The blog from across the globe

Hello there, how is everything? I'm writing this from Tenerife in Spain as I'm attending my cousin's wedding. Haven't been to this part of the planet in almost 15 years! Woah, I have barely any recollection of visiting this place and oddly, I'm here now.... blogging! Lots has happened and I've got a nice tan from all the time in the sun. I visited my sister in Cambridge, England then my cousins in Gran Canarie and now here in Tenerife. It is so bright my eyes are actually tired from squinting. I haven't seen so much sun in my whole life! The sun sets at around 9pm daily! It's quite bizarre because this is exactly what I always dreamed about. Having the sun stay up and go down just when it's time to sleep, not when it's time to eat dinner.

So why am I here blogging?! Well it is 11pm now after all, we've spent the whole day doing wedding-stuff and I'm trying to stay up-to-date with my to do list. Speaking of to do lists, now that I've been on the road I've been noticing my holes in my be a mobile warrior mentality. First of all, I've been exploring the importance of trying to find the perfect balance between having your tools on you and having them accessible from anywhere (as long as you have an Internet connection). I'd always been an avid Drop Box user, but the one downside to it is the lack of Windows Mobile access. So I did some research and discovered Sugar Sync. I must say, so far so good, I'm liking it more than Drop Box. The one thing that sold me is its Windows Mobile support. One thing I know I almost always have with me is my PDA. So this worked great, some tools that you'd normally carry on a USB thumb drive now get stored on my Sugar Sync account and anytime I need it, connect to my account via my mobile phone (PDA) and voila, I'm all set!

Another thing I'd notice being problematic for me was my to do lists. I'd always relied on my windows mobile device and Microsoft Outlook 2003 on my home computer to take care of everything. The problem is, being on a trip of 3 weeks means you're going to have to use your mobile device as your primary to do list manager. As much as it's convenient to have on you, having to poke away at it all the time gets quite frustrating. After a while, I just got tired of working with its tiny screen and felt like giving up. I went back to my roots (the days when I first began my GTD lifestyle) and found my good ol' Remember The Milk website (the first to do service I used!). I signed up for a new account just to start things fresh and have been spending a little bit of my down time re-familiarizing myself with the interface and trying to find ways to make it even easier to use (and also faster) than with Outlook. The major issue I was having with Outlook is its inability to allow me to be truly mobile. With Remember the Milk, I now can enjoy its services anywhere and should the day come I have no Internet access, well, thanks to Google Gears, I can still use the application offline. Fantastic. When I return to Hong Kong and have gone through using this service for a month, I'll probably pay the upgrade price and get the extra services (namely MilkSync) which allows me to use my mobile device just like I do now, but instead of syncing to Outlook, it syncs to my Remember the Milk account.

On the offline end, I've been reading the book DaVinci Decoded. It's by the same author as How to Think like Leonardo DaVinci, a book I love (read my earlier posts in this blog, you'll see how long ago it was when I read that book!). So far so good, it's not as good as the one about how to think like him, but it's a good refresher course. I bought my own copy of Art of War and also came across another book called The Back of the Napkin. It's about using drawings/images to solve problems, I was quite fascinated by this concept and also figured this'd be useful for me. I know a lot about this technique, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to learn a few extra tips/tricks through this book. I've been giving myself a refresher course on the classic How to Win Friends and Influence People, but I'm leaving that reading for the plane. I've got a loooongg trip out of here :P. I was reading The DaVinci Method on my way here but halfway through the book I felt it was constantly repeating itself. I really don't like books that just keep going on and on and on about the same thing (ahah yes, I know you're pointing at my blog as nothing better).

So I return to Hong Kong at the end of August and it's back to putting the nose to the grindstone, but hopefully I'll have a fresh mind to see everything. The world awaits (when I return of course :P)

Enjoy the next 10 days!

The lock up

Woah, that took a while to do my Day 10 entry! I'm only4 days late. But for a very valid reason. I've been busy. Whoever didn't guess that needs to wake up and smell the coffee of life and the fine line between excuses and reality.

I've finally got some time today to catch up on all the 530538068042042853058350369018539 things I have to do because I've locked myself up in my room and I'm not allowed to leave this apartment until 8pm tonight when I go jamming with my band. This weekend is a big test of me sacrificing for my interests. So Ted Alexandro is in Hong Kong and he's performing at TakeOut Comedy from today (9 July 2009) to Saturday (11 July 2009). I opened for him last night at a show at the Hong Kong Football Club and it was awesome! As much as I want to go watch him again tonight, I have to practice with my band because we're scheduled for a recording session at the end of this month for Underground Compilation CD #3! And on top of that, a metal band called Rudra is performing on Saturday 11 July 2009! The kicker is that my band was invited to be an opening act for Rudra and due to the clash with my comedy, we couldn't make it. So I guess it's one of those "you can't have it all" deals.

I've been doing some thinking recently on the idea of when it is ok to not do something because you couldn't do it even if you tried (eg. no electricity) vs. not doing it because you're can't do it (eg. brain dead) vs. not doing it because you just don't want to do it (eg. frustrated and don't care anymore). I've reached all 3 moments in a lot of things and it's like I keep bouncing from one to the other until the job is done. Usually when I hit the point of frustration, I'm propelled back to why I can't do it and what's stopping me and if that's not the case, chances are I'm brain dead which frustates me because I want to get stuff done. In some ways, this mentality of getting things done is a blessing and a curse to me. It's great because I have achieved oh so much more than I ever did, but a curse because it's like a nagging boss never letting you go. I was talking to someone today about how it's already July and I heard the typical sense of unhappiness that the year has gone by so fast and it feels like nothing has been accomplished. I guess for me, it doesn't really happen anymore like that, I no longer feel like my months are getting wasted away, but more like did I maximize my time? I know I accomplished stuff, but could I have accomplished more?

