This Is Me A Few Years Ago

My name is Banji and I am an information addict. (This is the part where you say – “Hi Banji!”)

I used to read every words in the book and tried to get as much wisdom from it as possible. I would then take notes and sometime try my best to memorize what I just read.

In the past, I even took note from watching the Discovery Channel so I can quote them later.

Why Doing Everything Twice Can Be A Problem

Clearly this is NOT the way to go. If I continue taking note from the books I read, I will spend half of my life rewriting all the books I read. It is very likely that I will never even read the notes. It’s just like buying a DVD with the intention of rewatching it when you have free time, in the end, the DVD is just collecting dust somewhere in your room.

In short, some people (myself included) really like to do everything twice or thrice. If we read a book, we will reread it a couple more time to make sure we don’t miss anything. If we like a movie, we will rewatch it again and again just to enjoy it. However this is not a very productive habit.

You may now ask “So what’s the problem?”.

If you think about it, there shouldn’t be any problem. You will be able to memorize a whole novel or an encyclopaedia (Who reads encyclopaedia anyway?) or you will be able to enjoy your favorite movies instead of all the rubbish on other channels,

The truth is, you are actually depleting your most valuable resource pointlessly – Time.

An average human is estimated to live up to 70 years. Just imagine spending 70 years rereading the same 10 books or watching the same 10 movies Don’t you think it is a waste of your time? In that 70 years you should be able to finish at least 1200 books (if you read 2 books monthly since age 20).

Why can’t we do everything just one time and still get the benefit of people redoing it a thousand times?

The following tips may help you to do just that.

1) Remember the 10

When you read a book, make it a point to list down 10 lessons you can extract from it. For example, if you read this article, just try to remember the 3 points listed here. After you finish reading it, repeat that 3 points in your mind and you don’t need to reread this article ever again.

Of course if you are reading a motivational book, try to memorize 10 points from what you have just read. If you found your 10 points but you are still on page 20, stop reading for the day. Continue reading tomorrow for another 10 points.

Another example is when you are reading a novel. Try to visualize all the key events in the story. Once you reached that 10 points, you can stop reading for the day. Repeat the story in your mind based on the 10 key events and continue reading the novel tomorrow.

You get the picture.

2) Forbid yourself from redoing what’s done

This is usually the hardest part. It’s very hard to keep your hand off from rereading what you have read yesterday. Just remember that you don’t have the time to redo everything in your life. Be slightly firm with this.

Even if you forget the story or the 10 points from yesterday, just continue reading. Believe me, the memory will resurface and when it does, it will be even harder to forget it later.

3) Have faith in your mind

Do you know that our brain is one of the most amazing things in the world. Studies have been done on the mind for thousands of years and we still barely scratch the surface of its true potential.

There’s a case featured on Discovery Channel not long ago about a woman who fall down a cliff and broke her knee. She was alone in the forest and she should not be able to survive without any help. Somehow, her subconcious mind realized that if she was in pain, there’s no way she would be able to get help, so the brain had stopped the pain neural system from sending pain messages to the brain. She didn’t feel any pain at all. In the end, she manage to walk for miles and get help even with her broken knee. Amazing!

I’m sorry I can’t put a reference link to the story, but it really is a true story.

In short, what ever you want, your mind will make it happen. Never underestimate what it capable of doing. Once you have memorize the 10 points, it will be stored permanently in your brain. Believe in this. You just need to know how to retrieve it effectively. I will elaborate on this in the future.

- I wonder -
How many of us reread a book more than twice?

———— Personal Note ————
I have in my collection about 100 VCDs and DVDs of movies. My real intention when I first bought them is to rewatch the movies whenever I have nothing to do. It has been a few years after I bought my first VCD – “Hollow Man”, and I can safely say that I rewatch only about 1% of them.

When I think about it, I have bought a lot of things based on the intention to reuse it over and over but I usually will only use it once.

Photo Credit – Demi Brooke

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Summary – Spoon-Feeding Effect of Reading

For the record, I love reading. Always have and always will. There’s no substitute to reading. It is the only portal to knowledge. If you want knowledge and wisdom, reading is the way to go. I’m not debating this so rest assured that you are not going to read about the benefit of reading today.

