On May 04 2012 00:46 JollYRoGeR wrote: I think that all comments about this being standard or "rehashed life advice" are from people who's still in the beginning of their careers or not even there yet. I'm 25yo and I'm CEO of a company that's not as big as MA's but it's still a lot of responsibility and I can totally relate to almost everything he's saying. I feel that I'm not 100% efficent all the time, especially when pressured at work.
I'm gonna print out these bad ass advice and put them close to my desk somewhere so I can remind myself that the small adjustments makes your working life easier. And the best part about being efficent when you work is that you'll enjoy your free time more, even if you're going to end up damaged and think about work even on your spare time!
If I'm going to SK I'd like to hook up, always been intrested in the korean life and business.
25 and CEO, sick nice! SK drinks anytime! And you're already a different breed, for me running some start-ups was because I just wanted to round myself out, but I find myself really more of an established company environment guy. I think I like crushing other companies more than starting one up ^^.
On May 04 2012 03:16 Impervious wrote: I can totally relate to "I started again because I didn't want to regret not trying".
I took a big gamble last year. I worked my ass off on a special project (this special project was on the side, and I was already working for them for 60 hours a week). I made a huge difference at my workplace (I was only there temporarily), and that ended up leading to an amazing job opportunity, since they wanted to keep me. Unfortunately, the location was not compatible with my plans for continuing my education in the long run.
I turned it down because it wasn't what I wanted to do. It was the hardest decision I've ever made. And things aren't going too great for me at the moment.
There are times that I regret declining that job offer, but I know that I would have been far more dissatisfied with myself for quitting my degree if I had taken that job.
My lovely wife, while extremely supportive and understands me, reminds me that I am a bit selfish and may have jumped the gun a bit, and she has a right to. But one thing is, that I would have regretted the rest of my life for not trying, when I was 35, I realized that if I didn't try then, then I likely never would. Has it been easy, no; has there been many bumps, yes, and I still working it out everyday, yup, would I like to enjoy the fruits of stability and build on the accomplishments I had, yes- can I do both...no.
But I reckon, when things eventually work out and maybe, maybe I just get back to square one, in terms of my financial position, I will be then in a position to have my cake and eat it too. Ultimately, have I progressed, yes, and I would say the only thing that fucks with my mind is that I have these expectations of where I should be at and they are based off of my past experience in working in large companies, which I have found to be entirely off base in working in a start-up situation. The days that I readjust my expectations and leave my ego at the door, are the good days, the days I don't, I feel the need to run through what I've learned and justify that I made the 'right' choice.
Thing is, while I know better than to even think there is a 'right' choice, I can't help it because I am human, but it comes down to the fact that if my future self, 10 years from now comes back in time to when I was 35 and says, 'Yo, don't fucking go to a start-up, you're a strategist, not a entrepreneurial type, you're gonna fuck yourself and your kids', I'd probably tell my future self to fuck off and ask him when he became such a pussy. If my future self came to me now, and said the same thing, I'd probably say, ' too fucking late,now just give me some pointers how to make it work the best that it can, and why are you such a pussy now?'
At the end of the day, the choices we make, whether for long term objectives, or by our passion, I think as long as we do honestly take a reality check, manage expectations and keep our focus up, life always works out in one way or another (cliche but true). It's only shitty when you give up because of anxiety. I'll walk away from a project that I've fucked up, no doubt, but it's because I know I fucked it up and after I did explore the options, -cause even retreat is a strategic option- but I won't give up or keep going in blind because of anxiety of missed expectations.
So good on you, at least you know yourself that you would have regretted and that shows passion. So take a moment also to realign your expectations instead of comparing to what was, what is past is past,and just to the next opportunity. ^^
On May 04 2012 13:29 MightyAtom wrote: Guys, I'm a bit in the weeds at the moment, but will respond in detail to posts in 24 hours ^^
Does that mean you're getting high or into trouble? :x
'in the weeds' is a term I picked up from watching 'top chef' when they are behind in their food orders ^^ so either, if I was going to get high, I wouldn't post it and at 37, only person I really get in trouble by is my wife (the police love me). ^^
On May 03 2012 03:35 Advocado wrote: The exercise advice is bullshit.
Oh jeez, the man writes an amazing blog/life advice, and thats the best you can come up with?
Seriously you could attempt to make a counter argument instead of a 16 year old's response
But even if it is bullshit there are literally no draw backs to exercising every day 30 mins a day unless you are doing it improperly and injuring yourself.
Amazing? I probably shouldnt have commented on this blog because I think the majority of it is rehashed life advice. If the guy wants to get good at writing - absolutely go for it. But unique content is king and that "You should exercise, avoid debt, keep your desk clean etc. etc." is boring. Its a lot of peptalk and incoherent advice.