I had begun on the 4-hour workweek but stopped it because it felt like it was going nowhere. Instead of going with my usual attitude of "get it done" by finishing it, I just stopped and moved on. I'm currently toying with a book called Train Your Brain More because I'm a firm believer that the brain is a muscle that needs to be worked out as much as the body to stay in shape and sharp and healthy. On top of that, proper nutrition is essential which is why I've been getting into the habit of eating almonds and nuts which contains good sources of essential fatty acids at least 1 serving a day. Usually at night before I sleep alongside my casein shake. Speaking of training your brain, I recently read an article by Jerry Seinfeld on Lifehacker talking about his productivity tip/technique which was interesting. I can't say it's uber-original or really special, but it makes sense. He basically says to have a big calendar that is stuck on your wall and for everyday you accomplish your goal (in his case, write comedy), you put a bit red X on that date. Over time you'd have this chain of X's which you'd grow fond of and you would not want to break the chain. In doing so, you build the habit of working towards your goal daily and also have the pressure of not ever breaking the chain. I've been using an online tool called Joe's Goals which is similar except it's not a whole calendar long but still lets you keep track of what goals you achieved in a day. I've been using it for a while and the main things I keep track of are:

• Practiced Drums
• Went to the Gym
• Ate well

I used to have a longer list of things to check but it didn't work because if I had 10 things and I only missed 1, it'd seem like I still did 90% of what I set out daily. The problem was that I'd slowly lose that "oh my God I need to work at it!" mentality because 10% was such a small amount. Whereas now, every item is 33%! Fail at one and I've screwed up 1/3 of my daily goals! It's a different mental-effect. Interesting how our minds can whip us into shape when given the right stimulus.

The interesting thing about all this is that at the end it's a matter of just taking the step and doing it, which is often the hardest thing for someone who doesn't have a whipper/boss standing behind them at all times. You're your worst enemy and best friend really. And speaking of friends, my friend Bun is back to Hong Kong! After almost 2 years of photography work in Germany he's here! Wahoo!

Well, I'm off to continue my lock-up and crank out all these tasks and widgets I want to get through before I go mental at my drums tonight! Have a great next 10 days!

Digging up the roots

So here I am in the middle of the night. Technically a day late for my Day 10 entry, but at the same time, I count my days from the time I rise to the time I retire. So I'm still on time :).

Recently, I've been going back to my roots and foundations and exploring whether or not I need to re-evaluate everything so I can further progress. I've noticed this necessity in my drumming, especially after I watched Benny Greb's The Language of Drumming. It's been a while and I'm still working on my single-strokes, pretty much the first thing any newbie drummer will learn to do. After all that research about muscle memory, I've been paying a lot of attention to the finer details of every movement I make. It's a tough test of patience but it does pay off. I can't wait to move into double-stroke territory.

My ankle has also healed pretty much 100% and I'm glad to say this has been the fastest recovery ever. Partly because I took care of it and followed the RICE guide although I skipped the ICE part but used one of those Japanese muscle pads (like Tiger Balm) and boy oh boy did that help! Also, I've been taking omega-3 fatty acid supplements so I'm guessing that contributed to the healing process pretty well, after all, it's good for joints and well, I hurt my joint. So with a healed ankle, I could finally work on my feet at the drums and I realized my feet progress is around 50% that of my hands. Like my hands can increase at around 40bpm each session, but my feet go at 20bpm/session. It also takes much more mental energy and concentration for me to keep my feet focused and disciplined so I can hit the mark of my metronome on the dot. For all of you drummers out there, I use the Boss DR-90 Metronome which has an in-built accuracy tester and I've kept it at the hardest. I mean, if I'm going to be practicing, I might as well do it right and perfectly. Like they say, perfect practice makes perfect. Not just practice.

Let's hope in the next 10 days, I can move on from single strokes and start with double-strokes!

Another thing I've been re-visiting is my comedy. I've been going back through some of my old bits and refining them. It's a very, very time-consuming process but the outcomes is worth it. One of my famous bits used to be good and now it's nice and tight. It's a great feeling when you know you've created an A+ bit that a lot of people remember you for. It's one of those signature bits :). I'm planning on going through all my other bits and watching my tapes, re-writing the wordings and making them tight, tight, tight! I'm talking machine-gun punchlines! Also, my goal for 2009 was to have a one-man show in English, which means I need a good 1-hour set. Right now I'm at a solid 15 minutes or a pretty alright 20 minutes if you include B-grade material. I recently got to watch Paul Ogata, who in my opinion has completely blown me away time after time and is the 1st live stand-up comedian I got to watch and ever since that has been a target I'm trying to achieve. It's great seeing him on stage and being able to speak to him off stage. He's a humble guy and as much as you ask him for advise, it comes down to one thing -- writing. And he's so right. I could read all the fitness magazines or listen to every drummer alive, but until I hit the gym or practice my drums, I'll get nowhere.

He said comedy is like a muscle you have to keep training and boy is that true. People don't get rusty for no reason, just like your body gets out of shape so does your mind. That's why I'm trying to go back to my beginnings and work from there again. The good thing is, having been there and done that before, I know what to expect and what to avoid, so it makes the process of progressing so much faster. It's like being fit once, and getting out of shape, oddly your body has a (different) kind of muscle memory that remembers the fitness level you were at before, and you can easily get back to that with a bit of training. It reminds me of my return from New York. I had put on a good 4lbs and oddly enough in a week's time I shed 70% of that new weight! Woah! I suppose it's like riding a bike, you might kind of need to warm up after not having ridden one for a long time, but it's a much faster process that it was when you first started learning.

