The Boring Lecture: Mars, Curiosity, Creativity, and Our Future

University of East Anglia
Norwich Business School
Management Skills and
Personal Development
NBS-7031X
Lecture 8
29th April 2021
Dr. Fahri Karakas
F.Karakas@uea.ac.uk

Review of Takeaways
 To solve wicked problems of the
21st century, you need to think
beyond borders and disciplines.
 Invest in yourself and your
learning every day. This is the
biggest investment you can ever
make.
1) Ask Right Questions + Follow Your Interests
+ Intense Curiosity + Continuous Learning +
Imagination + Passion
2) Courage: Take Risks + Consistent Small
Actions + Smart Moves + Hard Work + Play
Your Game + Resilience + Resourcefulness
 Think about where you will be
after 10 years. Act according to
that vision.
 You can be as big as your dreams
and ambitions.

You can use improvisation to increase
adventure and quality in your life.
Try to apply automated writing,
drawing, doodling, story-telling,
ideating, designing, creating, dancing,
and singing in your life.
In this life, it is never too late to follow
your interests, curiosities, and passions.
Show up for creative work and use
random prompts or anchors to get
going. Start small – small is beautiful.
Business as usual is over. We need a
new paradigm of business that solves
complex problems ahead of us.
Review of Takeaways

In your profession, it is not enough to
know only about business or finance or HR
or marketing. You need to think bigger.
Be a polymath: An individual whose knowledge
spans a significant number of subjects, known to
draw on complex bodies of knowledge to solve
specific problems.
Be an autodidact: A self-taught person individual
who initiates and manages his/her own learning and
reads voraciously
Be a hunter and learner of most interesting
things. Cross boundaries – there are no
borders.
Go out of your comfort zone. Learn outside
your discipline. Think and act wider.
Education as usual is dead. Long live
lifetime learning!
Assume responsibility for your own
learning.
Review of Takeaways

6
 Review of Last Class
 Puzzles
 The Boring Lecture:
◦ Exercise: Create your Reading Challenge
◦ Exercise: Create your own YouTube Channel
◦ Exercise: Create your own Manifesto
◦ Exercise: Creative writing – complete the story
◦ Exercise: Imagine disruptive innovations and sectors
◦ Exercise: Imagine flying across the universe + daily life on Mars
 Mini-Workshop: MARS
 Mini-Workshop: Life and Employability in Mars
 Key Takeaways

7
 Boredom strikes when we let our
habits/routines control us.
 Lectures are inherently boring – slides are often
recipes for mediocrity.
 It takes courage and experimentation to get out
of what is ‘boring’ (the rut)
◦ Therefore, in this lecture, I will try to escape boring by
embracing uncertainty and exploration.
◦ To escape boredom in lectures, you can also take
actions, such as writing (taking notes), doodling,
reflecting, making materials relevant for yourself,
identifying action points etc.
◦ Remember: Improvising, surprising yourself, incorporating
uncertainty, turning everything into play and adventure also
help.

https://fahrikarakas.medium.com/the-pandemic-lockdown-enabled-me-to-reinvent-
myself-in-one-year-c9002485caf3?sk=46702fd6a91fc85527d1ed2f6cfbd3db

9
To escape
boredom…
Invest in your
hobbies

HERE IS A PUZZLE:
Elon Musk has started a new company (as a hobby) for building
tunnels and solving the wicked problem of traffic.
This ‘hobby’ company’s value could be 16b$.
What is the name of this company?
The Boring Company

14
To escape
boredom…
Read and learn
exciting things

Here is what we did throughout last month.
My wife Sertac encouraged me to take up a challenge:
“Why don’t we read 30 books in 30 days?”
30 Days 30 Books
Challenge
on INSTAGRAM
Many of our friends joined the challenge. We both read 30
books. You can use fast reading and skimming through to
quickly read and finish books.

