Inheritance Inheritance

Ever since my little baby girl was born, the question of what to leave her with has been haunting me, you know, when I am gone.

It might not be unusual for any dads to want all the good things to be happening to their children, even though that is mathematically impossible. I have been thinking, if there is one thing I want to leave my daughter with, what is it?

Surely you would hope your offspring carry all the good genes you have been proud and bragging about; surely you would also hope all the good stuff has not landed onto you would land on her; surely you would hope she is going to enjoy her life like anyone has or hasn't been able to; you might also go as far as wishing that those hardships, which made who you are, are not going to make her struggle as much as you have done…the wish list is endless.

STOP.

None of these are within your control, no matter how much insurance you have put aside to reinforce the unpredictable, no matter what wise choices you want to make on her behalf. This is beyond you, and that, is a fact.

So the question is, what is the thing YOU want to leave her with?

What would be the one thing when she grows up, and I am gone, she would appreciate, more than anything else? That seems to lead to a plausible answer, memory, or in logical terms, evidence of all what has happened. Admittedly, this is the reason for my "one DVD for every birthday". Memory is what completes the missing of existence, what offers a sense of belonging.

To put this into perspective, what can we leave to the next generation who will be standing on the same planet as we do?

As intelligent specie as ourselves, we are often driven by the very question of who we are, what our purposes are, if any. Although sometime I do find it fascinating that when we try to understand so much about the world while we know so little about ourselves, little about where we came from. Just you know, the acceptable answer for me to question like "what will you do when it is coming to the end of this physical world" would be, preserving human knowledge.

Another one of my wildest imagination is that if there is a gigantic recording device, casting upon on planet earth, to record anything and everything that has been going on this very place from the point of time of which we can comprehend till now, to go on to the rest of our existence. Can you imagine what it is like if we get hold of that tape, sit down and watch? Apart from the overwhelming length of time, I think we will be bored with all the blank and repetitive daily activities the human race has been carrying over centuries, even with fast forward key pressed. There is just not that much of excitement. Moments such as great inventions, major history changing events, or even wars, will seem to be such rare seasonings on a massive plate of fried potatoes – there is just not much thrilling stuff going on.

But then, if you try to keep yourself awake during this long movie, and watch really close, I think you would probably find, there are some interesting aspects of history, although seemingly random and ad hoc, were driven to certain directions by those rare sparkling moments, by which I believe, mutation is the decisive factor of nature evolution. The impact of such moments depends on the context, but the common trait is, these are never created by one individual; they are collective efforts. Every hero has his time and place, where his influence converged with a stream of efforts resulting at critical mass. Only by then, the normal daily life is subtly being swayed from one route to another, undetectable for most of us.

Now, back to what I was nagging about inheritance. Officially I don't want 20 years down the line, there is my daughter, sit and get bored by the long-winded DVDs with no excitement whatsoever. Apart from telling her what has happened before she could remember, it won't tell her anything about who her dad is. For her and my own sake, it seems that the choice is fairly simple - contributing to the critical mass aggregation activities. At the very least, I would have something for her to feel thrilled about.

My time is limited

I don't like wasting time, wasting time with whoever appears to be hapless.

Not that I don't like to help, but if you appear to be hapless and clueless in sorting your own shit out, how am I supposed to believe that you are going to make our interaction not just as dull and disheartening as you are?

No offence, but my time is limited.

I am like a lot of other souls out there, desperately want to enjoy a meaningful conversation, and seeking for good causes for amusement, as Bill Bryson puts it. Conventionally, some may argue, not everybody has the luxury to undertake such search, when many of us fix our heads in commitment to make ends meet, despite the indulgence leading to the ever increasing outgoings. That's a choice, isn't? So I say, if you even consider yourself to be a boring person, go away so we can avoid the embarrassment and the likelihood that both of us get upset, I really don't have time for that.

Believe me, it does not take a great physiatrist to tell whether someone is trying to make things better, trying things which aren't destined to be. Those who do not accept what's been given easily are those who has hope to get out; for others who are willing to take what has been left or lack the motivation to refuse, their chances of getting anybody's time are slim, if at all possible.

So pretty simple, if you want my help and time, make yourself worthwhile first, otherwise you are just robbing me off, and that, is not tolerable.

