Putting Effort or Being Passionate?

http://blogmaverick.com/2012/03/18/dont-follow-your-passion-follow-your-effort/

Excellent post by Mark Cuban about being passionate and putting effort. Above URL is the link to that post but as we all know there is no guarantee that the page will still be there next 6 months or 6 years or not so i also copy/paste the contents here at blogger.

I hear it all the time from people. “I’m passionate about it.” “I’m not going to quit, It’s my passion”. Or I hear it as advice to students and others “Follow your passion”.

What a bunch of BS.  ”Follow Your Passion” is easily the worst advice you could ever give or get.

Why ? Because everyone is passionate about something. Usually more than 1 thing.  We are born with it. There are always going to be things we love to do. That we dream about doing. That we really really want to do with our lives. Those passions aren’t worth a nickel.

Think about all the things you have been passionate about in your life. Think about all those passions that you considered making a career out of or building a company around.  How many were/are there ? Why did you bounce from one to another ?  Why were you not able to make a career or business out of any of those passions ? Or if you have been able to have some success, what was the key to the success.? Was it the passion or the effort you put in to your job or company ?

If you really want to know where you destiny lies, look at where you apply your time.

Time is the most valuable asset you don’t own. You may or may not realize it yet, but how you use or don’t use your time is going to be the best indication of where your future is going to take you .

Let me make this as clear as possible

1. When you work hard at something you become good at it.

2. When you become good at doing something, you will enjoy it more.

3. When you enjoy doing something, there is a very good chance you will become passionate or more passionate about it

4. When you are good at something, passionate and work even harder to excel and be the best at it, good things happen.

Don’t follow your passions, follow your effort. It will lead you to your passions and to success, however you define it.

Sitting on the shoulders of Giants

A thought came into my mind when i think about the technology and human beings. From stone age to present world, we all know that many generations have passed along the knowledge in between. The title has been said by Issac Newton, if i m not wrong. Then as a suspicious, pessimistic fool, I was thinking like, OK we are getting knowledge from our ancesters and we learn those from the school, universities, books and a bit of our own expereiences. And as we know the world keeps going forward, and human life span is getting shorter (pls google it). But the knowledge has been accumulated more and more which is needed to passed on to next generation. Then one day, we will reach a point that one human life span is not enough to learn all the knowledge from pervious generations. What do we do then? I have No idea.

Another fact about me being thinking particularly about this is that young ppl (newer generation) tend to learn the latest technology and they(not all but most of them) do not care much about what happen before that technology. Knowing history alone wouldn't help much, i guess. So let's say.... T1 means 1st technology that enables T2 and hence T3, T4,.. to Tn. We need people who understands all T1 to Tn. But hey it becomes impossible as only one human can take in knowledge so little. We might need a few ppl to take care of T1 to T10, and a few ppl to take care of T11 to T20 ... so and so forth. That's one solution I could think of. May be you wanna say, "hey you wanna reinvent the wheel?" I wouldn't say yes but hey we should not take everything for granted for what we have. We need systems that could manage our knowledge to distribute as efficient/effective as possible.

I think AI(artificial intelligence) is one of the solution to such problem. But I guess we are still in the age such that one person can gain most (if not all) knowledge if he/she wants to.

Things to be aware of:

1. Do not start something that you might leave it in half-way. I have wasted most of my time on those things. Leaving half-finished things and a few months later I don't even know 5% of that thing. There is also another factor for doing so,i.e. PERSEVERENCE. I normally tend to give up when things are hard to understand. Saying myself "Ohh. i will do it later" and that "later" never comes to exist. So this point gives out the next point :

2. Finish something to the point at least you remember what u have done by observing 1% of what you have invested in. e.g. If you have studied ruby for 100 hours about how ruby works and its techniques. After a few months later, you should be able to recall most of them by just studying 1 hour. In a simple plain word "Finish-what-you've-started." For the perseverance part, I think I need to have more endurance mentally and physically (pt. 9).

3. Be honest to yourself. If you know something is wrong, SEE it as it is, not as you want to SEE. Outlier said you need at least 10,000 hours (of conscious learning, not just doing the same thing for 10k hours) to master at one subject. It was never easy. Never kid yourself and don't make it a habit. So the next point is:

4. Change it if you know that u have the better method than the way you are doing it right now. If there is no chance, then keep reminding yourself to do the change when the time comes or Make one.

5. Do not let your mind filled with small things. There are TONs of big things to be shoved into your mind. But never have big MOUTH about it or else no one will really want to listen to u if the time comes. But how do we do it? What kind of big pictures are you talking about? It depends, coz it is only you who can find out what's big thing for u. Honestly, I still don't know what is my big thing yet. FUCK. Still finding..... But if i wanna go down one line, i m tempted to press "j". :P

6. If you see everything as chellenges insteade of obstacles, then remind yourself that it is that attitude that could raise you to top. I think it's especially important to remember this fact when u really face problems, big ones. Really, People tend to drop, at leat it's true for me, when things get heavy.

