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October 25 UnattainableUnattainable
The shape of the flowing water in the spring The shadow of the flaming sun in the summer The sound of the flavored grapes in the fall The smell of the falling snow in the winter
The figures of your glance pick the grapes The arms of your breath mix them with water The shoulders of your song shelter them from the sun The body of your temperature blocks them from the snow In an imaginary oak barrel
As the texture of rainbow As the color of dew And as hopeful conciousness v.s. unconciousnessThere is a rare disease, of which the patient would look at his mother and say “this woman looks exactly like my mother, but I am sure she’s NOT.” Freud’s believers concluded that this was a denial of a man’s sexual desire of his mother: because he couldn’t admit that he was sexually attracted to his mother, he denied the fact that this woman was actually his mother. However, you can imagine how weird it was when a patient claimed that his pet dog PiPi was not actually his PiPi but some other dog looked exactly like PiPi. With better technology and improved brain science, doctors now understand that this disease is caused by the damage of the link between the vision section and the emotion section within the brain. The patient sees his mother, and rationally recognizes this woman looks exactly like his mother. However, the patient doesn’t feel the emotional warmth he expects from his mother while looking at this woman due to the disconnection between the two parts of the brain, and thus he draws the conclusion based on his emotional decision – “she is NOT my mother” – even though it is contradictory to his rational recognition – “she looks exactly the same as my mother”. However, during treatment, by recognizing this fact, the patient would start to live a normal life with his mother in some time. He just has to overcome his lack of emotional attachment and acknowledge this woman who looks exactly his mother is actually his mother. This case implies: 1. When not aware, we follow our subconscious and emotional conclusion, even it is opposite to the rational one. 2. When acknowledged, we are able to overcome the subconscious impulse to adjust our behavior and act according to our rational judgment. The war between our conscious mind and subconscious impulse never stops, and the battle field is within our fragile brain. The more we know about it, the less painful we are. To learn more about our mind, please refer to the works of Dr. Vilayan Ramachandran at University of California San Diego. A right-handed who wishes to be left-handedThis is NOT a political statement, nor a confession on personal preference. This is about philosophy. “I shouldn’t have expected this!” “Your expectation is unrealistic / gives me too much pressure.” If you have said/heard the above statement, you probably have thought about the “expectation issues”, and you are with me. As we all know, our left brain controls the right side of our body and our right brain controls the left side. Therefore, if we want to practice any one of our brain more, we should exercise the opposite part of the body. Current brain studies show that the left brain is in charge of remembering our pass and projecting our future, and our right brain is to receive and process the current surrounding. For example, when you are handed a glass of wine, your eyes see the crystal red color and liquid shape, your nose smell the intoxicating sense, and all the signals are sent to your right brain, which collects them and put them together. Then the information is transferred to the left brain, which draws conclusion based on your previous experience – this thing tastes good and makes you happy – and projects what might happen in the future, in other words, generates expectation – I will be happier after drinking this. If your right brain is more active than the left one, you focus on the current surrounding more: you enjoy the moment. If our left brain is more active, you pay more attention to the past and/or the future: you “think” too much. Therefore, if you have “expectation problems”, you want to make your right brain, which looks at the present, more active, and thus should use your left hand more. So, I use mouse and chop-sticks with my left hand now. April 06 in the stream of timeIn the stream of time - a story about others In the stream of time, we found a wish bottle. We opened it, and uncovered a story of others. In the stream of time, two random leaves encountered each other. They talked about the cloud, walked along the moon, and flirted with the stars. All the weather was sunny, even the spring cold shower was warm. The stream of time became smoky. Sparkling lightening bugs were dancing, like the music notes from his guitar. They tangled on the grass, whistled in the ocean, and discovered in the wildland. They were two bees found the stream of honey, too busy to dance the song of joy and forgot to harvest. She drowned in the sea dreamily, while he was wandering around like a confused seahorse. The stream of time surrendered to the chilly long winter. Water froze, fell apart, and broke into thousands of sharp pieces, tore into her face as her tear rolled down. Drinking the wine of her sadness, he suffered. Spring brought lives bac to the stream of time. Her bleeding heart grew into a red corral, colorful, delightful and peaceful. He turned into a clown fish, swam with his kind, but never wanted to leave the beautiful corral. In the stream of time, Are they both