Category: Advice

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Advice::Use the wastebasket « What’s new

One has to know when one should be persistent and patient, and when one should be pragmatic and realistic; stubbornly working away at a dead end is not the most efficient use of your time, and publishing every last scrap of your work is not always the best way to meet the standards of quality you expect from your publications (though sometimes it is still worth making your partial successes available in some format). Of course, in today’s digital age it is cheap and easy to backup all your work, and you should certainly do this before performing major surgery on any paper.
via Use the wastebasket « What’s new.

I’ve always had a problem with balance. In a sense excess, persistence or resignation has always been what I’m about, Always about extremes. Hope I can learn to regulate myself one day!

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Advice::Step one is admitting you have a problem – (37signals)

Being addicted to your work might be slightly better than a coke habit, but it follows the same pattern of abuse and escapism. And most importantly, it is not a requirement for success. You do not have to become an addict to run a startup. Be passionate, be obsessed, but don’t let it be an excuse for consuming your life.
via Step one is admitting you have a problem – (37signals).

Life is about balance.  Most addictions are not good.

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Inspiring::iSteam for iPhone earns a bunch of 22-year olds $100,000

iSteam features an incredible graphics engine that renders foggy, wet overlays on top of any image from your iPhone’s library with astounding realism. But it isn’t just the graphics itself, it’s the clever use of iPhon’s user interface and sensors that earned this application such a huge following.
The iSteam application is for sale for just 99cent and has been bought over 1 million times since its launch last week! ISteam has currently experienced more than 14% daily growth, with estimated monthly revenues of $100,000 – all this just 8 days after iSteam was first released. Since the launch of iSteam other top iPhone applications such as iFart and iBeer have seen a drop in sales for the first time since they launched.
This was all done by a bunch of 22 year olds, it just shows that young entrepreneurs know where it is at! iSteam managed to show up some well established Apps backed by millionaires in under 2 weeks! I wonder what would happen if we give them a month.
Good job iSteam!
via iSteam for iPhone earns a bunch of 22-year olds $100,000.

Posting this to inspire us.

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Advice:: Are You a Guitar Player or Club Owner?

The Guitar Player Paradox
I’m intrigued by this observation that we prefer stress over hard focus. My current hypothesis proposes two explanations:
First, the club owner strategy is more predictable — you can’t go wrong working harder, even if its rewards are distilled.
Second, and perhaps more important, hard focus, at first, can be incredibly uncomfortable — so much so that we’d rather accept 12 hour days of regular work than spend 2 hours on intense concentration. The good news is that, as Haruki Murakami taught us, hard focus is a practiced skill. If you improve this ability enough, the guitar player path might eventually seem less onerous.
I plan on exploring this paradox in more detail in the near future, as I wonder if it might hold the key to jump-starting a remarkable life. In the mean time, you should ask yourself a simple question:
Who are you trying to become, the guitar player or the club owner?
via Study Hacks » Blog Archive » Are You a Guitar Player or Club Owner?.

I choose to see this differently.  To focus, invest yourself in a single thing seriously does not allow you the luxury of failing gracefully. We know that if we fail our psyche have no where to hide. When we fail with something we focused on singly we face our weakness, our inability to do something. This is scary. This is why some people never show others what they: write,compose,paint,draw, or create in general. We hate to see ourselves in positions of weakness, we hate rejection, we hate failure. We must learn to not be stopped by the voices in our heads that tell us we aren’t good enough. We can not be great if we continue to be paralyzed by our fears!