I've also gone back to enjoying Buddha Bar music. No Phantom of the Opera for me for now. I've also been reading a lot of books on mind-mapping, hoping to find some awesome trick to improve them but in the end it seems I just have to go and map what's on my mind. I had made one on a large sheet of paper, but the speed of my thinking is much faster than the speed I can write at, I can at least type almost as fast as my thinking so that helps. I'm evaluating iMindMap to see if it fits what I'm looking for. I've found a lot of other mind-mapping software both open source and commercial but all of them looked too technical and seemed very creatively limiting. Tony Buzan talked about how we keep using our left-side of the brain and don't stimulate our right side enough because we often lack colors, images, sounds, etc. so I'm trying to make sure my right side gets strong too by incorporating all these into my mind maps. I've realized one limiting factor is my inability to properly draw what I see/think in my head. I've tried but it just doesn't work. I had talked about this being something I'm going to work at every night but I've come to realize leaving something to do at night is not a good decision because usually near bed time, I'm quite burnt out or exhausted mentally and being told to learn something that doesn't require just passive reading or watching is really not attractive at all and by this time my level of discipline has dropped too due to my low energy levels.

On a reading note, I'm currently ploughing through Beyond Brawn and so far the initial chapters are full of stuff I consider nonsense. Not saying the author is not good at delivering his message, I mean it's still I already know and it's basic motivation repeated in different words. I'm planning on following this book with Weight-Training Technique because I'm starting to get into much heavier weights and before I injur myself, it's best I make sure my technique is perfect. This is also the phase my imbalances will start getting exagerated, like my stronger/bigger right arm is more noticable now and so it's time I upped the level and really killed myself at the gym. The last time I had a leg day, I came out totally trashed, in a good way. Not "oh my goodness, I'm so tired I want to die" but "oohh, I can feel my legs are exhausted after a good, hard workout". I felt good. Which is often how I feel like at night after a long hard day of work, work, work and achieving!

So far going to the foundations has been helpful for me and may be good for you, maybe you should spend a few hours and re-evaluate the steps you took and make sure they were perfected before you progress even further. Heck, no one wants to climb back down a hill because they realized they left something at the bottom, right? At least not when you're near the top.

Back on Track

And finally, my life is back on track. Well almost.

After my trip to New York, I had so much catching up to do, it wasn't funny. I then realized, I was falling back into the old ways where I'd get stressed out because I kept looking at my never-ending to-do lists and felt like there was always something waiting for me, even if it wasn't due today.

I then did what most people would do to give themselves a fresh start. Well, most geeks really. I did the equivalent to a girl getting a haircut to shed away her old memories or a guy buying himself a new cap. I reformatted my computer and boy does it feel good! It gave me that fresh feeling that made me feel like it was time to throw away my old ways and get on with the new. I sat down and went through all my work processes and figured out all the problems I was facing and listed them out, and solved them one by one. I've also started on a book called The Mind Map Book. A clear classic and figured I could use with the extra information this book has on Mind Maps. I mean, no one really needs to be taught mind mapping, but it's more like how to best use them. Kind of like no one ever needs to be taught how to do make to-do lists, but it's how to effectively use them, or make them more efficient that helps.

I must say, I've got back into my GTD ways and it's rocking my world like it did before. Especially since I've modified the way my to-do lists are displayed to me, hiding anything that isn't due today, until I want to see it (ie. when I've finished everything there is to do today :P). I've got myself into a fixed routine of practicing drums around 30 - 40 minutes a day, as well as a good, efficient workout routine that gives me days off without the psychological guilt trip many gym-goers get when they take the day off for rest.

I've also figured out a bunch of ways to keep my mind constantly growing in all my passions, from my love for everything metal to learning about the most effective way to do a bicep curl. I've also got myself going back into drawing but that's where I still have to work a bit because I still suck :P. I can't even seem to draw stick men properly.

My band, Eve of Sin, had a gig on 11 April 2009 during Easter weekend and boy was it awesome! Oh man, the crowd was freaking insane! I loved it! Thank you so much! We filmed it down but it's really quite dark. I should have used my night-vision setting, even though it makes everyone seem like green zombies, it's better than looking at a patch of black. But after some post-production, I can see the crazy moshing and oh man, my favorite, wall of deaths! We didn't expect it during one of our songs, but the crowd just spread apart like the Red Sea in the story of Moses! And before we knew it, BOOM! Ahah, I have to get the video to the other bandmates before I get everyone's approval to upload it for your viewing pleasure. Please be careful, it is still metal so mind those ears! :D

Comedy's been going good and I had 2 good shows this weekend, with English on Friday and Chinese on Saturday :) I hosted the Chinese show and it's a lot of fun, even though I'm not very used to starting a show, but the coolest part of hosting is that you get to keep going back on stage :) So if you ever forget to say something, you can go back and do it! :D There is a 2nd chance! :D i even got invited to go on a TV show called Sunday Whiz (Check out the 19 April 2009 episode) as a guest to talk about racism in Hong Kong. It's in Cantonese, but it was quite interesting. I guess the thing is, if you ask me to point out racist events in my life, I could go on and on and on, but at the same time, I don't feel that racism really. I just feel it's racist only if you take it as racism. Calling someone a gwailo, in my view, is racist only if it's said offensively or if you want to make sure it's distinguished that you are not them. But there are a lot of people who feel good being called that, it makes them feel like they are part of society, now that they have terms like that that are specifically for them. But oh well, I respect everyone's opinion :).