Successful leaders view learning as a lifelong pursuit.
When asked how to get smarter, Warren Buffet held up a pile of
reading material and said, “Read 500 pages like this every week.
That’s how knowledge builds up, like compound interest. All of you
can do it, but I guarantee not many of you will do it.”
HERE IS MY RADICAL
SUGGESTION FOR YOU:
READ 100
BOOKS
EVERY YEAR

Read 500 BOOKS
“The key to reading lots of book begins with stop thinking of it
as some activity that you do. Reading must become as natural as
eating and breathing to you. It’s not something you do because
you feel like it, but because it’s a reflex, a default.” — Ryan
Holiday
Reading should be treated like a job, not a hobby. Gathering and
applying knowledge speeds up the process of becoming
successful. You can read your way into becoming an expert at
anything.
What area are you seeking to become successful in? Read 250
books in that area to build a rock solid knowledge base. Read
250 books in areas unrelated to your subject so that you can
form mental models to help you solve difficult problems.

Read 500 BOOKS
This connection of ideas is known as the adjacent possible.
•“The strange and beautiful truth about the adjacent possible is
that its boundaries grow as you explore those boundaries. Each
new combination ushers new combinations into the adjacent
possible. Think of it as a house that magically expands with each
door you open.Keep opening new doors and eventually you’ll
have built a palace.”
— Steven Johnson, Where Good Ideas Come From.
•Reading tons of books expands your mind and continues to open
more doors in the adjacent possible. Your knowledge base will
grow until you explode with creativity and are able to make
insightful connects between disparate ideas.
•The speed of your success depends on the pace of your learning.

https://medium.com/illumination/why-and-how-i-read-five-fiction-books-at-a-time-
60fb2af5eb6f?sk=b45266ce0a934f1a9a71cff7740a360b

Now, please create your own READING
CHALLENGE
Example:
I will finish min. 60
books until the end of
2021
This means 2 books every week.
Can you do this?
Write down your own challenge and
plan.

22
To escape
boredom…
Search for outliers
(extreme examples)

HERE IS A PUZZLE:
Is it possible to write 100,000 words in
just one day?
Sean Wes attempted it. He ended up writing
55,614 words in one day.
https://seanwes.com/2019/writing-100000-words-in-a-day/
https://seanwes.com/2019/i-tried-to-write-100000-words-in-a-day-and-failed-
spectacularly/

HERE IS A PUZZLE:
Is it possible to try out 52 jobs in 52 weeks
to explore and learn?
Yes

One Week Job (52 weeks, 52 jobs)

26
To escape
boredom…
Expand your sense
of what is possible

HERE IS A PUZZLE:
Bihar, India.
Dashrath Manjhi, known as ‘Mountain Man’,
single-handedly carved a road through a
mountain Das.
After his wife died due to lack of medical
treatment because the nearest town with a
doctor was 70 km away, Manjhi carved a
360-foot-long, 25-foot-deep, 30-foot-wide
road through Gehlour hills.
How long did it take to do this?
22 years
https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/man-single-handedly-
carved-road-mountain/

HERE IS A PUZZLE:
For how long do you think it is possible to
live on London’s buses at night?
21 years of sleeping on a London bus
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-50459821
For more than two decades after his asylum application was rejected,
Sunny found a safe haven aboard the buses that zigzag across London at
night.

HERE IS A PUZZLE:
You remember the movie “The Terminal”.
This movie is based on the life of a real
person. Who is this person?
Mehran Karimi Nasseri (Sir Alfred Mehran)
18 years of living in an airport
https://allthatsinteresting.com/mehran-karimi-nasseri

HERE IS A PUZZLE:
Is it possible to plant an entire forest by
yourself?
Yes. Jadav Payeng dedicated his life to planting a
forest. He created 1,360 acres of forest.
Every bamboo tree on this land was lovingly planted by Jadev after he witnessed
the local wildlife population suffering due to a lack of shade.

Fahri’s Manifesto
I have written my own
manifesto.
In the next two
minutes, create your
own manifesto.

32
To escape
boredom…
Hunt and find
interesting ideas

33
https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/10-unexpected-places-to-find-
interesting-ideas.html

What is the significance of
this picture?