However, there is one side effect of reading that you really must know. If I can name it, I will call it Spoon-Feeding Effect of Reading. It is when you read a book, and you just believe and absorb everything you just read without ever drawing any conclusion from it.

For example, John is reading a book about politics. As we all know, the political stand of the author will always be mirrored in a book about politics. John had absorbed everything he read from the book that he is now an exact clone of the author when it comes to political stand.

This is one of the side effect of reading that you must know before attempting to read anything. You must never absorb everything the author wrote and make it your opinion.

You may ask, “what harm can this do?”. Well quite a lot actually. You could end up with these effects.

• No creativity – How creative can you be if you are nodding to everything the author gave you.

• Non-critical mind – You will need critical mind, when it comes to making good decision or brainstorming.

• Lazier mind – The mind is like any other muscle in your body. You exercise them, it gets stronger. Vice versa.

• No individuality – Have you ever met a person, and you notice immediately that he is different from the rest of us. He stands out naturally. That is because he is not a clone of anyone.

Reading will always be the best way to learn. But you should also know the best way to read. What you should consider when reading a book are as follows:

• Read the book.

• Try to grasp the message in the book.

• Search your mind for your own opinion about the topic at hand.

• Compare notes between the message and yours. The author can’t be always right and he can’t also be always wrong.

• Draw your own conclusion to the matter.

You may find these steps very simple, but you will be surprised to know that almost all readers fail to practise them. It is always easier to take the author’s word for it.

Conclusion

Books and blogs are usually written by smart people. And the readers are usually very keen to learn more about the subject from these smart people. What better way to be smarter than to learn it from smart people. You just need to make it a habit to develop your own conclusion from anything you read.

Your conclusion can be wrong. It can also turn out to be a smarter approach. What ever it is, it will always be yours. Nothing beats that.

- I wonder -
Besides fiction, what other types of books do you read?

———— Personal Note —————
I remember when I was a child, people often asked what my hobby was? I will then answered almost immediately, “Reading”. I guess reading was just the easiest answer or maybe I knew that people will stop asking when you answered “Reading”.

Photo Credit – Lin Pernille

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One of the most sought after knowledge is on how to understand the human mind. It takes hundred of years for people to get a grasp of its true potential and yet we are still scratching the surface. That being said, I’m going to introduce you to one theory of mind utilization which is The Theory of Three.

Just like a radio that will only produce clear sound when you tune it specifically to, let say, 100.1MHz, the mind will also work at its best efficiency if you know how to finetune it. And in this specific case, one way of finetuning your mind is via The Theory of Three.

What Is Theory of Three

Basically the theory states that our mind works best when it is associated with the number three.

The best way to explain the theory is by examples. Just have a look at the world’s famous three; “The Three Stooges”, “The Charmed Ones”, “Do Re Mi”, “The Three Musketeers”, “Location Location Location”, “Just Do It”, “As easy as A B C”, “On the count of three 1 2 3″. These are a few of phrase and title that comes in three.

All of them are very catchy, very easy to remember and very popular. Imagine changing the phrase to “The Stooge”, “Re”, “Do It”, “As easy as B C” and “On The Count Of 56″. The phrase will not be appealing now wouldn’t it?

This is how The Theory of Three works. By changing the form of your thoughts into another form that is associated with the number three, you are actually finetuning your thoughts making it more catchy and more effective.

How To Apply The Theory of Three

1) Change your life motto. Motto like “I’m going to be the no 1 student of this class” will not work. Use motto such as “No 1 Student”

2) Repeat important keywords three times. If you are going to remind yourself to study, Repeat the words “Study Study Study”. It will have more impact than just the one word.

3) Reorganize your subject in three. Always read three chapters of your subject every day. And rearrange the notes in each chapter into three different groups. Do this until you can actually see your three chapters in your head with all the three branches. Memorizing three chapters? Not a problem anymore

4) Better headline for reports. If your assignment require you to come up with a title. Try to adjust it to utilize this theory of three. Instead of “The Complete Study of Human”, try “The Mind, Body & Soul – A Study”. Your assignment will immediately stand out from the crowd.

Conclusion – Applying The Theory of Three is only limited by your imagination. You can always find other ways to utilize this technique and make everything in your life comes as easy as A B C

- I Wonder -
Anything else comes to your mind that utilizes The Theory of Three?

