Daily Tips: How to finish huge tasks

August 18th, 2008 Posted in Tips
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Do you have too much to do? Is your current task too big to finish? Does it seem insurmountable to finish it? Let me share with you what works for me in finishing my tasks.

If one day you find that you have too much work to do, just remember the following 3 magic words:

“Divide and conquer”.

Yes, that’s the best method that has worked for me in finishing big tasks. You chop the unmanageable big tasks into smaller tasks which are manageable, and complete the smaller tasks one by one until one day you realize, the big task is completed! It may sound simple, but trust me it works!

Using this method, although simple, helps you to finish your huge tasks not just directly, but indirectly. Once you chop the huge task into smaller pieces, you will feel that the task is do-able, and that’s a huge breakthrough! Once you realize that you can actually finish a task, you’ll feel driven and re-motivated to finish the task.

Also, by using this method, it ensures that you do not succumb into depression or get petrified and do nothing. That itself is more valuable than any other methods combined.

Good luck!

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Daily Tips: How to ask dominantly

August 16th, 2008 Posted in Tips
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Have you always gotten a “No” for an answer? Do you find it difficult to get things your way? Whenever you ask for something, do you always prepare yourself that you might not get what you want?

Maybe you’ve been asking the wrong way.

The way you frame your questions or requests matter. You could ask for something in two different ways, and end up with two different results. Let me share with you what I learned early in my career.

I was at Melaka, and the company I was doing my internship at was having a team building session over the weekend. They flew people in from Hong Kong and Singapore, and there were activities and all, you know, play games, motivational talks, company presentation and boring stuffs like that.

And then it was time for dinner. We all went to the restaurant at 7pm, although the reservation was for 7.30pm. Someone asked me to ask the waiter if we can sit down first, but one of the senior managers stopped him and told me, “Don’t ask like that. Go tell the waiter that we have a dinner reservation and ask him where is our table.”

I was stunned. The same question, but asked in a different way.

The first, “Hi, we actually have a reservation at 7.30pm, and we’re wondering if we can sit first” gives the waiter an opportunity to say no, or say that he has to ask his manager first.

The second, “Hi, we have a dinner reservation. Where’s our table?” does not give the waiter any chance to say no at all, and forces him to show us our tables. Of course he may still say no, but with so little opportunity to say so without offending the customer, most of the time he will just do his job and show us the table, and if there’s no tables, prepare one for us.

See how asking the same question in a different manner gives different results? Just by framing your question differently, you position yourself in a dominant position, and this increases the chances of things coming your way.

Good luck!

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Daily Tips: Be thorough and reduce your mistakes

August 15th, 2008 Posted in Tips
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It’s common to make mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes. You can’t eliminate mistakes, but you sure can reduce them.

When I was doing my internship, I was asked by a senior manager to upgrade her email client. Having possession of her laptop, I downloaded the install file, made copies of the email file archives and ran the upgrade installer.

To my horror, the laptop crashed during the install. When I restarted the machine again, her email client was screwed and I had to remove and perform a fresh installation.

After I recovered her email archive files – to my horror, again, I cannot find emails for the current month. All the backup had was emails up to last month, and I realized that I had only backed up her archives, not the folder storing the current yet unacted on emails. Dreading having to tell her the bad news, I summoned all courage and went up and told her that her emails for the current month was lost, explained what happened and prepared myself for the worst.

Instead of throwing something at me, she looked at me and said, “Next time, you need to be thorough. Be very very thorough and you won’t make mistakes like this.”

From then on, in nearly everything I do, I double check, probably even triple check the work that I do. And I find that most of the time I check, there would be something missing that I can correct before I complete and hand over the task. And I believe that because of this habit, it greatly reduced the mistakes that I did or could have done, and probably helped my career in some ways.

Lesson learned.

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Daily Tips: How to escape a maze

August 13th, 2008 Posted in Tips
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Do you know how to get yourself out of a maze if one day you find yourself in one? In one episode of Amazing Race Asia 2, the participants had to explore a small maze and find a chest where the clue is hidden. The chests are sprawled all over the place.

