Yes, I was angry. Angry not because she told me I can’t do it. I do know my own capabilities pretty well and it’s obvious that with my current skills and experiences, I will not able to secure a managerial opportunity. This, I know clearly and probably better than everyone else. What I was really angry of was the way she replied me.

Imagine this, you have this big idea and have a solid plan on how to make it happen. Then you approached a friend, only to receive a blunt reply from him – “you cannot do it”. That’s very demotivating, isn’t it? I do understand that some people do seriously think that you cannot do it, but rather than pouring cold water on you, maybe it’s better to encourage you in a nicer way or at least explain to you why he thinks it’s a bad idea? Because at the end of the day, the reason you approach your friends and family members is to ask for their support or opinions.  Not to make yourself feeling more depressed and demotivated. That is why something such as “you cannot do it”, is the last thing you should hear from someone close to you.

The same thing should also be done when someone approaches you to talk about his plan, dreams, goals, etc. Be a good listener even if you cannot help. Just be there and LISTEN. If you feel like telling him what you feel about the whole thing, put it in a nicer way. Give your honest assessment and also some ideas as to how you think the person can solve the problems that you’re worried about. Don’t ever say “you cannot do it” or anything which holds no meaning other than to demotivate the person. Because if you want to demotivate the person, then you’re better off not saying anything because you won’t be helping the person at all.

I know that whatever I’ve said here is pretty obvious and anyone with common sense should be able to realize it. But I also know that to realize something and to do it at the same time, can be quite difficult for some people. For this group of people, they need to realize how much weight their words carry and what are the impacts their words have on the life of other people. If they sincerely want to help, then don’t demotivate people. If they don’t want to help, then just shut up.

Conclusion, I believe that friends and family members should always be there to help and support each other. If someone approaches you to explain his plans, goals and dreams, that means he trusts you and you should respect that trust. Help him out. Motivate him. Explain to him. If you cannot do all those, then the only thing you can do is not to demotivate him.

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To be honest, I feel that having a to-do list does help us to be more organized as we know what are the important things to do, and also as a reminder not to miss out on those important stuff. But I also feel that it does not really make one more efficient and it certainly does not allow one to enjoy life as it is. Why am I saying that? Based on my personal experience, people tend to have too many things in their to-do list. There are so many things to do that at one stage or another, we feel overwhelmed by the very thing that is supposed to make us “in control”.

Just imagine that the weekend is coming and you have the current list of to-do items in your calendar:

1. meet the property agent
2. get a book from the local bookstore
3. bring your bf/gf/family to the nearby shopping complex
4. write 2 blog posts
5. redesign the theme
6. do some self-study on that technology
7. catch up with some ex-colleagues

If you think this is not overwhelming enough, you have my respect.

Actually the above is sort of like my default to-do list for the weekend and I am pretty sure I’m not alone. A lot of people I know really try to throw a lot of things into their already over-cluttered to-do list especially during weekends. In the end, we become overwhelmed and most likely could not accomplish most of the items in the list. What happens after that? We become demotivated and exhausted for the weekdays. Perhaps this is due to our nature – human beings love to accomplish things and having too many incomplete things does make one feels a bit ‘useless’.

What should we do then? To-do list helps us to be organized and it does help us to keep things done….but now you’re telling us that having one actually makes us feel exhausted and even demotivated?

Well, it’s not the end of the world really. The solution is pretty simple – keep your to-do list but minimize the number of deadlines. Having a lot of items is fine but don’t assign deadlines for all of them. Also, try to keep to 2 or 3 to-do items in a day. And if (a big IF) possible, free up 1 day in a week without any to-do list, preferably a Saturday or Sunday. Spend the day with your loved ones. Go out and enjoy life.

I believe by doing those simple steps, the tendency of you feeling overwhelmed by your to-do list will be lower and you still get to be “in control” most of the time. If you still feel overwhelmed, then start removing more to-do items until you feel you are comfortable. And if having no to-do list is what it takes to make you feel less overwhelmed, so be it (people who are in favor of the minimalist lifestyle believe that having a to-do list brings more harm than good).

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But does becoming faster actually help? Well, it depends on what you are talking about. But for the purpose of this post, let’s talk about life in general.