7. There are days I am satisfied with myself that I get things done a lot. Sometimes, I get depressed as there isn't much been done for that day. I think the latter comes a lot than former. Anyway, I wanna raise the ratio 30(sa):70(un) to reverse 70:30. So what do i need to do? Then the next comes to my mind:

8. First things first. Yes. For example, if you allocate 2 hours to play and 2 hours to work. Which one u do first, if it is me, i would play first then do the work with half-assed mind, not with the whole heart. Well that's just me. I m not judging you. Doing so will also used up all of my energies in the first thing (playing). So when I get back to work, I have little energy left to concentrate. It is true especially for no-exercise, sitting-all-day-long guy like me. Yeah... which makes me to the next point:

9. Fucking exercise. It's painful. It makes my muscle ached. It literally kills me. But we have to do it to live as we are supposed to or longer. Yes we have do it if we don't want to end up a few years later diagnosed with Heart-attack, diabetes, (type any disease here).

10. I need to make myself calm down. Not to get too much emotional. Focus on the present and do most of the things with undistracted mind. As you can see, it is difficult to do so. But we have the way to tame our wild wanderous mind. Meditation. Yes it's meditation. That's what I m gonna to do for ADD/anxieties anyway. Sometimes, I hang around youtube for some good 30 min or so. Singing along songs while enjoying youtube mtvs also calm my nerves. PPL who can't enjoy music wouldn't find it that way effective. So find your own way. Do it when u feel stressed, frustrated or feel like need to charge your battery.

To get better ....

How are we getting better at the things that we love? In "outlier" book, it said at least "10,000" hours is needed to master something. I think it's about 4 years of daily practise. What I mean by practise is that "Not" doing something that we are already familiar with but doing something harder, solving bigger problems, etc. We need to be diligent and persevere at things we do.

Let's say if we need difficulty level 3 job for our daily routine, we should practise with at least difficulty level 7 or more so that when the harder time comes as level 5, you will have no problem dealing with it. I guess I am saying this in very blunt form but I hope you get what I mean.

In practicing so, different jobs has different requirements. Some might need actual H/W to practise with or some may not. Anyhow, we can use the simulation method to cultivate our mentalities to solve the problems and to make us stronger or better in problem solving.

To fulfill our dreams!

This kind of topic was/is/will be written by many good authors many times already. But I found this particular essay expressing really good insights. The link is here. Yup, I just post the link and you can read all from there as I am not a fan of plagiarism.

Sometimes we have to make difficult decisions.

Sometimes, we have to make difficult decisions. Some may be necessary and probably some are not. Anyway, it does not take Einstein to understand we all have to face situations like this from time to time if not quite often. The problem is when the time comes, how do we face it? How do we make decisions which aren't biased upon anything? How do we decide which ones are the best for such situations? I guess there are no exact formula or procedures. we do things according to our experience or wisdom or advices (voices from within or from someone else).

It is not easy to have clear head but at least we should remind ourselves to have it when those times come. We all have our own Archillie's heels. Knowing ourselves and letting them out (e.g. anger) in constructive ways will help us a lot in many difficult situations instead of confronting head to head with other parties.

I am sure there may be times that conflict is unavoidable. Some people tend to feel offended easily and some are not. Knowing which one is which will make your life much easier. I don't think we should have our own point of view in every conceivable area but it's extremely important to have a few major ones in one's life. Without them, it will be like living other people lives instead of one's own.

Pushing ourselves is good. But pushing without direction means possibility of heading towards unknown which may be either good or hell. Sometimes, we have choices about how we are going to response but sometimes we just don't have much options left. All we have to do is shove our own complaints up our mouth and face them with "clear head" and "less worries/fear".

Running away may solve the problem in short term, but it makes you feel disgusted about yourself later for being a coward. Eventually, I realized that the only thing matters is how you feel about yourself. That's when the first point(not running away) kicks in. It doesn't matter where you are right now. As long as you feel good about yourselves, you are ok. We are doing fine and we are on the right track. Let your gut feeling sense it. Let your inner light show you the way.

I just remember what I have read from one article. I think the author is Jim Rohm. What he said is "If you keep doing the things that you have always been doing, you will keep getting the things that you have always been getting".

Remind me to lose weight !!!!

Damn.. the last blog i wrote about losing weight was in August 2007, which is nearly 2 years ago and I have pretty much the same weight as of that day.

So far, I have made a few things last month to support my idea of losing weight.

• Joining the California Gym membership
• Sleeping less
• Eating less at night time

Well.. let's see my weight next month but so far I am 110kg fat bastard.<06/Aug/2009>

Now I weigh 102 kg and it seems I could reduce only 8 kg. But I am glad that I now have the routines which make me more healthy and fit. One is walking/jogging of around 5km 2/3 times a week and another thing is going to driving range and hitting the balls which is also 2/3 times a week as of now. <14/Mar/2012>

How do you finish your things early with good quality?

Well... I have been thinking a lot lately about this and sometimes i could do it and sometimes i couldn't even if i tried to. Then i had this idea of last minute rush thing, i.e. acting like you have to finish the thing in your hand within an hour. It works! All the ideas from this rush flow through my brain and certainly, I could visualize the fastest way(may not be the best) to finish it up.