Pointless exercise

Let me start this by asking you a question, is there a moment you suddenly realise, "oh crap, whatever has been kept me busy like hell in the last 12 months has just been rendered as useless. It is not going to make any difference in what matters." If the answer is positive, then you would probably want to continue to read the following.

I mean, don't get me wrong, I am sure you probably had been working your ass off, and probably had succeeded a few things in the stuff you had your eyes on, or had made some customer smiling rather than grudging, launching couple of products onto the market which made onto some sort of review lists. That is probably giving you a warm feeling of accomplishment, or fulfilment. But, you know that's not what I am talking about; the funny thing is, that's also not what you, have been thinking about either.

So what's wrong?

Needless to say that everything is moving at a speed which is slightly over what we have been trained for, which is not necessary a bad thing by the way. We convince ourselves that we know how the shit runs, and we cook out a plan to get us from where we are to where we want to be. As you don't have too much time to think, which you might have been kept telling yourself of, you decided to get started. "We can't predict the future", as we normally referred to back up our ways of working.

True that.

We forgot something. So what is it?

Well, before we go any further, let's take a brief look at the two causes which make this negligence almost inevitable, almost.

·         Firstly, we are busy, way too busy. "I am already late for another meeting which I don't think I want to miss"; "if I don't reply this email within next 5 minutes, someone is going to jump off the cliff, literally."; "You must be joking me! We absolutely can not delay this for another day, either I have this by end of today, or I am not going to make it for tomorrow morning coffee."; "We have to get this bug fixed within this week, otherwise we are shut off from this customer forever and ever.". If any of these sound familiar, then you have just identified yourself to be in this group. But don't worry, we are certainly not alone here.

·         Secondly, our heads are in the sand, very deep. "We have been pulling every string possible, throwing every heads available, doing every thing we can, to make this happen - we are on schedule."; "Damn it, why the blood-swearing design doesn't appeal to the focus group, we must have got the wrong crowd, or the sampling method is wrong"; "We are the market leader in our sector, but not sure what happened, within 3 months, that market has been superseded"; "We are closely following our competition, we are ready to take them head on…WTF, it looks like we are in totally different games here. They are not even looking at what we have been doing". As I said, when we are walking on top of some level of establishment, that establishment appears to be eternal, regardless what second laws of thermodynamics thinks.  The thing is, nothing is there forever, not even the same every other day, if we really want to get philosophical.

The two causes are leading to the same consequence, we are way out, we don't even have the right target, or it's evolving, and we are not – we are fucked.

What makes this even more painful and hard to swallow is, at subconscious level, you actually knew this, you knew you are looking at a moving target, you knew you are not keeping up with what is happening out there, you knew you will miss the pole, you knew you are doomed – you knew this will be another, pointless exercise, all along.

Why didn't you do something about that? Now you see why I want to lay out the two causes first, they are just there.

We don't want to change, that's what I believe as the fundamental nature of human mind, or the source of the profound conflicts with reality – everything changes, at all times. (And yes, I never believed those who tell me in interviews that they are not afraid of changes.). The fact is,

• -          "who am I to question the status quo?"
• -          We don't spend enough time in watching everything else is going on while our own shit is being dealt with on daily basis, fires all over the place.
• -          Under statistic assumption, when some of us picked up the scent of moving targets, we convince ourselves with figures, measurement, or whatever we find emotionally pleasing, that everybody else is wrong, we are right. We will come out as the one stick to the plan and win.
• -          Ok, we knew we might be off the mark now, but what can we do about it? "There is too much uncertainties, and I am not the one setting the post, why should I take the risk now? I mean, after all, if I see it, someone else must have seen it too right?", "we don't have a better plan so I'd say we do what we have said we're gonna do, and leave the rest to the higher power".

-          We miss what really matters, not because we don't see it, it is because what matters is normally hard, and we don't like that.

This time it is a certainty – a pointless exercise. It will be a cruel reality check for individual and entire organisation. More often than not, this will come at a time when it is already too late.

Had enough of this? Well, the way out is pretty simple, just do the opposite of everything I have just rambled down.

A little bit of heaven

To start by saying that if this post in anyway smells sentimental, that might just be what it takes.

