Last week in Bologna I met an investment banker and we got on the topic of ING Direct and their incredible success with a strategy centered around simplicity. The banker told me something interesting I hadn’t heard before that I couldn’t find online. Something to the effect that ING Direct tells their customers that to determine how much of their money they should put into high-risk investments versus low-risk ones, just take your age up to 100 years old. However old you are, that is the percentage that you should invest in the low-risk stuff; then take the number 100 and subtract your age from it and invest that percentage in the high-risk stuff. I was impressed with the simple elegance of the thought.

I was introduced to the Chinese concept of “Empathy and Fullness” in Shanghai last week. This topic came about when discussing my surprise that everything seemed bigger, brighter, and simply more in Shanghai. We ate at a restaurant where you could select from a menu of over four hundred different items to then visit the sauce bar to mix and match one hundred different flavors.

My guide to Shanghai explained that, “Feeling comes from richness.” This is in line with the Law of emotion but I certainly didn’t expect to see it manifest as the mountain of taste selections I had that evening. But certainly by the end of the meal I was feeling the need for differences and desired a simpler, plain bowl of rice. It would have made me appreciate the experience better. But that addition of the neutralizer is ironically more itself.