I was hoping there would be someone who would methodically search for the chests, but sadly all of them ran all over the place randomly opening chests and trying to remember which ones they had opened and which ones they hadn’t. It may work in a smaller maze, but if it’s a bigger maze, they’re probably screwed, or even worse, trapped.

What is the best way of getting out of a maze? Simple, just take your hand and touch the side of the real wall of the maze. The tricky part here is, there are fake walls and real walls. The real walls of the maze are those that divides the maze and the outside. Now, just keep walking and keep your hand on the wall, never taking it off (imagining that your hand is at the wall works too if you’re afraid to touch the sides of a creepy maze) and never walking backwards. Just keep walking. If you keep at it, you’ll find the exit sooner or later.

Putting your hands at the side of the wall and keep walking ensures that you only pass by the wall once and just once (it has to be the real one! if it’s a fake one you may end up round and round around the fake walls). It may not be the shortest way to the exit from where you were standing, but randomly choosing a path isn’t the shortest way either. You could get lost and stuck there forever, so IMHO a methodical way, such as the one suggested above is the best.

Good luck!

P.S. The Amazing Race Asia 3 will premiere on 11 September 2008! Can’t wait!

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Daily Tips: A wise advice about reacting in anger

August 12th, 2008 Posted in Tips
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How many of us has shot back in anger when we receive emails that anger us, or worse, emails that insult us? How many of us has written emails in anger, hitting the keyboard key after key, whispering “That’ll teach you!” under our breath and hit send and immediately felt guilty afterwards?

Too many.

I’ve done some of that myself in the past, and I wasn’t too proud of it. Almost always it didn’t solve anything, and whatever problem at hand could’ve been solved if I had acted more maturely instead.

This is an advice my boss told me before, which I practise until today:

“When you receive an email, SMS or news that you don’t like, don’t do anything. Just sit on it, sleep on it, and act tomorrow. If you still feel like shouting at the person tomorrow, then you shout. Just wait until tomorrow to do it.”

It is a good advice, because it allows me to cool down, and think clearly about the problem at hand instead of reacting to it. Now, if you are still angry tomorrow and you still think shouting at the person who sent it is still the right thing to do, then by all means pick up the phone and call and shout all you want. But once you practise this, you will find that almost always, you will not remain angry, and you will have done the right thing instead of lambasting at an innocent person or reveal that you’re unprofessional to parties that you would never have done under normal circumstances.

Good luck!

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Daily Tips: Does the “increase your luck” tip work?

August 9th, 2008 Posted in Tips
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rabbit's foot for luck

Yes it does. And I’ll tell you why. (Refer to Daily Tips: How to increase your luck for context)

Basically, the principle of the tip is that with more practice, the more “lucky” you get. You may ask, “How does that make sense? No matter how much I practise, I don’t think it made winning the lottery any easier! And of course, if I practise something a lot, I’ll get good at it. That’s not luck!”

True. But, the statements made above are too widely scoped, and doesn’t take into account of the different scenarios that luck can fall on.

There are many situations that luck can come into play in determining the outcome, and these situations are made up of 2 elements: element of chance, and element of skill. Situations that are mostly made up of element of chance are called Game of Chance, and situations that are mostly made up of element of skill are called Game of Skill. The thing is, although there is Game of Chance that has elements of skill, there is no Game of Skill that has no elements of chance.

Point is, every situation somehow involves chance, but not every situation involves skill. Confused yet?

The graphic above illustrates that everything involves element of chance, and out of those, there are only some that involves element of skill.

An example of Game of Chance are the lottery, while an example of Game of Skill are sports. Oh by the way, did anyone catch the grand opening of the Olympics? If you didn’t, catch the rerun! It was excellent!