So Steve Jobs passed away.

Not sure what’s the odds, but just watched A little bit of heaven from Nicole Kassell. She isn’t usually my favourite director but this one hit me, hard.

You might wonder, even though each and every one of us is going to die sooner or later, but that unknown of certainty somehow fences off the fear and helplessness, yeah, feelings again. Imagine this, you now know it is close, you try to keep the hope high like many others, but damn sure you know it is coming, very soon, what do you do?

You don’t need me to tell you how much of an impact Steve Jobs has created, in the daily lives of yours and mine. I have no intention to run through the story of Apple family and all the tasteful products, ventures. What I am wondering is, how he did it, in the last days of his life, how he faced what was coming, what he chose to do and more importantly, what not to.

So in the movie, Marley is told that her day is coming. She went through the possible emotions, I would too, to realise that there is nothing you can do to avoid what’s going to happen, be angry, sad, nonchalant. What she really missed, was the fact that others around her will go on with their lives, one way or another. I know it is hard to swallow, but it starts to become obvious to me that it is not just about Marley anymore, it isn’t. Because she is loved, she is the other end of emotion linkage. Now the natural thing seems to be, how to fill in the gap which will be created, when she is gone, to return the love, take the responsibility.

Easy to say, I know. It seems insane to ask a dying man to hold on to all the commitment, responsibilities. Wrong, so wrong. We usually view these two things as heavy weight stuff, I mean really serious stuff, right? The truth is, a person with commitment, responsibilities is a happy one. I would have sense of fulfilment, sense of purpose to life, before anyone figures out the ultimate question. Those bonds are what define us. Be true to your heart, would you indulge yourself, not for a day, not for a week, but for eternity? All of sudden, what Steve did starts to make sense to me. It was sad to see his condition getting worse that he has to step down; it was only admiration when you look at his seven years of fighting with cancer. We don’t really see that, do we? I didn’t. I only see a man keeps breaking the rules, and keeps telling the world what it really wants to hear, in an honest way.

So Marley died, after planned her fun funeral party celebration.

Steve Jobs passed away, with little pieces of many hearts.

I did not realise I have tear in my face when Marley said to her friend “Renee, I’m just gonna say what I came here to say which is, I am sorry. It really hurts me when you started distancing yourself, but it’s ok, I get it. A new baby coming and me… leaving. It’s not fair having to be so happy and so sad at the same time, is it? Our friendship is one of the best things in my life and I am sorry that I’m not gonna getto know that little boy…”

Eric Schmidt in his tribute, quoted Steve, "Steve and I were talking about children one time, and he said the problem with children is that they carry your heart with them. The exact phrase was, 'It’s your heart running around outside your body.' ". Many coverage tell the story of how he arranged the last days of his life, on his terms. Steve Jobs called in to offer advice for iPhone 4S launch, right before his death. How much is it too much to say what one cares about his creation and what emotion attach is that?

Many seem to share the belief that Steve Jobs is one of those opinionated dog, although incomparable genius. I don't see it that way. I actually think Steve Jobs is a man full of emotion, not just passion, and his great ways of knowing what people want to hear and have, before we know them ourselves. He is the ultimate salesman - he has our trust, money, respect; now with him gone, pieces of our heart too. His genius is as much as in design, product strategy as in marketing, if not more.

Steve Jobs is not my hero. He merely taught me how to treat my life, or the rest of it.

Time vs energy

A small flash game got me thinking, time vs energy, only it might not be that simple relationship as exchange.

If you are lucky enough, you would have probably realised already, in essence, time is all you have, and all that you have to lose, if any.

Typically, when you start to engage any activities (just by the way, in my world, it will be defined as in projects), it's likely that you would be thinking about how much time and resource you're going to put into this gig, and whether or not you can afford it. Simple inference tells us, all that resources usually you obtained by exchanging time that was running on your watch, be it hourly or contractual repayment. In professional world, we have one fancy thing normally named as project plan, which usually consists of a bunch of milestones and period of congregated effort estimates. Alright, there we also have people's name beside the coloured bars/items, depends on which religion of project management school you're from. My point is, it doesn't matter as long as we view it as we have been doing for God knows how long. Timing is just about everything we care about, everything we check against, everything we breathe with, everything we rely on our lives to tick with, to certain extent. I feel psychologically, it came from the needs for us to be in control our daily shit, a false sense of knowing where we are and where we heading. It's funny how time and space is really no difference, Kudos to Einstein.

