Life – The Lazy Employee

Feeling Stuck = Insanity Check?

“People in distress will sometimes prefer a problem that is familiar to a solution that is not. “ – Neil Postman, Professor at New York University, Author

I shared this quote with my employees a couple weeks back. I got this quote from a business book but I feel this can be applied to most daily things in life. I can’t help to think that often we circle back to a familiar problem when we ignore the unfamiliar solution. At some point in our lives we either encounter someone who encountering the same problem.

For example there are some people who face financial problems so they work more, but choose to still keep their lavish life style. There are some people who aim to lose weight, but continue to eat regularly or do not exercise. Some of those people may have legitimate reasons but if we truly look in them, its just simplest excuses to avoid the unfamiliar solutions.

Insanity is doing the same thing expecting different result. This is not improvement on it self but just stagnation that doesn’t get anywhere. It may be someone or even you doing this. These people might be telling themselves that its okay that they are tackling the same problem because they are able to easily answer it, but it doesn’t provide progress. Be associated with the unfamiliar, take a different approach to a problem, and look at it a different way. You may find that answer you always wanted to a problem you been trying to solve.

At the same time, we aren’t able to arrive the an unfamiliar solution unless we ask an unfamiliar question. Instead of asking why your having financial problems, what can you cut in your life to allow you to save. Or why you can’t lose weight, but how can I manage my daily life for a better life style. In business, often we ask someone else perspective, and often this drive innovation. Same in life, we might need someone’s observation to allow us to find that unfamiliar question. Be comfortable with the unfamiliar.

P.S. So the picture is suppose to be that classic riddle. You got lost while hiking through the woods when you come across two doors with two guards. There is sign says that one door leads to the way out of the woods another leads to your death. The sign also says that the magical guards, one always tells a lie while the other tells a truth. It additionally says that you are only allowed to ask one question. What do you do?

Fill’em Up

A wise man said that you should find a work as…

Something you enjoy doing
That you can make a living from
That you are passionate about
That you are fulfilled.

One of the professionals shared that with the students at a career professional speed dating event hosted by HCOP (Health Career Opportunity Program), a program that introduces health careers to high school and college students. It gives a chance for students to explore health careers beyond nursing, and medicine. (I am product of the program) I was supposedly not only share about my career, but also trying to influence them to consider medical technology. I didn’t do that. I was more interested what they want to become but more importantly why they want to become.

Their answers have so full of passion that they had a light their eyes and a fire in their bellies. Their determination to get where they are going gave me a sense that the future of health care is in good hands. The beautiful thing about this was this event was only for college students between the ages of 18 to 28. It is never too late to start trying to find what you want to do in life.

I heard the wise man quote from one of the professionals there, and what is said is pretty true. The first two is a given, its something that you must be enjoy doing and you can make a living from. If its something that you don’t enjoy doing and you end up making you money, then you’ll going to have a bad time. Unfortunately we don’t live in a perfect utopia, so everything comes at a cost.You need to make something to barter for things you can’t make, a general rule of supply and demand.

The last two things are some things that people who are searching, or in a career that they are missing. I’ll explain passion and finding it in a different post, but for now I used passion is having strong emotional feeling about it, that you want to talk about it and share about it. You can be happy about something, but to have also passion, would mean that you want to share it, and basically do more about it. Take for example, a passion for cooking, could mean sharing recipes or developing recipes, while being happy cooking would mean enjoying doing it.

What got me the most of the wise man quote was the fact that the career has to have some type of fulfillment. Through my course of living, I haven’t heard an adult said that to me (that also could mean that I haven’t met a wise man). Fulfillment or a sense of sanctification is hard to come by, because a person has to determine what’s that particular point. Its like defining a limit, but we are told that there is no limit to our potential. I can’t help to think that a lot of us interpreted wrong, wanting more because we can go further, and not wanting to be satisfied. That’s one aspect of an lazy employee, to only produce only whats needed and not to do more than necessary. We waste time and effort if we spent time worrying or over preparing for something. Over abundance or over production is a waste.

Satisfaction in life is hard to define because the potential that there is to life is great. A CEO could be working at the top and live life not satisfied and unhappy. A Casanova could date many people, and because his or her satisfactions can’t find that significant other or happiness. This unhappiness that you may have it because your not satisfied in life. It may be because your level of satisfaction is way to high or you don’t know what it is there to satisfy you. It’s like eating at a buffet. You eat to get full and you hunger is sated but then you see that one dessert. Your too full, but because you can’t eat a single bite you are sad, and at the same time, you eat that, your body could be hurting or you had a chance to satisfy your self earlier and not later.

In any case, satisfaction can be difficult to determine what it is and when it is met unless we explore it. Meaning that we should try everything, but in small amounts, early, to see what we like. That way we can concentrate on it and be happy later on.

Do you know what satisfies you in life? If you don’t, what are you trying to do about it?

Post Script: In it’s on ironic sense of things, I feel this topic of satisfaction/fulfillment hasn’t be wrenched out more. I’ll write more at a later time.

Lingering Thoughts

“You can’t build a reputation on what you’re going to do.”

– Confucius

This past couple weeks something was in the back of mind: Do I progress forward in my career or level up in my education. I do have my master degree (apparently a thing now a days) but there are job opportunities that would require a Phd. At the same time there are other job opportunities that value career experience.

When we first get out of high school, we could either further our education, get a job, or do nothing (absolutely nothing, no progress). We been taught that a degree is important because it leads you to more money, but for those who don’t know how to play the career game (which I’ll explain in another post) you might be losing entry level positions to those who have more experience than you. It’s frustrating! That’s why some may go for their master degree or even their doctorate. There is a flip side to that, and that is the fact that some positions require a level of degree to even apply. Experience and education is intertwine with each other that creates such a difficult for most millennial to get a working career going.

