Limiting Intake of Action Items

My best friend in office gave a valuable feedback to me. He said that during my last meeting, I asked everyone to give input whether I miss any factor to consider my test. There are two problems with this. First, I am the one in charge of the project and so the position I have is to propose a test plan or direction instead of seeking inputs to build from scratch - even when I already have something and just ask out of politeness. Second is that I myself am currently still struggling in conducting the basic tests. So by asking more inputs, there are more things to test or at least there are more things to be evaluated as to whether they are included or excluded from the tests.

He reminded a very good point which my wife already often reminds me: finish the food on my plate first before taking additional items.

In life, there are things that we cannot control. For example, a family who is sick is beyond our control. Then there can be nice opportunities such as viewing our home and listening to sharing on the process towards patenting something can come out any time. In short, there are already many impromptu things that can happen.

Since those are beyond my control, the one I can change is how do I myself generate action items? There are many times where somehow I created difficult or time-consuming tasks for myself. Example includes connecting university students with senior leaders. Or to promote Duolingo to people. Or to promote teaching resources to other teachers and so on. I can’t deny that it is part of me and sometimes can be good such as offering the trial program to my ex-colleagues who may have such printing needs. On the other hands, things such as pure volunteering, attending talk that is only informative, and talking to people to persuade them to do something such as duolingo, taking part time course and etc; can be avoided.

One way to do this is to first delay following up on impromptu things today. Let it be over one night of thought first. Second, I need to learn to allocate time to filter the list of items to do.

Just remind myself that overflowing plate is not that effective. It is better to do one by one.

Irrational Beliefs

It is amazing that I am on a 10-day streak, not for the good things but for not so good things such as skipping writing blogs for just 5 minutes everyday. Unlike last month where we posted 22 articles, this is only the 10th post of the month while February will ends in two days. Ironically, this post is still something to celebrate as it is the 200th post since we began to write this blog.

The theme in the past 10 days revolved around my irrational beliefs. Although I have managed to somewhat control my anxiety, there are other irrational beliefs that I nurture. One is on procrastination while I somehow believe that last minute works better than a small efforts over a long period of time. Second is on giving feedback or mentoring where it turned out that I had many hidden expectations on my mentees. Third is again on my godlike demands to myself where I keep adding my load without remembering that I am just a human who can be tired and need rest. A medical certificate two days ago due to diarrhoea and a sleepy encounter yesteday evening were good reminders that I spent more time creating new inputs of my to-do list instead of clearing the existing tasks at hand.

Well, as the Now Habit book mentioned, it is not fruitful to analyze what has happened. The more important thing is what would I do from now on.

Thanks to my wife for encouraging me to start writing. May I continue to write more regularly this year :).

Patience in Listening

The more I observe the more evidences to show that I am not patient although I may look as someone who is patient. One of the hardest patience for me is to listen until someone finishes talking. I have four meetings today. The first one I could not cut as I chose to be muted as I was traveling and I don’t know how to mute my phone when there is no wireless connection. The 1-to-1 with my architect was having me cutting her several times as I knew our time is limited and we need to go to another meeting. During that sharing, I have the tendency to want to keep asking. But as the content is new for me, it was easier for me to wait till I find a pause from the speaker.

The hardest which I almost failed was during my team meeting this afternoon. I felt confident on the topic and I almost want to cut my senior. That is because he used a longer way to explain by saying there are two scenarios when we develop a new product. Either we say we also want to follow having a feature from past product and then mention the possible trade-off risk or we do not follow because of something even though there is a benefit. I almost cut in the middle which would not be the right thing to do as I would misunderstand his meaning. So hopefully I can continue improving my patience.

In another 1-to-1 with my friend, I managed to patiently waited for what he said and so I had a very good feedback on the four zones of interpersonal space or called Proxemics. I hope that I can remember where I need to stand the next time I talk to people.

Humility to keep changing ourselves for the better

As I have many progresses this year, I somehow become proud of myself and it is getting harder to be humble and acknowledge that there are so many things I need to change myself.

At home, sometime I focus too much on my progress this year where it seems that I can handle my emotion better in the sense that I am less stressed and frustrated. However, I forgot that my problem is my tendency to be too tired, too depressed, or too busy when I am at home. Being able to prevent me getting too depressed does not mean that I am automatically free from being too tired or too busy. If not taken any action, there will be days where I am busy in front of computer and other days where I sleep early. This reminds me to not take additional commitments easily and second to manage my time for doing something too long while I can move forward.

In office, it is also similar. Some of my technical knowledge and skills have increased in the last one month. Now I can give some constructive comments to my mentees. The problem is that I forgot that there are still so many things to do for me to keep being by the owner of my own progress.  For example, when I talked to senior in office, I only focus on the answers I got right instead of asking the reasons behind him saying so and so.

So, let’s be hamble, do not compare myself as to others. Remember, to make change, it requires efforts.

Overcoming Procrastination

I was happy to finally start be able to refuse to make myself miserable about anything. Recently I managed to control my emotion and dispute my tyranny of musts and shoulds. This helps me to have a happy live. However, I often take it to the extreme by the easy going approach in terms of taking commitment and staying true to the current commitments.

