Tributum Newsletter #19
Hello
In his book “The 4 hour work week” , Timothy Ferris (3rd most followed person on Linkedin and worth a read) discusses things to avoid in order to save time. One of them was getting bogged down with news. According to him you do not need to know everything the President said or what the gold price is all the time. You cannot control any of that – you just need to know the highlights. Don’t be ignorant, but don’t get lost in the detail…especially if its outside your control.
I tend to agree. So much is being made of the job losses and the economic contraction in South Africa in Q2 and there are lots of detail and lots of news analysis. Admittedly, its not good news, but we all expected it to be bad anyway, so is it even news? None of us individually can do anything about it so do you need to know it all? Rather than getting all stressed out about statistics is it not better to focus on not becoming part of that statistic, getting the job done, the sale clinched, the client signed up and cash in the bank. But, if it bleeds it leads in journalism and that is why I only believe every second word I read…
In between the bad news maybe you missed some good news. SARS eventually assessed the Gupta company that paid for the infamous Sun City wedding. There are some doubts about how the tax debt will be collected but seeing that the IDC was successful in the US court to be granted access to US linked Gupta bank accounts maybe SARS can attach some of those. SARS also attached some of the assets of businessman Hamilton Ndlovu after he infamously bragged on social media about the luxury cars he acquired in May 2020. Add to that Mdluli being sentenced and NMBM councilor Lungisa at last going to jail and you have 5 good news stories in the space of 2 weeks that received very little mileage. Maybe because there was no blood…
I think there are two important points to note from these stories:
- Maybe SARS will be the blunt instrument that eventually catches up with the alleged corruptors and state capturers. And its not just Government officials – did someone say Marcus Jooste?
- You should ensure that you remain on the right side of SARS. As was said in last month’s newsletter there is no point in complaining about crime if you don’t keep your own house clean.
It’s easy to be overwhelmed by all the news and figuring out what’s real and what is not. Sometimes less is more. Ultimately, what will you really miss out on if you don’t read every headline? More stress? Less time? Rather tune your b&*l@#t detector and scale down, surely there are much better things to do. Until next time, keep filtering…