friend of an aunt, they are rarely afraid of giving an honest answer. ‘Unrealistic’ isn’t a word many children associate with. After all, this question is usually preceded by a statement indicating that ‘when you grow up, you can be whatever you want to be’. The sky isn’t the limit, the edge of the Universe is. I vividly remember Mrs Leslie asking us this in primary school. I must have been six or seven years old at the time. She stood in front of the class and said, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” An open-ended thought that brought with it endless possibilities.

“A fireman,” yelled out one of the boys at the front.

“A nurse,” added a girl to my left, enthusiastically.

“A spaceman,” said my best friend.

Somewhere along the line, though, these desires fade. Reality takes over. We lose passion. We get side-tracked by the monotony of daily life and short-term thinking. Doubt creeps in. Dreams are suppressed to when we are asleep. As an experiment, I recently posed this to a work colleague of mine. The response was a bemused and confused wrinkle of the face followed by the statement, “I’m not a kid anymore. But I suppose when I was younger I wanted to be a veterinarian.” Wanted. A verb used in its past tense.

Yes, people change. I understand that. And something you wanted to be ten years ago may now be something that genuinely doesn’t interest you. As we learn new things and grow as individuals, different influences and wishes take over. This is why it is so important to keep asking yourself this question. What do I want to be when I grow up? I don’t care if you’re eighteen or eighty. Until you are dead you should still be wanting to pursue new things. Why should fantasising and dreaming about our future lives be constricted to only when we are children? I’m a 25-year-old 'man' and still get a kick out of what some may consider ‘unattainable’ thoughts and ideas. As far as I’m concerned, if something is deemed to be unattainable, then it’s all that more exhilarating and exciting when you finally achieve it.

My response to Mrs Leslie’s question? – “I want to be an explorer.”

As I head off next month on a tour of Oceania and Asia to compile stories for my sophomore travel book, this ‘dream’ is now very much still a reality. It’s a goal, I suppose. And what are goals but simply dreams that have timelines attached?

So ask yourself today, tomorrow, and the next day: What do I want to be when I grow up? You’ll probably be surprised with what your brain comes up with…

The Most Remote Place on Earth

Tristan da Cunha, UK • November 2016 • Length of Read: 4 Minutes

2,400km west of Africa, and 3,360km east of South America, lies a group of volcanic islands which are the most remotely inhabited place in the world. Tristan da Cunha was first sighted in 1506 by the narcissistic Portuguese explorer Tristao da Cunha, who was egotistical enough to name the main island after himself. The sole settlement of this southern Atlantic Ocean archipelago is located here and is home to 265 permanent residents, most of whom are fishermen. It is called Edinburgh of the Seven Seas. The people that reside here are 2,173km from the next nearest human settlement, Saint Helena, the British overseas territory it is a part of, and they refer to their home simply as: The Village.

Edinburgh of the Seven Seas was founded in 1816 by a Sergeant from the Scottish Borders, and was given its name after Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, visited the UK annex in 1867. It has a post office, a small port, and a military garrison that was disbanded at the end of the Second World War. This had initially been set as a defense when Napoleon was imprisoned in St. Helena. There was also a crayfish factory, but in 1963 this was destroyed by an Earthquake which forced the residents to evacuate to England until the settlement was re-built. With no airport, the only way to get to the island is by shipping vessel from Cape Town, South Africa. Permission also has to be granted before travel.

Most comically are the selection of vehicles on the island. The ambulance service is single a Toyota Hilux, the fire engine a Land Rover Defender, and the police car another Land Rover. The Village also has a bus service called the Potato Patches Flier. This is a 24-seat Isuzu mini school bus that was brought over from South Africa and allows the residents to travel around the islands only road - the M1. There is one shop, one school, one TV channel, and what settlement would be complete without at least one place to get a drink.

I quite fancy having a pint one day in the Albatross Inn, the most remote pub on Earth, and learning from the locals what life is like at the end of the world. That’s if I can understand their curious 18th Century seafaring English dialect. Apparently it also does a pretty tasty lobster quiche if you’re feeling peckish.

How Do Behaviours Spread? - The Hundredth Monkey Effect

Glasgow, Scotland, UK • November 2017 • Length of Read: 3 Minutes

The remote island of Kojima in the South West of Japan has no human inhabitants. Its picturesque shores and forested landscape are, however, home to a very special group of primates. The wild band of macaque monkeys that reside here have been so unaffected by man that they’ve become the subjects of numerous fascinating academic studies, one of which made international news.

Researchers became captivated by the species when they discovered that one of the monkeys had learned how to clean dirt off the freshly dug sweet potatoes that grew on Kojima. With their other foods requiring no preparation, the tribe were reluctant to eat these dirty potatoes. This monkey managed to resolve the issue, though, by washing them in a stream, and was soon teaching her mother and playmates to do the same. As this skill was passed around, sweet potatoes soon became a source of food for monkeys of Kojima, whereas their distant relatives on neighbouring islands continued to leave them untouched.

