Passion Trade-Off
By Kevin
Do Something, on the side....
I was reading this entry on the HBR blog and found it incredibly perceptive if not insightful. We all have this incredibly strange tendency to believe in an 'all-or-nothing' situation even when we don't actually live such lives. Perhaps we enjoy the binary-choice questions both because they are simple and elegantly reflects our priorities but we almost definitely would hate to be put into that kind of situation where there appears to be no 'third' way.
So must there really be a trade-off? Can't you hold on to your job while trying out something new in the backyard of your home in hopes that you'd create a new product for your future firm? Can you not work as an accountant by day and sing in a bar in the evenings? The people who succeed in doing what they really enjoy and receive the financial fruits do not always simply plunge into something that was initially judged as impossible or unprofitable. They experiment and achieve small wins that leads on to big wins; sometimes it is about persisting through the whole series of failures and hanging on (which might be impossible if you take the all-or-nothing mindset).
OMGPOP, the firm behind the overnight sensation app 'Draw Something' started out as a 'joke' according to its founder and was on the verge of winding up after 35 failed attempts to create an app that generates sufficient revenue for the firm. And then all of a sudden, Zynga came and bought the struggling start-up for $180 million. So were those guys lucky? Yes. But did they hold on to the firm because they believe they'll get lucky? I guess not; it was something closer to passion.
Sure, you can always imagine that if you had not put in that much in your passion, you could have made more money and live a more comfortable life. Or that if you had not suppressed your passion and pursued that high-paying job, you'll be happier. The grass is always greener on the other side. Learn to realise that you can actually balance it. And that life is not all-or-nothing.
Personality vs Character
By Kevin
To put Susan Cain's ideas in a rather more coherent way; an introvert is someone who gets energy from low levels of social stimulation while the extroverts are people who are energized by high levels of social stimulation. It's great to see a book like Quiet published. And I was pretty moved by Susan's talk in part because I really appreciated the position she was describing, and in part because she presented herself as a really genuine, quiet cheerleader of the introverts.
The more interesting idea that I picked up from the talk was this idea about the transition from a culture of character to a culture of personality. Indeed, because of the ultra connected world and our obsession with efficiency and speed, we no longer have time to try and truly get to know people - we can't be bothered to. Therefore, we prefer bite-size pitches, 'superficial' demonstration of abilities, outright self-confidence, the easily-identified bright spot. Personality supersedes character; even though I suspect that in long term, it really is the people with good character whom you should hang on to.
We need to re-discover character-building; we need to discover people's character to know them and not just by their personalities. Only when we take the time to discover them, people would start realising the importance of building that up. The decline of character-building is also why people are more easily irritated by failure, intolerant of difficulties and drudgery, quick to anger and slow to forgive.
Virtuous Haste?
I came across this image a couple of days back and was amused by it. But I've also discovered how mutated our culture has become; indeed, 'hurrying' has already become a virtue, just by the sheer number of people upholding it. So what's with the haste? Why not sit back and think about where has persistence, endurance, patience gone? What's with the obsession with quick fixes and speed? The way we see 'time' has indeed altered our judgments of the merits of the man of actions and the man of contemplation. While those men of action should sit back and contemplate, those men of contemplation need to summon the courage - in Susan Cain's words - 'to speak softly'.
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.
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.
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...
Rethinking Groupthink
By Kevin
You sure that works?
Finally, after years of bashing the notion of brainstorming, there is research indicating its usefulness. As a matter of fact, people do consistently come up with better ideas on their own when they think hard and deep rather than spending half the time listening to the ideas of others and the other half just waiting around for ideas to pop up. There is, what the researchers call 'evaluation apprehension' - so there's a natural tendency to hold back your ideas when ideating in a group as compared to when doing it on your own. Having led countless project teams and committees at meetings and sessions when we need to come up with ideas for a variety of different sort of stuff, I guess I have a pretty good idea how useful group-brainstorming is.
I was introduced to brainstorming when I was 11, where I attended a course on WITs (Work Improvement Teams) and subsequently represented the school in a WITs competition organized by one of the polytechnics in Singapore. Subsequently, I picked up individual ideation techniques from the Edward De Bono's Six Thinking Hats course when I was in Secondary school. I found it much easier to come up with lots of ideas when you don't feel like you're at risk of being judged.
And books I read about thinking, group work, and management agree with me on that and emphasized the need to create a space for thinking and ideation that suspends judgment completely. And it's not just about verbal judgment, it goes beyond that. Participants must truly believe that they are not being assessed, judged or perceived negatively in that group thinking environment. It works well in a setting with people who are already extremely familiar with each other but may be more difficult amongst strangers.
So why not designate group thinking sessions as meetings where people already came up with lots of individual ideas and then are asked to reconcile them. As mentioned in the research, this 'brainwriting' technique appears to work much better. It is surprising then, that it hasn't quite been used that extensively in work and project settings.
A hint then, for those of you working on PW and frustrated with your teammates who may be 'social loafing'.
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