strong stones standing still regardless the force of water? Are they a pair of brave fish swimming against the strength of wave? Or, are they just two paper boats, carrying beautiful yet fragile wishes, floating... NightNight, Chilly, tearful, long and tight, Like a heart-broken woman's sigh. Night, As if I want to cry, As if sorrow will never go by, As if life is saying to me "nice try." However, Night, will eventually yield to the morning light, the first beautiful warm sunshine, when the birds are singing with delight, and the butterflies are dancing with smile. (At that moment, will you be by my side?) Written at a sleepless night on the rain forest mountain in Puerto Rico. February 21 Let’s go to Six FlagLet’s go to Six Flag - a poem dedicated to 2008 Valentine's Day another over-application of economic models to lifeI think ultimately, what we are obsessing with and constantly struggling against is not "your" need/interest versus "my" need/interest, but instead my own or your own short term need/interest and long term need/interest. I would like to illustrate this by starting with explaining why the needs of us are essentially not conflicting. One of the basic assumption is people are self-interested, and we all value our happiness over theirs. Prisoners' Dilemma models were decided to find out what is the best strategy in each different setting. In a long term repeating game, the overwhelming winner is "tic for tac", meaning I will repeat whatever strategy you applied in the previous game, and this will eventually leads to all cooperation solutions. One example is the open source software, which actually help the creator nice profits. Another example is improving of management strategies for corporations. So, what's the source of conflicts? Most of the time, it can be traced to the conflicting interest for the same person - desire for different things, or the short term v. long term. I always tell people the opportunity cost for studying is too high b/c I can otherwise be having fun or working to make money. However, the long term paid off of having better education and more skills is plausible. In order to be making more money ten years from now, I choose to sacrifice some joy or potential income today. It does not mean we are making irrational decision by having fun now because there are two critical factors influencing our decision making: marginal rate of substitute and discounting rate for future income/utility. Discounting rate of future utility is obvious, and the marginal utility of substitute is between the joy of say watching a movie now and the feeling of satisfaction from knowing I am working hard for tomorrow's exam and will do good at it and potentially (with a certain range of probability of) getting a better job in the future. Nevertheless, the origins of conflicts are from different marginal rate of substitute and discounting rate for future income/utility varying from person to person. The model is: future income * probability to gain that income * discounting rate = current utility of expectation future utility when: enjoy life now / current utility of expected future utility = marginal rate of substitution, we are in an indecisive mood, otherwise, we will decide to do one or the other. Despite of all these differences, we all hang out with people having similar marginal rate of substitute and discounting rate as we do. Just for different things. We go movie with friends who have higher marginal rate of substitute of movie over other things; we go drinking with people who have as low of discounting rate of not having a headache tomorrow morning as we do. Then, each individual has a very complex set of marginal rate of substitute and discounting rate, which are dynamic, and we don't always make the same decisions. At the end of the day, we are just conflicting with ourselves, internally, indecisively and infinitely. August 30 before a new era - to my best Phoebe"After years of wondering, questioning, seeking and struggling, you finally found the one you were looking for, built the connection between both of you, made a commitment for now and the future, and stepped into a new era. This is not doubt one of the biggest decision in your life, and I believe you made an absolutely right one." - to Phoebe Phoebe was one the 4 princesses in room 414, who was like a real princess the most. She was the cutest, the sweetest, the most caring, the most innocent, and the most parenting one, with the most watchful eyes, the warmest smile, the most affecting laugh, and a lot of cloths, shoes and (male) servants. We had all agreed that she would be the first to step into the holy plaza of marriage (also known as the crypt of love). Room 414 was famous for two things, both of which Phoebe took a lot of credit of - good cook and better gossip. I had been wondering for a long time why she could just put everything casually in the cooker and then made the most delicious chicken soup, which solved all our IT problems, well indirectly. As we all knew, boys in computer science department liked chicken soup. But luckily, most of our visitors were girls, who stopped by to diffuse and collect latest update of everyone in our law school and people in our college. A girl who we didn't even have any class together with could just step in our room casually after lunch on a Wednesday, and started the conversation like this:" I am bored, anything new?" We had a lot of friends, really a lot. The only people hated us, we believed, were the girls who lived downstairs beneath our room. I