I had been on a writer's block the past 6 weeks whereas come to think of it, my wife and I had been in 3 countries and there is really so much to tell. So much to tell but so little time. Well at least that's what I thought..
Until I got to sat down and pondered on an email Mr Jomar Hilario, an online entrepreneur guru, had forwarded me. It got me to clicking this Kindle thing and how I could earn passive income from it. Kindle? Well I (and probably 96% of Filipinos) are so used to reading pdfs as ebooks instead of kindle books so why bother?
That's when I began checking out this link he sent me and within an hour I was truly convinced that kindle books are the more user friendly ebooks in the market. I was amazed with its functionality..Just by touching a word a little longer in any of its text, a menu pops out giving you its definition and asking you either if you want to highlight such or take extra notes of or share it thru twitter or FB. It's an interactive book!(Nope, Amazon did not pay me to say kind words about this haha).
What caught my interest all the more was that the opportunity makes any interested writer make his own kindle book easily and have it published online in the Amazon stores for selling instantly entitling the author or publisher lifetime royalty income. Hmm, something which I had dreamed when I was in high school and thought as impossible (imagine National Book Store or Rex book store approaching you and asking if they could publish your work and put it in their stores...hmm far out!) is now something which I can now do at home and be seen and sold everywhere. :)
So having studied it well and watched Mr Deiss' videos, I was truly convinced to make the investment and dive into this. Of course, I investigated and checked some third party reviews on the site. It's not actually a walk in the park.. I paid a hefty sum (Philippine standards) to get enrolled and be in the club and get the course & necessary special softwares (let's just say it's much like our college tuition fee). But my heart is into it and in order to commit to it, I should not place myself once again in analysis paralysis again. I TOOK ACTION. Now that it takes extra effort & resource to do such...I have no excuse to fail.
I had searched online for solutions how to get rid of writer's block and the common suggestion is just observe & observe then write & write. Now to hurdle the most difficult task, "What will be my topic and title?"...... Please feel free to comment or suggest. Thank you!
What about you, what drives you?
Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) American naturalist, poet and philosopher.
Showing posts with label goals. Show all posts
Showing posts with label goals. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
Sunday, July 22, 2012
Eighty twenty
I think I might have done too much rest (that is, from blogging) thanks to my previous post. My other side had been quite filled up, it's really sick season these past few weeks both in the clinics and in the hospital. Actually had just been back from a seminar and some respite, I might as well post on the same topic as promised.
The world literally had trained us to keep busy if we want to go up the ladder of success. Tim Ferris puts this in a graphic tone as follows: "If you want to move up the ladder in most of our corporate world, and assuming they don't really check what you're doing (let's be honest), just run around the office holding a cell phone to your head and carrying papers from 9 am to 5 pm. Now that is one busy employee". Unfortunately ( or quite fortunately), that's not how you increase your results and attain objectives.
Being effective is different from being efficient. Effectiveness is doing the things that get you closer to your goals. Efficiency is performing a given task ( whether important or not) in the most economical matter possible. Sadly, being efficient without regard to effectiveness is the default mode of the universe.
It is no different to you to see so many people working in a company or more so in the government, when you visit their offices. It would surprise you why even with so much manpower, you find yourself with so much people waiting like you in a queue where the service staff seem to have no regard for your personal time. Then observing them closely, some of them just chatting with each other, some just having their eyes fixed to their documents not even looking at you when they talk to you, and most just running around in circles. All for the routine of just to consume their 9 to 5 regimen. It is a wonder why it takes months just to get some simple government permits done. The society is infected with AIDS (As If Doing Something).
Applying this to your life, there are two truisms to take note of.
1. Doing something unimportant well does not make it important.
2. Requiring a lot of time does not make a task important.
Enter this principle of a renowned economist who lived from 1848 to 1923, Mr Vilfredo Pareto. The principle he conceived and presented then is now one of the secrets of the most successful people in the world. His Pareto principle is more popularly called the "80/20 principle".
His principle originally describes how uneven the income distribution was in all parts of the world. "80% of the wealth and income was produced by 20% of the population". But this proportion is found actually in almost all aspects of human life.