Now, what I really want to talk about, is energy.

Only a handful smart ones know that time is irrelevant if you want to live your life in a non-mediocre way (accidentally, while I was pondering the content of this blog, friend recommend 4-hour week). Let's get this straight first - I do not believe you'll be able to be the geek you want to be when you are clueless at timing. On the contrary, I think we should be master of it. The difference is, where the real focus lies. For me, being able to manage energy and understand how it develops and evolves at different stage of your life is critical. With that, have a easy grip on the timeline is going to be natural. Working by hours will always be limited by Laws of physics, in terms of how much you are likely to gain. Your income will depend on your continuous efforts in time, instead of quality of decision or unique skills required.

So if time is an easy reference we can always look up to, energy is not. The best reference we have is probably those society elites. Nonetheless, a certain period of full concentrated energy can deliver results which would be difficult, sometimes impossible to achieve in a usual time-is-the-God manner. Why? Simple. When you have a target, and you are fully charged for it, it's much more likely you'll get it; otherwise, your ambition, passion or whatever you like to call it, will more likely to be worn out in the mist of motionlessness, with nothing come out the other end, sometime, even if there is something out, it won't be meaningful anymore.

Now, most people could not keep a constant charged state to be ready to engage whatever is coming their ways, some could but very few. Thus we have to be humble enough to learn how to tune our energy state and know when we should be ready to strike. Fluctuation is in the nature of energy. The other one is defined by law of conservation of energy - energy can neither be created nor destroyed: it can only be transformed from one state to another. It really doesn't matter how many days you spent on your couch reading books or playing games, skiing or diving in the middle of nowhere, do what you like. Just make sure when the mission is called, you know you'll be ready to go for it, like you never had before. That energy, is what I call something of note and can make delivery happen.

Look around you, if you think most people around you are busy in serving the system, you might be in the wrong crowd.

Play Google Scribe

The following lines came out of Google Scribe, with only me input first word following space bar (accepting whatever suggested by the prediction engine). It's funny to see whatever got into this person/algorithm, no matter who you started with, it always ended up at "world of the living room and dinning room..."

I have a lot of people are not aware of any other person or entity that is not the case for the other two are the same as the one in the same way as the first step in the right direction for the future of the country and the world of the living room and dining room with a view to the sea and the mountains...

You can also use the following command to create a new one and it is not a valid stream resource in D minor for two violins and a cello player and a great deal of time and money to the poor and the rich and famous and the most important thing is to get the best of the best in the world of the living room and dining room with a view to the sea and the mountains...

He/she was a member of the Board of Directors of the Company and the Group of Seven and the Ragged Tiger Deluxe Plastic Sled Blue and White Porcelain Vase with Flowers and Fruit of the Loom Men 's Boxer Shorts collection of the best in the world of the living room and dining room with a view to the sea and the mountains...

It is a very good job of it than I do now is to get the best of the best in the world of the living room and dining room with a view to the sea and the mountains...

Update 20/04/2011: In fact, later it turns out, no matter what word you chose to start with, it always ends up in the world of the living room and dining room :)

Inbox tolerance value

I have zero inbox tolerance (IT).

Every email drops through spam filter will be consumed immediately. Email processing always has been top priority thread in my daily task scheduling. Yes, my system works pretty well by interrupt handling, be it an engineer or manager schedule; I also have the bottom half handling to allow interrupt pre-empt if you're a Linux geek and really interested.

Secondly, I never group emails into sub folders, categories or any kind. It's simply a waste of time and counter-productive. You have From (who raised the matter), To (who should care), Subject (what's the matter), what else do you need to bring it out more easily? Whenever I saw a ever growing tree of folder structure, I am thinking "who are we kidding here, are you really gonna efficiently penetrate through this depth and get what you want from some emails you don't even remember whether or not you have consumed". I bet by the time you actually got the email, if you're lucky, there is a big chance you've forgot what's for, and all the reasons why it matters.

