Bjorno.licio.us

Get the full 50 tips here from the Business 2.0 Magazine article: “How to Succeed in 2007. I have only read through haf but here are 3 excerpts I found really useful.

I remember when I was a 15-year-old asking Vanessa Redgrave or James Baldwin for an interview, and the fact that they took the time to respond meant an enormous amount to me. It inspired me. So it’s extremely important to respond to people, and to give them encouragement if you’re a leader. And if you’re actually turning people down, if you must say no, whether it’s for a job or a promotion or an idea they’re proposing to you, take the time to do it yourself. — Richard Branson, Virgin Group

Stage a Great Second Act

For me, the past 20 years have been practice for tomorrow. Someone who’s successful in any area has figured out at least two things: how to get the most out of themselves, and that attention to detail matters. Having a career that lasted that long in my sport explains the sort of personality that you have to have. You have to treat it as a marathon. You have to treat it as building blocks… You have to understand who you are and figure out a way to communicate it. It might be in a different industry, but it’s about what pumps the blood through your veins, what makes you excited, what pushes your buttons. And then discovering the best way to communicate that, no matter how big or small; it’s what you stand for, what you believe in, and what reflects who you are.

– Andre Agassi

Obsess About Solutions, Not Problems

There’s a lot to the credo that success breeds success. It puts you on a high that makes more success like a magnet. I’m a positive thinker who does frequent reality checks. Negatives turn into positives, problems can be solved, things can turn around. The image of success is important, but even more important is the ability to focus on solutions instead of on problems. That way, you’ll never be thinking like a loser, and you probably won’t look like one either.– Donald Trump

Thats how I feel now, after a 10KM jog in the park and after having lived my past 2 months with a heavy heart and a weary mind. I have finally graduated from college, but the last lap of this journey ain’t pretty and would hardly be worth a mention should anyone ever write a biography of me. Lets just say that my honors thesis was a horrible manifestation of my procrastinating ways that gnawed away at my soul for the past year I tried writing it. There I said it. I am not cut out to be an academic. No Dr. Bjorn Lee, ever.

With the conclusion of 20 years of education, I am ready to begin my next phase of life. And gawd, ain’t it difficult! I consider the past 5 years of my life to be an accelerated learning curve that followed a concave, rather than a convex, path. The earlier half was spent in military service and bumming around in college freshman year, lost mostly in mind-numbing military regimentation routines and drunk partying plus mindless mugging. But I learnt alot about my own character and leadership through that regimental life, and how to manage difficult people especially. I considered my freshmen year a gap year as I took a break to experience real social life again so maybe not much learning was done.  In my second year in college, I decided to take the entrepreneur path since I thought that was cool as I get to be my own boss for at least once in my life. I enjoyed getting my ego smashed and think i had a thicker skin to show for it.

Then the second half of that 5 years started. The learning did not taper with a decresing rate of increase as most learning curves would. IT accelerated. I left the comforts of my little dot of a country, SIngapore to the vast lands and competitive environment of America. Looking back, I might have though being young granted me a licence to be foolish. GOod choice, I still believe that now and am glad I realized that. I won’t go into details of my life there but I think Silicon Valley really opened up the world to me. There were just so many opportunities and exciting career paths that I think I had the slightest inkling of what it means when they said you are a mosquito in a nudist colony. I think choice is great, before I left for Silicon Valley, I thought a great job would be an investment banker cos i can make big bucks, but not so much anymore cos money ain’t everything and there’s much more to life besides banking,

But too much choice can also spell trouble. You begin to question yourself if you are making the right decision and that “What if?” will always plague me from then. Am I making the right choice? For those who learn economics, what is the opportunity cost of my current decision, should I change? ANd I think I was afflicted with that, what Bush would call “flip-flopping”. I also think my lack of focus is a symptom of my attention-deficiency. I didn’t really know what I want, which is good cos I am young. But I am not that young, which brings me back to the topic i started here — the lightness of being, because my lack of focus in a sea of bewildering choices contributed to a confused sense of self-identity and became a huge chip on my mind ever since I returned to Singapore earlier this year.

Running helps me think because I think my mind gets clearer once the heart starts flowing through the whole body instead of being bunched up in my empty head as I try to think. I don’t think I have the answer yet but I have been speaking to many people these past few months and these conversations help me internalize  these people’s  advice. I have been warned not to act smart, to learn to suck unpleasantries up/ be more disciplined and focused, listen to my heart and not just the brain, and also one takeaway which is that good things never come easily. You gotta fight for something otherwise it ain’t worth it.