So with this in mind, here are two basic questions which you should work on to free your precious time (as recommended by Mr Tim Ferris in his book "The Four Hour Work week)".
1. Which 20% of sources are causing 80% of my problems and unhappiness?
2. Which 20% of sources are resulting in 80% of my desired outcomes and happiness?
Just set an entire day to ponder on these questions and write and record your answers in each aspect of your life ( family, business or career). Your goal is to find your inefficiencies in order to eliminate them and to find your strengths so you can multiply them.
Being overwhelmed with things to do is often as unproductive as doing nothing and is far more unpleasant. Being selective- doing less- is the path of the productive. Focus on the important few and ignore the rest.
It;s easy to get caught in a flood of minutiae, and the key to not feeling rushed is remembering that lack of time is actually lack of priorities. Take time to stop and smell the flowers...
"One does not accumulate but eliminate. It is not daily increase but decrease. The height of cultivation runs to simplicity. - Bruce Lee
The world literally had trained us to keep busy if we want to go up the ladder of success. Tim Ferris puts this in a graphic tone as follows: "If you want to move up the ladder in most of our corporate world, and assuming they don't really check what you're doing (let's be honest), just run around the office holding a cell phone to your head and carrying papers from 9 am to 5 pm. Now that is one busy employee". Unfortunately ( or quite fortunately), that's not how you increase your results and attain objectives.1. Doing something unimportant well does not make it important.
2. Requiring a lot of time does not make a task important.
Enter this principle of a renowned economist who lived from 1848 to 1923, Mr Vilfredo Pareto. The principle he conceived and presented then is now one of the secrets of the most successful people in the world. His Pareto principle is more popularly called the "80/20 principle".
His principle originally describes how uneven the income distribution was in all parts of the world. "80% of the wealth and income was produced by 20% of the population". But this proportion is found actually in almost all aspects of human life.- 80% of the outputs result from 20% of the inputs.
- 80% of the results come from 20% of the effort and time.
- 80% of company profits come from 20% of the products and customers.
- 80% of all stock marketgains are realized by 20% of the investors and 20% of an individual portfolio.
So with this in mind, here are two basic questions which you should work on to free your precious time (as recommended by Mr Tim Ferris in his book "The Four Hour Work week)".
1. Which 20% of sources are causing 80% of my problems and unhappiness?
2. Which 20% of sources are resulting in 80% of my desired outcomes and happiness?
Just set an entire day to ponder on these questions and write and record your answers in each aspect of your life ( family, business or career). Your goal is to find your inefficiencies in order to eliminate them and to find your strengths so you can multiply them.
Being overwhelmed with things to do is often as unproductive as doing nothing and is far more unpleasant. Being selective- doing less- is the path of the productive. Focus on the important few and ignore the rest.
It;s easy to get caught in a flood of minutiae, and the key to not feeling rushed is remembering that lack of time is actually lack of priorities. Take time to stop and smell the flowers...
"One does not accumulate but eliminate. It is not daily increase but decrease. The height of cultivation runs to simplicity. - Bruce Lee
Thursday, June 7, 2012
Enforcing life changing habits into your own "comfy" life
It was almost 11 days ago when I last posted here. Tsk tsk to think that I plan posting daily as much as I could when I made this blog a month or so ago.
To ensure this, I changed my Yahoo homepage to blogger (it has been Yahoo since I "discovered" the internet about 12 years ago). This is to constantly remind me that when I begin to surf (which I do daily), I would get subconsciously "forced" to write a short piece to share to the world before I get lost in my emails, Twitter, and FB...
Apparently, starting a new habit is really hard. Life always get in the way. There is this call (referrals/ admissions) from hospital A, then hospital B. There is this habit of patients to come in your clinic when you are about to have your lunch ( clinic time is 10-12 in am, not much to see when you arrive early but a throng arrives at 11:45am) so you finish almost 2 pm very hungry. And when you are to come home for dinner ( clinic time in pm is 4:30 to 7pm, the gang cluster of patients arrive around 6:45pm) so you finish almost 9pm and when you come home, the kids are usually asleep and you take your dinner watching the last batch of telenovelas for the day and you're so poofed right after, you lost consciousness the moment your back hits the bed.
