Dec

23

Persistence and keeping your eye on the prize

Filed Under career, goal setting, perseverance, regular reads, things to remind myself | Leave a Comment

Looks like Marc Andreessen has been sharing a lot on the books he has been reading. Which is great, because he’s filtering out the less interesting stuff and only sharing the good stuff! :)

This story on persistence inspires me. I’ve quoted Vinod Khosla a lot on this already, but I’ll write it to remind myself: Part of entrepreneurship is persistence. When you run into an obstacle, you either plough through it or you give up (and do something else).
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Dec

22

Facts about helplessness at work

Filed Under career, did you know, fear, passion, things to remind myself | Leave a Comment

I have held previous jobs where I felt just absolutely shitty and felt just completely helpless, not knowing how to dig myself out of the deepest trench in my life. Out of challenging moments and difficult times, you always learn something out of it. Consider it character building–the tough way. I read this today and am sharing this here to remind myself in future:

Among small-business owners and employees, those with a stronger sense that they control what happens to them in life are less likely to become angry, depressed, or agitated when faced with conflicts and strains on the job. But those who feel little control are more prone to getting upset or even quitting.

In a study of 7,400 men and women in London civil service jobs, those who felt they had to meet deadlines imposed by someone else and had little say in how they did their work or with whom they did it had a 50 percent higher risk of developing symptoms of coronary heart disease than those with more job flexibility. Feeling little control over the demands and pressures of the work we have to do holds as a great risk of heart disease as risk factors like hypertension.

That is why, of all the relationships we have at work, the one with our boss has the greatest impact on not just our emotional health, but also our physical health.

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Dec

19

Bristlebot

Filed Under howto, marketing | Leave a Comment

Haha, this has got to be the simplest but elegant nerdy toy I have seen in a long time!

Dec

19

Two Fishermen

Filed Under fear, quotes, regular reads, things to ponder about, things to remind myself | Leave a Comment

Two men went fishing. One was an experienced fisherman, the other wasn’t. Every time the experienced fisherman caught a big fish, he put it in his ice chest to keep it fresh. Whenever the inexperienced fisherman caught a big fish, he threw it back. The experienced fisherman watched this go on all day and finally got tired of seeing the man waste good fish. “Why do you keep throwing back all the big fish you catch?” he asked. The inexperienced fisherman replied, “I only have a small frying pan.”

Sometimes, like that fisherman, we throw back the big plans, big dreams, big jobs, big opportunities that God gives us. Our faith is too small. We laugh at that fisherman who didn’t figure out that all he needed was a bigger frying pan, yet how ready are we to increase the size of our faith?

Great story, that I randomly stumbled on. This actually reminds me of something the famed VC Vinod Khosla once said in an interview, that sometimes entrepreneurs fail because they fail to think big enough. The problem is their self-imposed limitations, and they just don’t realize it.

Dec

18

Interview with Max Levchin, CEO of Slide

Filed Under people i like, startup, strategy, things to remind myself | Leave a Comment

Max Levchin is someone I admire. If the name doesn’t ring a bell, he is the co-founder of Paypal that was sold to eBay for $1.5Bil.

Here are some of my key takeaways:

  1. As an entrepreneur, you have to learn to define yourself as someone who runs a company. You know you’re really good at that if you dont think that much about what kind of company you are running (meaning, it’s second nature to you).
  2. After you launch something, watch the world respond to it. If they say it is no good, you must evolve.
  3. You don’t wait for the market to tell you that your product or idea sucks. You keep your ears close to the ground. Sometimes you must completely your strategy. Smell the opportunity.
  4. On reaching out to end-users: Being active in forums and the company blog is good, but that doesn’t scale. Satisfy your early adopter (your core base), then shift to metrics. Use metrics to drive all features. It’s important to measure, interpret the information, and feed that directly into product strategy. 10% of headcount at Slide is dedicated to measuring.
  5. Greatest fallacy: build products for yourself. Abstract yourself out of the equation. Startup founders are smarter and crazier than the average person, you can’t use yourself as the “normal” person this product is built for. Find out who you are building it for. It’s great if you are a part of your audience, but you may not necessarily be. If you are not, you must understand the audience really well.
  6. At Paypal, everyone on board understood the vision, and genuinely focused on customer needs. Build value, create something people want.