Back to the topic, now that you know the difference between Game of Chance and Game of Skill, the other thing that you need to fully understand is that both of these involves chance, or in other words, luck. The amount of luck that is involved vary from game to game, for example, in a game of snooker between pros, there’s very little luck involved. In F1, you might think it’s a game of skill, but there’s plenty of luck involved. The car may have engine problem, flat tyre, etc. In a game of poker, it involves both skill and luck, if you’re lucky, you may win big a few rounds, but a pro can outlast and outwin you if you stay long enough. The pro knows enough how to harness the element of luck in his favour so that over the long run, he will come out positive.

So, basically, in nearly everything, luck is involved. Life itself involves the element of chance. And that is why knowing as much as you can about this luck thing is important.

Next, I will share with you how to equip yourself with the knowledge and skill needed to harness the luck element and increase the odds in your favour. Stay tuned!

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Reality Bites

August 9th, 2008 Posted in Tips
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Some of you might wonder, why do i write about relationships, and so far all of them are on the negative side? Don’t get me wrong. It’s not like i have no faith in relationships, i believe that people are missing this angle of the relationship. When you like someone, you are easily clouded by your not rational emotions. You let your feelings take over your brain. A lot of things you think that you are feeling can be wrong. Your judgment may not be right. I know it’s easier said than done, but you are the one that control your mind,feelings and emotions. I want to make a point and remind people out there, that reality bites! Just keeping it real.

Optimistic or pessimistic

No one likes to hear bad news, or even accept the facts. But by knowing, understanding and being alert about what other things that can happen, helps accepting disappointments and failure easier. It’s harsh, but someone gotta point it out. Instead of feeling down and sad, you can overcome all those feelings easily. The world has not end yet, failure doesn’t mean everything you did was wrong. Maybe you didn’t see it that way. Don’t over analyze anything and just move on. Be focus what’s in the future but not what’s in the past.  Most people are suffering from “letting go.” If you learn to let go, that is the 1st step of excepting. By blaming and giving excuses will hold grudges and vengeance for that person and it won’t change anything.

Positive thinking

Feeling positive and confident is good. What is there to think about when things totally go your way. You will be shouting in your mind “i’m the king of the world!”. No problem with that. What happens when it don’t ? Have you thought about all the unhappy things? Are you able to deal with the disappointments? I guess you have to, there’s no choice. So, why not learn how to deal with it before hand than after. Protection is better than cure. I am not asking you to think about negative things all the time. Why not take a little time and ALSO think about the posibility of things not working out too. I’m definitely a positive person, but i learn in my life experience that it is better to be prepare what lies ahead, no matter what it is. When you have thought about it already, when it happens, disappointments is not that bad after all.

Solution

My recommendation, when things turn bad, don’t harbor over the situation, problem whatever. Move on. If you have to make a decision, find a solution instead. Most people like to complaint, let off some steam, which is fine we are all humans we need to bitch sometimes, but they tend to ignore the solution. After bitching is done, do something that let your mind get over the situation. Did you find the solution to your problem? or are you still harboring it? You can still be optimistic but wouldn’t you still want to be prepare when things are pessimistic? There is no right or wrong whatever works for you.

Till next time…

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Basic Public Relations Skill (PR)

August 7th, 2008 Posted in Tips
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A lot of people think talking is easy. How hard can it be? Just open your mouth and talk. What happens when you want to develop a business relationship or simply have a intelligent conversation with someone. Perhaps getting to know a girl. All these are a form of public relations. Today, public relations is a set of management, supervisory, and technical functions that foster an organization’s ability to strategically listen to, appreciate, and respond to those persons whose mutually beneficial relationships with the organization are necessary if it is to achieve its missions and values.

Basic rule # 1

Always smile when you see someone even though you don’t know them. That will always give a friendly impression. Break the awkwardness with a conversation by saying hi, how are you? (for business a handshake). You want to start the first line of the conversation with the other party that can answer back. That’s ice breaking. If you are the introvert, always talk about general knowledge (no need to go blank). That way the other party can respond and there you go, you have strike up a conversation.

