Richard Yong

Reflection time

'Only when the clamor of the outside world is silenced will you be able to hear the deeper vibration. Listen carefully.'

- Sarah Ban Breathnach

It's quiet in the garden today.

I close my eyes and let the warm dappled sunlight play kaleidoscopic games. I breathe deep the lovely warm musk of the tropical plants and the sweet scent of late blooming flowers. My mind is calm, gently rhythmic. The thoughts in my mind ebb and flow. I slowly begin to reflect on my life.

After some time, I stand up, brush the rogue grass off my pants, straighten my tie and place my makeshift pillow suit jacket back on. I step out of the Botanic Gardens and step back onto the city streets. The din of this smoky buzzy city is in full roar.

By the time I arrive back at my desk, the staccato of laptops, the whirring melody of mobile phones and the faint smell of the morning's coffees invade my senses. But it doesn't matter. My mind is relaxed and focused.

Reflect. Listen carefully.

Flickr pic courtesy of Hamed Saber

Dollars per awesome

There is more to life than increasing it's speed

- Mahatma Gandhi

In the busy-ness of life it can feel like we live in a blur of rushing from one task to the next, as though the neurotic need to do something will somehow provide some perverse sense of completion or satisfaction in our lives.

Hard Fact #23124: When you die, your inbox will not be empty. It's true, no matter how important you are, the day you check out is the day you will still have things to do.

Fortunately, we can make the most of our things to do. Tackling them with conscious appreciation and understanding can give us greater clarity about our choices to make clear decisions on whether to do, delegate, dump or defer.

Every task we choose to do, we're trading our life for. Read that again. A portion of your life is traded for every single thing you choose to do.

As morbid as it sounds, being conscious about every minute towards a finite end has shifted my perspective on how I decide to deal with my inbox items. I've become much more critical of how I spend my time and the value I place on my work time (hint: It's no longer in dollars per hour/week/year, it's in dollars per awesome).

flickr photo courtesy of veo

Min Maxing

Min Maxing. Your Dungeons and Dragon analogy for the day. I'm a massive geek, and if you didn't get the memo, geeks rule the world now.

Beyond the fat sweaty balding men in basements rolling dice, role playing is about developing a unique character with strengths and weaknesses, usually physical or mental. Min Maxing is the art of maximising your allocation of skill points earned into your best strengths (Maxing) and not adding to your weaker skills (Min-imising). For example a warrior might maximise his strength, but will not allocate anything to wisdom or intellect (and spend time hitting things... rather than thinking about them.)

Back in reality things aren't quite so black and white, but Min Maxing can still be a useful strategy for getting the most out of life.

It's a tedious grind spending time working on things that you neither have the talent or skill for. The opposite is also true, it's extremely rewarding, fun and valuable to work with our strengths and talents. In fact, second for second, dollar for dollar I will bet that the quality and time saved on the result of working with our strengths puts the time we do spend working with our weaknesses to shame.

Sometimes we might spend too much time working on weaknesses, it's common to sometimes spend too much time on this instead of using our strengths. I personally struggled with mathematical studies and sciences, however I excelled at humanities where analysis of abstract concepts and discursive learning were my strengths. Once I finished high school, I made the obvious decision to study accounting at university. Yes. I know. Real smart. Hindsight is 20/20. I finished my degree, however I chose to leave the accounting world behind. It's been a difficult but liberating step, and the upside is now I get to spend time maximising the use of my strengths.

Min Maxing - not just for geeks.

Flickr image courtesy of Extra Ketchup

Be Demanding

I just watched Valery Gergiev, a wild eyed Russian conductor, take three talented young conductors through a masterclass. The difference between Gergiev and his young charges was immediate and distinct. Gergiev was demanding. He expects the orchestra to perform as demanded, and conducts without reserve.

Being demanding isn't about being arrogant, it is about expecting the best in people, expecting to receive what you ask for and having the gumption to ask for it.

There are a few habits that help with being demanding

1. Just ask. I recently bought a laptop using a 25% off staff discount. When I called up to make my purchase, I just asked politely, can you take any more off? The operator paused, then whispered conspiratorially through the phone, 'would 40% off suit you, Mr. Yong?' That suited me fine.