The reason it doesn't work sometimes is that we couldn't create enough rush, thus ending up with same old pushing the nearly deadline thingy. It's not the new thing and also not that i just found out but i guess it would be nice to write it down somewhere else when i am in mood. That's pretty much it.

Shadow

There are many sayings we've heard when we were children. My elders used to say that girls are like the shadow that they love to run away when you try to chase them and they will follow you if you try to run away from them.

I am sure most people have already heard of this thing but I am not sure how many of us(guys) have faced the real shadowy situations. When this kind of situations happen, most of us don't know what to do next, including me.

Don't follow/pursue them. Yes, it's as simple as that. But we all know that it's really hard to control your emotion of trying to do the next worst thing(chasing them).

Healing Depression; random post

After reading this article, I feel like I have to put it in my blog so that some others may read it and hopefully, get something valuable from it.

It's about how to cure depression without taking any clinical meds. And it's quite short.

http://www.depressiontreatmenthelp.org/clinical-depression-treatment-causes.php

Above article is really helpful and also I realize that taking omega-3 drinks everyday would be good for our health.

How do you feel?

I have been feeling quite strange lately that I can't even name what I am feeling... It's kind of complex, mixed-in feelings. And it reminds me of a movie "Way of Peaceful warrior" and its scenes.
In it, Socretes(Nick Nolte) asked Dan that "Are you Happy?" after Dan told him Socretes that he could ask any question to him. Happiness can be defined in many interpretations depending on individual's background, religion, social life, etc. Then I asked myself that question and honestly, I don't have an answer to that. So probably, the answer is I am not happy.

Sincerely, I think I am just an average person (in terms of education, financial & social POVs) , I guess at least. But I have one weakness that I am bad at expressing my feelings and may be that's the one of reasons I have failed the previous relationships( not to mention being lazy and not ambitious ;o) ).

Another thing is that I have insane amount of work to be done in 2 weeks time and may be my subconscious mind is doing something to me, Anxiety & Panics? I don't know, it's all mixed-in.

I think it's time to make myself being better person than this.

Steve Yegge's Rebooting is dying article

Steve yegge's Article, really nice one... His opinions about software and its features makes me think of totally different point of views.

One thing, by no means that I am a computer scientist or dealing with CS all the time. But my work, interests and experiences have made me wonder around HN at PG's site and Reddit.

So to be honest, I don't get 100% of what steve is trying to say or explain. But understanding some of this has made me blog out his article.

I think my blogs serve as the reference for blog reading trend.... :)

The wonder of Letting Go

I have just read an interesting article that I think I wanna share with anyone who's gonna read my blog. It's called "The Wonder of Letting Go". Amazingly, the writer made a reference to the Buddhist philosophy about life which I am familiar with but rarely practiced. It's about how we are afraid of changes and even if we know it is not going to be pretty, we still tend to cling to those old things instead of making changes. Well.. i guess i shouldn't talk too much but just letting you go there and read it.

Nice article: Finishers wanted!

This one really ticks me as you soon will realize if you read that article below.

Finishers wanted by David Weiss

I know myself that i am interested in many things and as all of us know, we have limited time. We have to say "No" to a bunch of things to do the "best" for us. Well ... it's better to let you read it for yourself.

Here is the poem from the Dave's Post.

Stick to your task ’til it sticks to you;
Beginners are many, but enders are few.
Honor, power, place and praise
Will always come to the one who stays.
Stick to your task ’til it sticks to you;
Bend at it, sweat at it, smile at it, too;
For out of the bend and the sweat and the smile
Will come life’s victories after a while.
—Author Unknown

Nice post on Disregarding what other ppl said

The link below will share you the idea of believing in yourself than following what others said (most of the time?).

Disregard 97%, Listen to 3%, You can & will succeed

OK. I was quite reluctant to post the article below on "How to become smarter" as I would know some of you would say "Only stupid/dumb ppl would read such articles" ... lol .... but hey Nobody is being smart all the time ... so here it is:

How to Become Smarter

Life Design Experiment by Alex Shalman

The link below will redirect you to the blog of Life Design Experiment(LDE) by Alex Shalman. He started right to the topic without making lengthy intro. Hope u enjoy it as much as i do. :o)

http://www.alexshalman.com/blog/2008/03/03/life-design-experiment/

Will I lose weight?

I am now thinking seriously about losing my weight? But how? That's the question, isn't it? Well... I've been like this for like more than 15 years already and I guess it won't take short time to lose even a few kilos. I need to have a plan for this. I know some tips like ...

• to eat less cholesterol/carbohydrates for meals...
• to eat much vegetables/fruits
  
• to have active life style...
• not to worry too much/be happy...

I have read some articles about this topic but I ended up like almost impossible diet plan eventually. I live in bangkok/Thailand, so as you can guess, the food I see normally are only hi-fat, spicy food.

So if you happen to have some ideas, plans or suggestions, you are more than welcome to post comments.