Even those who have settled in the career may consider advancing it, but that still proves to be difficult to progress. We have to stick it out and be patient for that higher position (which is hard for most millennial, me included), but adding education to work life, social life doesn’t jive. Some degree programs also interfere with the work life that makes it even harder to even attend. So there lies my dilemma, do I stop working just to pursue my higher degree or do I I continue my career field.

After talking to my friend about my dilemma, I came to the conclusion that education allows the door to opportunities to be open, but experience solidifies obtaining those opportunities. Additionally, my friend mentioned that at some point in progression of life, education and experience ends up not mattering at all. He posed me this question: A person with a bachelor’s degree, a person with 5 years of work experience, and a person with 2 years of experience & an associate degree who was recommended by an awesome boss; among the choices who would you choose if they all posses the same skill knowledge?

In all honesty, I would pick the recommended person, just because if the boss is awesome then it means that the person that they picked is equally awesome to work with. I’ll explain fitment in another post, but I am curious, which one would you choose? A person with experience, or with education, or nice fit in your job site regardless of experience or education?

1.01^356

“Don’t be pushed around by the fears in your mind. Be led by the dreams in your heart.”

― Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart

I was scrolling somewhere on the internet when I came across this 1.01^356 with the caption “the most motivated thing”. To be honest, I didn’t get at first because it’s numbers that represented some type of data for me. I mean 1.01^356, if calculated out is 34.55. But looking at the numbers closely, there is more significance. 356 represented the days in a year, while 1.01 might be harder to understand but converting it to a percentage, it becomes more understandable as 101%. Thus if we interpret doing the same thing in a day, meaning no improvement or diminishing of self, then we are doing 100%. Statistically speaking, if we improve ourself by 1% each day, by compound interest, we have the potential to improve our self by 34.55%.

To understanding it a bit better, if we start at $1000, and we wanted to save 1% each day. The first day would be $10. The next day, you add another 1%, which makes it $10.10. The 10 cent difference seems small at first, but to think, you added $1020.10 to your savings. In 10 days, you have added 104.62 to your bank account.

Applying it to yourself, studying 1% a day, exercise 1% each day, improving yourself a day becomes much more manageable. Say for example, climbing a mountain seems daunting because the sheer enormity of it, but those who venture into mountain Everest doesn’t do that in one day. (Unless they cheat and take a helicopter ride to the top). It goes to the old adage “Rome wasn’t built in a day”.

This in itself does become seem a little difficult because perception of the world ask us to be the top of the game now. Meaning the world doesn’t want you to have patience for you to achieve greatness. To “cheat” this ideology is to quickly rise the top, quit the work and find something easier. Which sounds like what I am doing, but not in its entirety. I honestly believe there is nothing to avoid the work but as a lazy employee, I tend to find ways to make it easier. That’s when working effective, efficient, and well lazy makes the difficult work not that hard.

With that being said, that work is needed, and sometimes it might take long, but there is time for it. Just need to change the perception that the world needs you to rush. The world actually, has it time and place for you to go along your pace. “You can’t produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant.” – Warren Buffett.

How are you moving forward? What’s taking you there?

“Your not dead yet” : Knowing Failure

“There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.” – Paulo Coelho

I was so distraught when I found that I have a D in chemistry in my first year of college. Additionally I wasn’t really doing so great in my other science classes. Before this, I was heavily in science since elementary. Chemistry in high school, I believe I average a B (I have to check back on that). What also really got me to that state is the fact that I needed to retake this class to get into a program but also the fact I told myself I was destined to become a Pediatrician. I was dead set and determine ever since middle school (more on that in a different post).

Grades — Chem 162 Grade D. Took it again and got a C+. Took Chem 273 and got a D. I could’ve quit there, but I determine there was a lot of things happen and one is that I didn’t work hard enough.

I came to a realization during this time of my life was that I didn’t learn something back in high school and I had to take a quick crash course in college: Learning how to study. This what I was missing back in high school because most things came easy for me, so I hardly failed (there was this one time in high school Human Physiology and Antonym that the teacher failed the whole class but I believe it was some teaching tactic). But the more important thing that came from this realization is knowing failure and knowing what to do with it.

Some people, experience failure more often than other people. I know someone who is scared to do anything because of the fear of failure. But experiencing failure quiet frequently doesn’t equitation knowing failure. It’s like saying that since you breathe a lot, you should know the intricacies of how oxygen travels into the alveoli of the lungs and through what mechanism does CO2 is excreted out. (Kinda shows my medical background) Anyways, experience it frequently does not mean you know it.

Knowing failure means knowing the options of failure, and how to correct/overcome them. It sounds like a pessimistic way of thinking and can viewed as a negative but it’s more so problem solving. I often told my friends when they are deciding what to do, the worst thing that could happen is that they could die. In the game of chess, you would often think what’s your opponent best move, and how to either prevent it from happening or work around it.

The thing is about chess is that everything known (except the other person’s choice, so that isn’t much a read), but take for example a card game like Texas Hold Up (The interesting thing about this post is that I am currently writing this while in Vegas). Everything can be calculated out but it isn’t certain what the outcome will be, that’s where we know what is failure meaning. we know what where we going to failure. If we are able to correct the failures or avoid them, prior to them happening. That’s the ultimate reward of knowing failure is increasing the chances of winning.

What is your life’s failures? Is it possibly your most valuable learning experience? Did you find a better place?

So you know your failures, what’s next? The thing two things is finding our passion and exploring our strengths.