———- Personal Note ———–
One of my favorite books during my childhood (10 years old) is a local book “3 Penyiasat” (3 Investigators). It is a story of 3 teenagers that often come across a crime case and successfully solve it. I still remember their name – Jalil, Gopal and Ah Meng.

Somehow the books had inspired me to start my own investigating club. We were supposed to investigate the claim that there was a ghost in our school. But of course in the end, the club just got deactivated because everyone was equally scared

Photo Credit – SweetGirl

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Summary – 10 important message to all students

If you can go back in time to meet your past self, What year will you go? And what will you say to him/her. Will you go to the day you get married and stop yourself from marrying? Or will you go to yesterday, and tell your past self what happen today?

Imaginative, yes. But it is still an interesting question to ask yourself occasionally. We have grown wiser over the years and sometimes there is this urge to share what you have learnt to someone else who may very well repeat all your mistakes.

Personally, I will go back to the first day I became a college student. And I will pass these 10 messages to my past self.

1) Backup all your notes in your hard disk.
I graduated from my college with almost no notes from my study. Somehow I lost almost all of them. It’s as if I had never been to one. What a waste. Some of them might not be very useful and relevant but still, I paid for the course, and I had to work hard to pass all of them. They are my asset and I lost half of them.

Word of advice – Scan your paper based note, or maybe snap some pictures of the notes with your digital camera. Don’t forget to organize them properly. You may forget which goes to which if you procrastinate.

2) Choose wisely which textbook to buy
This is another mistake I made when I first started college. I bought every textbook recommended by the lecturers. It turned out, some of them were not being used at all. That money can be put to better use.

Word of advice – Check with your seniors on what books to buy. Some may prove more useful than another. For the less useful ones, maybe you can share with a couple of friends to buy it. More money saved for you.

3) Money to be spent is money left at the end of the month.
I learnt this the hard way. Whenever I get my allowance early in the month, I will usually spend it immediately. I went ice skating (it was a new thing back then) or go to internet cafe. And I was living neck to neck from month to month financially.

Word of advice – Money received early of the month should be used in life and death situation ONLY. For example, you don’t eat, you die. So then it’s OK to eat. You should only use the extra money saved at the end of the month for leisure.

4) Save money for your job hunt
After I graduated, I just realized that I have no money to job hunt. No money to buy newspaper, or to go for interview, or to buy stamps or print resume. I had to work as a gift wrapper at a mall just to pay for my job hunt.

Word of advice – Spending money is fun. I know, I’ve been there. But you will need some money to get you started after college. Start saving some every month. You will not regret it. I wonder how many job interview I had to turn down just because I don’t have enough money to go to the interview.

5) Listen to the lectures the first time
Believe me when I tell you this. For a college student, there are only about 10 hours per day. You are busy going to class, doing assignments and projects, maintaining student organization, sports. And if that’s not all, you are dating a few girls at the same time. Seriously where will you find the time to restudy.

Word of advice – Listen to your lectures the first time. Listen carefully and try to understand them IN CLASS. You will never need to study them again. Imagine the time you saved.

6) Identify your destructive addiction
I was addicted to chatting over IRC back then. I almost failed a few subject just because I couldn’t find the time to do them. That’s me. You may find another form of addiction.

Word of advice – Identify your addiction. It’s actually easy to do. If you notice you are not doing your assignment, you miss deadline, that’s the signs that you are addicted to something. It can be blogging, IM or even stumbling interesting sites. Deal with that immediately. If not, it may be too late when you realized what has happened to you.

7) Enjoy your long holiday
I think I can say this on behalf of everyone that is currently working. Please enjoy your holiday. When you are working, there are no more long holiday for you. The boss will be smiling disapprovingly if you apply for leave longer than 4 days.

Word of advice – Enjoying holiday doesn’t mean that you need to be in your bed the whole time. Do everything you want to. Go travelling. See the world.

8] Try to know as many people possible.
Now that I am working, I found a lot of my college batch. I don’t even know the name of some of them but they know my name and instantaneously we become friends. Imagine if I made the effort to know more of my college batch. I will then have a bigger network of friends which will help each other out in any situation. For example, I can ask them if they are any vacancy in their company, etc.