I'm hitting a slight plateau in the gym though, so my routine's probably going to need to get changed in a week's time, however, the coolest thing is that I'm getting some pretty good gains though. I think it has to do with the way I plan my meals before and after my workout and so far so good. I have to say though, I've come to realize, my flexibility isn't balanced though, my left side is muuuuccchh tighter than my right, which sucks but also makes sense seeing as my right side is stronger and also from my drumming, using the computer, it's my right side that moves the most, left side usually stays there, hence the muscle tightening. Sigh :\

And everything else is so far so good. Today I get to take it a little easy and I've got myself a slice of salmon. Did I ever tell you how much I love salmon? You have no idea, whenever I buy it, I literally have a singing tune in my head as I wait to get back and cook the hunky piece of juicy fish :). Maybe because it's good for my heart, it gives me that warm fuzzy feeling you'd get when you saw, say, a handbag of your dreams and you fell in love with it :)

Mmm... salmon *drools like Homer does*

The art of KISS

Nope, I'm not about to get all romantic on a Sunday night/Monday morning. KISS as in Keep It Simple Stupid.

A lot of my blog entries have been looonnngg posts with an automatic-writing style to it and in some ways, it's tiring for me to even re-read them after a while let alone anyone who's curious about what I'm thinking, so I'm going to try my best to get to my point as soon as possible here.

So I've been spending my whole day re-organizing my room/work area and everything else so that I've created more empty spaces. Oddly, I've always been the type of person who aims to just fill up any empty space with something because I feel that I'm not making the most of a shelf if nothing's on it. But I was thinking about its relation to design and even music. If anything, it's the empty space in a design and the non-notes in a song that allow people to stop and enjoy what is occupying the space/music. And so I started telling myself to keep it as basic and simple and minimalist as possible and so far so good! My room feels more spacious all of a sudden and I feel like I can even kind of go for a walk if I need to do a 'ponder stroll' :P It's quite nice, just having what is necessary and chucking away all the rest. Of course, there still lies the problem of me needing a lot of things! For one, I've got 3 freaking screens on my desk! :P I've managed to connect all my many computers so I only have to use 1 keyboard and 1 mouse thanks to the crazy power of Synergy! I've streamlined a lot of my drumming area. Like I used to have a little flat area to keep my macbook for recording/practice and another area for my mp3 player for play-alongs and another area for my exercise books. Then I realized, I never ever use all 3 things at the same time! They're mutually exclusive! If I'm reading from an exercise book (by the way, for all you drum freaks, I'm working on Afro-Caribbean Drum Grooves, I remember like 9 months ago, I tried out the first exercise and just gave up because of the insane coordination/limb independence it required, but now I can do it and it's a lot of fun!) Ahaha, I can appreciate the finer details of this type of music now! I never realized how complex it was! The accents, the crazy hand/foot patterns, it really forces you to divide yourself into 4 parts!

And this whole mutually exclusive thing made me think about how much this can be a good factor in my arranging my life, which kept leading me to the whole KISS attitude. I went berserk and started throwing away drum catalogues I had collected as knowledge/references because I figured if I ever needed to read something, I could download the PDF's! I threw away name cards of people because I have all that information stored in my contact database, so what's the use of the card? I cleared up my desktop and re-mapped some of my shortcuts (yay for AutoHotKey) combined with ol' trusty ObjectDock but I still have Launchy installed for times when my hands are on the keyboard so I don't ever need to move away or to the mouse if I don't need to. Yes, if you haven't noticed, I'm a productivity/efficiency freak. If you're wondering, my macbook is similarly set up but I use QuickSilver (I prefer it over Spotlight). Though I still haven't found a good mind-mapping software that I'm happy with (so if you got any suggestions, please let me know).

Alright, KISS! Mutually exclusive, it's another thing that came up when I was researching some more about the typical "I want to lose fat and gain muscle" routine. In fact, those 2 things are mutually exclusive! In a nutshell, to lose fat, you need to burn more calories than you consume. To gain muscle, you need to consume more calories than you burn! And the only proper solution is to do them at different times. In other words, in phases. You burn fat first (but also risk burning some muscle) then you pack on some muscle (but also risk packing on some fat), then go back to burn fat, repeat. In the end, your goal is to come out with more muscle and less fat after a few phases.

So now we got the KISS attitude, we've got the realizing that things that are mutually exclusive can help towards KISS and now we have the concept of phases. This brought me back to when I first dove into GTD, one thing the author David Allen talked about how you end up wasting a lot of energy in the process of changing tracks. Like if you tried to over multi-task you end up wasting more effort because your lack of strong, deep focus on the thing you're working on results in a weaker outcome. As a lot of people know, I'm a multi-task lover. I try to make sure I'm pushing everything to the limit, I try to eat while I walk rather than sit down, I leave my reading to the bus instead of sitting in my room and wasting precious work-time, etc. But this phases concept brought me back a lot because I do agree, I've suffered from a lot of over-multi-tasking and ended up more confused with what's going on than I expected.

KISS, mutually exclusive, phases, not over-multi-tasking and focus. And that's my goal for the next 10 days, to keep it simple by making sure I focus on phasing all my mutually exclusive tasks while trying my to make sure I know my multi-tasking limits. This is going to be a tough 10 days because it'll require quite some discipline on my part because I know I get really greedy sometimes and just wanna do so many things all at the same time which sounds possible on paper, but from my experience usually fails :P. Like telling myself I'm ready to go do cardio for an hour straight at the gym! Sure, I'm fit enough, but 1 hour later, I'll be dead. And the rest of my day/night suffer.