I was the only person at my old high school to hug the Prime Minister when he visited (he smells like old man, and was shorter than he looked on t.v.) I just asked him, and the point is, it never hurts to ask, people will continue to surprise.

2. Don't take no for an answer. The initial reaction to doing something that isn't in the rule book is no. Humans like to err on the side of caution. Being wild feels uncomfortable. Don't take no for an answer. ever. It took 9 years of government bodies, councils, experts and just about every dog and his bone to say no to Paul Cave before he got his one yes.

People now pay Paul to climb the Harbour Bridge.

3. Do first, apologise later. Okay I took this one from the Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss, instead of facing a no in the first place... just do it and worry about the no later, it will save you time and energy, and lets you skip point 2.

Be demanding.

Flickr photo courtesy of lewishamdreamer

The Economy of Ideas.

The following is some food for thought from a very good man.

Here's a question that you should clip out and tape to your bathroom mirror. It might save you some angst 15 years from now. The question is, What did you do back when interest rates were at their lowest in 50 years, crime was close to zero, great employees were looking for good jobs, computers made product development and marketing easier than ever, and there was almost no competition for good news about great ideas?

- Seth Godin -Two Years Left

Here is some more food for thought. In the last 5 years...

• A student became a millionaire selling a million pixels. (that's less than an A4 page)
• A guy traded a red paperclip for a house
• Two guys became billionaires by helping people find stuff.
• Two other guys became billionaires showing off other people's home videos (and made no money doing it)
• Two other guys made money by cussing and drawing comics about videogames.

There is a new economy out there that values people's ideas. The new economy doesn't play by the old rules. The old linear model where hours worked is used as some yardstick of productivity and pay is a prehistoric throw back from the industrial revolution.

Let's start playing by the new rules.

flickr  photo courtesy of stephano m

Workspace minimalism.

Minimimalism is about getting away with as little as you can without losing what you need. As simple as possible, but no simpler.

We all have a little pack ratitis at heart, and as we collect things, our lives become more cluttered. These obstructions and clutter can mess with our sense of peace and calm. I've begun minimalising my house, my life and my work, today I want to show you our workspace.

I had a few goals to decluttering.

• Remove all visible wires
• Remove any items not used everyday
• Look nice
• Be cheap

Starting with my sound system, my PC and printer, I went off to IKEA and bought a BESTA shelving unit ($99) , and stuck all the wires behind it. Then I bought an IKEA BOALT dvd box ($18) to replace the books I'd been using to prop up my monitor.

I also use an 'in' tray, this is where paper resides with information that needs to be processed.

You might want to checkout a couple of sites I visit frequently to get inspiration for decluttering and having a nice looking place. www.unclutterer.com and ikeahacker.blogspot.com.

Checkout my flickr stream for more of my workspace.

www.flickr.com

This is a Flickr badge showing photos in a set called My Workspace. Make your own badge here.

Happiness and the family.

A good friend of mine in HR made a pithy observation, she said 'you know what Richard? the happiest and closest families on that TV show Wifeswap always seem to be the poorest ones.'

It's not about being rich or poor. The families that bond are those that live with each other and not just under the same roof. They are the ones spend their evening sharing stories, sharing lives and supporting each other through their struggles and living their lives with each other, not in spite of each other.

Happy post Valentines Day!

Photo courtesy of forfurafelinas

The Keys to Life. Running and Reading

I love running. I picked it up 5 months ago. It took some time, I never thought of myself as particularly sporty, least of all a runner. I grew up as the short fat kid with glasses, I'm now 183cm, 77kg. I threw a head fake and said, you know what? enough with putting myself down before I even try. Running is more than just exercise, it's about mental tenacity and commitment. It's cheap too, no gym fees, just pavement pounding.

It's not the physical pain (it almost never is). It's the demons in your head that start to whisper when you run and your legs start to get sore and it hurts to draw in breath, if you stop now, it'll all be okay. Walking doesn't hurt. If you go home now you can lie down on the couch and it won't hurt anymore. It's when you tell the demon to go to hell that you build character, when you keep running through the barriers, you're competing with yourself, you win.