Beyond the medical life, there are too many distractions also. Your wife who is equally busy with her patients suddenly asks you to bring the kids to the dentist for their dental appointment (Yep, I have a 2 hr window to travel from Dau after my morning clinic to Bacolor to have lunch, bring the kids to the dentist in Angeles, wait for them to finish, to bring them back to our home in Bacolor and then catch my 4:30pm clinic in Dau....whew). If not dental appointment, maybe their singing and painting lessons and of course, our tutoring them on their classroom assignments, etc. Yep, life is SO SO filled up and busy for me......... Well, that's what it appears to be..... but I chose NOT to be.
Yes each of us have 24 hours a day to spend on what we think will make us feel good (well not really everything is spent actively, take off at least 6 hours for sleep, so 18 hrs). But honestly, many of us spend at least 3 hours of television everyday. 18 hrs of awake time, 3 hrs of TV time..that's 1/6 of our lives awake infront of the TV ( about 85 hours of TV a month!). And I can't understand why many of us (me included) could not spend at least 20 minutes a day writing down what you want to do with your life (believe me it should not be just work and FB!) for the next 5, 10, and 20 years. Or spend the same amount of time learning something new beyond your daily routine/ work, Or sharing what you already know to others so you can make a statement in the world (like what I am supposed to do with this blogging). 18 hours a day for each of us human beings...whether very poor or very rich...and it's how it is properly spent that makes a man poor or rich.
They say if you want to start a good habit right and regularly, set a fixed time of the day to do it. Some prefer the moment they wake up, some right before sleeping. Sigh, I know too much principles but I still have to work these principles into my life.
I would be reading self discipline and time management articles/books this week and would share them to you thru blogging in my next posts (which I hope would be just a few days from now. Ciao!
Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift, that is why they call it the present.“ –
Kung Fu Panda
To ensure this, I changed my Yahoo homepage to blogger (it has been Yahoo since I "discovered" the internet about 12 years ago). This is to constantly remind me that when I begin to surf (which I do daily), I would get subconsciously "forced" to write a short piece to share to the world before I get lost in my emails, Twitter, and FB...
Apparently, starting a new habit is really hard. Life always get in the way. There is this call (referrals/ admissions) from hospital A, then hospital B. There is this habit of patients to come in your clinic when you are about to have your lunch ( clinic time is 10-12 in am, not much to see when you arrive early but a throng arrives at 11:45am) so you finish almost 2 pm very hungry. And when you are to come home for dinner ( clinic time in pm is 4:30 to 7pm, the gang cluster of patients arrive around 6:45pm) so you finish almost 9pm and when you come home, the kids are usually asleep and you take your dinner watching the last batch of telenovelas for the day and you're so poofed right after, you lost consciousness the moment your back hits the bed.
Beyond the medical life, there are too many distractions also. Your wife who is equally busy with her patients suddenly asks you to bring the kids to the dentist for their dental appointment (Yep, I have a 2 hr window to travel from Dau after my morning clinic to Bacolor to have lunch, bring the kids to the dentist in Angeles, wait for them to finish, to bring them back to our home in Bacolor and then catch my 4:30pm clinic in Dau....whew). If not dental appointment, maybe their singing and painting lessons and of course, our tutoring them on their classroom assignments, etc. Yep, life is SO SO filled up and busy for me......... Well, that's what it appears to be..... but I chose NOT to be.
Yes each of us have 24 hours a day to spend on what we think will make us feel good (well not really everything is spent actively, take off at least 6 hours for sleep, so 18 hrs). But honestly, many of us spend at least 3 hours of television everyday. 18 hrs of awake time, 3 hrs of TV time..that's 1/6 of our lives awake infront of the TV ( about 85 hours of TV a month!). And I can't understand why many of us (me included) could not spend at least 20 minutes a day writing down what you want to do with your life (believe me it should not be just work and FB!) for the next 5, 10, and 20 years. Or spend the same amount of time learning something new beyond your daily routine/ work, Or sharing what you already know to others so you can make a statement in the world (like what I am supposed to do with this blogging). 18 hours a day for each of us human beings...whether very poor or very rich...and it's how it is properly spent that makes a man poor or rich.