So here we go! Woohoo! A (relatively) short simple post! :D Have a good week + 3 days!

It's Sunday, the day of rest

Well, it's Sunday and technically should be the day of rest. In many ways, it still is a day of rest for me as I'm doing all the things I enjoy, even though they require voluntary effort on my part and take up my whole day.

Oh, by the way, after writing the previous post last night, I got up and was swept away with exhaustion and decided I would just go to sleep. I was actually so tired, I couldn't even fall asleep! Have you ever had these before where you're too tired to even sleep!? I hate it when that happens because I really am wasting my time but at the same time, I can't do anything else! I slept a good 9 hours and woke up. All my early morning plans had to get shoved aside or pushed to the afternoon, but that's alright. So what do I have planned for today? As usual, a lot of course:

• Do my breathing exercises
  
• Practice drums (Drum Set, Hands, Feet)
• Sort out my to-do's for the rest of the week regarding all my freelance work
• Finalize all my gym workout routines (and get a work out while I'm at it)
  
• Finish sorting out a few more processes on my computer
• Go play my drum gig tonight
• Update this post to see how much of this I've accomplished :P

You know, the more I try to do, the more I agree with one statement that said you are as productive as you are relaxed. I used to be a big fan of intensity where I thought the more intense I was, the more work I could get done. But that's like saying the tenser your muscles, the more you can get them to work. Muscles work by getting tense, not being tense! Same for me being productive, by starting off relaxed, I give myself all that room of building focus and intensity as I become productive.

Speaking of being focused, after a lot of hard work and discipline, I've managed to get quite focused now when I practice my drumming. I can sit there with my practice pad and metronome and do a series of control bounces at the same speed for a whole 10 minutes without getting bored. How? Well Rhythm Coach on my DB-90 metronome helps a lot because it keeps things happening, one moment I'm on the dot, next moment I'm too fast or too slow so I have to keep up constantly! In the beginning this used to get discouraging, but now I love it! Makes me really focus on hitting the mark of every beat perfectly! I'm not saying I want to be a drum machine, I'm saying I want to have the option of being a drum machine when I was to.

Wow, that brings me to another point. I was watch the Modern Drummer Festival 2006 Saturday & Sunday last night and in the interviews section, Thomas Lang talked about his performances and how he improvises most of his performances and it made me think of one thing. Many artists and people who always claim to want to break the rules in their creativity and so choose to do things with no regard to the rules. Now I'm sure you've heard the statement "To break the rules, you need to know what the rules are first". That goes the same with my drumming. For me to play drums with a human touch (ie. not like a machine), I need to be able to be a machine, too. Basically, instead of saying I don't want to play like a machine, so I don't practice as strict as I do, is wrong. It should be "I can play like a machine, but in this situation, I choose not to." Jo Jo Mayer said the same thing when he talked about using a drum stick's bounce rather than trying to do the full down and up motion by yourself. He says not to think of this as a crutch where you rely on the bounce to get the job done, but more like you realize the bounce is going to happen, so why not work in harmony with it rather than waste the potential of the stick's bounce? So true, so true! Ever since I started doing a lot of the things I do, I've learnt to see the world around me in a different perspective. Things that used to discourage me because I'd feel let down by them now pump me up even more because it reminds me how much it all comes down to me and myself.

One day while walking in the MTR, I thought of one phrase which I really like: "Only I can hurt me". This is so true! Things that used to upset me or hurt me only bother me because I let them into my system and do their damage. It's just a mental shift that is necessary for me to push them out or turn them into energy for me to go even further. When I did my corporate stand up comedy gig, I was nervous as ever. I think the most nervous I'd ever been in my life because I was really, really, on my own. But that experience made me also realize the potential that was in me when it came to relying on myself. It reminded me how much I can do as long as I shift my focus in the right direction! I mentally prepared myself that night and just let it flow and it worked out! :D This was one thing I learnt from the book Effortless Mastery: Liberating the Master Musician Within where the author talked about why musicians did drugs and stuff and about how the best performances were those by musicians who just let it go and play. It's so true. Many seasoned musicians will tell you the same thing. Practice all you want, but when it comes to performance time, throw it all away and just play the music! I do that very often now, I go with my feeling rather than the vocabulary of licks and grooves I have in my head. But to do this, I need to have that vocabulary to start off with. It's much like a person who learns the alphabet and a few words can never write a masterpiece. I need to have my vocabulary digested into my system to really be able to play-at-will! The same goes with my stand up routines. The more I do it, the more my bits get digested into my system and I can pull at them whenever I want and execute them at will. And so having done that corporate gig, it makes me realize that shows at the comedy club are relatively nothing (stress-wise) comparatively and so whenever I perform there and find myself getting nervous, I remember how I managed to survive through the corporate gig and I'm calm again.

This brings me back to the things I have to do today. Don't get me wrong, there have been many, many, many days where I wanted to do 100 things and only accomplished one. Heck, last night was a perfect example. While writing my entry, I had all these things lined up. After pressing the Publish Post button, I just went to sleep! But this doesn't discourage me because I also know there were times when I wanted to do 100 things and I ended up doing 101 things! I know it's possible so I keep at it and take advantage of it whenever I can. If I can't, I accept it and move on! :)

But one final note before I go and get on with my day and stop making this a super long post, is that what I say here is theoretically straight-forward and true. Like any other human, I have times of weakness where I find myself just emotionally wrecked. All the great ways of thinking and positivity just can't help me. This, in my opinion, is normal, it reminds me that I'm still a fragile human being that is alive. It's at times like these I appreciate the days when I'm truly a happy, happy person because without a few crap moments, happy moments will get normalized and you'll get used to it. So on days when I feel bummed out, it's really a blessing in disguise because thanks to that day, the next day when I feel better, I'll really feel better, not just be better.

