Reflection
... we rarely take the time to pause, breathe, and think about what's working and what's not. There's just too much to do and no time to reflect.
~The best way to use the last five minutes of your day
Firstly... Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone! Believe it or not, we are near the end of 2011. As the year draws to a close, it seems to be the time when we reflect on what has happened throughout the year - or at least I do.
A lot has happened in the past year for me - in some ways you can say it's been like a roller coaster ride. Some of the observations below are in some ways obvious, but I would still like to write them down here to share and to serve as a reminder for myself.
- Things can change at a moment's notice - adapt to change when the unexpected happens
- Appreciate what you have - don't take anything for granted
- Friends are awesome - talk often, look after and care for each other
- Take things as they come, don't worry too much - if it's happened, you can't change it; if it hasn't happened yet, it might not happen. Worrying won't do you any good.
- "This is your life. Do what you love, and do it often" - Holstee Manifesto
- Smile, be happy. Relax, enjoy yourself - not everything in life is all that serious, take time to have some fun
I feel it is quite beneficial to reflect on what you have learnt from things that have happened. The act of learning and reflecting on what you have learnt are two very different things. In my opinion, reflecting enables you to better understand what you have done right or wrong and allow you to improve.
Unfortuantely, I believe we rarely reflect enough - I tend to reflect sporadically, especially after major events. However, we learn and do so much on a daily basis, it seems like we should really reflect at the end of each day. By not pausing and taking time to reflect, it means we are more likely to repeat the same mistakes, or fail to repeat something we did right.
I am going to challenge myself to take 5 minutes each day to reflect over what has happened; what I have done during the day; anything I could/should have done differently etc, I challenge you too do the same.
Once again, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all Hope you will have all an awesome and memorable holiday with family and friends!
Your inner voice?
Not only could they not communicate, but they were left without a code to think in.
~ How Deaf People Think
This post is long overdue and thus it has been quite sometime since reading the article, but still something to think about. After reading this article, I realised that I had never quite thought of how one who has never heard sound would think in their mind. When random thoughts float around my mind, they are definitely quite literally a "voice" that is there blabbering away. It made sense that deaf people's inner "voice" would be how they normally communicate - sign language, but I still somehow find it mind boggling!
After reading the article, I thought to myself - what would I do if I did not have an inner voice? Would I still be able to think? I know this isn't the focus of the article, but the thought was probably triggered by the section about deaf people who were forced to communicate only via spoken language and therefore never really formed an inner voice. Luckily research has found that forcing deaf people to communicate exclusively with spoken language only is detrimental to their brain development.
It is good that with more knowledge people are (hopefully) not being forced to do something they are not naturally inclined to do. I for one cannot imagine not having an inner voice or some way to talk to myself and think in my head.
Regarding Happiness
Happiness is a state of mind or feeling characterized by contentment, love, satisfaction, pleasure, or joy. -Wikipedia
Life is interesting and complex. There is a whole spectrum of experiences that come with life - good, bad, happy, sad and anything in between. It is this array of experiences that make us who we are.
As annoying and frustrating as down times are, they are not the be all and end all, in fact they are needed. After all, there is no meaning to 'perfect' if there is no imperfection. Happiness holds no meaning if there is nothing to complement it. This is not to say that we should always dwell over problems and sorrows; instead we should be optimistic and try to see the brighter side of things whenever we can.
There is always plenty happening around us, often so much is happening that we cannot acknowledge them all. So, be selective and concentrate on the ones that make you happy, the ones that you like. There is always bound to be something good that is happening; so don't go and make your life harder by looking at those that irk you, because as unfortunate as it is, they often come and find you instead. When they do find you, don't give up - smile, be brave, be optimistic - it won't last forever.
Being happy is one of the most important things in life. As much importance as society today places on material wealth, it doesn't matter how much material wealth you have, they don't mean much if you're not happy. Life is too short and precious to be wasted on our worries, so instead go and find something that you enjoy doing.
Smile, be happy
Time is a funny thing
"Time (noun): [mass noun] the indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future regarded as a whole." -Oxford Dictionary
Time is a funny thing. We, as humans, all seem to be aware of the concept of time. What time did you wake up? What time is dinner? When will the train leave? How long is the movie? We have units to measure time - seconds, minutes, hours, days etc. Despite these well defined units of measurement, I feel time seems to be a very flexible and almost completely open to interpretation...
Musings of a psycho #51
A short musing for the holidays (just because I feel lazy), in fact only one...
Why is the flight attendant call button on the ceiling of the plane?
Flew JetStar few days ago and while reaching up to the ceiling to close the reading light realised that the call button to get the attention of a flight attendant was also there on the ceiling. My understanding is that one of the usages for this call button is when there is possibly some emergency/important matter you need to tell the flight attendant. So is it just me who thinks it is rather silly that this button is up on the ceiling making it rather hard to reach? (It would be quite bad if there was severe turbulence and a kid stands up to try and push this button to get some help...)
Ok, maybe that was a bit too short - but here are two quotes that I've came across in the recent few weeks that I thought are worth sharing:
"If you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original."
- Sir Ken Robinson
"Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand."
- Albert Einstein
Musings of a psycho #50
It's been a crazy few days and I know Musing #50 is long overdue - sorry! However, now that I am not doing a musing/thought a day I can foresee myself not religiously updating on Sundays any more, rather I will aim to put up a musing roughly once a week. So, without any more random ramblings, here are some random musings…
Don't forget your weaknesses, but pay more attention to your strengths.
This advice came from a work colleague few days ago. As summarised above, although you should not completely ignore your weaknesses your time is probably better spent concentrating and making your strengths stand out even more. My understanding of the reasoning behind this is if you spend a whole tonne of precious time and effort in building up your weaknesses, it will make you better overall, but you won't stand out. Since you have spent the time working on your weakness (and 'neglecting' your strengths) you will be able to do a good job at most tasks but it'll be harder to do a spectacular job at something.