Going to the Teamliquid H&F forum will net you way more information that you can explore yourself.
Being positive is good though.
Sure for most people being positive is good, but that isnt necessarily true for all. Some people actually strive off of being pessimistic, believe it or not. Personally in some situations I do indeed strive off the negative aspects of things.
In terms of perfecting something, like practice or working harder, I agree, some people need that to take things more seriously, traditionally most Korean families say, 'not good enough,' opposed to, 'great job' when the effort from their children is on that line between good and great- encouragement is usually framed in the negative; but in terms of continual productivity, especially when it is a shitty environment to begin with, whether it be a big project for the survival of your company or being in the middle of war, I'd disagree and I think that is more of the context of the post. When you're continually getting beat down on, optimism is more a survival tactic.
8. Always keep your personal finances in check. Don't over spend, don't miss your credit card payments, get a second job if you need to, or take a non-paying internship if it means you'll get a job with a future better salary, but whatever you do, keep your personal finances straight or else everything else won't seem to matter. Its funny that when you're personal finances are fucked up, you won't be able to focus on anything but that, then you're entire life is on pause. Get this fixed and never let it go out of hand. Sacrifice to make sure your credit is always good.
I can relate so much to this. I thank my mother for teaching me the value of being financially intelligent. As she says: 1. Never spend more than you earn 2. Always make sure you have something for the rainy days 3. If its a need, buy it even if it's expensive, if it's a want, think twice before buying it even if it only costs a penny.
Smart mama, especially point 3 for both parts of it.
On May 05 2012 06:57 Mr.X546 wrote: Thank you for taking your time to share your experiences. I like to find advices to use on myself to develop myself as a person, and while this behavior usually takes a lot of sorting out and discarding, I must say that your list brought up the major points, if not all, there is to know. I even got to add some of your points to my own list. For this, I am thankful.
I would like to repay the favor, to get you to feel better about yourself, and the only thing I can think of would be that "it gets better". We both know that that you already know that, but it is worth saying once in a while when things gets nasty. Kind of a mantra thing. But you know what, I think that will just have to do, for now. Refocus, one thing at a time, and you'll be back on track soon. I promise.
Always be cheerful and look on the bright side. Thanks!
Thanks, it is worth hearing,especially from others, repeating it to yourself sometimes actually has the opposite effect. ^^
3. Have a schedule book/calendar. Even if you don't follow it to the T, every day write in it what you have to do, just list it out at the very minimum and even if you write the same list every day for a week, just do it, and don't write it on random sheets of paper, get a calendar book and write it in. And every time you finish or start something, check it off to indicate that it is progress or done. Every time you finish a few days, go back and fold the top page from from the top right corner down so it makes half page fold (triangle top) and the next page fold it from the bottom left corner up. So after a while it will leave an empty triangle space in the middle of your calendar scheduler. Don't ask me why I do it, I just do it and it does make me feel as though I'm progressing. And that is the thing, time is so elusive, but if you can just get a handle on how much time is really passing in relation to what you are doing, it just keeps you on track.
It took me less than 10 minutes to realise you aren't full of shit :D
I agree with you. That's what I've been trying to tell my mother all along. She wants to learn Chinese and piano but only dreams. Same time about my brother wanting to learn music.
On May 03 2012 05:57 ruXxar wrote: I really like the last two points that you made. I believe that you can achieve almost anything if you just want it badly enough. The reason why you don't achieve, is because you don't believe or want it enough.
I read the OP and skimmed some comments. I don't think exercise is worth it, in fact I think it's a waste of time and energy in this day and age. I don't think I need more body mass to feed. I do exercise. I've ridden my bike to work last summer. I've swam before. But it was never exercise for exercise's sake, rather for fun or for travel.
I also think that it is ok to break every once in a while. The last time I would have broken down and really started crying would have been October 2010. Every single time it's happened, my convictions have seemed to strengthen nearly ten fold overnight. It's ok to break. You just need to be able to pick yourself back up.
On May 03 2012 05:57 ruXxar wrote: I really like the last two points that you made. I believe that you can achieve almost anything if you just want it badly enough. The reason why you don't achieve, is because you don't believe or want it enough.
I really did not like this video. Why? Because this video is irrational. You should prioritize breathing more then you want success, anything more is hyperbole. He also uses Rihanna as an example of someone who works hard. How many people do you know that say they work hard but don't? I don't know how hard Rihanna works but I just negatively stereotype her.
I've used an assignment notebook daily since middle school and switched to PDA last year. The reason I like the PDA more is because of the reminder and because it's easier to shift tasks that weren't finished one week to the next.