In another word, it is very easy for me to get distracted or to take new commitments while the current ones are left neglected. This literally happened yesterday. I got to know about the deadline of the ACM Special Interest Group in Simulation conference on Principles of Advanced Discrete Event Simulation three weeks ago. But I just started to think about it last week. Only on Wednesday night I really spent time for drafting the paper. I woke up on Thursday morning so that I could start work early. But end up I didn’t have the energy on Thursday night. On Friday at the end I didn’t do anything as I was busy with my ideas in the office and then followed by attending prayer’s meeting and watching the election debate. So I only had yesterday morning of which I wasted time to mention about my theories and experiences to my wife. It was only by God’s grace that I woke up at around 4.30 and spend 30 minutes to write about the idea. But afterwards, I wasted the grace by taking my own sweet time having breakfast and chit-chatting. I was only ready by 10.30 am. So at the end, I had to break my lunch date with my wife as I was nowhere to finish at 12 pm and only managed to submit by 3 pm.

In short, my procrastination has caused my wife and possibly my colleagues suffer. I had the capabilities but I didn’t put efforts to deliver. No planning was involved and I only relied on God’s grace, which seems to be more of testing God as last minute tendency means I demand God to follow or to give what I want immediately.

So it is time to change. It is time to take this problem seriously. It is time to find tools to overcome procrastination. Today I also make a promise to my wife to spend 30 minutes every day for doing reading or research as a part to break down things as I still have another two conference papers to go: Winter Simulation Conference of which deadline is on 7 April and IEEE Conference on Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management of which deadline is on 1 June. For each of the paper, I promised my wife to spend at least 20 hours instead of the 5 hours I did yesterday.

Finding the right person and the right tool

I finally sold my Galaxy Note 4. I was not sure how to do the factory reset but apparently it is quite easy. We can just go to settings and choose factory reset. And all data will be wiped out and the handphone is kind of new again.

The problem is the additional memory card. I have an extra 32 GB memory card. However, i did not know how to reset it properly. This is because when I tried to copy and move the data from the memory card to my laptop, there was lost of connection halfway. At home, it was even worse that the disk can no longer be accessed. It kept prompting for format disk. The good thing is that most of my data should be gone and I no longer need to erase it. But I am not sure how to make the memory card usable again. I kept formatting again but the quick format was not working. I ticked out the quick format, it run for a very long as if it is going to be completed. But at the end there was issue as well. So I gave up.

This morning I woke up and met my father in law. I told him his problem. And then he acted. Within two minutes he already finished re-formatting the memory card and now it is accessible again. The trick was that he used a special utility or application for re-formatting the memory card. So it reminds me, if there is a problem that we cannot solve, there are two three things to do. First, do not keep pushing doing the same thing because same approach will yield same result. Second, take a rest, let it go for a while. Third, rise up again and find the right person and or the right tool to help us solve the problem.

Are you excited with or afraid of high speed?

Driving is cool because we can go fast than if we walk. But as we go even faster, the question will come whether we are excited with or afraid of high speed. Of course it depends on the speed. But the thing is that with higher speed, there is a risk of higher danger if we hit on something. Higher speed also means longer stopping distance. Higher risk also means that we need to ensure that the brake system is working properly. Without a good breaking system, we may not be able to stop in time and hit the vehicle in front. Higher speed also means less robust in the case of bad weather where the road becomes more slippery and visibility decreases.

Well, having said that, does it mean that we need to go very slow? Slow enough to the point that there is little risk of we hit something? No. First because even when we go slow, there can be other vehicle hitting us from any possible direction. For example, if we are on highway we should not go slow because it will obstruct the way or increases the risk of vehicle hitting us from behind. Third, if we go slow, what is the point of driving? One of our goals to drive is to shorten the traveling time.

So, speed up accordingly. When it is time to slow, slow down in advance instead of jam braking. When it is time to speed up, speed up smoothly instead of jerking. When we are at high speed, remember the speed limit. Empty road does not mean we can speed up even more. We need to remember that the road is not always empty and we need to learn to be content as we know that there will be time when we need to slow down. In any case, remember that panic does not help. Be calm and adjust the speed accordingly.

Why do you want ask questions?

I asked myself that question. The reason is that recently I found myself to be excited again and have so many questions. So I need to be careful whether those questions are necessary. For example this morning I got an idea to send e-mails to my director’s bosses who are coming to Singapore. I wanted to give them the feedback that too many reorganizations are not helping in the Asian contexts who value relationship. Changing bosses and personnels mean that we need to start over from scratch again and it is frustrating. The second questions would be whether they plan to make any more changes as it is expected that different people have different views in how to run a business.

But why do I ask those questions? Is it because I want to gain visibility? So that they know? And then more chance for me to get promoted? Or is it because I want to consider myself as a savior and a speaker on behalf of my colleagues? Let’s suppose I get the answers from them. What would I do with those answers? Would it change anything? Is there anything I can do within my control? No.

