Category: Everything else

:)

Have a nice day!

I’ve been spending a lot of my time (about 1 and half hours a day.. sometimes more) switching between buses and MRT’s etc but contrary to what I’d’ve expected, I’m finding myself recharged after a trip because the following happens –

1) Reading – Normally, I used to push 30 mins a day of reading but nowadays, I do an hour and barely feel it.

2) Call home/other people I like talking to: And talk undisturbed – no email popping up in front of me!

These are the 2 big things that are adding so much value and joy! Oh, and there is one more –

Calling Starhub customer service – you get entertained by the beautiful waiting music and the awesome voice of the lady saying ‘Our customer service executives are still busy. Please hold the line or try again later’.. This typically takes 45 mins as well..

So, there you go! :)

Many things people strive for are actually byproducts of what the real goal should be. But by focusing on the byproduct instead of the goal, the desired byproduct is ever elusive.

Let’s look at a few examples:

Happiness

The real goal is finding activities you’re passionate about and consistently engaging in them.

That definition skews towards work, but consider spending time with people you enjoy being around an ‘activity’ and it can encompass romance and family time.

Becoming “Networked”

Lots of people want a big network, full of powerful influential people, but if you focus on that is the end goal it’s probably not going to work out very well and you’ll come off as very insincere.

Having a large, powerful network is the byproduct where the end goal is helping other people, building relationships or trying to make an important vision happen that others can get behind.

Making Money

Making money is a byproduct of focusing on creating value.

If you focus on making money, you might end up making a lot if you’re very driven, but if that drive was applied toward how you could create the most value, you’d make a lot more money.

The one caveat with making money is that it only captures the economic spectrum of “value”, but a lot of people are working on how we can measure other kinds of currencies and make them more fungible so that in addition to financial capital we can measure things like social capital and emotional capital.

Confidence

I can’t become more confident by saying to myself, “C’mon Max, be more confident”.

Confidence is a byproduct of being really good at something, which is only obtainable through practice and repetition.

Though often people can practice and practice and not improve. That’s why people will tell you, “practice doesn’t make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect.” While that’s directionally correct, a better answer is “practice in pursuit of perfection will allow you to increasingly approach perfection and achieve excellence”

Conclusion

The list goes on and on of things that many people try to achieve directly but are actually byproducts: Enlightenment, Love, Creativity, Status, Success, etc. etc.

It’s not wrong to want byproducts, but they are not things we can get, in the capacity we want, by focusing on achieving them directly. Byproducts are the rewards we get for living our lives the right way.

And by recognizing how byproducts break down into corresponding end goals it becomes clear there are no short cuts. When we care about other people, other people care about us. When we create value for others, we are rewarded financially. When we do amazing work, we gain respect. To live a rich life where we are happy, financially abundant, surrounded by amazing people and confident in our own abilities, requires cultivating curiosity, persistence, self-reflection, self-discipline, compassion, character, drive and many other esteemed traits.There is truth in the words that our external reality is a manifestation, or a byproduct, of our internal reality.

I encourage you to look at the things you want, and figure out what’s a byproduct and what’s the actual end goal that you should authentically commit to.
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Thanks Vikram for the link and Max Marmer

Have a nice day! :)

The line by the US commentator when the USA were seconds away from a miraculous victory over the legendary Soviet Hockey team in 1980..

If you haven’t watched the movie ‘Miracle’, I recommend you see it when you can..

3 wonderful things that struck me –

1) It’s all about conditioning. Herb Brooks (the coach) assured the team that while they may not be the best in the world, they were sure to be the most conditioned.. and they were.

2) Prepare, prepare, prepare: From day 1, the US team were assembled for just 1 mission – get conditioned enough to beat the Soviets in the Olympic games..

3) The name on the front is far more important than the name on the back: For all of us who are part of schools, companies – isn’t this a lesson for life?

:)
Have a great day! And yes, I do believe in miracles..

“Nietzsche was the one who did the job for me.

At a certain moment in his life, the idea came to him of what he called “the love of your fate.”

Whatever your fate is, whatever the hell happens, you say, “This is what I need.” It may look like a wreck, but go at it as though it were an opportunity, a challenge.

If you bring love to that moment—not discouragement—you will find the strength is there. Any disaster that you can survive is an improvement in your character, your stature, and your life. What a privilege! This is when the spontaneity of your own nature will have a chance to flow. Then, when looking back at your life, you will see that the moments which seemed to be great failures followed by wreckage were the incidents that shaped the life you have now. You’ll see that this is really true. Nothing can happen to you that is not positive. Even though it looks and feels at the moment like a negative crisis, it is not. The crisis throws you back, and when you are required to exhibit strength, it comes.”
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Wow!