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Advice:: Alex Payne — Criticism, Cheerleading, and Negativity

Everyone Wants A Cheerleader
Everyone says they’re comfortable with criticism and with critics, because not being able to handle criticism is a sign of immaturity. What people really want, though, are cheerleaders. Nowhere in life is this more true than in business.
A healthy business needs passionate employees to succeed. Critics are the most passionate people you can find, but we’re conditioned to assume that critics are negative curmudgeons with nothing more than slings and arrows to contribute. So rather than seeking out critics, employers seek out cheerleaders.
Cheerleaders are, on the face of it, lovely people to have around an office. They’re just super excited to be there, even if they haven’t had the time or inclination to really think about why. They abhor any suggestion of negativity, and pave over it with empty can-dos. A cheerleader might be a good worker or he might not be. It doesn’t really matter, because the guy is just so damn nice.
via Alex Payne — Criticism, Cheerleading, and Negativity.

I use to be a vortex of negativity. I believe everyone goes through a I’m mad towards the world for no fucking reason phase.
After I got through some of my hang-ups I believe I started to criticize most things/people/stuff. People don’t really like this.
Now; I believe I am in a If I care for this/for you I will not shut up. As most things balance is needed. I accept you/this for what you/this is , But I still yearn for you to meet your potential, yet if you don’t it’s not an issue.  It is this constant battle between loving/accepting who we/they are , and wanting to change/improve who we/they are.
If we love ourselves too much we don’t change, If we hate ourselves too much we become powerless to change.
It’s this dualism that keeps us going forward one step at a time.
What does this mean to you? Some friends will push your patience. Some friends will make you hate them. Some fill question what you believe in. Some will tell you flat out you are wrong. Don’t go for the primal reaction of wanting only cheerleaders. If your friends can’t be honest with you, who can?

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Sentences To Ponder: Some new happiness research

There is, I suspect, a common theme here – that people don’t predict what will make them happy at all well. Having children and investing in careers rather than in social networks doesn’t make us happy, and yet we do it in our 20s and 30s, only to be miserable later.
via Stumbling and Mumbling: Some new happiness research.

That was one loaded sentence. Thinking about my life, I am solidly in Team Social Network and Not the  TEAM Children/Career that a lot of my generation are slowly (fast?)  going into. I don’t know, maybe in our 40’s we would know.
PS 01: I’m not anti kids. Simply put I see myself as a big kidI sometimes can’t be trusted with myself, why the hell would I trust myself with the responsibility for another human being.
PS 02: I’m not strictly anti-career, It’s just that I believe that our society/backgrounds do not allow us the leeway to really find our passions. If we dive head on to our “careers” when will we ever find our passions. 2 things.
One, I’m lucky to have my mom and dad as my parents.  This for me means that I have a personal responsibility to be the best that I can be, whatever that means.
Two, I saw a friend from high school/college in the elevator yesterday, we decided to catch up a little. During our conversation he told me something. He has found his passion, He said in a way Pisay and UP wasn’t such a good fit for him, what he wanted to do was for from what he learned from these great learning institutions. This is the third time (That I remember vividly but probably more than 10 or even more) that I have heard this from a friend from Philippine Science/University of the Philippines. In a way it made me happy. Not that my friends wasted a lot of their time, rather they do not see the other side of the coin, I prefer to think of their predicaments more in the light of; I am lucky to have found my passion, it is probably because of the different things that I went through in life, of which going to PSHS/UP was a part of.
Read the original post to get to the research to justify the claims.

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Introspection::It Stops Here

The students were interviewed after the study and most appeared “genuinely flabbergasted” to learn that an experimenter swap had occurred, yet they still responded differently to the prostitution scenario compared to the control group. Proulx and Heine say these results are similar to other studies where people have been made to feel threatened before making a judgement: when threatened, people are harsher judges of others. The researchers suggest that the students implicitly noticed the change of experimenter, but since this type of a swap is unusual in real life, they never became conscious of it. Because of this implicit detection of an unusual event, the students behaved as if they had been threatened.
via What if you saw something that rocked your world … and you didn’t notice? : Cognitive Daily.