I found this cool interview of him, by iinnovate. Read more about Max on the New York Times.

Dec

16

The invisible skill

Filed Under career, regular reads, self improvement, things to remind myself, time management | Leave a Comment

Interesting thing I read today: Much like how a sculptor’s work is the result of what is taken away, self-control can also be described in the same manner.

Self-control manifests largely in the absence of more obvious emotional fireworks. Signs include being unfazed under stress or handling a hostile person without lashing out in return. Another mundane example is time management: Keeping ourselves on a daily schedule demands self-control, if only to resist seemingly urgent but actually trivial demands, or the lure of time-wasting pleasures or distractions.

From the book, Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ

That sounds to me like people who constantly repeat self-destructive (but addictive) behavior, such as gambling, drinking, .. <insert vice here>. Although it doesn’t even need to be that severe. These days, addiction to TV and mindlessly surfing the wonderful internet aimlessly, squandering precious time is also an indicator of lack of self-control.

It was a painful decision at that time, but I did give up TV. I haven’t replaced the remote’s battery and have been TV-free for more than half a year now. Do I miss it? Only if I start again I will. Have I missed out on the world? Not at all. I’ve also come to accept *not* completely finish reading all my RSS feeds. Even with my carefully culled list of RSS feeds, there’s just way too much information out there, more than I can consume, more than I have the time to separate wheat from chaff. Surfing the web for the pleasure of surfing, I have kept to a bare minimal.

The demon I am fighting today is waking up early. I’m more of a night owl, not really a morning person. But I have taken measures, including external accountability (with friendly bets with friends on how early I will wake up the next day, which if I fail to do, I buy them lunch). Sleep is a waste of time, I am trying to keep that to a minimum. I hate myself for indulging in it.
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Dec

13

You must want a big success and then beat it into submission

Filed Under business, career, changing the world, goal setting, passion, people i like, perseverance, quotes, regular reads, things to remind myself | Leave a Comment

I love quotes! And here’s a good one I picked up today from Marc Andreessen’s blog post today:

Marcus Loew, founding father of the motion picture industry and founder of Loews Theatres and MGM:

Ambition!

You must want a big success and then beat it into submission; you must be as ravenous to reach it as the wolf who licks his teeth behind a fleeing rabbit; you must be as mad to win as the man who, with one hand growing cold on the revolver in his pocket, with the other hand pushes his last gold piece on the ‘Double-O’ at Monte Carlo.

As quoted in Neal Gabler’s outstanding An Empire of Their Own.

On another note, today I learned that OLPC’s Linux-based operating system was available for download, and so I wanted to check it out for myself. It’s pretty neat. Now I know what my blog looks like when rendered on an OLPC:

times-jliew-olpc
Also interestingly enough, when I uploaded the above screenshot on Flickr, the admin of a group (on Flickr) for the OLPC: One Laptop Per Child group asked if I could use this picture, to which I said yes. Do check out their gallery for more pictures of this laptop.

Dec

11

Commiting to execution and excusitis

Filed Under career, execution, goal setting, perseverance, self improvement, things to remind myself | 1 Comment

The secret to success boils down to three simple words: Dream. Plan. Execute. It’s in committing to that last part–executing–where people often fall short. You could spend hours and hours envisioning a glorious life for yourself. You could outline on paper every single step you need to get there and every person who can help. But if you can’t commit to working the plan, regardless of how long it takes, you may as well take that piece of paper, crumple it up, and throw it in the recycle-bin.
– Nicholas Aretakis, author of No More Ramen

Love that quote. This resonates with me. Reminds me of Guy Kawasaki’s term for this: people suffering from “excusitis”. Don’t you just love people who talk and talk but *never* frigging deliver (but continue to paint their bold and supposedly forward thinking vision)?

