Blog Roll

It’s interesting when you are busy at work you don’t always have time to write stories or pose for a photo. I’m writing this now because I am not working right now. And when I’m at work I don’t write. Given I’m not a writer.

The underrated “workaholic”

The word workaholic is strange. And we tend to use this label sometime for the wrong people. Consider an artist who loves his/her work. Is she workaholic? How about someone who doesn’t feel like he is working.

I tend to think you if you have a purpose you don’t work. You take part in a game that you enjoy. Just like a mother who goes through a lot of pain giving birth to a child and doesn’t complain. She is not sick or overworked. She is doing what is necessary to have a baby. Likewise, we are often not working when we are driven by a great purpose. We are building a home to live, helping a health to heal, educating a new generation, caring for a sick parent, paying back for some silly mistakes of the past, dreaming up the next love etc. Not being workaholic.

Two of my favorite characters in the history are Isaac Newton and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Are they workaholic? Well, they may be, but if they weren’t, some of the most beautiful tunes would’ve never have been heard by human ears.

Often times we are not patient. Our acts and responses at times are inconsiderate. After being a tinkerer for many years I now know that patience gives birth to innovation.

While others are complaining about your way or my way. A patient person thinks about a third way. An alternative way that accommodates both. A way that is better than the first two. When you are not patient perhaps you are missing out on a solution the world can see only through your mind.

If you are not patient though, how can you ever reach that third alternative?

One great thing that is going about Sydney is it’s rich cafe, food, and social culture. I’m definitely a busy city boy.  When you make some time though it’s very easy to find somewhere a little away from the CBD (Central Business District) and recharge yourself with some great coffee!

I’m just finishing my very late first meal of the day at the Corellis Cafe Gallery in Newtown. Luckily our developer Bharat was available on the other end of the call and able to chat about the latest design I’ve completed about one part of oLab. That’s going to be done by tomorrow. We are halfway there with this.

I’m excited about starting next week on Monday. Also very grateful to the people I have around me.

Hope your weekend was good too…

Often when we learn something, initially we start with a passion to learn the subject.

Some of us however are cursed with “The Vinchcurse”. We have many interests. So often half way through learning something new our direction changes. We either stop and start something new or our primary motivation for learning becomes racing to the end.

It is vital to keep a clear focus on our motivation for learning something new. If we have the motivation clear in our mind, it becomes easier to invest extra time for mastery.

The extra time we spend in mastering something (not just learning) can save hours down the track. So I embraced this philosophy:

If you are going to use something a lot, don’t just learn it. Master it.

As we go through our daily activities it seems we often don’t have enough time for thinking & planning. Most of the tasks are things we need to do today; a problem we need to solve now. A few of what we do are plans and preparation for a future issues. It seems we tend to like giving responsibilities of our future to other entities so that we can have fun now.

The problem with that is the outcome or solution we get is determined not by ourselves but by someone else. It seems we are often addressing things that needs immediate attention or damage control. It is often hard to do the work that will contribute to the result of something in a few months time. It seems like most of us don’t have time for planning. We are in a constant damage control mode.

Are we all running a big debt of thinking and planning?

If I had an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions. ~ Albert Einstein

More about the artist Dennis Massoud here >>

I’ve never heard the phrase “negative momentum effect”. It is possible that I’m making a new phrase up. It sounds pompously better if I actually said I just coined this new term, ha ha…

Here’s something I recently observed. When we are doing something continually over relatively long period at some point it becomes harder to stop.

This is obvious when we think about a car I suppose; but how about watching TV or scrolling through the Facebook feed or eating some of those food you love. Did you ever notice that after watching a TV for a while we sometime don’t feel like stopping. Even if the program you turned it on for is over. I’m not a big TV person, most of my entertainment comes from the internet. However I feel like not stopping whenever I’m watching TV.

There are probably a lot more negative momentum effects that takes place everyday. The only way to stop the effect influencing is just stopping. And sometimes when you stop doing something like checking Facebook feed, you may be left with a slight bit of disappointment without any realistic reasons.

This happens in big and small scale. Perhaps we often refer to it as fear of change. Is it possible that we are afraid or uncomfortable of change because our brains has gained some momentum and that’s why it resists the change.

Did you notice that sometimes we actually feel good after doing something that we initially didn’t want to do? Did you also notice that sometime the only thing that stops us are the same things that stops a car. It’s obstacles that stops us from running in autopilot and pushes us to try something new. And all of a sudden we realise that we came out of our comfort zone without even know we did.