The photo, called "Station
Squabble," depicts two mice
fighting in a London tube
station. It was taken by Sam
Rowley and won Wildlife
Photographer of the Year
competition (12 Feb. 2020)

Is it possible to win Wildlife Photographer
of the Year award with a city picture?
Yes, of course

37
To escape
boredom…
Write, write, write.

Creative Writing
Exercise
Complete the story.
3 minutes

39
41 Creativity Lessons I have learned as I have learned as I have
entered my 41st age by Fahri Karakas
https://medium.com/@fahrikarakas/41-creativity-lessons-i-have-learned-as-i-have-entered-
my-41st-age-92f3552970af

40
To escape
boredom…
Use the immense
power of your mind.

HERE IS A PUZZLE:
Which technologies or inventions do we owe to
Einstein and his theories/thoughts?
Hint: There are many.
Television, Radar guns
Nuclear power
Solar Power, solar panels
GPS systems, satellites
Stock market investing
Weather forecasting
Automatic doors & burglar alarms
Digital cameras
DVD players, supermarket scanners, laser eye surgery
https://www.bbva.com/en/four-contributions-einstein-made-to-our-daily-lives/
https://www.nationalgeographic.com.au/science/technologies-today-thanks-to-einstein.aspx
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/tv-radar-guns-and-other-technology-linked-to-einsteins-theories-of-relativity
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2017/06/einstein-relativity-lasers-solar-genius-science/

42
To escape boredom…
Move. Take a positive
action.

“The 5 Second Rule” by Mel Robbins
The moment you have an instinct to act
on a goal you must count 5–4–3–2–1
and physically move or your brain will
stop you.

45
Explore yourself.

HERE IS A PUZZLE:
“The most remarkable part of all is your DNA. You have a
metre of it packed into every cell, and so many cells that if
you formed all the DNA in your body into a single fine strand it
would stretch ten billion miles, to beyond Pluto. Think of it:
there is enough of you to leave the solar system. You are in
the most literal sense cosmic.”
This quote comes from a fascinating book titled
“The Body: A Guide for Occupants”
Who is the author?
Bill Bryson

• “Just sitting quietly, doing nothing at all, your brain churns
through more information in thirty seconds than the
Hubble Space Telescope has processed in thirty years. A
morsel of cortex one cubic millimeter in size—about the
size of a grain of sand—could hold two thousand
terabytes of information, enough to store all the movies
ever made, trailers included, or about 1.2 billion copies of
this book.”
• ‘We spend our whole lives in one body and yet most of us
have practically no idea how it works and what goes on
inside it. The idea of the book is simply to try to
understand the extraordinary contraption that is us.’
• Bill Bryson sets off to explore the human body, how it
functions and its remarkable ability to heal itself. A brilliant,
often very funny attempt to understand the miracle of our
physical and neurological make up.
• A wonderful successor to A Short History of Nearly
Everything, this new book is an instant classic. It will have
you marvelling at the form you occupy, and celebrating the
genius of your existence.
• ‘What I learned is that we are infinitely more complex and
wondrous, and often more mysterious, than I had ever
suspected. There really is no story more amazing than the
story of us.’

48
Learn about the
future.

POSSIBLE TRILLIONAIRE
SECTORS
An Imagination Workshop

Trillionaire Sectors
If 7 billion people on earth each spent $143 on the same
item, it would yield $1 trillion.
Peter Diamandis, serial entrepreneur and engineer with a
net worth of $200 million dollars: “If you want a billion
dollars, help a billion people.”
https://futuristspeaker.com/business-trends/what-industries-will-
produce-the-first-trillionaires/

Right now, we have 1 billion $ companies (Apple, Amazon,
Google, Microsoft)
For any industry to produce 100 times more value than today’s
corporations, it will need to be:
• Rapidly scalable
• Global in nature
• Products or services with strong demand
• Transportable to anywhere in the world
• Highly profitable
• Extremely influential
• Leveraging disruptive technologies

Possible Sectors
1)Cryptocurrency: The first global currency will likely be a
cryptocurrency. These operate outside of the realm of highly regulated,
nation-based economies.
2.5 billion adults do not have bank accounts, nor do they use any formal financial
services to save or borrow. The opportunity here is huge.
2) Asteroid Mining:The most valuable space industry:
Extracting resources found in near earth asteroids.
Our growing need for platinum based metals could result in entire asteroids being
dragged back to earth, each valued at hundreds of billions of dollars.