In my opinion, people should not move fast in life. Here are some of the reasons why.

By moving fast, you won’t be able to enjoy the process of doing something. For example, going for a vacation with your loved ones. Following a tour group has a very different feeling than free & easy (provided you know the way). By following a tour group, you will most likely be rushing against time and not enjoying the moment.

Besides that, going fast will also make you feel tired faster. It’ll drain your energy and your motivation. This happens to a lot of people. Have you ever seen people getting all fired up to do something at this moment, only to give up not long after that? It’s not that this person is not hardworking or motivated. He is! But the problem is, he is so motivated that he burns himself out before long….and he ends up giving up too early before he even manages to create the necessary momentum.

Also, going faster will bring out the worst of human beings – more errors. A project manager who rushes his team members to complete a project ahead of time might end up with a project filled with problems. A student who attends exam cram session might end up remembering nothing during exam. And parents who force their children to study this and that, hoping that their children will gain all the knowledge and become successful in a short time…but they might end up disappointed when their children become too exhausted and lose any interest in learning new stuff.

There you go. The 3 simple paragraphs consist of common scenarios that most of us have experienced or witnessed before. And based on our past experiences, we should know better than moving fast often ruin things. Yet, we continue to do so…pushing and making things faster whenever possible and end up disappointed with the outcome.

Perhaps a change is needed here. Stop pushing everything to be faster. Some things are supposed to be slow. Enjoy the moment, do it with a focused mind, do it properly and create a good outcome.

p/s….. there are things which should be fast….like the renewal of passport, bank operations, etc. But we should not mix up these things with the things that are meant to be slow. Always remember making everything fast often ruin things.

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We hear such lines all the time in our working environment. Processes, processes, processes. They are there to assist us to be more productive. They are there…well….to calm down the bosses because if we follow processes, things won’t easily go out of control. Well, not THAT much anyway.

To be honest with you, processes are fine but sticking too much to the processes can be counter-productive. But most importantly, it dulls the creativity of your people because they are being given a pretty tight constraint to work within. After all, most processes exist in order to control the people so that they don’t stray too far away from what they are supposed to do.

The funny thing is, after introducing such limiting processes, the bosses will start questioning their employees why aren’t they using their creativity at work? Then they will try to come out with MORE processes to promote creativity among the employees.

I guess the bosses or whoever that wants to come out with processes, should remember that creativity is not something that can be calculated – unlike the results of following a process. And it is not something which should be restrained by the processes. If you want to promote creativity, then remove the processes. Those 2 can hardly work together – there are occasions where the 2 can work together, but companies have the thread carefully…because not everyone can do that successfully without screwing up or making the bosses angry.

So yes, processes do dull creativity. Tell me if you think otherwise. I cannot think of how someone can be creative when he/she has to follow step (1) to step (10) as per the process.

Last but not least, people should remember that nowadays, companies need to rely on creativity and innovation more than they need to rely on boring processes. Processes are there to help, but creativity and innovation are there to make them win in the competition. So which should you be focusing on? It’s your choice.

p/s….. having said that, I don’t deny that certain processes should always be to keep things under control. Imagine what is it like if your HR person or account person try to be too creative by ignoring the processes.

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The good news is, it’s not difficult at all to come out with big dreams. In fact, anyone can come out with one…or more than one at any given time!

Now the bad news is, most people won’t be able to achieve them. Not because they’re unlucky or not talented, but because of the way they approach big dreams. Most of the people will just go all-out towards the big dreams.

And what happens next? They become tired very fast and give up. And the big dreams? Gone. They’ll be too demotivated to carry on…so they take a break. Few weeks or few months later, they would come back STRONGER than ever and set new big dreams. Then they go all out towards it (again)….and soon, history would repeat itself – they become exhausted and demotivated to carry on.

See the issue here? The issue here is that people tend to set up big dreams and then just dive straight into it….without dividing them into smaller portions. It’s like saying you want to climb Mount Everest and just head straight into it, hoping you can conquer it within a single day. Or saying you want to earn $1000 per day by blogging, and start to write blog posts… hoping that people would notice you in a week’s time. Well, all I can say is…. you have the right direction (the big dream) but you’re taking the wrong and unplanned approach.