Now I, like you, keep an excel document, that opens on startup up, and I log exactly how productive I was that day and what I need to change. My diary is for random musings. I never want to prioritize play over work for days on end and end up failing a course or an equivalent ever again.
On May 03 2012 19:44 Azera wrote: MightyAtom,
While reading this informative, enlightening, inspirational blog, I can't help but think about my present circumstances. I'm a teenager that thinks he doesn't belong where he is, who thinks that he belongs somewhere better, because he can do better. And yet. Plagued by plain laziness, a severe lack of motivation and inspiration, I, unfortunately, am on the road to failure. I hope for a future of marriage, a well-paying job that I love (A lawyer, maybe a professor), but these dreams, I have come to realise, will remain as dreams. When I eventually reach adulthood, I know that these dreams will never be achieved, and I will lock them up in the back of my head, and create re-defined dreams to fit my new circumstances. This will just end up being a harsh, vicious cycle. I fear becoming a dreamer, and yet, I can not bring myself to do anything about it.
I understand that the life of a student, especially an Asian one, is to achieve a rather simple, yet tedious to reach goal - study hard to get good grades. Heck, education systems elsewhere in the world might claim that this isn't what the teach students to be, the values that they guide students by, but I'm pretty sure the hard truth is - that's the way if you want to succeed. There are obviously exceptions, like born-geniuses like Mark Zuckerberg and whatnot, but that is irrelevant.
I want to try my best to fix all these things. I want to be able to live my dreams for once. I want to learn to endure the pains of hard work. I want to overcome my laziness.
You're 15. There's a lot of potential.
I'm 21. I myself have felt the loss of ambition. I don't know if I can achieve my dreams anymore.
Why do you think Zuckerberg was special though? From what I gleaned from The Social Network and some blogs, he was just an average Harvard student who ended up being lucky in picking the right idea to follow. Designing a social networking platform isn't that hard with all of today's online resources. And I feel like he just had an idea to improve on Myspace's bad design (a mess on everyone's page).
There's content management systems that can make logins and web design easier. Most have addons, some probably have addons similar to social networking sites. Starting from scratch may be easier since you don't have to work with code designed for something other than social networking. There are online resources showing you how to save user info to databases, and how to make forms that don't need to refresh to submit so people can post wall pictures, and forms to let people upload pictures and videos to share. The social network wouldn't be as good as Facebook's since facebook would have better algorithms, but it'd have the basics.
Honestly, if you started tomorrow. If you dropped all your procrastinatory tendencies, started learning app design or web design or whatever in your spare time and on weekends, you could make something just as amazing as Zuckerburg's original facebook easily. You'd just need the right idea, and time. I started web design when I was in 9th grade but I did it very halfassedly. The Da Vinci Code movie had just come out and I was obsessed with da Vinci so I made a webquest about him after playing the da vinci webquest made to promote the movie.
Dave as always its great to hear from you. I will send you an email like you asked so I can update you on the cluster fuck that is my life haha.
Really love the advice in the thread. Some of the points seem so obvious but escape lots of people. I never thought that staying organized would help me so much but it really has. For the first time since middle school I have been using a planner this year because I just have so much shit to do and it keeps me motivated/ on track.
Glad to hear that things are going much better. I know that your business definitely was put to the test this last year and I believe it can only go up from here. Can't wait to make it to Korea to have that drink.
Ah yes. Bein an adult, being abroad, and being on your own, is the best way you will mature and learn fast and hard. In your case you are also married and have children. I can only imagine how difficult, happy, lonely, sad, exciting, and generally, in the end, awesome it must have been. May life continue as a happy adventure, my friend.
On May 06 2012 09:33 obesechicken13 wrote: I read the OP and skimmed some comments. I don't think exercise is worth it, in fact I think it's a waste of time and energy in this day and age. I don't think I need more body mass to feed. I do exercise. I've ridden my bike to work last summer. I've swam before. But it was never exercise for exercise's sake, rather for fun or for travel.
........
I'm 21. I myself have felt the loss of ambition. I don't know if I can achieve my dreams anymore.
Why do you think Zuckerberg was special though? From what I gleaned from The Social Network and some blogs, he was just an average Harvard student who ended up being lucky in picking the right idea to follow. Designing a social networking platform isn't that hard with all of today's online resources. And I feel like he just had an idea to improve on Myspace's bad design (a mess on everyone's page).
......
Honestly, if you started tomorrow. If you dropped all your procrastinatory tendencies, started learning app design or web design or whatever in your spare time and on weekends, you could make something just as amazing as Zuckerburg's original facebook easily. You'd just need the right idea, and time. I started web design when I was in 9th grade but I did it very halfassedly. The Da Vinci Code movie had just come out and I was obsessed with da Vinci so I made a webquest about him after playing the da vinci webquest made to promote the movie.