remember it was the night before final, the four princesses were so stressed out and couldn't study any more, so we decided to have our routine entertainment - a small close door dancing party. We turned off the light and turned out the music. When we were having a little fun, some one knocked at the door. Phoebe opened the door and a girl who looked kind of familiar but we didn't know stood there, and said politely, with very impatient expression on her face:"I am one of the girls living downstairs. For the whole semester, we have been very tolerant to you, but we are having a final tomorrow." After she left, we were amused enough and didn't need to dance anymore. Phoebe was also the our clock alarm for 3 years - the first to wake up in the morning and her action of climbing down from bed, which was on top of the desk and closet, and getting ready to go to class was always so loud that we could never manage to stay asleep. We ignored, we complaint, we yelled, and we even tried to seduce her to get up late by occupying her in our conversation until very late at night. But to the professors' fortune, none of these worked. We were all annoyed every morning, and ended up going to classes on time. However, being the first to get up didn't necessary ensure Phoebe being on time for the class because it could take a lot of time to "get ready", meaning to pack books, comb hair, put on skin care, pick appropriate clothes, find a pair of proper shoes, choose lip stick of fit color, and sometimes to change for another pair of nicer shoes. In order to make sure she would have enough cloths and shoes to choose from, Phoebe liked taking us out for shopping. Once during our sophomore year, the four princesses, under the leadership of Phoebe, went shopping together from noon until all the shops were close. Besides all the shirts, skirts, dresses, and accessories, to make up for the wore up part of her shoes, Phoebe got an new pair. Above all, what made Phoebe so special was that she could be surprisingly lovely annoying. She annoyed me the most always before the "room inspection" when other students come into our room to see whether it was clean and neat. Phoebe was a perfectionist, and I was an opportunist. She wouldn't stop asking me to put my stuff away, so I yelled at her for being demanding to me and then for moving my stuffs, and then felt terribly regretted about yelling at her after 5 minutes. But she would listen to me, always listen to me, wherever she was and whatever she was doing, as soon as she could spear herself, she would come to me, and give me however much support I needed. With a doubt that her nose might be too big, which we finally convinced her was sexy, Phoebe never had a second thought about her profound belief in romance, true love, and soul mate. More importantly, I believe, from the facts above, Phoebe is fully prepared to be a perfect wife, and, potentially, an outstanding mum . August 22 CinderellaDeep inside, as all other girls, I knew I was a princess; but I was not convinced until I met my prince at a dance. It was a contra dancing night. I was having a lot of fun swinging. The music was delightful, my partners were skillful, and my shoes were hurting me, so I got rid of them and danced barefoot. I was dancing with my friend while the prince, whom I happened to partner with for one swing, asked me, with a warm smile, “Do you want dance with me the next song?” He was tall, bony, no glasses, wearing a blue and green shirt and a pair of dark green trousers, had dark brown short hair and large watchful eyes. If I had not been swinging so hard, I would not have delayed 5 seconds to say “sure”. “I would like to dance with you because you are the only one here besides me dancing bear foot here.” And then I noticed he was not wearing any shoes either. “People with shoes wouldn’t know how we feel.” He said to my ear. “Just like a leaf flowing on the water” I was like a flower flowing on a small steam through a hidden forest with birds singing, butterflies surrounding, and frogs jumping; I was like a rainbow hanging on the sunny blue sky with cloud cuddling me, wind playing my hair, and air touching my face; I was like a drop of drew dripped from the tip of a leaf and then dropped into a deep deep pond at the first shine of drawn. So, we danced one song after another. Then came the last song, and I had to leave right away with my friends. He smiled to me, but I had to go. All a sudden, I realized, my prince had nothing that he could use to find me in the crowd, not a crystal shoe, not even my email or my phone number. Then, I grew up. Every ordinary girl is Cinderella, but not all of us have the crystal shoe. Finally, I start to understand those women who spend at least half of their salary on shoes. August 07 Monday evening outdoor movieWent to the Monday evening outdoor movie at the Mall again yesterday. It was very nice, people were laying on the grass or comfortable beach chairs, eating, drinking, chatting, relaxing, and we did a little dancing before the movie started. When I was a kid, there was weekly outdoor movie show on the campus I lived in too. It was very important to me because when I was in elementary school, I couldn't just go out after dinner, I needed a legitimate reason to do so. Watching a movie on the play ground every Saturday evening was a perfect legitimate reason, so I could go playing with my friends in the park or in the street, where my parents usually wouldn't allow me to go to without them in the evening. What's better, I managed to save the money