Running builds character. Someone once told me that writing difficult reports and being challenged to hard, boring work builds character. I prefer running.

The habit of commitment is the mind game I struggle with daily. It's easy to make excuses... it's raining, it's too hot, it's too cold, i'm too tired, i can just watch one more tv show.

So what do I do to fight these demons?

1. The Head Fake. I read somewhere once that when a challenge comes up thats so big and ugly, you don't take it head on. You dodge it, you head fake. It's a sporting term for when an athlete uses his head to fake the direction he's running. Even the biggest scariest tacklers fall for it. When my mind starts telling me to quit, or that I'm not a runner, I throw a head fake and I just run. When my legs start to hurt and my body tells me to stop, I throw a head fake, I keep running and ignore the pain, I don't give in to it.

2. I Turn Up. I make time to turn up to running. It's a contract I have with myself. I get home, pull on the shoes, pull on the shorts. If I don't feel like running then, I can stop (one time I fell asleep in bed after getting changed, it was probably for the best!). Turning up is most of the battle already won.

There are probably some truths here about our lives too.

In another post, I'll write about another great passion of mine (and Will Smith's). Reading.

Mindfulness and the impermanence of life.

  The Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius explored the frailty of man in Meditations, '... if we live longer, there is no guarantee that our mind will likewise retain that power to comprehend and study the world which contributes to our experience of things divine and human... so we must have a sense of urgency, not only for the ever closer approach of death, but also because our comprehension of the world and our ability to pay proper attention will fade before we do.'

If we consider this in our daily life, many people 'do their time' in painful, stressful jobs with some expectation of a greater life in retirement, we miss the urgency of the present and the attention we should pay to it.  If we always live for the future, when we retire, become rich, famous, or hit that big idea to really live life, it's as though we're waiting for future before we allow ourselves to start living.

These are the times when we launch into the 'if only I had' or 'If only I were' something or someone before we can be happy. The problem with the future is that it's not yet here and that we only have the present. And if we wait too long, we might miss our chance to really live. We may no longer have the youth, energy, vitality and ability to live in the moment as we do right now. Perhaps it's a reason why the most inspiring, talented, authentic and emotionally open people are those with terminal illnesses or disabilities, with finite dimensions on their lives, they are driven to make every single moment count.

One of the best techniques I've found for living in the moment, and living life right now, no matter what I'm doing is to think deeply and be mindful to each of my five senses. It's easy to fall into the trap of defining moments between scheduled 'events' as times to place your mind on cruise control, for example commuting, boring client meetings or talking to someone you dislike. Letting these times pass without thinking is a waste of your time, precisely because it is yours, it's your life, and we can only ever experience life in the present, everthing else is over or is yet to come. It's a powerful way to kick the habit of going 'through the motions', and it can bring a vivid experience to everything

Don't touch. Feel
Don't glimpse. See
Don't hear. Listen
Don't eat. Taste
Don't sniff. Inhale

Be curious, and make use of every thing you have. Now.

Image credit: Dominic's Pics

Calling, career, vocation, job.

Calling, career, vocation, job. The four types of work. They all mean different things, and work can be made up of several of them. Teaching is a good example of work that can be a vocation and a calling.

A calling is doing the thing you love most. I'm not sure you would even call it work anymore and you would probably have a sneaking suspicion that you're being payed too much to do it. You don't read about it all the time, however yesterday I read a very high profile case in the Sydney Morning Herald, about Dr Kawashima, the creator of Brain Training for the Nintendo DS.

Dr Kawashima says some odd things we don't normally associate with a 9 to 5 job, he says, 'my hobby is work,' and on holidays, 'If I had such spare time, I want to do my research.' The good doctor has a career, a vocation and a calling.

Finding the right calling doesn't sound like an easy thing. In fact, it sounds like something that you would be lucky to find straight away. It would definitely be odd to define your entire life by decisions made when you were 18, 22 or even 40 years old. But it's damn easy, and it's what so many of us end up doing.

It's easy to fall into careers and then follow them out of habit, history and comfort, but the question is, do you want a job, a career, a vocation or a calling?[