Richard Yong

You've got to find what you love.

Here are a few if's worth thinking about.

• If you were going to die in 15 years. Would you do anything different? What about 50?

• If you had a dream, are you still dreaming?

• If you  were going to be remarkable, what would you do?

• If you had the resources and the time to do anything... what would it be?

• If you could be a good person, who would you be?

• If you didn't have to please your parents/wife/children/friends/golf buddies, what would you do?

The power isn't in the if. It's in the question of the when.

I've got one more piece of advice from Steve.

Almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

Flickr credit: Voetmann

TCO - Total Cost of Ownership, the other TLA about spending.

I only buy something if it adds some value to my life. One concept, stalwart to my buying decisions, is considering the TCO. The Total Cost of Ownership. The cost beyond the dollar price of buying.

So what are the costs beyond the dollar price?

• Maintenance
• Health
• Time
• Mental anguish
• Mental and physical clutter
• Opportunity

Before I sound melodramatic, I'll use the example of a car. If you buy a car, you need to spend time cleaning it, you might drive instead of walking or cycling, you need to maintain and fuel it. Some people have their cars as objects of desire, and the mental anguish from being in an accident or the car being stolen can be really high (remember your first car?)

I've always loved video gaming, but I secretly suspected that as a past time, it didn't really contribute to anyone or anything. I had been looking at the Sony Playstation 3 for quite some time, and was impressed, enthralled even. I could easily afford it, but I spent a long time debating the TCO.

The TCO analysis of the Playstation 3 (you could apply this to a TV too!):

• Health. The late night, sedentary lifestyle of gaming can make you seriously unhealthy. This is against my values of living a healthy life.
• Time. If I game for a long time, it means I've chosen, consciously or otherwise, not to spend the time with my wife, my family or working on projects and my health.
• Encouraging more 'screen time,' I spend over 12 hours a day working on a PC, it's seems silly to swap to the next 'screen' after work.

Sure I could use it in moderation and still have a balanced life, but then I wouldn't be able to justify the cost per use, and therein lies the magic relationship, and the hook of deciding to own stuff. Just because you can afford it or like it, doesn't mean you should get it.

I caved. I'm only human! I ended up buying a PS3 for 50% off. I rationalised it by saying I could easily get my money back. Sure enough I started spending late nights, and long periods of time playing the PS3. The short story - I got fat. I wasted time reading game reviews and gaming websites. The cost of ownership was more than I could stomach, literally.

I sold it, made my money back (Cost Per Use = $0!) and breathed a big sigh of relief.

So what does TCO mean to you?

• Stop. Think. Before you buy something, consider the hidden, non monetary costs. Use the ten second rule.
• Use don't own. Most of us just want to get the pleasure of using something.
• Borrow or rent as an alternative to owning, especially things with lots of added ongoing costs like maintenance, repair or health costs.
• Enjoy what you do own, lots of people get worked up over repair costs or broken things. That's the price of ownership, and if you know that when you hand over your money, you're a step ahead.

* This is a follow up to the Cost Per Use post

** TLA - Three Letter Acronym. I hate acronyms, so the title is a little tongue in cheek.

Flickr cred: Kate_A

Persistence and carrying 74.6 Big Macs

Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan "press on" has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race

Calvin Coolidge, 30th President of the USA

Yes, I've said it's a false belief to believe thats it's always true that you have to work very hard to be successful.

No, it's not true either that being lazy is going to get you success.

It's about working persistently on the right things.

It's about focus and working only on the valuable. I'm not talking about the corporate doublespeak of 'adding value to our customers/clients.' I'm talking about a complete shift of focus from let's do it better by increments to should we be doing something entirely else?

The pain of not doing the valuable is evident in the politics and infighting of nearly everything. For example, labourers in Australia have worked so hard, but are now trying to keep their jobs in car manufacturing plants, when it's fundamentally not valuable to do it here.

Big businesses that have eaten 'working hard but not on the valuable pill' include giants like IBM, Microsoft and Apple. Because while they were running hard up the mountain, someone moved the peak.

It really comes down to value per awesome.  You can be closer to success if you spend your time on the value (awesome) work instead of the flurry of not so awesome work. Sounds simple, but in reality we go through a masochistic habit of doing painful things for little or not gain, working in jobs we might not like so much, surrounding ourselves with distractions. Then we tell ourselves stories about how it's what we do to live. The risk of this reasoning, is that you never really end up anywhere you want to be.

So if we've got the right goals now what?

Persistence.

The art of self discipline. It's not about being perfect, it's about being on mission critical 80% of the time. I learned a lot about persistence a few years ago.

In one year of work and university I put on 15 kilos. That's like carrying 3 bags of oranges, 15 bags of frozen vegetables or 74.6 Big Macs all the time. A 20% increase in my body weight, I was 1/5th more Richard. Something was wrong, and it was a mixture of sleep, nutrition and exercise. I had to have a plan.

• I ate nothing but oats for breakfast, yoghurt and nuts as snacks, and lean chicken with steamed vegetables for lunch for a few years. But once a week, cheat day, I would flip out and gorge. 10 chocolate self saucing puddings? sure why not...
• Scheduled gym time between lectures. Contracted in, no matter how tired I was, I would just turn up, change into my gym clothes and do it. To be honest, I think the biggest obstacle to exercising is a gym membership (I don't have one now).

The plan wasn't so simple to keep. But I ignored emotion, headfaked it. Persistence goes beyond emotion. It's all about the mission. Happy, sad, anxious, upset, tired, gym membership or not. It never matters. You just do it.

So what is persistence?

• Focusing and working on mission critical tasks only.
• Forgeting emotion, emotion doesn't get things done.
• Reflecting often on what mission critical is. Cut the distractions.

I dropped down to 78kgs, sometimes I falter, but never long.

I'd put a caveat here and say that, sometimes, work is a job, and if it lets you find freedom, pays the bills and can let you get on with the best bits in life, then it's well worth it.

Happy Easter, and press on... on the right things!

Richard

   

Flickr courtesy of lakshmi.prabala

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.