Anyways, let's see how I get through today!

Update at 4:19pm.
I've done the following:

• Breathing exercises
• Drum practice (Drumset)

I'm about to go shower then hit the gym, so on my way I'll try and sort out the following:

• Sort out my to-do's for the rest of the week regarding all my freelance work
• Finalize all my gym workout routines (and get a work out while I'm at it)
  

Going to be a long, long day.... :)

Update at 01:19am (31 Dec. 2007)
Wow, I just got home. The show went well and boy was I glad I went to the gym before hand! I sorted out all the different variations on exercises I can/will be doing, so I'm all set for a routine. I'll be back tomorrow to work out my aerobic exercises. Still debating if I should go jog around the race track or just stick to the gym. I don't want to strain my knees too much but at the same time, the race track just rocks!

Alright! So I still need to accomplish the following:

• Drum practice (Hand/Feet exercises)
  
• Finish sorting out a few more processes on my computer

I didn't fully finish off writing out all the work I have for my freelance projects and also I still have my hand and feet exercises I need to get through for my drums. Speaking of drums, I got so much time to jam tonight on stage! I love jamming! This is the time where I really just throw away everything I've practiced and just play from the heart. I'm not scared to muck up nor am I worried I'll miss the beat. I have faith in my jamming abilities and tonight it went nice and smooth as usual! All those rap beats I've learn came out and I funk'ed up what was supposed to be a totally metal show! Hehe!

I'm off to finish off the remainder of today's to-do's! :D

Update: 04:09am (31 Dec 2007):
Woohoo, finished!

• Drum practice (Hand exercises)
  
• Finish sorting out a few more processes on my computer

Ok, I admit, I didn't do my feet exercises because I really was just too damn tired I couldn't help it. I just got out of the shower and am about to hit the sack. I have a long, long day ahead of me tomorrow before I say goodbye to good old 2007. I still remember starting the year with the phrase "2007 is the year for change". A lot has changed! A lot! Some of them were intentional and voluntary, while others were unfortunately forced upon me. But I can only take them all as blessings because if not for them, I wouldn't be where I am today. So much has happened that it makes me really curious as to where I'll be this time next year. For once, I look back at the year and don't feel "wow, the year's over already?" but instead smile because I know I really made the most of the year, just like I made the most of today.

I had my highs and obviously I had my lows... but today, I'm at peace with myself. As of right now, I know I did my best and that's all that matters to me, that I did my best and that means tomorrow I'll be better than I was today because as long as I keep working at something, I do nothing but improve.

I wish all my readers the best of luck in 2008 because let me say it now, 2008 is the year everything happens. I can feel it in my blood! I've worked too damn hard for it not to and I know I can, so it's just a matter of doing it now! Watch out world! :D

One too many...

Woah, talk about having an intensive start! I wake up, and get like 3 phone calls straight of people asking me questions and stuff! Don't get me wrong, they did nothing wrong, but today I really just wanted to wake up and just relax for a bit. I've had a long hard day yesterday as I juggled many meetings and pushed myself to rethink of strategies for the day while I was outside most of the day. My new GTD implementation in Outlook is really rocking! There still are a few glitches I need to work out on a personal customization level, but otherwise I'm loving my current work process I've created for myself. The only problem is when my next-action widgets keep growing while I don't have enough time to crank through each one of them. It's like, I know what I need to do and they keep piling up but I physically can't keep up with it at times.

Yes I need to get extra help, I agree, but I think there are a few more kinks I need to sort through before I can think of hiring people to help me out. I guess the main thing stopping me is the need for a flexible schedule on my part. You know that experiment where they pour oil in a bottle of sand and the oil seeps into the gaps of the sand granules? I'm taking that concept into my daily scheduling because I realized instead of working on one level, for example, like burning a CD-R, I can work on two levels, so while burning the CD-R, I could finish typing that email because burning the CD-R doesn't require the resources I need for writing an email. And as I expand, I realize I can do a lot more, like if I need to go to the library, I'll definitely schedule my gym working within that time so I don't find myself going out and coming back and then going out again (ie. I cut out one whole journey from my schedule). However, this requires a new way of thinking when scheduling my time/day because I need to categorize each job and see how they fit best with all the other things I need to do. This is where my GTD implementation comes in with those @PC, @Outdoors, etc. tags but I need to customize them more to suit my personal requirements and taste.

So what has been up? Well I played at a band show! :D Wahoo! I mean not just jamming at the last minute, proper performance. I play drums for this band called Crazimals and we performed last Saturday and it was awesome! I haven't played a proper live gig like that in ages! They're, in my opinion, an emo-hardcore band which reminds me of my old band where we tried to achieve what they're doing. It's quite good fun because their songs aren't all metal, they have more emotions in them so it gives me a good change from my own band : ) Not to mention they sing in Mandarin and all I have to take care of is the drums rather than help manage the band too. I must say I freaking love playing drums, I've been disciplining myself a lot lately with my practice and working hard at it because I know drumming is one of those things you just cant cram. That's a thing I have to take into consideration when organizing myself, there are jobs that can be done all at once and some others that are temporal and need to be spread over time. It's like a wound healing, you can do all your dressing on the same day but no matter what it'll need time to heal.

