The arrogance of youth

I found this written on April 5th 2008 while rearranging my computer files. An entry written back before I went up against the world of business. There were still some youth in me as is evident from the arrogance in my beliefs. It was such an awkward time. Full of optimism without any doubts about the outcome of the success. I decided not to scrap it nor edit the text, as a reminder of the contrast in mindset.

The best thing that happened to phil is getting fired from Matrox

Streamlined driving

Specialty: Body reading

Ever since I remember using this skill, there’d always been doubt associated with it. The doubt comes as a result of the fact that this ability is completely illogical and at the same time hard to verify. It’s not like I can walk up to strangers on the street, tell them what I observed about their body and expect an honest answer on whether or not I am correct. Besides, not anyone know themselves as well as they should.

There is really no logic to this skill and that bothers me. I feel like a snob, overly judgmental when I believe I can understand a person just by looking at them. But as I gain more confidence in myself and actually test the results of my observations, I realized that I am often right.

Take this picture of the Montreal Canadian Chinese Cultural Association for example. Can you tell who is the best dancer in it? I can from just one look. I was even more amazed after I confirmed with my friend who’s part of the troupe. The person I suspected turned out to be the teacher of the group.

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She’s the girl in the middle. No analysis, no staring at the picture. One look, one second.

Specialty: Fast learning

In our minds, a superpower is no longer considered superpower when everyone has it, yet in the physical reality we live it. The fact still remains that we have this superpower. Everyone is born with a brain and a body, but none of us has exactly the same gifts. We call it by several names. Personality, skills, intelligence genetics and so on…

Like a character in smart Japanese Manga (Jojo’s Bizarre adventure, Naruto, Hunter X Hunter), I’ve started to explore and cultivate these powers. To figure out different ways to use it to my advantage in life and a best course of action to improve it. So far, I’ve identified one that people around me unanimously agree on: Fast learning.

Physical Learning

Its properties can be best explained by one of my dance teacher’s remarks: “He’s like a sponge, it doesn’t matter that he can’t reproduce or understand anything today. Show him as many moves as you can, make him do them all once and he will have them in his movements the next time you see him.”

My learning works in terms of time lapsed and not in the intensity at which I train. Which means that I usually don’t “get” something right away, but will get it eventually as time goes on. This disadvantage gets balanced out by the fact that I can learn as many thing as I desire without having any ill effect to other skills I am learning. The only requirement is that I practice the skills regularly to test out the improvements done overtime and reinforce the internal models that evolved.

Because of this property, I have adapted a practice schedule where I don’t focus on any one particular skill or movement, preferring to go through the motion of them all at least once.

Mental learning

Mental learning is different. Even though I learn just as fast, there are slight differences in its composition. After analyzing it completely, I’ve come to the conclusion that there are two major factors that goes into creating this skill. First is a lack of fear for the unknown (This is something that I overcame) and second is probably a lack of prejudice.

The fact that I don’t have to deal with fear or doubt whether or not I can do anything means that I save about a week of time paralyzed before a decision. If something new comes to mind, I will opt to practice it at least once before deciding to reject it. As a result, I’ve developed a pretty systematic way of exploring unknowns when I was in university (Deciding to do all the assignments by myself finally paid off).

The second one is still pretty murky since I probably come off as the most prejudice and stereotypical person. It’s more like a prediction algorithm that act as a bunch of if… else if statements in computer. A “Prime computation” like method you see in a mental from the Dune series. For each action something does, I develop at least three reason that’ll cause it to branch and then test the current reality against it to see which path it took. Then I take the next reaction and test it against it. This means that I often have to test the opposite of the most likely outcome against something before I am sure which path it reacted to. I am completely open to any outcome it might take, but to judge which outcomes an event might have, I have to be completely prejudicial and stereotypical. A double edged sword.

Cream of the crop

The fallacy of confidence has always resulted in the manifestation of a self-deceptive practice in which one gets more and more frustrated at the incompetence of those around them. In my case, it manifested itself in the way I look down upon the US population.

The crimes, the aggressive war oriented foreign policy, a general lack of the hunger to succeed and the fact that China has more honor students than US has population, they all served to make me re-evaluate its position on the pedestal. (Being born in Asia, I am culturally brain washed into believing the white supremacy). I have often wondered, how the US can be the super power that it is today if The people living in it are like this. How did their economy thrive?

Little did I know that the benchmark that I used to compare are but a facade. The real cream of the crops are usually hurdled together into the company that I get to deal with today. I am used to people in my team not pulling their weight in a project. Used to dealing with lazy people, dumb people, slow people, difficult people, emotionally unstable people, you name it (I might even be one myself). But dealing with them, I feel like. Wow, they are smart, forward looking and very capable. This on each and everyone of them. So this is where they are and this is what being surrounded by elites feels like. Do they have flaws?

On workaholics

I admit that I used to be a workaholic. Now, I am seen as the most self centered and self important worker by some who are around me. Some would call me slacker almost. It’s only reasonable. In their eyes, I am someone who’d never skip breakfast or lunch in order to rush a job out. I work 8 hours a day and never putting in that extra minute to finish off something. My emails are short and lack all the pleasant wrappings of an excellent writer, I spend time reading articles online and my desk is a perpetual mass of morphing computer parts.

I am fine with being accused of laziness by those who measure productivity with the obvious signs, I only wish that they can see it like I do. That measurement of productivity is more complicated. In any case, being fired or laid off by bosses that look only for the outward appearance doesn’t concern me a bit. My most major concern is still personal growth, whether it is related to the job or not. A new research says that happier employees are more productive, but rather that happier people achieves more success.