Read the whole thing it’s very intructive. I’d like to just say that we should try to understand other people’s predicaments. Some are just simply lonely/sad/insecure and that’s why they are acting like class A @$$h0135. There was this movie “Pay It Forward”, where in upon receiving a major blessing from another person, you Pay It Forward. I think we can make something different. I don’t have a gift for naming things so let’s just call it “It Stops Here”.
Whenever somebody is acting harshly towards you, take a few deep breaths and tell yourself “It Stops Here”.
Whenever some other driver cuts you off, You don’t go ballistic. Respectfully correct the driver , take a couple of deep breaths and tell yourself “It Stops Here”.
When you get home after a long stressful day at work, before entering your house, you take a couple of breaths and tell yourself “It Stops Here”.
See when we are insecure we go into defensively offensive mode.  If you really are the strong one, then you roll with the punches and make it stop where you are. We must make it such that there is a voice inside our heads that says “I would not be abusive because another person is abusive towards me.”,” I will not let my insecurity become the reason I shout at another person.” It’s the small things like this simple act that make the world so much more livable.

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UCLA Loneliness Scale

Take the loneliness test here: UCLA Loneliness Scale.
UCLA Loneliness Scale
Indicate how often each of the statements below is descriptive of you. Circle one letter for each statement:
via UCLA Loneliness Scale.

If I interpret this correctly I have low loneliness, but this is because I don’t feel lonely doing things alone (I love how this sentence rolls of the mouth).  I searched for the UCLA Loneliness Scale after reading this post by Gretchen of The Happiness Project. Loneliness was on my mind because of the study this article was based on. (Pointer From Jayson F.).
Hope we can all self-evaluate and if we feel lonely then connect with people. Loneliness can be debilitating.

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Advice::The Psychological Immune System | PsyBlog

In the same paper Gilbert and colleagues report studies on people getting dumped by their partners, told their personalities are deficient and academics failing to get tenure. The pattern repeats: people think it’s going to feel bad, but generally it’s not as bad as they expect, and people recover quicker than they predict.
The merciful unconscious
The very fact that we don’t seem to notice our psychological immune system is probably the only reason it works at all. After all, in order to feel better we have to conveniently forget some important facts, such as how much we wanted the job we didn’t get, loved the partner who walked out or were enjoying the ice cream we just dropped.
But the good news is when life deals out its cruelest blows, our unconscious will be working overtime to find the upside. That’s why life often doesn’t turn out to feel as bad as we think. Soon enough most of us are on our merry way again with a bounce in our step, all thanks to the merciful but covert work of the psychological immune system.
via The Psychological Immune System | PsyBlog.

I understand how powerful this knowledge is but the fear is still there.
I hope I am not alone when I say that the fear of not getting what you want is one of the main reason that I sometimes or probably the majority of times I do not go after that which I want.  We really need to convince ourselves that, It’s not going to be as bad as you think! The earth will not end after she rejects you (well at least for a week/month or so it seem to have ended). Life goes on even if you got fired. The birds will still sing even if you are alone. See it’s like the rich getting richer. The people who fear less get to live more. The people who fear more live less. A friend told me that I lacked faith because I was always too prepared. This advice is for me. Fear less. Have faith. Things are seldom as bad/more bad than you expect it to be!

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Advice::The Intrapreneur's Ten Commandments

pointer from ben casnoscha .

THE INTRAPRENEUR’S TEN COMMANDMENTS
1. Come to work each day willing to be fired.
2. Circumvent any orders aimed at stopping your dream.
3. Do any job needed to make your project work, regardless of your job description.
4. Find people to help you.
5. Follow your intuition about the people you choose, and work only with the best.
6. Work underground as long as you can -publicity triggers the corporate immune mechanism.
7. Never bet on a race unless you are running in it.
8. Remember it is easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission.
9. Be true to your goals, but be realistic about the ways to achieve them.
10. Honor your sponsors.
via The Intrapreneur’s Ten Commandments.

Loved this list, I have to say that I agree with most of the things written. I believe 4 is the hardest for me. As I have said in the past I can’t seem to find someone to mentor me.