I know I suffer from mild excusitis sometimes–so I’m putting this out here for everyone to see. You can call me out on this if you see me talking but not delivering (tell me to STFU). I’m doing this because I never want to be like that.

Dec

9

Putting up with grief

Filed Under failure, fear, passion, quotes, self improvement, things to ponder about, things to remind myself, values | Leave a Comment

Retired Stanford business professor James G. March asserts that “short-term reality is an insult to the vision. You have to be self-delusional to create change - it’s a useful craziness guided and founded on your clear identity and knowing what you must do.” What lessons in leadership can be learned from Don Quixote? According to March, “We live in a world that emphasizes realistic expectations and clear successes. Quixote had neither. But through failure after failure, he persists in his vision and his commitment. He persists because he knows who he is.” Builders are not only willing but indeed determined to put up with the grief that results from pursuing their dreams.

The above was from a book review on Amazon. Some powerful stuff. I had to take a few moments after reading that just to fully absorb it.

Dec

9

What is your coping mechanism for bad news?

Filed Under failure, passion, perseverance, quotes, self improvement, things to ponder about, things to remind myself | Leave a Comment

Today, I watched the 2007 keynote from TechCrunch40 where Mike Moritz interviewed tech heavyweights Marc Andreessen (of Netscape, Ning, Opsware fame), Chad Hurley (of Youtube fame), and David Filo (of Yahoo! fame).

Marc Andreesen has a point on being CEO, that it’s not a job cut out for everyone.

CEO job is an unrelenting stream of bad news. If it’s a international big company, then you get bad news from all over the world. The key is to be able to listen to and absorb all that news, then filter and act on it; not letting it get to you emotionally.

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Dec

8

Focusing on things you don’t like to do

Filed Under things to remind myself, time management | Leave a Comment

IMG_2242

I’m a busy person. One of the resolutions I made during my solo euro-backpack trip two months ago was that I would diversify my reading–that I would read the things I wouldn’t normally read. I am a voracious reader and read only business and tech. Everything else, .. mmmh .. I can’t really find the time for.

One of the things I do to cope with information overload is skim reading my emails, separating the wheat from the chaff. I usually discard long rambling pointless emails. It’s become a habit of mine that was really born out of necessity. However, this morning as I try to read this book by Ayn Rand, a good story book recommended by our previous fed chief Alan Greenspan, I just simply could not focus.
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Dec

2

UPGRADING WORDPRESS!

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Im taking my blog offline for a little while for some backend maintenance and upgrade .. if this page looks messed up — it’s ok. Your life will go on.

Update: 6:09pm - Wow this upgrade process has sucked up more time than I thought. There are still some quirks that annoy me, but I will have to fix them later.

Dec

2

20 questions (only!) personality test

Filed Under career, self improvement, things to ponder about | Leave a Comment

Speaking of self-awareness, I had just recently sent out an email survey to some close ones to ask for good and bad feedback on myself. I recently stumbled upon this test from Penelope Trunk’s post and decided to give it a shot. I don’t exactly fancy tedious lengthy questionnaires, and this one was only 20 questions, Penelope recommended it, so I figured I’d give it a shot. Pretty insightful, I recommend it; it tells you how you interact with other personality types. Here is the link to J.T. O’Donnell’s Interaction Style Assessment Test.

Now on some of the questions, they were basically polarized yes/no types, with no in-between answers like “sometimes” or “depends”. That was tough, so just shoot from the hip and go with your gut. First thing that comes to mind is probably right, so don’t think too hard on these questions.

Below is my report card. This is just for my personal reference to remind myself. Take your own test here:

Based on the results of the ISAT, you are an….ENERGIZER!

Full of persuasive energy, ENERGIZERS are natural people-persons. You know how to strike up a conversation and keep it going. Take a look at the following grid to learn more about your professional strengths as they compare to the other three Interaction Styles:

Interaction-Style-Chart

Every Interaction Style is valuable in the workplace. However, the key to being successful on-the-job and as part of a work team is to understand your Interaction Style so that you can A) choose a role on the team that leverages your style’s strengths, and B) understand the other styles on your team so you can communicate with them effectively.
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Dec

1

Self-discipline and getting a grip on growing to-do list

Filed Under execution, goal setting, perseverance, regular reads, self improvement, things to remind myself, time management | Leave a Comment

As I was taking a break from studying at a coffee shop today, I was *productively* wasting time by burning through the pile of magazines that I subscribed to when I found this gem from Entrepreneur magazine written by Romanus Wolter. He listed 4 points that hit me hard on all four counts.