for ticket to buy some candy or ice cream or cookie most of the time. The movie was shown in a basketball playground on a large wall screen. The playground was fenced, so people had to pay to get in to watch the movie. Everyone brought his/her own little plastic chair, which was like the little chair kids in kinder garden sits. Only kids would sit on the ground in front of everyone. Some people, maybe because they were too heavy for those small plastic chairs, would bring wooden chairs that were a little higher, and they would sit at the back. It was funny to see everyone bringing a chair walking in and out the playground. People sat in vaguely straight lines and rows, and if the person in front of you was too high, you might need to find another spot. They charged a entrance fee, maybe 50% off for kids. I don't quite remember how much it cost, but believe it was about the price of an ice cream. They stopped checking ticket 30 minutes after the movie started. My friends and I usually would wander around the playground, tried to sneak in first. We would act separately, ran into the playground when the person at the entrance was talking to somebody else or not looking. If we were caught, we would pretend that we were already in, but just came out for a minute and now wanted to get in again. Unfortunately, we usually didn't have much luck. If one of us sneaked in but the rest couldn't, the isolated one usually would come out and join the group, because it was each other's companionship that mattered. Sometimes, we would sit on the trees or walls around the playground so that we could see the whole screen, but we couldn't really hear the movie this way. Most of the time, we would just go in after 30 minutes and decided we didn't know what the movie was talking about, left and went playing in the street. If we stayed for the movie, it was usually for two reasons. One, our parents were there, we had to do what we claimed we wanted to. Or, the movie was actually amusing. However, if we stayed for the second reason, it was unfortunate for other people. Kids usually were noisy and not good at sitting for a long time. We laughed as loud as we can all the time, and we needed to movie our butt quite frequently. When we were really bored but didn't want to leave the movie, we would go running, jumping, chasing and fighting against each other around the playground, sometime in front of the screen. We got yelled at, and then we sat down for ten minutes, and then we started running around again. Snacking was never the main part of the movie, because we simply couldn't afford much, but we managed to left a mass behind us every time. I was very good this week during the movie, although I felt asleep in the first five minutes of the movie last week. Maybe I can plan on running away next week. July 06 Best thing of lifeThe best thing about life is you never know what is waiting for you next. “My dear crystal ball, can you show me the future?” My lovely skeleton, dressing like a Gypsy, and waving his long and slim figures and murmuring, was looking into the life of a gold-digging woman’s life. “I saw a lot of money and a lot of blood. Our innocent sexy gold-digger has not yet realized what she is digging is not buried treasure but her own tomb. She is so rich now, and also, so dead! HAhahahahaaaaaa~~” The story is about a girl who wants to marry a rich guy and have a luxury life ever after. Let’s call this girl Lucy. Lucy went to see a Gypsy fortune teller who had great reputation and predicted precisely about Lucy’s encounter that day. The Gypsy told Lucy that she would had a lot of money before long, and before that, she would get married with a large guy. Not long after her marriage, her husband would inherit huge fortune from somebody very closed to him and died violently soon after he inherited the money. “In other words, you will be a rich widow.” Soon, Lucy met a fat gross ugly disgusting guy who perused her persistently. She refused him at the beginning, but with the trust to the Gypsy and the hope to inherit his money no long after marriage, she became his wife. Marriage per se was not easy, no mentioned with the person you actually hated as hell. Lucy couldn’t stand it anymore, but the Gypsy encouraged her to hang in there because easy money would come to her soon. All a sudden, Lucy won a lottery of 100 million dollar. “The Gypsy was so stupid and wrong. I became rich, but all by myself, not because of the pig.” She went home to pack her stuff and slapped her husband right away. “You are such a pig! I married you just for the money which you didn’t bring to me at all. Now I am leaving, you pathetic disgusting pig, and you will never see me again, ever, never!” Her husband was outrage and killed her with a knife. Of course, he inherited her 100 million dollar. Then, he was found guilty of murder and was executed. Everything the Gypsy said was correct and accurate. Just not in the same way as we would like to interpret it. Destiny, if there is any, means something unchangeable. So, theoretically, the fact that you will go to a fortune teller and try to change your fate will be included. In other words, changing is part of the pre-set game. Although seemingly you changed something, it’s actually in the program. What’s the point to try then? Just work as hard as we can and hope for the best. What’s good with this attitude? It at least saves you a lot of money from not going to fortune tellers. What the best thing about life? You never
know what is waiting for you next, even you think you know.