Speaking of healing wounds, I finally wrote lyrics for 2 of my band's songs! I realized it's quite therapeutic at times but also can sometimes pull you down into the shits while writing it. We're down to our 5th song now and once we get that down and also work out with the vocalist we'll be ready to rock at shows! :) I look forward to it, but before that, there is so much to still do. I need to re-tune my drums a bit better so we can record better because I'm really getting sick of my current drum sound but at the same time what sucks is that I need to re-tune 7 at a go if I plan on doing this! Not to mention a huge burn of time but money too! Drum heads aren't cheap! Especially when you use 2-ply ones as well! Yikes! Ah well, what can you do...

Like I said in my title, there are always one too many things to consider with everything. I've learnt what information-overload is really like and in many ways I'm facing it everyday. I was joking with my friend Samuel yesterday about how it sucks to be "smart". What I mean is that, and as my other friend Sharon told me, the smarter you are, the more people will cling on to you and need your help. It's cool but at the same time can really wear you out. Just yesterday, one of my uncle's computer died and he urgently needed me to help him build a new one, I got it done within 24 hours with everything setup for him. The only reason he called me like this was because he'd heard I was reliable and fast. I knew exactly what to do so within minutes I re-arranged my schedule to accommodate going to the computer mall and getting a custom built computer for him. This brings me to yet another self-organization problem where urgent cases pop up and you need to immediately decide what not to do so you can do this urgent job first. If I hadn't taken the time-sensitivity of the custom-built computer into consideration, I'd have probably lost this opportunity and the income that came along, not to mention a new client :).

So it's another Day 10 entry, and the main thing that happened was I played drums in a live gig! I got my GTD properly implemented into my PDA and Outlook and I'm ready to move on with learning other tools/methods to organize myself. Hopefully in another 10 days I'll have that sorted out too and I'll be one step closer to achieving productivity zen. I like Thomas Edison's goal of every 10 days achieving a minor goal, it really helps me focus better on the bigger picture because I've broken it into smaller bits and pieces. For anyone who doesn't know what I'm talking about, go read a bit about him and you'll see what I mean.

So how am I doing today? I'm a bit stressed out at the moment because I've got to go for a seminar tonight but I have quite a lot of coding work to get done today. I've already got my next week's work scheduled for myself so I must stay on track this week! Oh man, this is like crunch time for me where everything is happening at the same time! Let's see what happens over the next 10 days and I'll let you know if I rocked and rolled or crashed and burned :P

I'll make you laugh and scream!

Wahoo!! What a crazy 10 days!! Life is mad, hectic yet totally full of surprises! :P

So first off, great news, I am officially Hong Kong's funniest (Chinese-speaking) person! I won the Chinese category for the First Hong Kong Comedy Festival. I got into the finals for the English one but didn't make it in the top 3 in the end. I was quite exhausted since I had to perform practically every night of last week!
Also, I got to open for Paul Ogata on Thursday (25 October 2007)! It was awesome to be in his presence. I got to see him perform and boy was I blown away! The guy is so smooth with picking at the audience. I admire the way he delivers his jokes.
Oh and here's a picture of my trophy! It's so cool, when I first saw it when I joined the comedy competition, I thought "Man, that'd be cool to have on my desk!" and guess what, it's on my desk! Enjoy the photo:

And so people laughed away last week. Then came this week, the almighty Halloween on Wednesday (31 October 2007). Every year I have a tradition of dressing up and going out to scare kids around Lan Kwai Fong. This year I was so tied up with work I almost missed it. I really didn't feel like hitting the streets or dressing up. I was even going to go to the Take Out Comedy Halloween party as myself (with black painted nails only) but at around 6:30pm, I just stopped my work and got up and organized a DIY costume :). I thought to myself, heck it's once in a year anyways, I have a great time going out taking photos and playing with the crowd so why not! It was so cool at the party, then I headed out and then turns out my friend Adam from Spermatic Chord was playing at the California Entertainment Building and I joined him for improvised drumming and beatboxing for a while. It was so cool, first time I've played drums for him for a whole show!
I'll see if I can get my hands on a full-body picture of me in my Halloween outfit because all the pictures I have are head shots only (yay to arm-length photography).

And today is Friday. I've finally calmed down and got my focus back and I'm ready to rock at my work again. I got to go on the Suzie Wong Radio show today in the afternoon to talk about my Chinese Stand-up Comedy experience and it was quite fun. I realized I really do enjoy just chit-chatting and joking around. It brought back memories of City University's Web Radio show I used to do with my friend Daniel (who I met today). In case you click on the link, the blue-colored show on the top-right corner is the one I was in (yep, that's me on the right with my tongue sticking out :P).

And now comes the weekend. The weather's cooler and life is turning good lately. My projects are calming down and I'm finally hitting the point where I'm under more and more control of everything. I'm more focused than before partly because I'm finally realizing a lot of things about life. So today is my Day 10 entry and I really should have a lesson or something wise to say. Well let's just say that sometimes when you just have faith, things work out. I'm not talking no religious faith, I'm talking faith in yourself that you know what, you're not retarded, you do it, it just works out. Stand up comedy has long been something I've been interested in, I just always filed it under Someday/Maybe (Yes, all you GTD lovers, I am a GTD guy, too). Today, it's filed under I did it! :) It's a good feeling.

My friend Bun's leaving in a couple of weeks so I'll be hitting the camping trail with him sometime. He took me up to Mount Davis once to see the view of Hong Kong and omfg! WOAH! It's so refreshing, just like the view from the Lookout point near the Ching Ma Bridge! He never fails to take me to places that inspire and relax me at the same time. I get into this meditative state whenever we're out in the wilderness or just away from the hustle and bustle of the city. Heck I get inspired when I just hang out with him! He helped me a lot with my Chinese stand up comedy's material by being honest and critical about every joke I have. His special lady friend Sally helped out a lot, too! I get both their perspectives and work stuff out. If it weren't for the two of them, I'd probably be making cheap jokes in Cantonese and would never have this lovely trophy on my desk (unless they made pirated knock-off's! :P).