Good morning! :) Good week ahead everyone! :)

Two separate incidents that caught my attention –

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I began sending book learnings to friends every weekend around August last year as a way of pushing myself to read. This soon became an initiative and when I look back, I see a marked difference my learnings now in terms of quality (in both content and delivery). Of course, that’s not to say they are amazing by any stretch of the imagination, but they’re definitely get better.

Good old trial and error. You never know until you try..
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The second learning is a result of many discussions. I decided not to attend my graduation as an Electrical engineer at NUS as a result of a lack of connection I felt with my course. Anyway, this has resulted in many questions from friends and family on ‘why’.. and ‘what if I regret it’ etc. While I don’t feel the need to justify why I feel so strongly against going, I did feel the need of clearly understanding my own motives and most importantly, I didn’t want to do something because I feared I would regret it 10 years from now.

To cut a long story short, it turns out that the big thing I’m missing is pride at my own results. Engineering has never been my thing and as a result, my results were never anywhere near standards I would expect from myself. This is nobody’s fault, it is what it is..

My mom had the best take on it after I’d explained the rationale behind my feeling this way(after some discussions with a friend), she felt it was a great learning to make sure I worked my ‘a&$e’ off when I got to B school to make sure I’m very proud of my graduation. Great learning indeed.. one for life to make sure that the standards set in whatever I choose to do are high – no excuses taken!

I like that – no questions, no judgement on my decision.. just a very deep learning. Thanks Mom! :)
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:)

The non-optimized life

When you measure an activity, you can improve it. Computers make it easy to optimize just about every portion of your life.

Surely, you can optimize a website or a blog for traffic. You can optimize ads to make them yield more results. You can optimize your presentation style to close more sales or change more minds. You can optimize your workout to get faster and stronger. You can optimize your diet to lose weight and gain muscle. You can optimize your sleeping patterns to get more rest in less time. Cosmo even says you can optimize your sex life…

And then, at some point, you realize you’re spending your best energy on optimization, not on creation.

This is a fine line to walk, because of course you can optimize your creation time as well! You can develop habits to amplify your best thoughts and make it likely you’ll ship work that matters. I get that. But I also worry that a never-ending cycle of optimization can become a crutch, a place to hide when you really should be confronting the endless unknown, not the banal stair step of incremental optimization. While Yahoo was optimizing their home page in 2001, the guys at Google were inventing something totally new.

That’s one reason I resist the temptation to optimize this blog for traffic and yield. I’d rather force myself to improve it by having the guts to write better posts instead.

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LOVE it! :) Here’s to better posts..

Now, that’s a big one!

I always have a flavor for the season when a new realization strikes and suddenly many things I previously felt strongly about without fully knowing why make sense. And the latest big one is curiosity..

I’ve realized that I really vibe with curious people. And I’m a curious prick.. I like to understand the ‘why‘ behind things, I don’t really mind saying ‘I have no idea what you are talking about‘ rather than potentially save face and nod along and I don’t really mind asking ‘stupid‘ questions so long as my curiosity is satiated. Now, as we grow, it’s important this is merged with tact (atleast, so I’ve heard), but I still feel inherent curiosity is a big one.

I don’t particularly like hearing the ‘that’s how things work here‘ or ‘that’s how it’s always been‘ or even a point of view that strikes me as parroted. It need not always be like that and I feel the ones who change things are the ones who keep asking ‘why‘ and ‘why not‘..

Anyway, my point is that we are all born with innate curiosity. Somewhere down the line this is quashed by some extremely insecure person who typically got annoyed – sometimes this was a teacher who stamped any questions out, or sometimes it was a relative who just asked us to shut up when we asked too many questions, and we did.. except we shut up forever.

And then, there might also have been people around us who encouraged us to ask questions all the time, kept that curiosity alive. For some, we re-discover that curiosity as we work or live with people who like that intellectual challenge that comes with asking questions rather than discuss events or other people because when we question, we invariably question opinions and ideas. An opinion or idea often has an origin in the most unlikeliest of places and that makes the journey of exploration even more rewarding because we often truly understand what shapes people we know and most importantly, what shapes ourselves.

Also because, discussing ideas and opinions and being open to those of others is just one step away from reflection and learning..

From my Harry Potter days, one of the big themes I remember from the book is that ‘the biggest mistakes adults make is that they forget what it is to be kids‘. They forget that youth, energy and most importantly, that curiosity and innate sense of adventure that enables youth to challenge the status quo..

Let’s not let that die.. We don’t need to have extremely high IQ’s or be the most brilliant analytical thinkers – we just need to get into the habit of questioning why things are the way they are, why we do what we do.. and that would be a start.. to a new journey of learning!

Here’s to that..