They say if you want to start a good habit right and regularly, set a fixed time of the day to do it. Some prefer the moment they wake up, some right before sleeping. Sigh, I know too much principles but I still have to work these principles into my life.
I would be reading self discipline and time management articles/books this week and would share them to you thru blogging in my next posts (which I hope would be just a few days from now. Ciao!
Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift, that is why they call it the present.“ –
Kung Fu Panda
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Getting that focus
It's summertime here in the Philippines and the temperature goes to as high as 35 C. Our kids had been pretty much confined at home, their eyes glued over their respective game devices with their fingers on the keypads and their focus almost 100% to their preferred game/ movie. So much so as when you call them, you pretty much would have your voice to a loud 10/10 before you could at least make their head turn and ask "what?".
Times had been so different when we were kids, our games were pretty much more physical and more social. Who wouldn't miss our hide and seek games, "What's your name...Orange juice (huh)", tumbang preso (hit the can), syoto, and pasi (top)? Instead of us hitting each other's tops and having the last top turning as the winner, my kids are now into the commercialized "Beyblade" game, each mini top with its metal cover cost almost P500! ( ~ $10!). That money could buy me a dozen tops, problem is I think they are nearly extinct nowadays.
Whatever the game is (whether circa 1970s or 2010s), one thing is for sure with kids.... that ability to focus and play into the game.
Sad to say, as adults since we are all so exposed to different situations / faces / predicaments (in short, stimuli) in life, we fall victim to distractions and get lost with the ongoings around us. We lose focus as we start our day, we most of the time do not fulfill our worthwhile goals/ agenda because "things happen" and we do this, we do that, we go astray our purpose.
Sooner or later, the attitude degenerates into the "come what may" attitude.....just wake up in the morning, wait for things to happen and simply react to them. Whoa, we are not plants, we can move and think!
Indifference and laziness are the main ingredients of a complaining, uncontented, and miserable life. The best cure for grief and frustration is action.
And kids are the perfect example of the indefatigable spirit. Just watch them closely how persistent they are when they want something. You're watching TV and your tot scratches your back and say, "Dad, I wanna watch Barney". "No, I'm watching the news" , you say. But then he goes again, "Daddy, I wanna watch Barney". You resist again but there he could go on and on until you give in....
Talo ka sa bata! " (You lost to a kid!).
Times had been so different when we were kids, our games were pretty much more physical and more social. Who wouldn't miss our hide and seek games, "What's your name...Orange juice (huh)", tumbang preso (hit the can), syoto, and pasi (top)? Instead of us hitting each other's tops and having the last top turning as the winner, my kids are now into the commercialized "Beyblade" game, each mini top with its metal cover cost almost P500! ( ~ $10!). That money could buy me a dozen tops, problem is I think they are nearly extinct nowadays.
Whatever the game is (whether circa 1970s or 2010s), one thing is for sure with kids.... that ability to focus and play into the game.
Sad to say, as adults since we are all so exposed to different situations / faces / predicaments (in short, stimuli) in life, we fall victim to distractions and get lost with the ongoings around us. We lose focus as we start our day, we most of the time do not fulfill our worthwhile goals/ agenda because "things happen" and we do this, we do that, we go astray our purpose.
Sooner or later, the attitude degenerates into the "come what may" attitude.....just wake up in the morning, wait for things to happen and simply react to them. Whoa, we are not plants, we can move and think!
Indifference and laziness are the main ingredients of a complaining, uncontented, and miserable life. The best cure for grief and frustration is action.
And kids are the perfect example of the indefatigable spirit. Just watch them closely how persistent they are when they want something. You're watching TV and your tot scratches your back and say, "Dad, I wanna watch Barney". "No, I'm watching the news" , you say. But then he goes again, "Daddy, I wanna watch Barney". You resist again but there he could go on and on until you give in....
Talo ka sa bata! " (You lost to a kid!).
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