Eric Fromm, in To Have or To Be
We are a society of notoriously unhappy people: lonely, anxious, depressed, destructive, dependent — people who are glad we have killed the time we are trying so hard to save.
The Pursuit of Happiness
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Happy Chinese New Year
Happy Chinese New Year everyone! Hope you have a really prosperous new year ahead! It’s going to be quite an exciting year for me, for various reasons, but especially because of the upcoming marriage.
As an aside, I’ve been really sick for the past week or so. I could feel the flu virus laying partially dormant for a few weeks before, but it all erupted last week. Had a terrible sore throat, dry cough, running nose with mucous with a hint of green and yellow (argh!), and a fever that just wouldn’t go away. I’m still not yet fully recovered (still no running for me), but at least the pain’s been reduced quite a bit since. And you know what? This sickness is, I believe, the best weight-loss catalyst one can find: a million and one Chinese New Year goodies were available, and I didn’t even care for them!
Anyway, I’ll leave you with a video of my cat Arsene doing his thing.
Doing great customer service or: Returning stinky poo with sweet smelling roses
Today, I received an angry e-mail from a disgruntled recipient of a reports I’m helping to generate. Turns out the data on the wasn’t all that up-to-date, and she wanted to know why.
The first reaction I had was that of defending myself: you read the report wrong; it’s the system’s fault; (and) you’re an idiot [fullstop]. Then I caught myself.
Maybe influenced by past experiences of great service I’ve experienced, as well as customer-service-oriented shows like “Can You Serve” in which a guy I knew in the army unbelievably won, I admitted my mistake, apologised, and asked how I could do better next time.
After sending that e-mail I felt pretty good about myself. It was so unlike me that for a moment I almost felt like I’d finally matured into an *gasp* adult (in fact, the huge, HUGE PR faux pax by Paul Christoforo is probably closer to what I’m naturally inclined to do; by the way, if you haven’t read about this sad yet hilarious incident, please do – you won’t regret it).
Whether or not yet another nasty e-mail is returned from my e-mail is irrelevant, once you realise the possibilities of returning stinky poo with sweet smelling roses. Even then though, I must admit to feeling a little apprehensive of receiving a nasty one after my being Mr. Nice Guy – I’m so thinned skinned if I stood in front of a light bulb that’d be all you see — a light bulb.
How measurable advertising makes us all the same
Seth Godin has a great post on how newer forms of direct marketing may be leading us toward a type of sameness.
I understand where he’s coming from. With instant feedback possible now with online sales, you can just about immediately see which product’s selling better than others, after which you exert influence on working up the sales of the superior product, while ignoring the inferior ones.
There is a problem though. What if it was just by random chance that the product deemed superior just happend to sell really well for a short time? With instant feedback possible, what happens is that there is no gestation period for other products to catch up — products that don’t perform well initially are dropped, while those that do remain (and pushed to ever greater heights).
Even if you knew that the better product wasn’t selling as well as it should, these days with instant measurements come expectations of instant results, and it’s going to be the products with instant mass appeal that will survive.
Happy 2012 everyone!
It’s the first day of 2012, and what better excuse to set your goals, resolutions, and plans than today?
So what will you be up to this year?
- Who do you hope to become?
- What do you hope to achieve?
- And, how do you expect to become who you want to be, or achieve what you want to do?
Personally, I’m just hoping to become a better person. Better how, and how I hope to do this, however, is still pending deeper thought — silent nights and mornings mulling over what life means. Something I hope to settle within the next week, and which is to be revised throughout the year and beyond.
Happy 2012 to you and your loved ones; may it be the greatest year yet.
Recording ideas through Evernote
I’ve had my Samsung Galaxy S2 for a few months now, and I can’t believe that I’ve only started seriously using Evernote for idea-tracking this past week.
I’d actually downloaded this App early on in my Galaxy S2′s life, but after my phone died on me due to an unfortunate, let’s just say, “water accident”, and all my data was erased in the subsequent repair (by the way, well done Samsung. Very professionally and quickly done; no questions asked, too, though it’s probably due to the miracle of unmolested water damage indicators), I hadn’t quite thought about the need to reinstall it again.