The one thing that people have very little frame of reference is, when I say work hard, if I were to put it to a comparison of undergrad work, I work an equivalent of a 20 page 4th year research term paper every 2 days. And these are long days, with 4 hours of sleep, with a couple of 30 min naps where I can take them so I can still write sharp.
After many years of professional training, I don't waste time, I know exactly what information I need, and how to structure it and then I don't think about the task, I just get it done. I went on a business trip to Manila a few weeks ago, I just got the call today to come back for Monday for a presentation on Tuesday. The proposal I had written was 52 pages with 3 other executives and had it done in 4 days with 12 hour days of pure at the desk working. The presentation I have for Tuesday will be 8 pages long, but each of those 8 pages will be essential to closing the deal and the deal is work at least 200M over the next 5 years. So the 52 pages + the 8 page equals 3.34M page in value.
But I didn't just get to this way in one day, it wasn't easy to develop this level of capability and I didn't just speculate or wonder about this or that, I worked like a mofo and at the base of whatever I write is that no matter how brilliant or intelligent, there will be people who are just as brilliant or intelligent or more so, and the only thing you can do is not just work harder, work fucking harder with more focus and dedication and when the majority wash out, your survival is good enough to win the day.
When kids that are above average intelligence say, 'I studied a hour and got a B, no problems, if I studied another hour I would have gotten an A, but whatever.' they are still in some la la fantasy land. The reality check is, if you studied an hour to get a B, you'd need to study 2 hours to get a B+, and 4 hours more to get an A and 8 hours more to get an A+. Being a bit above average is nothing meaningful and school gives you bullshit idea that somehow your Bs and B+s are worth something. In the real world, A+ is the minimum, there are no levels of ok work, if I sent in a 52 page document that was a B, I don't get 10M, I get ZERO. That is the way life really works.
But the other side is, you need to work your way up to this point, it doesn't happen over night and it doesn't happen in some half ass way.
Just to pick out some points:
1. The people who don't get the exercise point because they've never worked that hard to really need it when it is essential for their performance, if you're not physically sharp, your work quality suffers. If you only work a hour a day, well, you don't need exercise then.
2. At age 21 and you talk about loss of ambition, and dreams, well, let me ask you, a very simple question, how many countries have you visited, do you know what a venture capitalist does, or an investment banker or the head of a media agency? Ambition, dreams, they aren't just our own speculation, they develop and mature and grow with the new experiences that we encounter. If at 21 you've already lost your ambition and given upon your dreams, well, they weren't worth very much to begin with if you can lose them so easily or they were based on naive expectations. At 21 you haven't even started working yet for any real period of time.
3. There is no such thing as an average Harvard student, the first thing people ask you in your freshman year is, 'what is special about you?' why because it isn't enough to have good marks, be president of your school, valedictorian, volunteer work, cause everyone does, you have to have something special about you. Go and read 'The Facebook Effect' then come back, you think back when Zuck was doing his thing it was even based on thoughts of MySpace? And comparing now and then when he started, man, it's already ages apart. Timing plays a part, but to attribute this to just luck?
4. If things are so simplistic, why doesn't everyone have a facebook, after all there are thousands of average harvard students out there, and some average MIT students, but none of them are going to IPO at 80 Billion dollars in a few weeks time. I can barely understand what 80 Billion actually represents.
Procrastination doesn't occur because it's a bad habit or tendencies, it is because of a lack of good habits. Good habits that put you in a position to really challenge yourself to know your limits, your true passions and interests and to eventually get that focus and dedication. We don't procrastinate because we have 'procrastinatory tendencies', it is because haven't found a passion or focus and to do that, we need some level of daily clarity, injection of some work for the sake of work and experience.
It is these very basic things that don't solve our issues of focus or procrastination, but allow us a bit more space to develop our capabilities over time, this will naturally draw us into a point of focus and dedication. That time may take a few years, but is is a process. Some people are born organized, they have time to see, to make adjustments are thus are naturally focused as well. Other are not and it is an effort, but if you can level the ground a bit, what you'll find is that once you get that space, your other abilities and outlook kick into play.
I didn't write this to cure anyone's procrastination. I wrote it so you could get to position where if you could increase/maintain your productivity, you'd have space to increase your capabilities and the rest will usually work itself out. But I had to reply to this post in detail because I think it is pretty much the typical mind set of someone who maybe of above intelligence but without any effort is simply at the same spot armed with some speculation and observations, and maybe back in high school or even college that was enough, but in the real world, it ain't nothing but bullshit.
EPT
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