Aug

30

Statistics - the new bling

Filed Under geeky, humor | Leave a Comment

My kind of geeky humor! 4:33 minute clip warning.

I am reminded of myself when I saw that take-himself-too-seriously guy (scene at 3:52). Just kidding. Ha ha.

Aug

27

Frank Sinatra — That’s life

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Thanks to my co-worker Sabrina, I’m now stuck on Frank Sinatra! I found his song titled “That’s Life” to be pretty meaningful. Thanks Sabrina!

 

I’ve been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate,
A poet, a pawn and a king.
I’ve been up and down and over and out
And I know one thing:
Each time I find myself, flat on my face,
I pick myself up and get back in the race.

That’s life
I tell ya, I can’t deny it,
I thought of quitting baby,
But my heart just ain’t gonna buy it.
And if I didn’t think it was worth one single try,
I’d jump right on a big bird and then I’d fly

Aug

25

What would happen if you had this laptop on your lap?

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Wow. I would hate having a hole on my lap when if I had this laptop. I would have to totally miss out on ice hockey for at least 1 week. Better return the Sony-made batteries in Dell and Apple laptops if you have them. Good thing I own an IBM ThinkPad! :) — and I don’t mean Lenovo either.

Aug

21

Young mentor, old mentor

Filed Under career, mentoring, passion, self improvement | Leave a Comment

Power Mentoring: How Successful Mentors and Proteges Get the Most Out of Their RelationshipsTom Morris wrote an interesting advice when it comes to mentoring:

A very wise woman in her 40s once said to me that she always makes sure that she has at least two women friends — one a good deal older, and one sigificantly younger.   The older one shows her the way forward, she explained. The younger one renews her energy for the journey.

Interesting advice for mentoring. When we think about finding a mentor, we usually think about seeking out a more senior person,or a number of such people. Maybe that’s half of the game. Perhaps an exposure to youth has its own teaching purpose in our lives.

That’s a pretty interesting concept I thought I’d share with my readers. Viewing the perspectives from both mentors, gives us the ability to see what we cannot yet see, and the ability to see what we have forgotten to see. Everyone, regardless of accomplishments, age, and power, can learn from others.

And to quote Mike Myatt, the Managing Director and Chief Strategy Officer of N2growth:

Whether young or old, experienced or inexperienced, the best way to approach personal and professional development is to always stay in the learning zone. When you think you have all the answers is when you are headed straight for the proverbial brick wall. Always seek out people who know more than you do and actively learn from them. Find a mentor or coach who can dispassionately point out your shortcomings and help you chart a path to progress. Most things in life happen as a result of choices we make and you can make the choice to gain an understanding of what it is that you don’t know and determine what you want to do with that information. It’s your choice…choose wisely.

I don’t personally own this book, but I’d be interested to know if anyone else has read it.

Aug

21

Scheduled site maintenance — DNS records

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Dear visitors,

I have just updated my domain (jayliew.com)’s DNS records at about 7:30PM PST — and these changes may take up to 48 hours to propagate throughout the planet. I hope for minimal disruption, but if you have trouble accessing this site, please be patient and I will sort it out as soon as I can. This also means that I might not receive some emails. If an email bounces back to you, please resend it to me. Thanks again!

Sincerely,

Jay Liew

Aug

20

Winning and suffering

Filed Under career, passion, quotes, self improvement | Leave a Comment

Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.

– Vince Lombardi

BusinessWeek has an excellent article about winning. In their poll of 2,500 American workers, two-thirds said “a modestly talented but extremely competitive person” would be more likely to get ahead at their companies and only one-third gave the edge to “an extremely talented but uncompetitive person”. Mentioned in the article, is the intense discipline that prompted a 19 year-old Santosh Kumar to borrow books, sell vegetables, tutor others, and study his way into the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, becoming a hero in his rural village. He is competing for a life no one in his family has ever had. My hat’s off to that boy, he has my full respect.

Sure, I’ve had rough patches in my life. Patches so rough, I start wondering what life is about, and if this is what I want out of life. I start tracing my steps, figuring out what I did right and what I did wrong, and checking if I have drifted from the long term goals. You are what you do, and I believe in actively taking action to shape your life, rather than waiting for circumstances in life to decide how you should live your life.

The state of your life is nothing more than a reflection of your state of mind.