Possible Sectors
3) Instant Learning – Today’s learning processes occupy
entirely too much of the human lifespan.
Nicolas Negroponte’s radical prediction: Ingested learning (eating a pill and
knowing French)
BMI (brain-machine interfaces) & neuro-laces) show promise
4) Internet of Things Devices talk to other devices.
Consider having devices that improve your health, energy, stamina, and
thinking ability by 100% or more.
Or devices that can communicate with plants and animals.
Amazon Alexa as the brain of your smart home

5.) Cure for Human Aging or Longevity – If every
person had the option of paying $10 a day to make aging stop, how many
would choose that option? A billion people paying $10 a day would amount
to $3.65 trillion a year in revenue.
In the late 1800's, the average life expectancy was 41. Today, it is over 80
years old.
Google has invested over a billion dollars into their firm Calico: Longevity
or‘the fight against death'.
6.) Ultra High Speed Transportation Tube
transportation proposed by Elon Musk and Daryl Oster

7.) Controlling the Weather Hurricanes, tornadoes,
tsunamis, and major hailstorms can be very destructive, so there are
already major costs associated with our current weather systems.
Farmers to have extra rain, a guarantee of no hail, favourable temperatures
and good sunshine
Homeowners to not have to water their lawns, or never have wind or hail
that damages their roofs
Guaranteed wind above 300’ altitude for all wind farms
8.) Instant Sleep How many people would be willing to pay $10
to use an ‘instant sleep’ device to add an extra 8 hours of productive time to
their day?
A billion people paying $10 a day would amount to $3.65 trillion a year in
revenue.

9.) Instant Disassembling of Matter Better ways of
working with raw materials. Digging, crushing, grinding, pulverizing, and blowing
things up are all on the material science short list for getting to the core material
inside. Imagine a process where large boulders can be instantly disassembled into a
pile of molecules, simply by breaking all the molecular bonds.
10.) Human Cloning or 3D Printed Bodies – Our bodies
wear out. If we could somehow transfer who we are into a younger, stronger, better
looking version of ourselves, how many people would jump at that opportunity?
11.) Personal Swarms of Swarmbots –the versatility and
utility of having a personal swarm of swarmbots. The same swarm that dries us
after a shower, applies makeup, and fixes our hair, assemble themselves as our
clothing, our body armor, and function as our personal tech.
amplify our strength, enable us to fly from place to place etc.

12.) Robotic Services – Robots are coming. The race to find the
killer app for robots and robotic services
13.) 3D Telepresence Avatars – How many times have you
heard someone say they need to clone themselves? 3D telepresence avatars are the
digital equivalent of cloning where life-size representations of ourselves can
interact with others in the same fashion as being there in person. These avatars
could attend meetings, file reports, engage in water cooler chitchat, and keep your
boss busy, all the while, extending your overall capabilities and earning potential.
14.) Artificial Intelligence Artificial intelligence is a game-
changer on almost every level. It’s difficult to imagine any industry that is not
improved exponentially with the addition of AI.
15.) Energy Storage – We are good at generating power, but not with
storing power from one day to the next. Anyone who finds a super efficient way of
storing power will quickly become the master of the energy universe. Energy
industry is $2 trillion dollars globally and is already seeing massive disruption from
alternative energy such as solar and wind.

Learn about Mars.