The thing is, we human love to see progress and we feel motivated by it. If we don’t see any progress then sooner or later, we’ll become demotivated and give up. This is the thing with big dreams. We set an end goal which is too difficult for us to achieve easily, so we become burnout pretty soon because there’s no way for us to notice any significant progress towards our goal.

What we should do then, is to divide the so-called big dream, or end goal, into many smaller parts. Set them up in a way that you can accomplish them easily. Once completed, you will feel more motivated and move on to the next one. And before you know it, all these smaller parts have actually managed to help you move closer to that big dream of yours. And you still have a lot of energy left for the final push!

Set up the big dream

Separate it into smaller milestones

Work on the milestones one by one

Once you’re done with 1 milestone, stop a while and notice the progress. Gather as much motivation as you can from there.

Continue with the next milestone

So remember, everyone (me, you, your family members, friends, bosses) loves to see progress. If there’s no progress, you will get bored and tired easily, and eventually you will give up. Learn to separate a big end goal into smaller ones that you can achieve. Make use of the progress you make to push yourselves further.

Last but not least, always bear in mind that pursuing your big dreams is never going to be easy. It’s going to be a long long journey so you will need to gather any form of positive energy you can get during the journey. Oh, and don’t forget that pursuing that big dream of your should be fun and exciting…not tiring and boring.

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So what should you do then? What if you really want to get a promotion?

To begin with, you can refer to Damien’s “Idiot’s guide to getting a promotion“. It’s a good guide which teaches you how to manage a list of to-do and discuss it with your boss. This list can also be considered as the “requirements for getting promotion” list. Feel free to read through it.

After that, the conversation with your supervisor should have been completed. By then you should be able to know if the company has any plan to promote you, or if they think you are too good to be promoted. If it’s the first case, then congrats, you can stop reading here. If it’s the second case, please proceed

The next sensible thing for you to do is to ask yourself if you are indeed too good in what you do that you cannot be replaced. If yes, what is it that you are so good at? Is it something which can only be applied to your current job? Or is it a skill which you can still use once promoted? Identify the skills and see how you can apply them after you are promoted. If the skills cannot be ‘reused’, then is there a way to train up other people? How long do you think it will take to train someone up to be at your level? And do your bosses agree to such a transition?

Try to get the answers to those questions and hopefully it will be clearer to you whether it is possible to have a promotion in your current company, or not. If it’s not possible, then it is really your call to either stay or to find another job which allows you to have a promotion. Oh yeah, 1 more thing, always remember that a good company should never ever rely too much on a person. For a proper company, nobody is irreplaceable. It is just a question of whether they want to replace you (and the amount of time spent on the transition), or not.

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Anyway, here’s part of the content extracted from the web site.

WHAT IS A TURTLE BLOGATHON?
A Turtle Blogathon is an event where we blog non-stop for 24 hours, about matters relating to marine and freshwater turtles. We will be staying up all night, researching, writing and publishing one blog post every hour, even when you’re asleep. And for staying up all night, we collect donations.

The name “Turtle Blogathon” is adapted from the original Blogathon where bloggers update their websites every 30 minutes for 24 hours straight to raise funds for their chosen charity.

WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS?
The main objectives of staying awake all night and doing the Turtle Blogathon are:

• to raise funds for the Turtle Conservation Centre (TCC) because we are a new turtle conservation organization and we are starting from zero in terms of funding. What we do have is experience, lots of experience
• to disseminate information about marine and freshwater turtles because we realize that the general public doesn’t know much about the turtles, despite these creatures being on earth since many years ago. Did you know that the earliest known turtles date from 215 million years ago, making turtles one of the oldest reptile groups and a more ancient group than lizards and snakes?
• to spread awareness about the plight of these turtles, because they are fast becoming extinct. And if we do not do anything today, our future generations will not know what turtles are!

So there you go, some basic information you need to know about this.

And yes, you can play a part in this too. Simply help to spread the words around or go to their web site HERE and have a read..

Hope it helps.

