What Takes Up Time

Sorting, searching, organising, classifying, filing - bringing order out of chaos. It's the paperwork that takes the most time. When you are confronted with a paper problem, the key is to immediately, there and then, take a decision about what to do with it, don't defer decision-making, make the decision there and then. Then you will see continual improvement.

Acquiring Software Skills

Requires a lot of reading, thinking, experimenting and recording of experience.

Confusing Activity with Productivity

This website encourages you to focus on the main task.

The Brain as a CPU with a Finite Set of Registers

To maximise problem solving efficiency, upload the minimal set of information into brain CPU for any given problem.

An Endogenous Cause of Stress

We schedule time to do a task. The task is conceptually simple (a computer based task involving creating a diagram or presentation). The task fits into a list of other tasks that have to be accomplished on the same day. However, we allocate too little time to the task and it takes longer than we expect. Instead of 1 hour it takes 2 hours (twice as long) and still it's not finished. We start to feel stressed. We realise our original plan as to how we would do the task is tougher than we thought, we cannot use the tools we thought we could use and there is a learning curve for the new tools. The key stressor here: we did not expect to have to learn new skills to accomplish what we thought was simple. Instead of feeling excited and motivated by the opportunity to learn new stuff, we sink into the quicksand of obligated learning, or more accurately, obligated learning under time constraints. The key thing is to embrace the learning opportunity as an exhilirating new experience. Accept it will take extra time to accomplish and allocate that time. After the process you will have learned something new. Acceptance is the best strategy, postpone other tasks and focus on the present one. If it must be done, it must be done. Don't fight the necessity to learn, accept and allocate time. Else you will be stressed, in a rush and won't make good progress. Take a few deep breaths and remind yourself: "Acceptance".

Rhythm

Needed to motivate repetitive thought processes, software tasks and repetitive physical exercises.

Practising Mind Zoom

Being able to zoom into minutest details and zoom out to the big picture in an instant is an awesome skill. Such a skill is needed to understand complex spreadsheets quickly, both from super-broad high-level perspective to super-precise low-level perspective. Practising mind zoom is more efficient than doing a full context shift to move between high and low level components. A problem many high-level executives might have is they are able to zoom out quite well, but then they "zoom-in and zone-out" and fail to follow the intricate low-level detail precisely. You should be able to zoom-in and zoom-out in less than half a second and not end up in "mind-fog" at the first sign of zoom-in. Mind zoom is defined formally as the ability to zoom in and out of a complex problem instantaneously, fully harnessing the "telescope" of the mind.

Quantitative Subjects

Quantitative subjects take time to understand and internalise. They also require sufficient practise to ensure competence. Once intuition is obtained, they are relatively easy, but the initial learning phase requires many hours of patience, calm mind and hard work. Practising mathematics is like practising tai chi, it requires stability of mind and union of mind and body in order to be effective. The same principles apply to understanding a complex Excel formula, connect mind and body through the breath and even infinite length formulas crumble like sand castles.

Too Much Work?

Sometimes it is good to be overwhelmed with work. It forces you to find aggressive techniques to systematise and control the surrounding chaos.

The Art of AES

When Godfrey Hardy wrote that a man with any genuine talent in anything must be willing to make almost any sacrifice in order to cultivate it to the full, he was writing about the Art of Acquiring Extraordinary Skills. If you want to acquire extraordinary skills you can't get too attached to academic work. You need to find time to practise what you want to get good at and practise incessantly. Your work ethic needs to be beyond what anyone else can prescribe for you. Hardy in mathematics, Bruce Lee in martial arts, Michaelangelo in painting the Sistine Chapel, it all amounts to the same thing - mastery of the Art of Acquiring Extraordinary Skills.

Time Pressure

Time pressure is a good teacher. With time pressure suddenly you think of shortcuts and work more efficiently. Non-essential tasks get edited out of the task list.

Trademarks versus Service Marks

A service mark is a special kind of trademark, used mainly in the United States, to denote a service rather than a product. Before the service mark is registered it is common practice to use the superscript SM. A service mark may also take the form of a sound.

Do As Much As Possible

You learn by doing, therefore so you should do as much as possible. After doing, take time to reflect on what you have done. This is the philosophy of Socrates and Descartes.

Hyperbolic Discounting and Human Behaviour

The Marshmallow Experiment was done at Stanford University in the 1960s, whereby a group of four year olds were given an extra marshmallow provided they could wait 20 minutes before eating the first one. The children who could wait demonstrated better SAT scores years later. This attribute is also known as delayed gratification, deferred gratification or impulse control or self-control. Accounting-wise, people should calculate NPV of future rewards and defer near-term rewards of lesser value. Humans don't do this, they tend to use "hyperbolic discounting" whereby valuations fall very rapidly for periods of small delays. Everyone prefers a dollar today to a dollar tomorrow, but what about a dollar today or two dollars tomorrow? Hyperbolic discounting would be using a discount function = 1 / (1 + kD) where k is the "discount rate", and D is the delay. Going against this instinct is the domain of impulse control. Good impulse control, psychological research suggests, may be important for academic and life success.

S2K versus Doing Something New

Sticking to the knitting means sticking to a core business you already know and not trying to diversify. This is what people advise others to do when they want to stifle competitive behaviour particularly from new entrants. If all the people of the world just stuck to farming and agrarian activity we would still be living in the Middle Ages; many of the great inventions of today like the Internet would not exist. Having an innovative mindset and diversifying into industries at first unbeknownst to you is the key to success and survival. We all know different industries have different sensitivities to the business cycle. Sticking to something you know already might be comforting but when there is a decline in the demand for knitting, even the best knitter in the world will struggle to survive. In those times, you'll wish you had left all the naysayers behind and tried something new.