The philosophy can be summed up by a quote from a previous manager: “We don’t want to pay for your overtime.” There’s layers of meaning in that and layers of wisdom I’ve come to realize and still discovering. I only wished that he is still my manager.

On Memory

So Sherlock Holmes was right, or rather, the author of Sherlock Holmes was right. That our mental facilities are a limited resource. It’s time to stop letting our mind govern itself and believe that its resources are unlimited. The myth about human using only 10% of their brain is NOT true. We might use at most 10% at any given time because we throttle down the rest that aren’t being used to save on energy consumption. Just like a CPU. Or rather, our CPU designs are getting closer and closer to an actual brain.

I used to envy those people who can remember all these details. People who seem to have their memories all under control to a point that I started doubting the validity of something I remembered. Slowly, I started noticing the flaw in that type of system. Usually, dependent on the extremity of details that these type of people remembers, they are more or less confident with their memory. Some extreme cases showed that some refuses to believe the other reality even when evidence shows that the opposite is true. Once I confirmed this theory with tests done on people (Sorry if you are unwittingly one of my test subject), I became more optimistic on my own memory capacity because I understood then that one is not superior to another. They are simply masters of different styles.

I’ve long puzzled over the way my memory works. Sometimes I remember events in details, sometimes I don’t. It is independent to most events, but variable to one significant rule. I seem to remember more, when the result of certain action leads to a conclusion to start an improvement. It explains why I don’t remember the details of all inspirational books I read, or why I noticed the shining shoes of an actor on screen instead of the dialog.

This memory, although lacking in detail, is focused on the future and is less likely to repeat itself over and over in minute details. For the details, it usually use deduction to logically form the rest if the need arises. I can deduct, for instance, what the reply from the person should be based on the memories of my relationship with that person before and after. I cannot deduct however, on what type of clothing or color the person was wearing.

I should work with it instead of focusing on molding it to the general public perception of memory. The first step, lies in a logging system that decides which is important.

How to learn from a teacher

Karl mentioned at the end of our lessons that I’ve learned to snowboard faster than anyone he’s ever encountered. Normally I shrug these remarks off as simple encouragements from teachers but coming from a buddy who has no financial ties with me nor any fear of me surpassing him , I will have to consider that sincerely.

It brought up a wave of similar compliments from my dance teachers. Long forgotten because I’ve ceased to believe them. Now that I have the 3^rd confirmation by an independent party who doesn’t know about the other two I can finally conclude one fact about myself. It seems that one​​​​​ of my natural abilities is learning motions.

Note to self: Ability to learn does not equal to success. Success is achieved by the day to day grind. Any success achieved by prodigies at copying former patterns gets overshadowed by a normal person who grinded daily and contributed to the revolution of the field. True success is achieved by having a network of the in crowd in order to push your revolutionary ways through.

The question then remains. What is the system I use for learning which allows me to learn so fast. What are the factors that makes up a fast learner?

The first and foremost quality that comes to my mind is the two different type of learning. You can either have guided learning or explore a subject yourself. The fastest way to learn under a guide is through total submission while exploring a subject yourself requires the confidence of a dominant personalty.

The dominant trait has to be stronger than the submissive trait because even though you submit to the teacher’s teachings through the period of your instruction, you still need the dominant quality which desires to achieve more. A total submissive, will learn at the teacher’s pace. A subtle dominant wills the teacher to give up all they know.

Learning by yourself and learning from someone else are completely different matters.

Funny business

There’s a big difference of opinion on how to go about contacting people. Some people opted for pure email, some swears by telephone. I still retained the simple 1-2-3 approached from my time at Glaxo Smith Kline. Email first, then phone call till eventually showing up in front of the person.

The approach is quite effective at getting a response. However, it might not be the best for the company. As with any approach that combines benefits of different methods, this one also combined their inconveniences.

The argument against phone and in person communications is that it doesn’t leave a paper trail so that your boss doesn’t know you are working. At the same time it interrupts the person, forcing them to divert their attention to you.

The argument against using email is the fact that it is too easy to ignore and can be ineffective when

Funny business

I once asked the boss at the startup I used to work with this question: “Why don’t you just fire that person if he’s not pulling his share of the load?” I was furious, having just interacted with the employee in question and realizing that the worker in question is all bullshit and no skill. My boss at that time gave me a simple yet important fact about business: “Troupe morale.”

According to big boss, he only did this twice in his 20 years of career. He didn’t even have to do it throughout the hi-tech collapse.

Low troupe morale didn’t show up as pessimistic talks or company bashing as I thought. It seems that the subject has become taboo. It represented itself more in terms of people calling in sick, increased effort from those who feel the next axe and the lack of laughter in every corner.

Initially, there was some fear in me, but confidence in my own ability has given me the stability I needed. What’s left to do is to take note of how the big players executed their play and why the axe fell on those selected.

Financial goals for 2008

This year, I intend to increase my income by at least 50% by jumping ship. I’ve done my time and have been in the industry long enough that I should be paid more. At least adjusted to the average pay of an engineer with 3 years of experiences. Being in Montreal might have something to do with the lower wage. So the jump will most likely be accompanied by moving and I am ready to do the necessary change for it. No, I am not drifting. This time, I have a goal.

I also realized that I need to establish a goal for my investment portfolio. Such as establishing the amount of growth I want per year. That is roughly estimated to be a 20% increase. This will lead to more profit taking of smaller amount instead of waiting for one large lump sum.

Let’s face it Warren Buffet style investing is not for small timers. Even Warren Buffet had his starting days in hedge fund before he transformed. So I will stick with losing money through commissions so I can have more chance of a positive gain.