Materialistic Rewards
By Kevin
Having failed to secure a seat in Alain de Botton's public lecture in the LSE led me to check out his talks on TED.com which turned out to be wonderful. His insights into life and philosophy is extremely powerful and can indeed be applied to living well.
99 Percent?
By Kevin
With the influx of information in our everyday life, 99 Percent is quite a gem with great insights on modern life and 'modern living' in general. It speaks of ideas for personal motivation and lots about making your life better.
It features articles that really touches me, like this short great read.
Einstein’s 1%
By Kevin
Gliding on the waters
Best-selling Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami talks about talent, motivation and most importantly, hardwork in his memoir 'What I talk about when I talk about running'. This point was well highlighted by 99%'s article on the book. That idea that talent is a pre-requisite is compelling, and that belief puts you at a higher level than most other 'smart' people who have given up on the way and become 'mediocre' or just 'ordinary'.
I sometimes believe that majority of people in life sail through life this way. We are all born with gifts that takes time to discover and develop. As we go through life, we discard these gifts as we found them to be either overly taxing (too much time and effort required to bring us to the next level), or uninteresting. An environment that encourage and fosters these talents are necessary not so much to 'discover' these talents but to develop them appropriately. And inspirations are, without doubt, important too.
Scott Barry Kaufman discusses the importance of inspiration in the blog entry and suggests ways in which inspirations can be made to come by more often. I'm not sure how incredible this appear to our readers but we must acknowledge that no idea comes independently and originally from the guy who mentions it despite the attribution. The mind works in curious ways and we might have simply picked up cues from those around us to eventually arrive at whatever we've got.
One Reality
By Kevin
Feeding Others or yourself?
The chapter on 'Efficiency' in my text begin with the following anecdote:
In my dream I came to a room where men sat in a large circle around a pot of soup. Each man held a long spoon, which he could dip into the pot. But the spoons were longer than the men's arms so they could not bring the soup to their mouths. The men were hungry, and cried out in their misery. "This is hell," said my guide.
Then he took me to another room, similar to the first. Once again men sat in a large circle around a pot of soup, once again each man's spoon was so long that he could not bring it to his mouth. But in this room the men were not hungry, because they were feeding each other. "This," said my guide, "is heaven."
There's only one reality. You and those around it makes it heaven or hell.
Motivational Psychology
By Kevin
Set it, and reach it
I never knew there was such thing as 'motivational psychologist' until I stumbled upon Heidi's article on HBR. She wrote a book about reaching our goals through better understanding of our own psychology. In this article, she detailed 9 traits that successful people appears to share. It is important that these are not character or personality and have got to do more with habits and conditioning. They do not necessarily require skills though intelligence and street-smartness helps.
Her list included the following:
- Get Specific
- Seize the moment to act on your goals
- Know exactly how far you have left to go
- Be a realistic optimist
- Focus on getting better, rather than being good
- Have grit
- Build your willpower muscle
- Don't tempt fate
- Focus on what you will do, not what you won't do
You realised that they are actions, things that you and I can constantly practice and perform in our lives. That's pleasing to know because many demotivated people find themselves helpless - they think that they are subjected to circumstances and conditions beyond their control. Being a realist, understanding what you can control and what you can't and then being hopeful by working hard on those areas where you can make a difference can be an extremely powerful thing to do. Take charge and play an active role in your life and some day, you'll be able to change it the way you want.
Conflicting Interests
By Kevin
Dan Ariely does a quick 6 minute little presentation to deliver his message that we must all be aware of our own conflicts of interests and how our incentives can be influencing our decisions in ways which obstructs us from actually achieving what we hope to.
As for takeaways on making presentations, Dan Ariely always does a great job packaging his personal experiences into the messages he wants to bring across. This is possibly because in most of his talks, he discusses his own studies and research experiences - but he almost always successfully makes us think a great deal out of those simple experiences and reflect on their implications. That perceptiveness is probably the reason why he had managed to design such interesting experiments to draw exceptional conclusions about humans and the way we work.