A bunch of mambo jumbo today in this blog post. I am not too sure it will make much sense to you guys but I do believe writing helps to develop more structure to my thoughts, never mind if I am not finding the right answer. So do bear with me as I untie this knot in my life. I hope you have no knots in your life, if you do, please share how you untied them with me and I would be most grateful.

After the campaign plug for Missouri politician Claire McCaskill, Michael J Fox came in for some scepticism and insenstive comments from a right wing radio host Rush Limbaugh who casted doubt on Fox and suggested the latter was “faking it” and “overacting” for the cameras and that Fox purposely did not take his medication to exaggerate the symptoms.

Rush Limbaugh: “In this commercial, he is exaggerating the effects of the disease. He is moving all around and shaking, and it’s purely an act.

It goes to show how little Limbaugh and probably a majority of the public, like myself, knows about the disease. All the more I think what Fox is doing is great.

More on the Limbaugh rant here, but watch Michael J Fox’s interview on CBS below. I suggest not to just watch his motions but listen to his message.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8lsjfjgAA8]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9WB_PXjTBo]

Parkinson’s Disease is a truly terrible affliction. I grew up with Michael J Fox’s character Marty McFly in the Back to the Future trilogy and maybe a couple of Spin City episodes.. This is not how he should live the next half of his life…

May the voters of America make some smarter decisions and kick the buffoons out of office. If there’s one thing that’s done right in Singapore, its our policy to allow stem cell research to be conducted here, enriching the lives of potentially millions of lives in the future. Yes, the policymakers might not have done it for purely altruistic measures, but the researchers are doing great work and thats what’s important. Lets support the scientists.

Related article here from Vin’s blog.

In my post yesterday with the “cheerleader” analogy of Friendster, I hit jackpot with my traffic after uploading the link on Digg. Looks like there’s still mojo in the Friendster brand for enough people to check in on its downfall.

I am No.4 (currently) under Fastest Growing WP blogs for the very first time and my post also appears in the “Top Posts” section next to Scobleizer’s “I hate Linkedin” rant.

But surprise, surprise, surprise, though the Digg effect was totally cool but not wholly unexpected, what I did not expect to see was a huge spike in referrals from the Stumbleupon service too.

It looks like StumbleUpon is fast catching up with Digg in terms of appeal to web publishers. If comScore ratings from June (best I could find in a quick check off Google) are accurate, StumbleUpon’s 1.37M toolbar users, as of today, are equally as voracious in terms of page views as Digg’s.

” I rose halfway, leaned to the right, and cupped the object. I might as well have plucked volcanic lava from a crater. I could feel the flesh of my palm liquefying. Pain bolted up my arm like an electric current. In one fluid motion, I raised my right arm and started to throw the mass over the side of the vehicle, a short backhand toss. Then everything went dark.”

Words from a brave man who threw out a live grenade from an army truck in time to save his and many other lives in that Humvee. And he’s not even a soldier, but a Time magazine reporter.

His reward? A metallic right arm.

There’s been so many superhero films over the past 5 years. Besides the inane James Bond and Batman, we had the comic Superheroes of Spiderman, X-Men, Superman jostling for the cultural tag of modern day heroism.

But we forget some of the other heroes — real ordinary people like you and me in flesh and blood. And when we do extraordinary things, we suffer.. physically and mentally. Take this Times reporter for instance, he was merely there to do a job, interview some folks and get the hell out of danger’s abode in Iraq. He was unlucky, just once… Faced with a wholly alien concept of seeing a live grenade waiting to explode right before his eyes, and being the only one to detect mortal danger unravelling, he did the only rational and instinctive thing he could…

“Mostly, however, I was angry at myself for getting in the wrong Humvee, releasing the grenade too slowly, even grabbing it in the first place. Nothing would have happened if I hadn’t picked it up. Why had I been acting like a cowboy? Why hadn’t I just left the damn thing alone?”

Is he a hero?

Hollywood heroism concepts have evolved in recent years, to peel back the commercial sugar-coating and reality-distorting package of alpha-male icons who have boundless courage and abilities, kick ass, gets the babes and emerge totally unscathed, even from “nuclear armageddon” (did we really believe that?). From the cliched “with great power comes great responsibility” bullcrap of Spiderman to the Superman who turns green literally when faced with kryptonite, we now see more of the reluctance, the uncertainty, the moral dilemmas, the raw agony and personal sacrifices instead of a “feel-good” facade painted by shallow movie producers. The grim drawback of heroic deeds are truly stomach-churning stuff and faced by somewhat ordinary people who find themselves in extraordinary circumstances. Their claim to heroism: Doing “the right thing”, at perhaps an inopportune time.