Word of advice – You don’t need to be best friend to everyone. You just need to be able to say hi occasionally to everyone. At least after college, they will know that you used to study in the same college when you bump into each other.

9) Be in contact with your lecturers.
Your lecturers are basically your real live wikipedia. Whenever you have a problem later in your work, you can always give them a call asking for help. It’s like free lifetime consultation. It’s a priviledge given to you since you are their student. Term and condition apply of course. The TACs are that you must keep in touch with all the lecturers, and more importantly you must be nice to them during your college years.

Word of advice – lecturers are not enemies. They are not going all out to get you. They are actually really good people wanting to teach you all they know. And when you appreciate this, they will appreciate you even more.

10) Enjoy your student life
Word of advice – This is my last message to my past self. It can be stressful, depressing sometimes. You may feel like running to another country sometime from all the boredom. Still, college life is one of the best time in your life. Enjoy.

- I wonder -
What will your message to your past self be?

Photo Credit – Foundphotoslj

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The life of a student has always been like a tug war between being motivated and plain lazy. I know. I’ve been there. Some time, we become so motivated, we even seek for extra work just to enhance our learning. Another time, there are no motivational speech in the world that will make us wake up from that comfy bed.

When that laziness attacks and you have so many things to do, what would you do?

These are a few tricks that I tried as my last resort to get things done. Most of the time they worked. Try them and tell me how it goes.

1) Read standing up
Sometimes I have trouble waking up when I read my notes. So what I did was reading the notes while standing up. If you can walk that would be even more effective to combat those drowsiness. However I found out that my concentration deteriorates even faster walking.

2) One page at a time
This is my last resort to almost anything. If I have to read 20 pages of notes, I will force myself to read 1 page. That’s it. I promise myself that after that 1 page is done and I fully understand or memorize the page, I can stop studying altogether.

Usually by the time I understand the subject, I will be more in the studying mode and thus page 2

3) Report your failure to other people
This also should be used as the super last resort. Make yourself accountable. Not to anyone but to your parent. I know.. it may sound very childish reporting yourself to your parent but believe me it work.

All you need to do is to write an email (if your parent read email of course) reporting every assignment need to be done, and notes to be studied. And each day, you should HONESTLY write a progress email detailing your progress. If you didn’t touch anything on the subject, confess to your parent and give reason why.

If the shame of not doing anything didn’t move you to finish your work, I don’t know what will.

4) Bet with your lecturer
How about if you prepare one letter signed by you and give that letter to your lecturer when you started the semester.

Put it in writing that everytime you are unable to deliver your assignment in time, you will wash his car FOC. The lecturer will definitely make use of this offer. He will look for your assignment first everytime. And you will feel more driven to do your assignment.

5) Red card of wealth
This is a system I created just to give me an extra push with money. However, being a student I don’t have money. Not much anyway. So what I did is creating about 20 red cards per month. I put value to the card at about $10 per card. So if by the end of the month I still have 20 cards, that is like an extra $200 in my pocket.

Whenever I want to push myself to work, I will just warn myself that 1 card will be burnt down (literally burnt) if I didn’t do the work.

Where will the money come from, my current salary of course. Once I start working, I am entitled to spend the red cards guilt free

6) When motivated, do extra
There will be times when you just super motivated for no apparent reason. How? Still a mystery to me. What I did when I’m in that state is to do extra work. Maybe study those subject not yet covered by lecturers, do past year questions etc.

Why I do this? Because there will be times when I’m just super lazy and all the above will not change it. By doing extra work when I’m motivated, I will feel less guilty being lazy sometime later.

- I wonder -
What do you do as your last resort to get things done?

——– Personal Note ———
I still have a few more techniques, but a bit abstract to describe here. Maybe next time

Now that I work, I actually still practise some of the methods. I honestly give report to my manager on what I have done and what I still don’t do. He may not even care, but I am so ashame to report on task not completed, I usually will finish them all. Well most of them anyway

Photo Credit – Orangeacid

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A few days back, one reader by the nick SilentReader had asked me one question to be discussed here – How to improve long term memory. Shall we?

First of all, allow me to interest you with some articles I’ve actually written on the subject.