Also, just for the record, I never bought the excuse that 'I am too busy to check my emails', 'I have actual work to do to be interrupted'. While we're so comfortably making these alibi for us to
shy into our own little geek caves, away from brute truth - communication is what really make or break.

What I should have provided is the definition of email consumption. Based on the From, To, Subject (surprisingly, little credit is given to priority field, due to the obvious abuse), every email is processed with either immediate response, noted, ignored, fyi'ed. (You might have picked up, yes, I never deleted emails.)

What's your IT value (number of unread/number of emails in inbox, per day)? Why is that?

Leave shit to where it belongs

Nowadays, there are tons of blogs, books, tips about how to get things done and why it's important to do so.

What I want to talk about however, it's how to leave shit to where it belongs, and why so. This is assuming you're a self sufficient and proactive cell. At certain point in time, you find yourself couldn't let go any screaming customer emails or plan of attack to any critical issues. Instead, you find yourself repeatedly coming back and dip into every project meeting, on every email thread of all issue discussion, being the one cooking the plan involves parties others don't even know they exist in the organization. In short, you're rock'n'roll, you are kicking ass.

Maybe or may not be, some part of you feels bored and tired of repeating this exercise and you just know that you can do a good job as this is what you do, what you grew up from. But, your team doesn't really appreciate what you have been doing, of course your hard working and attention to details have always been very convincing, however, they didn't learn much. At the end of last project, they are just identical to what they were. Why? Because you didn't leave shit
to where it belongs.

I know you don't like not being the centre of the gravity, I know you also hate 'not-in-the-loop' for everything, maybe you still hold sense of insecurity for not being able to review code from every part of the system, or you just couldn't understand how maker's schedule runs outside immediate firing line. All these share one reason, you don't know how to leave shit to where it belongs.

What you will probably realise is, there will not be void in a positive team environment, to which hopefully you're part of it. To give'em space and leave people chew and grow on their responsibility might just be what you need to really inject sense of ownership into this team, you being there or not.

So, leave the shit to where it belongs. No one likes when shit hits the fan. Nonetheless, you need the shit spin out from the fan to test your defensive system, more importantly, how well your system performs under negative impact. Let go of the shit so you could have a chance to take care of something which might present real challenges, such as fan is broken.

Plausible deniability

I have not given this enough though until someone came to me and said, "hey dude, are you really gonna throw everything you have to this project? Aren't you supposed to just play safe?"

The point is, you have to be safe to be able to achieve what you plan for. On the other hand, if you spend too much time in looking for plausible deniability, guess what, you just create an atmosphere where everyone's main interest is not in getting things done, but in getting asses covered when shit hits fans. It is not easy, however, just to keep your head down, ignoring all politics around you and your project team, naively thinking it is a single-threaded project execution. Make no mistake, it never was, and will never be!

To have a project without pissing everyone off, yet still coming out with expected results, is more of an artistic execution than a by-the-book exercise. Obviously, a happy and motivated crowd will just ease off those expected and unexpected impedance, not mention initiatives. If your goal is really getting things done rather than being tragic hero, you should know that when you are gone, by whatever reasons, your project gone with you, be it a car crash, a mis-interpreted message, one wrong recruitment, one careless comment. I might have made it too dramatic than reality, it is likely that some of these problems will not be one if you weigh them at different levels.

It is imperative that a project leader shows his/her full commitment and always ready to go extra miles to make things happen. I have plenty of examples that crossing the line of being THERE or "let's try it next time" really lies in how much you want it, in another word, if you started to look for plausible deniability, using brake when you should be on full gas, you're pretty much out of luck.

Hit the high notes

Nessun Dorma is one of the few musics I can understand but love. Everytime when I hear it my blood pressure goes high and my eyes waters. Sounds too sentimental huh?

Why I like it? For very amateur reason, the powerful high notes, wave after wave. When someone hits those high notes, you think, wow, this dude is good, there is something in there, this guy has it!

Not everyone can do it, fortunately. That makes it special and meaningful. Similarly, not everyone can be a star in what he or she does. That's the way it is, the way it will be. People who can hit those high notes are so rare species. When you are looking for talents, no doubt you want the best, most of them pricey, but you still want them. They give different perspectives, achieve different levels. I am addictive to high notes. It makes me wonder whether that's what we are seeking in lives.