photo credit: Crystl

There is one event I was invited, a farewell for a minister in a campus organization I was actively involved before. I am not sure if I will come to the farewell party, as I do not know him very well. So I went to the Facebook event where I’m asked to RSVP. And I’m the first person who put it neither “Attending” nor “Not Attending”. I put my answer as “Maybe Attending”.

Maybe? That sounds like a lame response. It’s so uncertain, so irresponsible, so uncommitted. People say that it’s not good to say I try, you better say I will or I won’t. If earlier I was reading that consistency is overrated, today I also want to say certainty is overrated.

Why is that okay for you to say “Maybe”? Continue Reading →

photo credit: lepiaf.geo

Why only three? Okay, it seems to be much fewer than many list of productivity in the blogosphere. I can always come out with more but a list article has not always been my favorite. And more than that it’s exactly relevant to the first point I want to share.

1. Less quality

Or in a better word, change your perspective of the quality standard that you need.

I’m taking an example of how I wrote this article. Who said that only a list with a lot of points is a better article? Fewer points per article can help me to generate more articles. It is churning as what Scott H Young called it.

If your quality threshold is too high, you’ll kill many great solutions before they have time to incubate. Sometimes an idea takes time to develop, before it can become an adequate solution. Churning allows those ideas to grow for a time before they are prematurely stopped.
~Scott H Young (How to Increase Your Creative Output)

More than that, Toastmasters International has taught me to stay with a maximum of 3 points per message I deliver. Why? With the limited time that it gives (approximately 5-7 minutes for most speech), it’s the number of points you can deliver effectively. And more importantly, your audience must be able to grab the message, to digest them, and even better, to persuade/inspire them to make actions.

2. Less quantity

If you’ve been wondering where I’ve been missing last month, I’m practicing an idea that Leo Babauta shared in his book The Power of Less (review). It’s called the 3 projects rule. List 3 of your most important projects and do them. Don’t add any more projects before you finish ALL of them.

Why only 3 projects? Again it’s the power of less quantity; the idea helps you to focus. Taking on too many projects will be useless if you end up starting but not finishing most of them. Leo also emphasized on finishing all three projects before you can take up another one. You can take any exception, and the best, you can’t keep on procrastinating the project that you dislike.

In my case, that project was my Java certification that I’ve been procrastinating for almost a year. Once I made the step to seriously working on them, focusing my time on them, I can actually complete them in only two weeks. Even more I can take the next step in the certification.

When you have no choice but doing them, you’ll be amazed that things that what you’ve been procrastinating for can actually be completed in less time than you’ve always thought of.

3. Less brainy

If this is really the brain of Homer Simpson, no wonder he makes so much action. Often, they are silly and stupid, but the point is that he’s doing it.

I was presenting on GTD (Getting Things Done) last weekend. My purpose was to introduce and persuade my audience to practice GTD. You can watch it here. Warning: Reading the next paragraph may spoil the fun of watching.

The message did not come across pretty well, the power point was not clear enough and the worst, I was nervous. I lost confidence in my message as I thought that my audience was thinking that GTD is too complicated. I was getting too brainy in thinking that my subject is too brainy for my audience.

Thankfully, I included the last step, the “Just Do It” step. I jumped and caught the attention of my audience more than the other. And at the end, I got the best prepared speech speaker award for the evening.

I don’t despise GTD. It’s been very helpful to me, especially GTD inbox for Gmail that I’ve been using. My problem is the paralysis of analysis. Often there comes a time to be confident with the decision you picked earlier and just do it. Even if sometimes it may make you look stupid like Homer Simpson.

Concluding thought

Here they are, the three “less” for more productivity:  less-quality to generate more, less-quantity to focus on things that matter more, and less-brainy to do what you have decided to do. Again, it’s turning limitation into advantages. Less is not always less, less has its power, and often, less is more!

For more things about the power of less… read The Power of Less by Leo Babauta (review).

Less-ing for more,
Robert

Sales! When you heard the word, what comes to your mind? I guess it will be selling/persuading people, techniques, tricks, –or if you have ever disappointed with undesired purchases–traps? According to Corinne it’s not the only thing that matters. High-pressure and arm-wrestling techniques may no longer work. Even if it works, people will feel manipulated. In this age of educated consumers, things don’t work in the same way. It’s not the matter whether people are buying or not, but whether or not they are buying from YOU. This is the naked truth that Corinne presented in her book.

So… what’s inside the book?

Sales are about personal growth. This is what Corinne is emphasizing in her book. Any human relationship involves sales. All of us are salesmen. From finding a job to parenting, you will need influencing and sales skill. This personal growth is what Corinne presented in her book.

In summary, these are the chapters in the book…

One  -        Loving the People
Two  -       Scared to Death and Ready to Go
Three -      Change – Is It Time?
Four -        Appreciation
Five -        Complaints
Six -         The Crazies
Seven -     Argument For One – How to Win
Eight -      Got A Minute?
Nine -       The Hot Button?
Ten -         Closing the Deal
Eleven -    Let the Cat Come to You
Twelve -   The Blahs – Business Burnout
Thirteen -  Client Profiles – Secret Tips
Fourteen – Writing Your Way to a Decision
Fifteen -   Looking for a Job?
Sixteen -    Just Shut Up! (for a while)
Seventeen – Ask for the Money
Eighteen – The Big Idea – When to Bail out
Nineteen – What else do you want to do when you grow up?
Twenty -   When You‘ve Lost Your Job

The book has chapters on variety of topics. It’s a compilation of short essays on tips and tricks; suggestions to improve your relationships especially towards sales and selling. Some chapters are helpful to find jobs, some others in dealing with difficult people (such as the crazies). Some deals with pushing the sales, while some deals with personal growth and better attitude towards people.