• How SpongeBob Improves Memory
• The Secret To Reread The Thickest Book In 5 Minutes

To tell you the truth, I actually did quite a lot of thinking on the matter. And at the end of the day, I’ve concluded that there is only one way to be able to memorize something and remember it for the rest of your life.

You must want to remember.

Seriously, I can list down every technique known to mankind – Chinese One Syllable Technique, Association, Repetition, Funny Images, House Mapping etc. But they will prove ineffective if you just don’t want to remember.

However trying to make yourself want something is not an easy thing to do. Why? It’s because the mind is always behaving like a child.

What will happen if you ask a child to work instead of playing? He will first disapprove and will try to wiggle his way out of the task. If that didn’t work, he will do the job lazily, hoping that you will give up impatiently. What would you do?

The same goes to the mind. It will goes exactly through the same phase as the child, disapprove, wiggle and lastly do the job lazily.

How to negotiate with the mind? Well treat it like a child of course.

1) Always slow talk
Never raise your voice to your mind. The more you force yourself, the more reluctant the mind will work for you.

2) Visualize what will be achieved.
Just like a child, you must describe how they will benefit visually. Maybe draw a car that they will be able to buy if the child gets good grade and be successful. For the child, the word successful doesn’t mean much.. but if he knows that with good grade, he will get to be a pilot and buy a car. That will push him in the right direction.

Research where your graduated seniors are working now. And how much are their salary. Imagine your dream laptop that can be bought easily with your one month salary should you follow their foot steps. In short, motivate yourself (visually)

3) Join in to do the hard work.
If you put a child to work under the hot sun while you sip cold drink under the shade, the child will immediately realize he is being bullied and may stop working altogether. If you work with him under the hot sun, he will do the work more willingly.

Work together with your mind. How? for a start, when you read, you read. Don’t read with your mouth while you are thinking about how hot your girlfriend is.

4) Reward
Every child demand some reward if they do a good job. They may not say it out loud, but they really want it. Some would settle with a pat on the back, some may want cash.

Figure out the reward for your mind. It can be as simple as a 30 minutes nap or $50 to be spent on anything.

5) Make it fun
Cleaning up the house is never fun for children. But if you assigned each child to a room and whoever can clean up the fastest will win one week of no work, I’m sure the work will be done in no time.

In the case of your mind, make it fun by maybe substituting the character described in the history book with your real life friends and family. Of course don’t let yourself be the hero. Hero always get killed in history books

6) Don’t plan too far ahead.
Children hate it when you gave them 20 things to do. Most probably they will just drag the first task to avoid doing the other 19.

For your mind, try to implement this trick. Only plan to do two things at any time. It is a great Getting Things Done (GTD) tools.

- I wonder -
Any other resemblance between a child and the mind?

———- Personal Note ———–
I just love children. Just watching them play can make me smile. They have no idea what they’re playing, what’s the rule or the goal but they can still make the game looks insanely fun

I guess one of the price we have to pay growing up, is losing that sense of having fun. What do you think?

Photo Credit – Hamed Masoumi

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This time around a lot of my blogger friends (younger friends anyway) are doing their internship. Basically internship is a part of their requirement to get a college degree where they need to work at a company for a period of time and learn all there is to learn about working experience.

Today’s post will be dedicated for them. A collection of my own experience on what the hidden lessons in internship they need to acquire to get the most out of the program.

1) Learn real people skill
Working people are quite different from students. They often view other people competitively, or sometimes they are too self-centered that they just ignore you completely. Yet there are still people who is kind hearted. Colorful people.

You should learn what is the best way to introduce yourself to them. And more importantly how to get their coperation on your task at hand. Basically you need to

• Befriend one quick and get the inside story of everyone (of course casually)
• Identify who people listen to, who people hate, who people like etc.
• Your aim is to get your task done, and if you ask them for help (what ever group they are), they will more than happy to help. Find out how exactly to achieve this.

2) Learn how a boss become the boss
Once you had observed your colleague, you should start monitor your superior or your boss. Try to pinpoint what quality he has that makes him the boss. If for example, to be a boss you will need to have certain specialization certificate, jot that down. You now know what you need to get to sit on his chair someday.