When I was young, I always pondered how tangible is heroism outside of that silly silver screen. But really, it is a highly ubiquitous concept we just fail to appreciate in our daily lives. Because true heroism is neither heart-thumping, nor attention-seeking. There is no media machine to hype it up as well. But it resides in every corner of society, people toiling away and doing the right things based on their sensible and rational thinking. And like the flickering light of a candle flame in the wind, heroic deeds only show up in the light of day during the darkest hours of our times. Like the ex-Marine who leapt into the furnace of the 911 rescue efforts:

““Someone needed help. It didn’t matter who,” he said. “I didn’t even have a plan. But I have all this training as a Marine, and all I could think was, ‘My city is in need.”‘

I’m not a hero. I’m far from a hero. Those men who ran up in there are the heroes, whether it be law enforcement guys, fire department guys or even volunteers and coworkers. Those are the heroes.”
Sergeant Jason Thomas
US Marine who helped find a pair of police officers buried in the rubble at the World Trade Center on 9-11.

The name of the Time magazine reporter? Michael Weisskopf. But it could easily be you.

.

.

Post-blogging:
Do read the full Time article on this. Its very powerful. It made me wonder why we have to wait for personal tragedies or extremes in life to treasure it. It’s my mom’s 49th birthday today and I am in school blogging and writing my thesis instead of spending time with her. I sure ain’t gonna wait to lose before realizing what I had owned. I do hope you don’t too. =)

I was kinda lambasted by my indian and chinese friends for not really having any meat in my last post. =) Thats cool, do keep the comments coming so I know what you want to read about.

I will highlight several conversations with local Indians here:

With Avnish Bajaj, Chairman Ebay India

He defines Web 2.0 as comprising of mainly social networks or other web-based social services where the usage model hinges heavily on users spending a phenomenal amount of time perusing the internet. (think Digg, flickr, blogs…)

Asia has 2 divergent paths for Web 2.0 businesses. They will flourish in countries like Japan and Korea where prevailing user habits has much of the web audiences spending phenomenal amounts of time on their broadband accounts. Web 2.0 will have no traction in India and most other Asian countries lacking firstly, access to basic internet infrastructure and secondly, social factors such as usage of internet in their lives.

But, Avnish also mentioned there exists high potential for non-social web 2.0 models where the usage of the web service does not depend on user labor (ala Facebook, Digg) He believes a purely advertising-based business model will work in India and can see the potential for that.

My thoughts: Avnish’s answer gave me deja vu. It reminded me of a similar presentation by the VP Marketing of Yahoo! at the Berkeley Play! conference last year. There is a huge disparity of usage patterns between dialup and broadband users many in the Web 2.0 sector in Asia has failed to grasp fully. While Youtube and blog-reading is highly popular in Singapore, it doesn’t necessarily translate to a broad increase in propensity of all web users to peruse other productivity services such as online calendars, event-search engines or travel-based products, even if these might increase daily routine activity efficiency. The broadband penetration in Singapore and much across Southeast Asia is still a niche segment.

With a 14-year old boy outside JW Marriott in Juhu Beach:

it was a useless conversation but the boy’s resourcefulness in tapping upon his unfair advantage of being able to speak hindi, gujarati, punjabi in addition to a smattering of english, was another reminder how cloistered youths in Singapore are. We have a lot to learn from the less privileged peoples of developing nations who simply have more hunger and drive to not succeed, but simply survive in the world. When you have nothing to lose, you have everything to gain.

Same goes with this other 12-year old kid in Goa running his own store selling cotton shirts and carpets. I had walked down the street going past multiple stores without buying anything and hHe was trying desperately to get me to buy stuff. While older savvier shopkeepers will play a protracted bargaining game with you while whittling down their margins, this kid had a refreshing approach in offering his lowest first to bait me, the jaded tourist-shopper, into looking at his goods, and i rewarded his observational skills by coughing out some rupees.

A fisherman on Calangute Beach, Goa:

42 years old single male who detested a hectic life in the cities. No ambition, no plan in life.

His daily routine comprised mainly of fishing at 5am, selling prawns at 6 rupees each to wholesalers, walking along th beach and settling down at dusk to smoke a joint and enjoy the sounds of the waves till 9pm when he will head back home, watch tv and sleep.

A manager at the beachfront bar on Calangute Beach,

Hailed from Uttar Pradesh, in search of riches in Mumbai but got sick of the 24/7 boring routine of serving food at 5-star hotels.

Decided to head to the beach where money was lesser but life less stressful.

Sleeps at the bar even off work and off-season, almost given up hope on starting a family.

Ticket Inspector at Bandra train station:

Highly articulate, speaks very good english and able to debate coherently about the nuances of indian laws on railway fares

Takes bribes from errant passengers after a long conversation on the rule of law in india and his morals.