– Wayne Dyer

It’s sad to see when people choose not to fight and accept their life the way it is, blaming it on luck and circumstance. Understandably, everyone is handed a different set of cards. But it’s still how you play it. Like Peter Kua says it in his blog post titled “Don’t read this until you are irritated”, irritations in life forces you to go from just mediocre to great. Angry for not making enough money at work? Angry that you can’t quit smoking? These irritations are calling you out to respond to them. Irritations forces you to innovate new solutions, many inventions were the answer to a problem someone had. And like Peter says,

It’s fun to struggle. If your entire life was not filled with struggles, you wouldn’t become what you are today. If you didn’t struggle through high school and college, you wouldn’t be parking yourself in that snug leather chair of yours, in an office overlooking the bay. Struggling to survive is a constant irritation, but a necessity for growing rich and powerful. Who doesn’t like competitions? Who doesn’t like watching their favorite basketball teams struggle in a fiercely contested match? The struggle to win, the struggle for power and glory brings about an immense sense of achievement to those who make it. To those who don’t, they trudge back to the drawing boards. And they practice and rehearse and struggle. In preparation for the next challenge.

How many times have you heard someone say “I wish I was born to rich parents, I wish I was given the option to pick who I wanted as my mom and dad”? I think being born to poor parents gives you the advantage of having no other choice but to fight (unless you just throw in the towel before the fight). Perhaps that’s why America is such great country. Here we have all the less fortunate people wanting a better life immigrating to the big apple, the land of opportunity, the USA. They all chose to fight for a better life for themselves, and their families.

 

Successful people are just not bothered about the possibility of failure. They go in the game knowing that they will win, and if they do fail, it doesn’t take them out of the game. Winners simply bounce back. They have a razor sharp focus on the prize and obstacles just sort of fade in the background of “minor implementation details”. Veteran executive coach Marshall Goldsmith says, “Successful people are delusional”, and “They are not as good as they think they are, but they have the confidence to pursue big things”. Sometimes the fear of failure prevents us from taking a chance, and when we opt to take on less opportunities, we’ve just secured ourselves absolutely no chance of success. It’s a vicious downward spiral that isn’t obvious everytime you opt not to take a chance — until you realize that you’ve just landed at the very bottom with nothing else to lose.

Sensei Paul Dal (a karate instructor), both a friend and mentor of mine once told me that when in a karate championship, there is nothing worse than fighting an opponent who has absolutely nothing to lose and unafraid to die. There’s just nothing worse than an opponent like that — so when he fights, he fights like he is ready to die. And guess what, he wins. It’s definitely a mental thing; when you detach yourself from all your worldly belongings and worries, and focus on that one single goal of beating that opponent, that’s when the magic starts kicking in. Rid yourself of your “oh, I can’t do this because I .. <insert excuse here>”.

And like Diane Brady says,

In short, they are the kind of people you want on your team. When somebody is passionate and driven by the pursuit, he tends to inspire passion in others. And fortunately for those less driven, most competitors are less interested in bringing others down than in raising themselves up. These aren’t the victims or complainers who have been beaten by life. More often than not, they like their bosses. In fact, they want to be the boss some day and often turn him or her into a mentor to help them get to the top. Whether racing to discover an AIDS vaccine or sweating to make it big in Beijing, this century belongs to the people who want the most.

Have you decided which of the following best describes you?

  1. A winner – fights to win
  2. Not a winner — accepts circumstances as is

I know I have.

Aug

14

You can have anything you want

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You can have anything you want — if you want it badly enough. You can be anything you want to be, do anything you set out to accomplish if you hold to that desire with singleness of purpose.

– Abraham Lincoln

Aug

9

Feedback: Key to continuous learning

Filed Under career, self improvement | 1 Comment

Whenever a Jesuit priest or a Calvinist pastor does anything of significance (for instance, making a key decision), he is expected to write down what results he anticipates. Nine months later, he then feeds back from the actual results to these anticipations. This very soon shows him what he did well and what his strengths are. It also shows him what he has to learn and what habits he has to change. Finally, it shows him what he is not gifted for and cannot do well.

Aaah, .. the power of documenting progress. Knowing thyself (yes, a clichè), knowing your strengths and weaknesses allows you to focus your energy on the essentials, like a magnifying glass that focuses the sun’s rays at a single point until it burns. Why waste effort? Effort costs! Even if you do not have to sleep and have unlimited energy, you are still bounded by time.

To know one’s strengths, to know how to improve them, and to know what one cannot do well — are the keys to continuous learning.

Aug

1

The “People” factor in technology

Filed Under business, career, quotes, technology | Leave a Comment

You may have a technology or a product that gives you an edge, but your people determine whether you develop the next winning technology or product.
– Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s CEO

Business, a human driven element. It’s a small world we live in. Invest in building meaningful relationships. Quote courtesy of Business 2.0