Apply Yourself - Lessons from Hardy

"Exposition, criticism and appreciation is work for second-rate minds..the function of a mathematician is to do something, to prove new theorems, to add to mathematics, and not to talk about what he or other mathematicians have done." Compare this to Bruce Lee's advice in an earlier post.

Work, Rest, Food, Exercise

Pick any two.

Intellectual Property Protection in Outsourced Locations

An interesting write-up from a Costa Mesa law firm.

Tell yourself to Relax - The Secret to Robustness

Always be relaxed, even when under stress. Especially in times of extreme stress, relax. This is not easy. You need to remind yourself, to relax (mentally). You can produce more if you are relaxed. If you are not relaxed you use up a lot of energy and get tired. This is the principle of "kong".

Learning Martial Arts from Bruce Lee

Bruce Lee stressed the importance of cardiovascular workout, having been tired of seeing big-bellied masters who would not last a single round with a boxer in a ring. One of the best ways to train cardiovascular and endurance for Bruce was running. He also stressed hard work in training - “Knowing is not enough, you must apply; willing is not enough, you must do.”

The Nature of Intellectual Performance

Optimal intellectual performance - what are the conditions that guarantee this? Adequate sleep, nutrition and exercise can result in very high mental performance, but is this always a practical goal? For various reasons, all three, sleep, nutrition and exercise can be impaired.

We might think that there are two types of thinking: thinking about things involving a large number of variables and thinking about very narrow, specialised problems. In the first category, the mental activity of "structuring" and "social thinking" (here defined as seeing something from someone else's perspective) can be difficult for someone specialised in the latter. However, too much of the latter can impair performance in the former.

Another interesting question is do people use more of their brainpower in certain activities rather than others? And does the brain's energy consumption (20% of the body's energy) increase for more mentally challenging tasks? Does too much physical activity impair mental performance due to more energy being diverted to the body's physical systems?

Dehydration in extreme circumstances can result in delirium. Delirium may manifest itself in "difficulty completing a single purpose-oriented task - to the extent that a delirious individual may engage in a string of incomplete and unrelated activities". Delirium is a form of organ dysfunction where the organ concerned is the brain. It can be caused by illness, or lack of food, water or sleep.

Dehydration also plays a role in mental performance. It seems there is a critical level of 2%dehydration when impairment to mental and motor performance becomes statistically significant. Water consumption when dehydrated can lead to an "alerting" or "revitalizing" effect (source: Water UK) but overconsumption can result in impairment. Dehydration can occur from exercise, exposure to heat or both. The impact of dehydration is greater on older people.

There is also a connection between food and mental performance. Eating a meal can cause a fall in mental and physical performance, a phenomenon known as the post-prandial dip. This is due to the body diverting energy to digest and absorb the meal.

Interesting article here.

Resources for Small Businesses

smallbusiness.co.uk is a nice site that keeps you up-to-date with issues faced by small businesses for example, in terms of technology, finance and government proposals, as well as case studies of entrepreneurs. BusinessLink also has some good resources on financing the small business. Also interesting is LDA website.

The Secret of Success

Brooklyn-born Bob Metcalfe, inventor of the Ethernet, studied at MIT and earned two degrees, electrical engineering and industrial management. His parents paid for the first year of studies and thereafter he paid his own tuition by working night-shifts programming at Raytheon and other companies. The secret of his success: "I don't remember when I slept!".

What is Stress?

Stress is when we are stretched almost beyond our limits; when the challenges of life seem to exceed our intellectual and/or physical capacity to handle those challenges. When you are in a stressful situation, work like crazy to exit the situation and complete the challenge and then, once things have cooled off, work hard to develop greater intellectual and physical capacity. The key is, when faced with an apparently insurmountable challenge, respond aggressively to "challenge the challenge". Nip the problem in the bud. If you feel not in control, take a few deep breaths to help focus the mind and bring it back to the attacking, egoless state. Then continue the advance.

Get out of Your Comfort Zone: Accept Mental and Physical Stress

Welcome activities that get you out of your comfort zone. Frequently we dread doing activities that force us out of our comfort zone, maybe because we do not feel as adept at that activity and prefer to do tasks that seem to reinforce our strengths and make us feel good about ourselves. Out-of-comfort-zone activities should be welcomed as great learning and growth opportunities, stretching your capacity to deal with new things and new situations, rather than seen as depressing situations that put us on the back foot. Frequently, too, many out-of-comfort-zone activities are things that we need to do rather than choose to do and hence we may feel a natural aversion to these activities. Imagine you are a General making battle plans. Define your objectives. Understand the pressures of war, understand that mental and physical stress is a natural accompaniment to combat. The war will go on regardless, it is your duty to fight it well. In fighting we are also learning, to deal with the increasing pressures of combat. Treat that as a challenge. Plan and foresee problems and difficulties in order to defend against them. And remember, application is always tougher than theory.

Buy-in

If you want to enact a major change, it is very important to get buy-in and to do so as early as possible. In doing so, you need to give people the opportunity to voice concerns early before commitments are made. In addition you need to provide facts and reasoning to support the change, it should not be a rushed job.

Alexander Hamilton (1755-1804), economist, Founding Father and first Treasury Secretary of the United States, stated:
"Men often oppose a thing merely because they have had no agency in planning it, or because it may have been planned by those whom they dislike".