I attended a discipleship seminar in my church today about worship. I was tempted to ask two questions: one, would it be possible to put the announcement in front or in the midst of the service so that the benediction and charge would be the last part of the service? Second, when do we want to unite differences (young and old, different languages, different culture, different music preferences or way of expressing love and adoration) into one service and when we want to split for efficiency and focus? Because there is always tools to unite people such as live translation, use various songs, use various approach. But are we going to build a mega church? Or do we prefer to split to smaller congregation based on location if not because of those differences?

Again, why do I ask those questions? The first one about announcement, benediction and charge seem to be more practical. It can be used as a feedback to the team who designs the liturgy. But the second one seems to be more theoretical or philosophical unless I plan or know a group of people who are willing to either develop the tools or willing to open new congregation.

So I guess it is equally important to know why I am asking a question and what I am going to do with the knowledge or additional information from the answer.

Literally Letting Go: Deleting and Scrapping

It is very hard for me to let go some things. Thank God that He taught me to let go these past two days.

First is on my S note. Last night I deleted all my S Notes. Yes, all. I was using iPhone and changed to Samsung Galaxy Note in December 2014 because I wanted to try the stylus. As I needed to recontract, I decided to buy a new phone and go back to iPhone as overall it is still better even when I lose the ability to write using a pen on the phone that is difficult to lose (as there is a home for the pen and it will vibrate if I forget to return). I have been delaying to take action on my Samsung Galaxy Note. Only this week finally I decided to sell it off. As I need to transfer the data, I was contemplating whether to transfer the S Note. As it is not straightforward to back up and to view it in non-Galaxy note phones, I took the courage last night to delete all. This is because anyway in the past 2 months I have survived without all those notes.

Second, I needed to scrap papers this morning. Given that I am in a printing company and I need to test, I have a lot of papers which seem to be necessary to keep. But as I had managed to let go my S Notes, today I managed to scrap a lot. Usually I will think what if someday I need it. This time, I reversed it, since I have not needed it until now and I often forget it except when it’s time to scrap, why not just scrap it. So I did.

I think this is a good reminder that all things in this world is temporary. Eternal life is later when we can be with Jesus all the time. So for now, we need to practice in letting things go. Because all are just trusted to us temporarily and they can be and will be taken from us.

Goblin

The Korean drama series called Goblin has ended. It is a very nice drama. Aside from that, I learned that there are at least three kinds of suicide. First is the suicide done by Wang Yeo which made him become a grim reaper. He decided to kill himself using the poison by his prime minister because he felt guilty for following the prime minister advice to give death punishment to his wife and brother in law. This is an obvious suicide.

The other two are not that obvious. Eun Tak was driving and she saw that a truck with faulty brake is rolling into a school bus. She decided to stop in the middle so that her car was the one hit by the truck which at the end caused her to die. She knew she can be safe but she chose to kill herself for the sake of others.

The third one is even hard to notice. Goblin himself did a suicide. He was about to be given death penalty by Wang Yeo. Not sure why, perhaps because of his pride, he asked his soldier to stab him in his heart using his sword, a gift from Wang Yeo. In other word, he chose to die by his own choice rather than being killed by others. A miracle can happen in the last minute but he thought there is no option and he did not want to be killed by Wang Yeo’s men.

From those, I learn that it is not so much of the suicide action itself but rather the motivation behind it that matters. Even Jesus can be considered to take suicide action as He chose to come to this world and died in the cross to save us, sinners, so that we can enjoy and glorify Him forever. On the other hand, it may be other people who took our life like the case of Goblin while it is actually our wrong choice to take our own life instead of surrendering all to God. I still remembered a lesson from the movie of rurouni Kenshin. Kenshin killed so many innocent people in the past that haunt him. So sometimes he did not have the desire to live and thus easily have the tendency to sacrifice himself for others. But the thing is that as long as there is option to be alive with our loved ones, we have to struggle for it and give our best. Back to Goblin’s drama, that’s the lesson both Grim Reaper and Goblin learn: to have the desire of life, to know how precious life is, that life is something to yearn for.

Heavy Eyes

Since last Sunday, I felt that there is something right above my eye that is heavy. As I am currently improving my troubleshooting skills at home, I want to practice to think rationally on how to respond to this heavy eyes. I listed three options: do nothing, go to see optician to get glasses, or go to general practitioner to ask for a referral for MRI or CT scan in case there is some issues with my brain. The point is to list down all the possible alternatives instead of worrying it. I also started to keep a log on when it started and how it feels until today. My friend added another option which is to get a referral to ophtalmologist as they can detect the root cause whereas optician/eyeglasses shop is to give solution if we already know we have blurry vision. There is someone called optometrist as well based on the google result.

Apparently I forgot that those options are under the option of decide now while I tend to have another main branch which is to observe and make decision later. My wife encouraged me to make decision now and so I decided to see a general practitioner tonight.

The result was ok. It felt a little nostalgic as the doctor did some tests like tapping certain parts of body just like how my dad usually does to his patient. The doctor said that most probably it is due to tiredness or dry eyes. So he asked me to rest me more and give eye drops.

It is a good reminder as to the doctor, 6 hours of sleep is considered lack of sleep. He recommended 8 hours while WHO recommendation is 7 hours.

Well, again this shows the importance of having enough rest.