June 14 骑呢帮特别通告各位骑呢帮的中流砥柱/社会精英/兄弟姐妹们,
为庆祝我们骑呢帮长老兼创始人Maymay长老的定婚大喜,我们全帮上下要一同欢庆，大鱼大肉（素食者除外，但是也要吃豆腐），斋戒沐浴，穿上漂亮的衣服，不醉无归！ 这次有幸当选为我们骑呢榜第一任准长老相公的张相公，是由长老亲自发掘，并Maymay长老用心栽培多年，经历无数（就是没有的意思）风雨和考验和摧残，终于修的正果，荣登此宝座。 有兴趣了解准长老相公荣升细节的帮众，请直接联络Maymay长老或其代理人（就是张准长老相公）。 希望各位帮众能继续努力发扬我们骑呢帮的骑呢精神，保护世界和平，对抗气候变化，为了社会主义和共产主义的事业，不断骑呢。 两位长老和新准长老相公福如东海，寿与天齐，千秋万代，一统江湖！骑呢帮万岁！万岁！万万岁！ 长老（不是Maymay的那个），致 May 13 Sailing with HelenkaI couldn't believe I was drinking vodka in the Chesapeake Dock in the middle of the day, with a guy whose name sounds very similar to "Picasso", watching my friend "nervous skipper" (NS) poured virgin pee in the front of a beautiful boat. But it was true. This was the renaming ceremony of a lovely boat "the indestructible Helenka". The next thing I know was that Picasso and I were shaking the boat right and left dramatically so as to get us out from the sallow water where Helenka was stuck. Today was a perfect day for sailing, warm and windy. Actually, it's kind of too windy so we only pulled up the main sail for about 2/3, and we were going 5 mile/hour, which was Helenka's full speed. She was built in 1965. Once upon a time, she was young and loved, but when NS met her last year, she had been abandoned for a while. NS gave her a second life. He washed her sail, repainted her, got new accessories for her, and renamed her after his lovely indestructible niece Helenka. NS and I were fighting for control of where the boat should be heading to. He's so nervous and didn't trust me to handle Helenka properly. Finally, he gave up "Helenka is very smart and sweet. If you handle her wrong, she will still do what you want her to do, but will tell you what's not right in her own way. You will notice it." I "drove" the boat, meaning I was sitting there and made sure it didn't run into trees, other boats, or birds, going under a bridge. When we tried to turned over and go back, the wind dead out all a sudden. We were stuck again, just for another reason. We turned three circles at the same place, but still got zero speed. We had to sail against the water flow, and we needed extra wind power. After serious debate, probably inside NS's mind, we pulled the sail full. Helenka was so happy. She sang the song "my sail was full of wind", and dance above the water with the wave a little, giving us the taste of the water where our fried fish swam before they were cooked. However, it didn't get any better. We sat still there and watched at least 3 other sailing boats passing us. Picasso was talking about fried fish and beer, and NS, who was too concerned about over speeding, finally agree to pull up the jib sail. All a sudden, Helenka was like a kid got her candy, and we started to move full speed again, just not to the right direction. "It's fine" NS explained to us. "We will go "Z" shape to catch the wind, and this will be faster than going straight but losing the wind." Switched his topic from fried fish and beer, Picasso wanted to do "tack", which was to change the direction from which the sail taking the wind by changing the direction of one of the holding points of the main sail and jib sail. NS didn't want to do it because it could be risky and he admitted that he was always worry and jumpy. Picasso talked about a sailing class he took 3 years ago with a alway-drunk old guy and shew the scare on his leg which he got from sailing to convince NS to entrust him to do the tack. I was sitting there observing their conflicts indifferently, because my stomach was having some inner conflicts and I only had one eye that could see since I lost one of my eye contacts. I found out that Picasso won because the boat was leaning on one side so bad that one edge was of the boat almost touched the water - we were tacking. My whole body was leaning backward at a 30 degree angle, and this was so cool. After 5 tacking, NS decided that Helenka didn't like the jib sail open, and Picasso had to climb to the front