On the other hand, if you concentrate on your strengths and make them even better you'll be an "expert" at particular tasks and you will be able to stand out in that area. So when someone needs someone to do a job in that area, you will come to mind as the person most suitable to get the job done well.
Of course you can't just not work on your weaknesses at all, for example, there are many 'weaknesses' that you can't just ignore completely - eg communication. If communication is not one of your strengths, I believe you should work on it so you can communicate comfortably and effectively; but there is no need to stress too much that you can't deliver speeches as well as the guy on the stage - after all, public speaking may as well be one of his strengths that he is working hard on improving.
Musings of a psycho #49
This week's musings will take a different format! Partly because the previous format took too long and partly because it sometimes felt like I was stretching myself to find a musing for each day. Or maybe I'm just lazy So here are some musings from the 49th week of the year.
Something as simple as "fun" can change people's behaviour for the better.
When I saw "Piano Stairs" on YouTube it made me smile It was great to see that by adding some 'fun' to something ordinary like stairs can change people's behaviour. It was quite interesting to see the range of people that chose to take the stairs over the escalator because the stairs had been converted into a piano - seems like everyone likes a bit of change and fun! If you're wondering who would spend so much effort transforming ordinary stairs into piano stairs, go and take a look at the people behind it - The Fun Theory.
Get feedback on your work - even if it is crap!
As some may be aware, I can be quite obsessed in making sure things are perfect. There is something in me that wants to go over every single detail to make sure nothing is out of place. This is all well and good for small projects/tasks (though I probably still spend too much time perfecting things that most people will not even notice) but when it comes to slightly larger projects this obsessiveness is a curse. So when I read "Version 1 Sucks, But Ship It Anyway" on Coding Horror, although not exactly related to obsessiveness, it still jumped out at me.
One of the reasons for my obsessiveness (I prefer to see it as attention to detail) is most likely because I want to know that I have thought of everything and checked everything. But realistically this is impossible. There is bound to be something I've forgotten, didn't think of or didn't know existed at all. Which brings me back to the article - no matter how much you try to polish something there is bound to be something you left out simply because you didn't know about it.
So it is important to get feedback as soon as possible - obviously you shouldn't ask for feedback on something that is totally hopelessly crap but neither should you wait until it has been fully polished and super shiny. In my opinion, the key is being able to identify when you have something good enough, stop being obsessed and get some feedback.
Here's a nice little poem by Donald Rumsfield about knowns and unknowns
The Unknown
As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don’t know
We don’t know.
Musings of a psycho #48
Another hot week in Sydney and another week closer to the end of 2009!
Sunday, 22 November 2009
#326 - Hot weather makes me feel lazy.
Today was a super hot and humid day in Sydney and I just simply felt like doing nothing at all. The day was indeed a very lazy day, just sat at my desk doing not much at all. In fact halfway through the day I just decided to lie down and sleep, though not much longer afterwards I woke up because it was too hot. Tried googling to see if there was any explanations to why hot weather makes people sleepy or lazy, but unfortunately didn't come up with anything useful other than a random comment on a forum saying "Cold weather makes me sleepy too. Being awake makes me feel sleepy."
Musings of a psycho #47
This week has come and gone, and somehow I don't feel as productive as I would have wanted to be. Maybe it is the stinky hot weather or maybe the time just slipped away, but either way yet another week has passed by. Hopefully I'll be able to use my time more effectively this coming week. As for the the Week 47 musings...
Sunday, 15 November 2009
#319 - Two things: Fast decision making can be critical at times and people can sometimes think very irrationally...
I was standing at the train station today waiting for the train and looking at a group of three people who were just talking to each other. Suddenly one of them accidentally drops their phone (an old Nokia 3315), all three look down at the phone, then one of them stepped forward to pick the phone up. Except when he stepped forward he kicked the phone down onto the train tracks. Now all three were staring at the train tracks. At the same time the announcement overhead starts "The train arriving at platform three...", the group looks to their right and indeed a train is coming.
So what do they do? One of them is just standing there seemingly still deciding whether he should go and grab the phone or not; the other jumps down to grab the phone while the other is yelling "leave the phone!". Luckily the guy that jumped down to grab the phone jumped back up before the train passed - he had probably only 1 or 2 seconds to spare. The fast decision made by the guy that jumped down meant that he was able to get the phone and be safe (had he hesitated he would not have made it in time), but on the other hand, I feel that it was a rather silly decision to make - risk your life for a phone.
Musings of a psycho #46
Yet another week has flown by and we find ourselves already halfway through November! This post is a day late due to my lack of Internet/computer use over the weekend. For those who are curious as to why it is Musing #46...read on
Sunday, 8 November 2009
#312 - There is actually a ISO standard (ISO 8601) that covers the "representation of dates and times"
In my attempt to give my weekly musings a bit more structure, I looked up what day and week of the year we were in. The day of the year was simple enough, but the week was actually more complicated that I thought it was! I always assumed that 1st January will be Week 1..but then thinking about it, if 1st January is a Friday, will it still be Week 1? According to ISO 8601, if 1st January is a Friday, Saturday or Sunday it is actually Week 52 or Week 53 of the previous year (ISO 8601 week starts on Monday). To confuse things even further, the system followed by USA is different to ISO 8601 - weeks start Monday, and there are partial weeks at the start/end of the year. If you're wondering, 09/11/2009 is Week 46 and the reason I start on Sundays for these posts is so I can have Sunday to write them up, and it's no fun to come up with the musing for the day and write about it on the same day.