1. Establish an affirmative mind-set by giving yourself a reason to become more disciplined. Just as everyone has different muscular strength, we all possess different levels of self-discipline. State three positive outcomes associated with becoming more disciplined, and give your subconscious direction by integrating your business goals into your daily routine. Having an overall view of your objectives and progress keeps you motivated to take action even when there are distractions.

I fight distractions a lot, and self-discipline is a challenge as well. This past week I did pretty well, digging myself out of bed early to go jog (to get blood pumping into my brain) and then going to work early to get a head start. I recently asked for feedback on myself from a certain few people and one of the criticisms I got was that I was too “corporate”. I think Romanus brought up a good point here; that integrating some business goals into your daily routine helps keep you more focused on your personal end goal. If the end goal is something large, this will obviously require some effort and consist of more than just a few steps. Some “corporate” grown-up-ness helps in reminding me of what I am working towards and not losing sight of my goal even if it’s distant.

In fact, just this past week I tried something new that worked well. I called a good friend Monday night, told him my entire to-do list (my desired objectives that I wanted to hit) for the next day, and told him that if I fail to achieve even one, I would buy him lunch. The list ranged from “not pressing the snooze button at 6 am more than once” (first thing when I wake up) to “studying for my test” (last thing before I go to bed). And I hit it all! Had it not been for this, I think I would have hit the snooze button more than once.
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Dec

1

When you’re at the very bottom, you can only go up

Filed Under backpacking europe, failure, fear, people i like, perseverance, quotes, self improvement, things to remind myself | Leave a Comment

I read this comment below today by Pistolette and have many times thought of the same thing. To digress, the blog post where I read this comment is a great one — I’ll write up on that in a separate post.

It’s been two years since Hurricane Katrina desrtoyed the homes of my entire family, but now we are more successful financially, mentally, and career-wise than we were before. I suppose its like the saying goes “it’s only when you lose everything that you’re free to do anything.” After a few days of moping around we quickly regrouped and simply felt happy to be alive. Every day since then I have lived strongly in the present, and have an awareness of things around me that I did not have before. We lost most of our fears, and learned to enjoy life through experiences rather than material things. Perhaps a record-breaking hurricane seems like an extreme case of happenstance, but I think it still qualifies. I see many people around me trying to endure life here (in New Orleans) with the same old attitudes and they are suffering so much. I choose to see the positive things the storm brought here, and as a result I am “lucky”.

Don’t you sometimes get tired of defending all that you have accumulated in life? Ironically, sometimes it’s the things that you have amassed that now holds you back from otherwise going in a much different direction than you would like to; effectively becoming “baggage”.

Recently when I was backpacking Europe alone, I met this shopkeeper lady in the beautiful city of Nürnberg, Germany. She used to be a school teacher, she was old(er), but very upbeat, positive, and energetic. We had more than a superficial “tourist to shopkeeper-that-sells-to-tourists” talk. Turns out, I found out that she had recently been through some difficult times and as a result lost almost everything, including her house and her significant other.

She smiled as she said to me enthusiastically, “I have lost everything, and now I can only WIN!” (now imagine that, in a thick German accent)

We bonded with a short conversation about life in general, after just 5 minutes. I guess we hit it off really quick. Her name is Christina, and I’ll never forget her (I hope I don’t). She was shy in front of the camera but I insisted that I wouldn’t leave without a picture. So here it is, and I’m showing it although I look like an idiot (my eyes are closed)

Picture 023

To go off slightly on a tangent, Christina’s store is one of those makeshift ones. It was among a few others set up on a broad pedestrian-only bridge. Here’s a scene from the bridge, across from her little store. Pretty, huh?

Picture 107