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True, you can always have plan B, plan C, D, X, Y, Z. But all those backup plans are there to minimize the damages done when shit happens. For example, your boss screwed up and decided to retrench 20 people in the company and you’re 1 of them. Is it within your control? Hmm, not really. But can you have a backup plan before it happens? Definitely! One of your backup plans could be having an emergency fund to help support your expenses when you’re jobless, or you can have a backup plan to sell your car in order to raise some fund.

However, despite all the backup plans, it doesn’t remove the fact that shit has happened. What’s next then? Be honest about it. Don’t give any excuses and don’t attempt to hide it. If someone asks you what has happened, just admit that shit happened even though not everyone will buy into that “shit happens” excuse. But that’s their choice. For you, being honest is the best you could do.

Well, there’s actually 1 more thing that you should know. That is… our society does not like people who screwed up, or people who have been in a “shit happens” situation. That is why entrepreneurs who have failed in their businesses find it hard to land a job after their businesses closed down. However, our society despises cheaters even more than people who experienced “shit happens” situations. So, in the end, the decision is still yours – be honest about the entire situation, or try to cheat your way through it.

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Unfortunately, they’re wrong. The biggest gift someone can give you is not money, gadgets or any luxury items. It is their time. Yes, that limited asset that everyone has in their lifetime – the asset called TIME. For example, when someone invites you over for a lunch, it means he is pushing away other more important things to spend the time with you. When a company calls you up for a job interview, it means the hiring manager is giving you his precious time out of his busy schedule, just to see if you are suitable for them. When someone answers your phone call, they are giving you their time to hear you out. And when a customer comes to your store to ask some questions, he is giving you his time and the opportunity for you to help him out.

In fact, I consider time to be equivalent to life itself. If you are wasting someone’s time, you are wasting someone’s life in this world. Similarly, if someone chooses to give you time (by interviewing you or meeting you), that person is giving you a small part of his life in this world. Now that I put it this way, time does sound like a very important gift, no?

If that doesn’t convince you still, let me tell you a story which I’ve read somewhere.

John lives in a small house together with his lovely wife Joanne and his 5-year-old son Michael. Every morning, John would give his son some coins, in order to encourage his son to save money. And then he’s off to work and would only be back late at night. Oh, and he has to work on weekends too. It was a pretty tiring life for John but he has to do this in order to let his family leads a comfortable life in the city. Then one day, when he came back home from work, his son approached him and asked if he could give more coins. John was furious but kept his calm. He asked his son how much did he want. Upon hearing the question, his son took out a piece of paper and a pencil and started to scribble some numbers. His son then asked him “how much do you earn in a day?” And John got even angrier and started to scold his son. Then Michael started to cry and said “I just want you to be at home with me and mum for 1 day”.

Okay, maybe I didn’t write the story properly since I couldn’t remember the full version. Hahha. Sorry for that but well, you get the meaning.

So the next time you want to give a gift to someone, always remember that the biggest gift you can ever give is your time. Spend your precious time with the person and invest part of your life in them. I’m sure most of them will appreciate it.

But of course, if you can give them some bonuses like handbags, gadgets, etc… that will be even better.

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Our designers are coming out with more and more complex designs. Our building architects are doing the same. Our consumers demand more and more features in a single product even though they don’t need all of the features. And our doctors are giving us more and more medicines when the simpler approach would be to drink more water and eat more fruits.

Well, in some cases, going the not-so-simple direction does help but most often than not, it just complicate things. Perhaps we are being trained this way, or our environment forces us to become this way. I don’t know. All I know is, we are starting to lose what we always call “common sense”. Ever heard of people saying “common sense is no longer common”? Maybe that has something to do with our way of life which ignores the simple stuff and focus on the not-so-simple stuff.

Heck, some people even come out with many different ways to cut a fruit!!

But people, I guess it’s time to wake up a little and be aware of how simplicity can actually improves our life. There are many problems which don’t require us to think of complicated and complex solution. All they need is one simple solution, that’s all. Not everything is complicated, so don’t assume everything to be complicated. Start thinking the simple way and if cannot be solved, move on to more complicated solution.

Hope it helps.

p/s…… the reason I am writing this post is that, nowadays, i really notice a lot of us tend to think a bit too much on a problem. We would think of sooooo many complicated solutions and yet failed to solve the problem. Why? Because the solution is supposed to be simple and straightforward, but most of us just failed to figure it out.

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