Basic rule # 2

Now that you are having a conversation, what do u expect to achieve or capture info from this conversation? It all comes down to the topic and how you speak. Don’t EVER interrogate the person you are talking to (doesn’t matter if it’s business or personal). You don’t want to appear like you are digging info about the person you just met. They can feel it. You don’t want to give out uncomfortable vibe. General topic is always the safest. Here’s an example:

After you have pass the introduction of yourself. You can move on to what are u currently doing? Do you live around the area? Do you come here a lot? After the other party respond to these questions, you should able to absorb information about the other party. Like, if you want to ask them out for tea, you already know if they live around the area or not. This give a good excuse to see this person again (be it for business or friendship). Another 1 is, you can call this person and say, hey i’m in the area wanna meet up for a drink? Of course, you have already know the info if this person hangs here most of the time. This is how u capture info from the earlier conversation you had and communicate back with their interest. This is how the foundation start.

I’m just going to talk about the simple basics first, cause it is easier said than done. Especially for those introvert character. I’m sure these 2 simple steps you can try out with your friends or co worker you want to know. This is how you want to build up your public relations skills. Smile always show friendliness. Strike the 1st sentence so the other party can respond, ice breaking. Capture infomation during conversations. The more you practice it will come to you naturally.

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Daily Tips: How to increase your luck

August 7th, 2008 Posted in Tips
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Have you ever wondered about luck, and whether there’s anything you can do to increase your luck?

Yes, there is.

Gary Player is one of the greatest players in golf history, with 163 professional wins and 9 major championship wins. When he first played in the United States as a young man, he was generally regarded as a “lucky” golfer by the regular Tour players, as when he faced more seasoned and successful adversaries, he would end up winning, much to their disbelief.

And when someone commented out loud how lucky he was to keep winning the championships, he answered:

“Sure, I’m lucky. The harder I practise, the luckier I get.”

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Daily Tips: Is your life difficult?

August 6th, 2008 Posted in Tips
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For us that is not so fortunate to be born into an easy life, life is generally difficult. We have too many things to worry about. We have too many things to buy, too little money. We have too many problems, too little solutions. The goals that we set for ourselves seem too far too reach, and one day we may get jaded enough to just give up and live life one day at a time, no more looking forward.

Do you plough your way through the day asking yourself, why is life so difficult?

Do you grudgingly finish your work asking yourself, why is life so difficult?

Do you cry yourself to sleep every night asking yourself, why is life so difficult?

Do you talk to your dog every evening asking him, why is life so difficult?

“Why?”

“Why is it so difficult?”

“Is there any way I can make life easier?”

The answer is yes.

The first thing that you need to do to make life easier, is to fully understand 3 magic words – and the 3 magic words are – “Life is difficult”.

“What? Just that?” Yes, it’s as simple as that! Once you comprehend that life is indeed difficult, your life will finally become easy. Let me quote the first few paragraphs of the first page of a book that I once read; this is a page that I truly agree with, and which had helped me achieve a breakthrough in looking at life.

"Chapter Title: Problems and Pain

Life is difficult.

This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult - once we truly understand and accept it - then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.

Most do not fully see this truth that life is difficult. Instead they moan more or less incessantly, noisily or subtly, about the enormity of their problems, their burdens, and their difficulties as if life were generally easy, as if life should be easy. They voice their belief, noisily or subtly, that their difficulties represent a unique kind of affliction that should not be and that has somehow been especially visited upon them, or else upon their families, their tribe, their class, their nation, their race or even their species, and not upon others. I know about this moaning because I have done my share.

Life is a series of problems. Do we want to moan about them or solve them? Do we want to teach our children to solve them?"

There, once you have truly understand that life is difficult, life suddenly becomes easy. The rocks and boulders that delayed and blocked you on your travel along the road of life, suddenly seemed smaller now that you have expected them to be there.

I hope by sharing this, it will make someone’s life less difficult, as it has made mine. :)

Good luck!

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