So imagine my delight when I “rediscovered” Evernote when, out of boredom, I downloaded the app from the Android store. After signing in, I was brought to my account where, lo-and-behold, the address of a colleague who has since left my current company (and of which, to my great despair as I’d yet to send her my promised wedding invitation, I thought I’d lost) popped up. Backed up on the cloud, and I didn’t even know it!
Already won over, I started reading several other “notes” that I’d posted inside, and realised what gems they were — and to think if it weren’t for this nifty free app I’d have lost it forever; iif there ever were a verb that described a “beyond-won” state I’d use it now. I’ll admit it’s a primitive finding for those who’ve been using Evernote for forever, but for a new initiate like me, it’s amazing.
Bonus (sample gem I found in my Evernote account):
I don’t know why but I’m feeling blue and have been feeling blue for quite a while now. By this I mean that life doesn’t quite feel like the rainbow coloured silken plushie that it sometimes feels like when one is on the top of the world. But it doesn’t feel particularly bad either (like end-of-the-world bad).
What it is, is a peculiar mixture of apathy, lethargy, and longing for a better life. The first two are, as far as I know, symptoms of depression. A mild case maybe but symptoms nevertheless. The last one’s a symptom of an inbuilt propensity to always think that things can and should be better: Optimism.
The first time I re-read this I just had to smile because it was just oh-so-true. It’s probably the perfect summary of what my life has been up till now: a curious mixture of mild depression and optimism.
Learning to think like the experts
Learning to think like the experts is not easy to do. But what’s even more difficult is learning to think like the experts while simultaneously making sure that you’re not caught in the type of thinking that keep experts locked in their “idea-shell”, where creativity falls prey to “how it should be done”.
How to think logically, illogically
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If anyone asks if you have a dog, just say "yes".
Saw this fantastic cartoon on humourlaughs.com about how a bartender uses his new-found knowledge on “logical thinking” to analyse one of his customers.
Life is a Sprint, not a Marathon
I just watched a video on The 99 Percent called Tony Schwartz: The Myths of the Overworked Creative, which talked about how important rest was to people (and to creatives especially). Though rest is something I know I should be getting more of, and something I consciously covet, it’s not something I actually do very much.
My cat Arsene: Master of Rest
I’m not sure if it’s a strange habit peculiar to me or if it’s shared with humanity in general, but when I’m tired, I tend to drag my feet more than seek sleep, maybe subconsciously equating being awake to making full use of my time. But rest, as Schwartz explains, is perhaps more important than anything else in being the best self you can be.
In the video, Schwartz also says that “life is a sprint, not a marathon.” It’s the first time I’ve heard of life being described this way, and it’s just so counter-intuitive that I couldn’t help but think, why? Reading that life’s a marathon and not a sprint is standard fare (i.e. that one should not keep pushing oneself lest burnout), but that life’s a sprint and not a marathon?
Schwartz explains that in a marathon, you pace yourself, and keep it steady (I suppose he was talking about most of us non-elite marathoners). You’re not so much looking for the finish line as you are in keeping an even pace and finishing the race. It is in keeping this steady pace, without the opportunity for rest and recovery in between, that we often “zone out” and get unfocused.
In life as a sprint, however, the sprinter keeps the finish line in mind the whole time, and is focused on the sole activity of getting to it as quickly as possible. You don’t forget what you’re there for, and there’s simply no time to zone out. At the end of the sprint you get to rest and recover, after which you sprint again. In a sense, you’re always on when you should be, while turning off as necessary.
It’s an interesting analogy, and one I think all us tired individuals should keep in mind.
Mandarin Oriental Tasting
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Food tasting at Mandarin Oriental
Just updated the wedding blog with pictures taken at our taste testing done at Mandarin Oriental. In summary, the food was great, and we’re more than happy with our choice!