Life & Employability on
MARS
MINI-WORKSHOP
for FUN/CURIOSITY

HERE IS A PUZZLE:
By which year does Elon Musk’s
SpaceX aim to send the first
astronauts to Mars?
By 2024

HERE IS A PUZZLE:
America’s 2020 budget includes
funding for a manned Mars
mission to launch with a goal of
bringing back samples of the Red
Planet.
For which year is this plan?
2026

HERE IS A PUZZLE:
How many people does Elon
Musk wish to send to Mars until
2050?
1 million

Creativity will also become important in
Mars

HERE IS A PUZZLE:
How long does it take to go to
Mars?
If everything goes right
About 7-8 months.

HERE IS A PUZZLE:
How long is one year in Mars?
Hint: Longer than the Earth.
687 days!

The Wonders of Mars
Some of what we know

HERE IS A PUZZLE:
How will people on Mars
communicate with people on
Earth?
Which technology?
Holoportation technology (virtually
placing people in the same room)

TED: The future of human life in Mars

Elon Musk making history
Inventing reusable rocket systems is a milestone in Mars mission

SpaceX's plan to colonize Mars, explained
“People Who Say It Cannot Be Done Should Not Interrupt Those Who Are Doing It”

Elon Musk’s Plans for Colonizing Mars
Elon Musk in 67th Int’l Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico (2016)

HERE IS A PUZZLE:
What could be some leisure and fun activities to be
done on Mars?
Any ideas? Use your imagination.
(Imagine TripAdvisor is asking your ideas: Top 3
things to try in Mars)
SAMPLE IDEAS
-Exploring Valles Marineris canyon system which stretches 4000
km, 200 km wide, and have walls 2–5 km deep.
-Exploring Olympus Mons - the largest volcano in the solar system
(700 km across and 22 km high!)
-Martian Olympics would be a feast! You can jump 3 times higher,
and you can throw things 3 times further (due to 1/3 gravity!)
https://www.britannica.com/list/10-places-to-visit-in-the-solar-system

Imagine daily life on Mars.
Exercise
Imagine that you have gone to
Mars.
How would your typical day look
like?
What would you explore/learn?
Can you write a science fiction story
about Mars?
In the next 1 minute:
Brainstorm and write possibilities.

HERE IS A PUZZLE:
National Geographic made a TV Series about The
story of how humans make Mars home in 2033.
It is on Netflix.
What is the name of this TV Series?
MARS
– no surprises here

84
MARS Series – National Geographic (on Netflix)
The story of how humans make Mars home in 2033

85
Career Ambitions: Being on a Mission To MARS
15-Year-Old Alyssa Carson Could Be The First Human On Mars

86
The Mars Generation
Imagination, passion, and adventure: Exploring Life on Mars

https://highexistence.com/100-science-fiction-books/

“Curiosity and
creativity are the new
productivity.”
Dr. Fahri Karakas

93
The Evolution of Dance - 1950 to 2019
Ricardo Walker's Crew

94
Elon Musk: Work twice as hard as others
Advice for entrepreneurs

96
 Be greedy about your learning. Read widely and diversely
beyond disciplines.
 Imagination and asset creation are linked very closely.
Imagine and create your own game.
 Establish a system of productivity and creativity to create
your own assets.
Consistent Small Actions + Smart Moves + Hard Work + Play Your Game
 Establish a system of productivity and creativity to create
your own assets.
 Develop effective meta-habits:
https://medium.com/mind-cafe/8-meta-habits-to-make-2020-your-
breakthrough-year-3dd00429cf3

97
 Search for novelty and variation in life.
 Your brain loves surprises, twists, and unexpected things.
 Move, dance, run, bike, spend time in nature.
 Read 41 creativity lessons article and apply these lessons
in your life.
 https://medium.com/swlh/41-creativity-lessons-i-have-learned-as-i-have-entered-my-
41st-age-92f3552970af
 Your imagination has no boundaries. Use it more often.

98
 Watch holistic and futurist films that will expand your
mind to new possibilities.
 Read at least 100 books every year (which means 2 books
per week).
 Your thoughts are powerful. You thoughts create reality.
 Make your thoughts and beliefs more positive. Amplify
your strengths. Compound your skills and assets for the
long term.
 Be a hunter and learner of most interesting things. Learn
beyond disciplines.

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