Yep, thats me. On an early Friday morning wondering what the hell went wrong for me and my new buddies to be staying in a crappy “3-star” hotel according to that travel agent we met at the airport. We arrived late with no hotel booking as we decided to take the “Au Naturel + Raw!” approach to our stay in India. Truly, we had our first encounter with a full-grown bull roaming outside the main entrance of our hotel 30 mins after we touched down.

And this is my morning view of the Mumbai cityscape in Andheri East, raw feed to you from my 3-star hotel room.

I have so much experiences, (many wonderful of course) that I will split up my encounters in India in several bite-sized posts. This is what I felt on the first day of my “Au Naturel & Raw” tour of India. Its an amazingly poor city if you look at it superficially by observing street activity, the Indians have no qualms living in squalor with piles of rubbish everywhere, downright dilapidated dwellings, poor road signs, pedestrians sharing the roads alongside cars, incessant horning of impatient drivers with no respect for traffic rules. Yea, if I stayed there for an hour, this is what I would think is all of Mumbai & India since Mumbai was supposed to be the most developed and cosmopolitan city. In a few days time, I would understand more about this rising nation of 1 billion.

All photos of my trip will be uploaded on Facebook, just search “Bjorn Lee” if you do not have an account yet.

You know that feeling. It feels like a Monday but isn’t. You feel lazy but its not even Friday. Your body is 2 seconds slower than your brain and coffee gets spilled, your mind wanders and you miss something important your boss said 2 seconds ago. You think every meeting with >5 pple is a waste of time.

Well, at least thats how I feel on a working Thursday, sometimes. Some of you lot reading this might disagree, good for ya, hope you ain’t reading this in the office then. =)

But I found some good reads today and thought I might as well share it.

1. DO YOU KNOW what are the Top-$ careers outside of finance, law and medicine?

Restaurant managers, truck drivers, coaches, tech writers, truck drivers.. All these jobs can make you > US$100,000 a year, more details here. Yes, and I like to highlight COACHES, cos these ain’t the sports coaches most are familiar with, but the business and life coaches that act as “cheerleaders” of sorts that provide confidence lifts to struggling entrepreneurs, aspiring novelists or even confused corporate executives.

Think for 5 seconds how many times you went out with friends and they complain about work over beer? So here’s an evil thought, why can’t we swap those “late-night beer outings-cum-life-ranting” sessions for a real job and provide it as a professional service to your friends and more at decent rates? That could be a win-win formula to making those beer sessions happier occasions for yourself and your “friend-client”. For proof, see below.

“Coaching is exploding,” says Dan Janel, president of Great Teleseminar, a business that caters to tech-savvy coaches by handling the production work needed to perform remote seminars via the TV screen. Janel said his business was earning six figures itself within 13 months, thanks to the plethora of coaches popping up.

Another business spawned by coaching, naturally, is coaching the coaches. Christian Mickelson, who started as a small business coach in San Diego seven years ago, now helps wannabe coaches get their businesses started through his Web site, CoachingBusinessRocketLauncher. He says the key to six-figure success in coaching is finding a specialty and sticking with it.

2. Question: Why Corporations should Embrace Oddballs and beware of Kingdom-builders

look for the occasional rebellious person who argues or is not afraid of the boss. It’s important to have a few around, although those are the ones who are usually sacked. Look for the oddball person with a different point of view.

The second thing that I recommend is to be aware of kingdom-builders. They start out helping the organization to function, but in the end, they end up hurting it by creating too many rules and regulations.

Answer: Keep the entrepreneurial spirit (of innovation and risk-taking) alive in a huge corporation

If this article inspired you to be a professional coach or an oddball in your company, drop me a line. If you are a kingdom-builder and hate me for what i wrote, go take a holiday and just chill.

South Park - inspired pics from JoshuaInk. Thanks!

Motivation for me to play more sports for the rest of my life will come from here:

Did you know that former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was a member of the Wellesley College swimming and diving team? Or that Vera Wang, CEO of the fashion design company that bears her name, was an Olympic-caliber figure skater? Were you aware that Jan Leschley, former CEO of pharmaceutical giant Smithkline Beecham, was once the 10th-ranked men’s tennis player in the world? How about the fact that eBay’s chief exec, Meg Whitman, played collegiate lacrosse and squash at Princeton? Or that U.N. Secretary General Kofi-Annan ran track and played soccer at Macalester College?

I have a strong belief that the skills and qualities people learn from playing sports are many of the same that develop leaders capable of achieving greatness in professional life: Dedication and hard work, resilience in the face of adversity, decision-making under pressure, confidence, optimism, balancing stress and recovery, honest and direct communication, establishing a clear vision and setting goals, commitment to excellence, a focus on team success, and leadership that inspires others.

From Yahoo Finance.