of the boat and pull it down. Picasso wanted to do more taking and didn't want to put down the jib. NS became very nervous. He complained about the green bucket flowing on the water, he worried about the boats 3 miles away was going to run into us, he didn't like the sound the boat made when the wave got higher, and he thought he saw a police boat which was coming towards us and wanted to give him a ticket for something. Picasso gave up. It turned out that NS was right, at least partially. There were a couple police boats in front of us - there was actually an accident there. "I had enough, and I just want to run the motor." NS said. "I am indifferent" Picasso said, because obviously, he was not the one in charge. " I am indifferent too." Basically, I didn't know what was coming out of my mouth, but everything other than throwing up was good enough. Then the motor, not the wind, took us back to the dock. We had a taste of everything, literally. We sailed for more than 4 hours, got stuck for an hour, motored for 30 minutes, and it's in total almost 6 hours. It's a long trip, in terms of the time we spent. But also a short one, because according to Einstein, when you are happy, the time passes faster. May 12 7 Habits of Highly Productive Peoplecopyright reserves to: http://www.whitedovebooks.co.uk/7-habits/7-habits.htm1. Be Proactive 2. Begin With the End in Mind 3. Put First things First 4. Think Win-Win 5. Seek First to Understand 6. Synergize 7. Sharpen the Saw Habit 1 - Be ProactiveThe first of the 7 Habits is - Be Proactive. It is perhaps a great compliment to Stephen Covey that today, the substance of this first habit is deeply embedded into the management psyche. We are told, in business, that we should be proactive; and broadly what is meant by that is to focus our efforts and attention on the long-term and to think in terms of the long-term consequences of our actions. Covey contrasts being proactive or having a proactive mentality with being reactive. Reactive people, he says, are those who are resigned to the truth that whatever they do in the present can have no effect on their circumstances. And interestingly, for reactive people, it really is a truth, for whatever we believe in our heart affects our thoughts, words and actions. If we really believe that we can do nothing about our unreasonable boss or the daily events in our lives, then we simply do not make the effort. Proactive people, on the other hand, simply will not accept that there is nothing that can be done about the unreasonable boss or the events of daily life - they will point out that there are always choices. It is by the decisions we make, our responses to people, events and circumstances that proactive people can and do affect the future. We may have no control over what life throws at us but we always have a choice about how we are to respond. Now this notion that having a particular attitude of mind (which is really where this habit begins) can make such a huge and positive difference to almost everything we experience in life is foreign to those who have already internalised the opposite habit as a part of their personalities. For some people, the glass is always half-empty and the feeling of melancholy is a pleasant reminder that something is indeed missing. For such people, this habit represents a bitter pill to swallow - but, says Covey, it is also completely liberating. When we are finally prepared to accept full responsibility for the effects that are manifest in our lives; when we have the strength of character to admit it when we make mistakes (even big ones); when we are completely free to exercise the options available to us in every situation; then it can be said that we have finally internalised this habit. The other six of the habits require that we first work on our basic character by becoming proactive and thereby transforming ourselves into men and women of integrity.