Anyways, it's time for me to head back into reality and get some stuff done. Tune in next time, I may have a tonne more happy stories to share with you. If not, well, make my life interesting somehow.

Work hard to be lazy

I've always been a big fan of smart lazy people not because I admired their ability to do nothing but I admired their ability to do nothing but still get things done.

Over time, I developed a mentality that I wanted to work hard to be as lazy (read free) as I could without having to sacrifice my work and its quality. Basically, I wanted to accomplish 48 hours worth of work in 24 hours time!

In the book Cracking Creativity: The Secrets of Creative Genius, one of the creativity techniques the author suggested was to use a paradox to stimulate new ideas and this immediately reminded me of the joke I used to tell co-workers that I wanted to work hard to be lazy. Perhaps you should give it a shot. Let me explain.

Working hard to be lazy basically means investing the extra effort (working hard) at first so that it will pay off in the long run (be lazy). I've broken down the process I took to achieve the lazy state I can be in guilty-free.

Re-evaluate your work processes
The lazy man will try to accomplish 2 hours worth of work in 1 hour's time but sometimes at the expense of the work's quality.
Think of it as efficiency = quality/time taken (referencing speed = distance/over). If the time taken is reduced, either the job's quality has to be lowered or the efficiency must be increased. Efficiency really relates to the work process. So in order to keep the quality the same and reduce the time taken, the work process must be changed. To do so requires a re-evaluation of your work processes.
Just because you want to do more doesn't mean you can do more. The saying when there's a will, there's a way only goes so far as to motivate you to start moving, you need to grease your wheels to let that momentum flow smoothly. Many people fall into the trap of getting comfortable with their process and never want to change. That's like a baby realizing he can travel by not crawling and so never sees the necessity of walking.
Take an hour and think of it as investment, to really analyze how you work. For designers like myself it may be how you approach design, do you just dive in and create some visuals? Or do you think about the objective you want to achieve first (eg. create a design that appeals to the young crowd)?
In Stephen Covey's book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, one of the habits is to begin with the end in mind. I am a firm believer of the value of pre-production as it gives me a clear goal of what I aim to achieve and so instead of just doing for the sake of getting it done, I'm doing for the sake of achieving a clear objective.

Don't repeat yourself
After evaluating what you do, you may have some ideas of what you want to improve or modify. Break it down to its core. For example, when I was re-evaluating myself, I realized I was doing a lot of repetitive tasks in my work. I'm a designer slash programmer, so very often jobs may overlap each other in functionality and so I'd find myself sometimes recreating the same function I did before simply because I couldn't be bothered to try to understand my code from a previos project. I'd waste good amounts of time doing this when all I really needed was perhaps a code library so whenever I needed a certain function, I'd have it ready-made in my library.
David Allen mentions in his book Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity that you shouldn't have to think about a thought more than once because then you're wasting your efforts. I agree, which is why after you evaluate your work processes, eliminate duplications in whatever you do or automate it after you do it once. For example, instead of checking your mail by having to click on the Check mail button, find a way to automate it.

Try a new process
Be open to completely changing the way you work. You can't expect to become more productive unless you pay a price at first. So bear with me and give this a shot. In my pursuit for ultimate productivity, I've changed from analog tools to digital tools. I tried different online tools such as Remember the Milk and 30 Boxes (both are free) and they worked for me as a beginning GTD follower, but over time my demands grew and currently, I'm giving My Life Organized a whirl and so far I'm loving it because it is much, much faster than the online tools I used to use so I don't end up wasting more time waiting for a page to load and tell me what I need to do (which kind of used to discourage me from relying on the tool in the first place).

Refine yourself
By refining yourself I mean going through this work hard to be lazy process in iterations. Try a new process, if that doesn't help as much as you hoped, try another process. The worst thing that could happen is that you don't find any improvement in your work process and go back to your original process and just work hard. Did you lose anything? You may say the time you spent searching, but think about it, how much have you gained? Right now in theory it may not seem much, but give this a shot and come back to this 1 week later and ask yourself what you gained. If not a new process, I guarantee you'll have become more open-minded to trying new things or at least created the desire to improve :).

So what benefits did I personally get from this?
Basically, it isn't so much that I want to achieve more with less effort, but I now hunger to improve the way I work because I know I can work less and get more. Now that I have a full-time job, I only have at most 5 hours a day where I can do what I want before I have to hit the sack. In that time, I want to achieve nothing less than 8 hours worth of stuff and so I keep trying to get myself to figure out ways to either automate or streamline. For example, for all you firefox users, you may be familiar with its ability to bookmark a set of tabs into one category. Using that, you can come home from work, fire-up that set of bookmarks and go to the toilet or fill that glass of water. Instead of sitting at my computer waiting for the web pages to load, use that time to do a quick job, a minimum of 1 minute saved. Later I may start to burn a DVD and since it takes around 10 minutes, I go for a shower during that time.
In thinking that way, I found that my work towards achieving laziness gives me energy that doesn't feel like forced effort but more like freely chosen effort.
It's been a while since I began my journey to achieving ultimate laziness and I find myself working harder and harder at it but loving it even more as things fall into place.

Work hard to be lazy, yes, it sounds stupid but doesn't it spark a few weird ideas and thoughts when you think that way? Instead of trying to work hard because you need to achieve me, twist the mentality and tell yourself you're working hard so you don't have to (eventually :P).