Being Wrong
By Kevin
Kathryn Schulz, a leading 'wrongologist', shares about her study of 'being wrong' on TED.com. It is something interesting to look into and embracing fallibility is becoming something rather in fashion after more than a decade of bringing the attempt to perfect ourselves to to the extreme (think plastic surgery, motivational courses, self-improvement hypes, etc). I'm not too sure about her underlying thesis that we all feel that we're right most of the time. I know of people (practically all Asians) who tread so carefully in life they naturally assume they are wrong until they gathered enough evidence to satisfy themselves that they are not wrong (which - they have to highlight - does not necessarily mean they are right).
I must say that Kathryn's style of presentation does make her appear like she believes she is right; at least enough for her to write a book about it.
Failure of Competition
By Kevin
Setting it up properly
Spending more than one and a half decade in a competitive education system like that of Singapore is pretty much enough to give me a good sense of what is wrong with it. It's a really good demonstration of how competition have been exploited way too far to attain an arbitrarily defined sort of excellence that has caused us to lose sight of the original intent of the competition itself. And perhaps this article discussing the state of NUS Lectures provides us with good insights on the effects of the 'Singapore Student Mentality'.
In a competitive set up of our education system, we want students to develop good character, work ethics, working knowledge of their field and an ability to motivate themselves to work hard. The design of our assessment and curriculum will have to match that in order to achieve the objectives of this competitive set up. Lectures and typical lessons should preferably not become 'exam-preps' as they probably are now. And while student feedback on course content and teaching style is good, it should be ignored when trying to drive lessons towards the direction of mind-numbing exam-preparation. At the end of the day, we want students who could go out there in life and perform.
A friend recently commented that bright Singaporean students sometimes face problems with getting in US schools because the top schools there are really not interested in an alumni who simply gets a good job, works hard and be recognized by his boss. These universities are interested in producing students who would be the next Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg (sorry I'm only thinking about more tech related companies for now). They are not interested in people who can top their cohort with their GPAs, they want people who top their cohort with ideas that the markets applaud, visions that talents would follow and products consumers demand, or influence the economic policies. This makes them bolder when it comes to admitting students who may not have the scores but the great stories about their exploits on trips to exotic places, initiation of eccentric projects, failed entrepreneurship attempts.
If our economy is to transit to greater heights, and human capital is the most important thing to a tiny economy like Singapore then modifying education, and not migration policy is going to be priority.
Freedom & Responsibility
By Kevin
I often look into management books for inspirations on personal development. Essentially, while winning in corporate environments may not always be about abilities or qualities but these are important aspects HR look out for when hiring. Their favored traits are often manifestations of something more fundamental in one's attitude and beliefs.
I was delighted to stumble upon Netflix's slides on 'Freedom and Responsibility Culture' not so much because it is a good framework to create a successful culture for a creative, technology driven company but because it contains some wisdoms and elements about living life that we all should learn. I've included it here for all to look through.
I'm particularly drawn to the idea of how you should only give freedom when responsibility is demonstrated. That's not only valuable for firms but also as an advice for parents. Too many kids today are not demonstrating the maturity and responsibility and they get freedom that can be dangerous. Worst, parents are not giving kids the right incentives and showing how they can achieve what they want in the appropriate ways.
Now that firms are learning how to teach and train their employees better, doesn't mean parents can cease doing a good job...
Deep Optimism
By Kevin
As any good young person in his 20s should know, optimism versus pessimism is not simply about half-glass full or empty sort of thing. In a recent FT article in 'Recruitment', research suggests that optimist tend to get the best jobs. They mentioned the concept of a 'deep optimist', whose optimism is not the simple foolish concept of 'looking on the bright side'. It is something that goes deep into the personality and thinking of these people:
In fact, psychology suggests that an important way in which deep-rooted optimism does good is through better coping strategies. The deep optimist has the strength to see obstacles more realistically and resourcefully, not less. And drink and drugs are deep optimism’s enemies, not its friends.
In other words, being cheerful and bubbly is more of a by-product of optimism though the reverse can often help to improve one's ability to adopt that deep optimistic approach to thinking. And Matt Ridley provides a very sophisticated demonstration of what it takes to be a deep optimist, although he tends to also exhibit the cheery personality that can be 'faked', it takes a remarkable deep optimist to stand up and tell everyone around him to snap out of the gloom.
I personally believe that a deep optimist does not ignore problems or negative aspects of issues but sees the opportunity to eradicate them. He seize the day and take action to realistically right things. And it is these actions, this attitude that you can strive and achieve that provides them with outcomes that might differ from everyone else.