Habit 2 - Begin with the End in MindThe second of the habits is - Begin with the End in Mind. Many people in the west identify with the frustration of success. Being successful at their chosen career and committed to its progress they come to realise that it does not, in the final analysis, bring any sense of real satisfaction. The reason for this ultimate dissatisfaction is that they did not begin with the end in mind. For many people, it is not just that they did not begin with the end in mind; it goes a bit deeper - they did not ever get around to defining the end itself and so they simply could not begin with the end in mind. So what does all this mean? The end represents the purpose of your life. Until you can say what that purpose is, with assurance, then you just cannot direct your life in the manner that would bring you the greatest satisfaction. There are no short-cuts here. To engage in this habit, you need to have a dream, define your own vision and get into the practice of setting goals which will allow you to make measurable progress toward the dream. If you practice a faith, then you will want to consider how this affects your purpose in life; if you do not, you will still need to get involved in deep self-examination to find out exactly what it is that will bring you fulfilment. To help you with this, you may wish to obtain my E-Book The Deepest Desire of Your Heart; available from this site. The book contains some excellent self-reflection exercises you can use to focus your mind on what is most important to you in life. Until you have defined your vision - the big dream to which you will be working - you will be unable to move on to habit 3 which provides a basic framework for you to re-align your efforts so that you will ultimately achieve your heart's desire.
Habit 3 - First Things FirstThe third habit is - First Thing First. Following the amazing popularity of his work on The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey published a second book that deals with the 7 Habits; and the title of that book is also First Things First. Both the book and this habit deal with subject of managing your time effectively. Consider the simple 2 x 2 matrix shown below. It plots the concepts of urgency and importance against each other; and represents where you are spending your time. To really understand and apply this habit, you need to have first done habit 2 - that is, you should already have defined what is important to you. Without first doing this, habit 3 has no power because you simply cannot separate what is important from what is not important. This representation shows four categories of demand which may be made on your time. Quadrant 1 consists of activities which are both urgent and important - in other words, things to which you absolutely must attend. Why must you do these things? Because they are important - meaning that they contribute to your mission; and they are urgent - meaning that they have some sort of deadline associated with them. Choices about where to invest your time really are made in the other categories; and most people - driven by the concept of urgency - get drawn into Quadrant 3; doing things that consume their time but do not contribute to their goals. Highly Effective People (yes they all fit together you see) understand that the high leverage activities are all Quadrant 2 - important but not urgent. Planning, preparation, prevention, relationship-building, reading, improving your professional knowledge and exercise are all examples of Quadrant 2 activity - not an exhaustive list, by any means. We all intuitively know that Quadrant 2 activities are the key to getting results; but you need to have internalised the first two habits before you can benefit from the high leverage this habit brings. In other words, you first need to have developed the strength of character (proactivity) which allows you to be able to say no to demands on your time that fall into Quadrants 2 and 3; and you also need to have defined what importance means for you - otherwise the Quadrants do not exist. Put habits 1,2 and 3 together and you have the ultimate success formula. Stated simply - get your mind right; define what is important; then organise your life to maximise your Quadrant 2 efforts. By spending appropriate time on Quadrant 2 activities, you will gain control over the circumstances of your life; Quadrant 1 will actually get smaller because you will have anticipated and prepared for much Quadrant 1 activity. Concentrating on Quadrant 2 is absolutely fundamental to achieving success. You might like to take a look at the 4tm Spreadsheet, available from this site, which can help you to make this key adjustment in the use of your time.
Habit 4 - Think Win WinThe next of the 7 Habits is - Think Win-Win. This habit is again an attitude of mind. It concerns fostering an attitude that is committed to always finding solutions that will truly benefit both sides of a dispute. Solutions do not, of course, exist in themselves; they must be created. And, even if we cannot see the solution to a particular problem, it does not mean that no such solution exists. The win-win idea is not based upon compromise - that is where most disputes naturally end. But compromise is the result of not properly perceiving the possible synergy of the situation. The more you practice this habit, the more committed you will become as you find solutions which truly do benefit both parties, where originally it looked as if no such agreement might be reached. Covey has amended the wording of this habit slightly in recent years to read: Think Win-Win or No Deal. This attitude works well because it liberates the individuals concerned from the effort of trying to persuade the opposite party to shift ground or compromise. The effort is instead spend on trying to understand, which is where habit 5 comes in - you see, they are also sequential.
Habit 5 - Seek First to Understand
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