Corinne has been trained for many years in sales. She is a sales trainer for fifteen years, and she has travelled several life paths – from business owner to sales trainer, author, lecturer, poet, TV producer, media coach, and blogger. The variety of experiences she had can be seen through the variety of topics she is presenting. I’m glad she is writing this book, sharing her collective wisdom from her life and career. I hope you can enjoy them as well. Here is the link to get the book… Sales Lies and Naked Truths.

Selling Corinne’s book,
Robert

photo credit: kwerfeldein

What if we can turn our limitation into advantages?

For readers that have been following me long enough will know that I used to have “turning limitation into advantages” as the big theme of this blog.

Today, I want to share something along that line, especially in relation to productivity tricks. The tricks are mostly inspired by the book The Now Habit by Neil Fiore (review). This article will cover three limitations that we might always tell ourselves regarding productivity, and how we can use them for our advantages. Let’s start with the first one…

Continue Reading →

photo credit: gadl

This will be a short notice!

Reason-4-Smile has a new companion site, Reason-4-Smile Library. Yes, it’s a new blog. While this blog will share insights and inspirations, the Library site will focus on the books, podcasts, or any other resources that I’ve ever picked.

I’m also going to provide links between them. Each post in library will have link to the articles in this blog (”Read Articles” link). On the other hand, the post in this blog will have the link to the corresponding review in library. One example is my previous post here (You can say ‘I don’t know’)

You have the choice.

Both will have different style. You can either choose between the insight and reflection here, or the raw material and review over there. If you’d like to subscribe to the Library site, these are the link. You can subscribe by Email and/or RSS.

Thank you so much for all your support.
Hope that this blog (and that blog) will always be an inspiration for you!
Robert

photo credit: somegeekintn

Is it comfortable for you to say “I don’t know”?

I learned one thing last week. It’s about saying “I don’t know”. It’s important because when we assume knowledge we often stop learning. There is a power in saying I don’t know.

We may think ourselves knowledgeable, but is that always true? We can assume knowledge, but there has to be certain part of ourselves that is willing to accept that “we don’t know” yet. We can be hungry. That’s how we will be satisfied.

We can learn so much from saying “I don’t know”. If you are not comfortable saying it yet, you may want to ponder these questions…

Continue Reading →

Secretary can actively operating a filing system, librarian can actively cataloguing books, or computer actively sorting out information. Our mind, however, does not actively sort out the information we receive. Our mind is passive. It only provides environment how information can sort themselves.

Memory is anything that happens and does not completely unhappen. It leaves some trace behind that eventually will decide how the information will self-organize themselves.

You can think of them as earth’s landscape. In the rainy days, raindrops form rivulets and streams on the ground. The streams leave the trace that decides how the following raindrops will flow. It eventually makes the stream deeper and turns into river, lake, and sea.

This pattern, the self-organizing pattern, however, may cause problem if it’s not correctly formed. Edward de Bono presents the following two diagrams to depict the problem.

Imagine that the blocks are the incoming information to our mind. As the information coming in, a pattern is formed, and it influenced how the subsequent information is organized to maintain the same pattern. This can cause problem if the pattern is not created properly as in the first diagram shows above.

A different way of arranging the diagram can be seen below, how the information can be formed properly including the final one. However this method is less likely to be tried because a square is much more obvious than a parallelogram.

It’s the problem with self-maximizing pattern. The most obvious solution may not be the optimal one. One may not be able to continue further without restructuring the pattern, without breaking up the old pattern that has been formed. That leads to the need of insight restructuring to achieve the maximal level.

Lateral Thinking VS Vertical Thinking

Lateral thinking deals with insight restructuring. It’s coined by Edward de Bono in the books titled Lateral Thinking. Many people believe that the only form of effective thinking is what Edward de Bono called as vertical thinking, in which people are going through the logical steps in thinking. These are some of the differences, and how lateral thinking can be beneficial…

Vertical thinking is selective, lateral thinking is generative. While rightness is what matters in vertical thinking, richness is what matters with lateral thinking. Vertical thinking resists irrelevant thinking while lateral thinking welcomes them.

Lateral thinking is provocative in nature. It can make jumps rather than sequential steps. It can make mistakes rather than right move in every step.

That is the exploration that eventually helps in the insight restructuring. Some techniques involves random entries which one must use to think of a solution, while some other provokes wishful thinking, reversal, and alternatives, questioning what most people believe. It is how one can learn from almost anything and take it into an insight that helps in problem solving.

The book comes with many more ideas on how to do lateral thinking. Meanwhile you can also find some idea generating tool in Wikipedia.

Lateral Thinking CS Vertical Thinking

Does that mean vertical thinking is not useful?

People thought that lateral thinking questions the validity of vertical thinking. It’s not so, the two are complementary rather than antagonistic.

Lateral thinking is useful for generating ideas and approaches, and vertical thinking is useful for developing them. Lateral thinking enhances the effectiveness of vertical thinking by offering it more to select from, while vertical thinking multiplies the effectiveness of lateral thinking by making good use of the ideas generated.

I hope this article gives you a brief introduction on the lateral thinking, an awareness of it and the need of it. You may need to get the book if you want to learn more about the techniques available. I will see if I can bring about one or two techniques in this blog as I am also preparing to speak about it for my next Toastmaster project.

Thinking,
Robert