Then, something incredible happened. Once a certain number of Kojima’s macaques – about one hundred of them – had acquired this knowledge, monkeys on the smaller island of Torishima began washing their food as well. There was no way they could have interacted with the original monkeys, but somehow the behaviour spread. The researchers were baffled. How was it possible that such a rare social trait should suddenly appear in two geographically distinct areas? Was there some recessive ‘food washing’ gene that had only now kicked in? Could the monkeys on Torishima have peered across the water and somehow understood what the other monkeys were doing and then copied them? Could this be some kind of simian extrasensory perception? Or were we witnessing a rare leap from one evolutionary plateau to another? The theories grew and grew, yet the mystery seemed intractable.

Some prominent scientists and brain researchers came to believe that there may be a collective consciousness that all members of a species can pull from. It has been noted, for example, that when one physicist makes a breakthrough, physicists elsewhere will simultaneously get the same idea. It is thought that when we align ourselves through belief, through focus, through optimal physiology, we find a way to dip into this collective consciousness and act in remarkable unison. In his book Unlimited Power, Tony Robbins used this hundredth monkey example to conclude that “The better attuned you are, the better aligned you are, the more you tap into this rich knowledge and feeling. Just as information filters to us from our unconscious, it may also filter in to us from completely outside of ourselves if we’re in a resourceful-enough state to receive it.”

Sounds too good to be true, right? Well that’s because it is. Only decades later, when someone with a rational mind decided to ask the local fisherman what they thought, did this theory become debunked.

“Well,” the fisherman replied, “the monkeys do swim back and forth between the islands. Maybe that has something to do with it.”

Are Employees Being Promoted Until They Become Incompetent?

In organisational structures, the assessment of an employee’s potential for promotion is often based on their performance in their current role. As such, in most standard organisations an employee’s appraisal process will broadly follow these five steps:

1. Feedback is received for work completed.
2. This feedback is then collated and used to form the basis of an employee’s business case for promotion.
3. The aforementioned business case is then presented to a senior management panel.
4. The senior management panel will agree on an appraisal rating for the employee based on the strength of this case.
5. Promotions will be weighted towards employees with higher appraisal ratings.

On the face of it, this makes perfect sense. Why would you want to promote an employee who is not already crushing it? The issue with this retrospective-style of appraisal, however, is that it doesn’t take into account one very important thing: Just because an employee is a great asset in their current position, it doesn’t mean that they will have the abilities needed to succeed in their new position.

Following this line of thought, it goes to say that employees will only stop being promoted once they can no longer perform their duties effectively. In turn, employees rise to the level of their incompetence. With no chance of further promotion up the ladder, they will reach a career ceiling and remain in a role which they cannot fully perform effectively.

This management theory concept is known as the Peter Principle, so named after the Canadian educator who formulated this concept in 1969, Lawrence J. Peter. He noted in his book Why Things Go Wrong that incompetence is most likely to occur when newly required skills are different, but not more difficult. For example, an excellent engineer may be a poor manager because they might not have the interpersonal skills necessary to lead a team.

So how does one, as an employee, avoid the Peter Principle coming to fruition? Well, the Harvard Business Review suggest asking yourself the following questions:

1. Is my boss interested in my welfare or does he see me as a competitor who needs to be neutralised? If it is the latter, then the chances of an employee being able to fully spread their wings become severely grounded.
2. Can I correctly work out what my boss wants or am I stuck second-guessing from what he's actually saying? Don't be afraid to ask further questions at the initiation phase of a project. Better to fully comprehend what is required to be done than being told half-way through that what has been completed is incorrect.
3. Will my boss reward or punish me if I make improvement suggestions? Some employers love employees who think outside of the box and constantly try to add value to the company. Others regard this type of attitude as evasive and threatening. Ensure you know when best to, and when not to, express yourself.
4. Am I capable of doing my job? it may take you longer to find your feet in a role than expected. This is OK. Don't feel pressured to race for promotion and the next rung on that career ladder. There is no finish line and gold medal waiting for you at the top. Feel free to stick in your current role until you have mastered it.
5. Do I want to emulate this boss, or should I distance myself from his poor example? Consider whether the job your boss has is actually what you want to work towards. If you don't admire their actions and position, then what is the point of being promoted one step closer to it. Be lateral thinking in your career development and don't become stuck in a silo.

Competent managers are likely to promote a super-competent for the betterment of the organisation. Incompetent managers, on the other hand, will feel intimidated and threatened by those who excel too much. The answers to these questions will help give you an indication of how to avoid hitches and obstacles in your career progression... and avoid becoming incompetent.