• Study how he handle people
• Observe his working attitude, can you do that?

3) Secure your future career
The next thing you should question yourself is whether or not you would want to work in the company after you graduated. Well, you should because job hunting after you graduated can be a very tiring thing to do.

• Obviously you will need to perform well in that internship.
• Do some research on the company’s hiring process. It will be a good idea too to get to know the HR manager of the company and casually hinting to him about your intention of working there.
• Insist on a recommendation letter from your superior. This will help a lot in your job hunting later on.
• Take note on the details of other similar companies, such as contact person, type of industry. You may very well be working there.

4) Learn surviving work
One great thing about internship is that how ever you do, be it good or bad, you will stop working there after your internship is over. So do take up some experiment. Here’s a few ideas

• Identify what motivates you to come to work
• Try out the many ways to manage your stress
• Get involve in the office politics
• Make mistake, get yelled at by the boss and learn how to get up from that
• Experiment with management system of the company such as 5S, or Decluttering etc. See which works on you

5) Learn how to manage your money
Most of the time, intern are underpaid, so this is a great challenge. How to survive with that small amount of allowances.

As easy as it sounds, this may be one of the hardest thing to do. It’s almost come naturally that when we have money, we will spend more. This is the basis of all budgeting.

• Start by analyzing your expenditure everyday. Keep track of them and make a summary by the end of the month
• Categorize your expenditure to maybe food, entertainment, travel, phone, bill, etc.
• Now find a way to cut down 10% of expenditure in every categories.
• You are now saving 10% of your salary. Keep increasing the percentage.
• Other tips on managing your finance

/end

Internship can be heaven or hell. However, since we must undergo it, why not take full advantage of it. You know people will take advantage of you.

- I wonder -
Any interesting stories from your internship?

———— Personal Note ————-
I actually did my internship at a petrochemical company. Unlike most universities, I worked there for 7 months. Hate waking up early then to catch the bus. Love the continuous supply of hot milo Can’t forget the time I hitchiked a car to go to work, Good times good times

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We all have been there. The life in which all you should do is actually study study study. It a strange new world where every problem seems to be the most critical problem on earth. And every seconds seem like torture but when you think about it, it was the best time of your life.

However in this life (student life), you will faced some of the most challenging task in life. Hopefully these words will help you cope with the situation.

Listed below are 10 of the most common situation faced by students. And of course its corresponding responses. Just say it out loud when you are stuck in that situation.

When you are feeling lazy to study

• If I don’t study now, I will have to do it later. At least now.. I will have more time and can study with minimum concentration

When you are doing something else besides studying

• This isn’t helping

When you fail an exam

• Wow.. failure sucks. Now where exactly can I improve

When you succeed

• I will definitely remember this feeling. Now where exactly did I do right?

When you are shy to ask questions in the classroom

• Years from now, I most probably won’t meet these people again my entire life. What they think won’t matter then, and should not matter now.

When you have that butterfly in your stomach just before the exam

• I’ve done what I can, and I shall fail or succeed entirely up to my preparation. Nothing else. So get off me you silly butterfly

When you are so busy with your study, it overwhelm you.

• Stop right there.. Breathe. Let me do this one at a time. In the end, everything will be done.

When you have so much free time

• This is not supposed to happen. Either I am extremely efficient or I’m missing 2 or 3 classes

When you think you just can’t study anymore.

• I better rest. There is no such thing as information overload, it’s just that I’m tired. My brain is better than this.

When you have so many problems, you think your head is going to explode

• Millions of galaxy, each with millions of stars, each possibly with a series of planet orbitting, and assuming one of the planet may have millions of people like earth, that will total up to almost infinite amount of people, each with their very own problem. How can my problem be any bigger than this.

/end list

- I wonder -
Any other situation I might miss?

——— Personal Note ———-
I think you would agree that distraction work at its most efficiency during studying time. Suddenly there’s your favorite songs playing in the radio, or friends coming to chat. I’m not sure why, maybe because deep down we always prefer to do other things besides studying.

During my time, my only distraction is Internet Relay Chat (IRC). I actually almost fail one of my subject due to this. Anyway I learnt my lesson the hard way

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Thinking back when I was studying, nobody had actually told me what to expect and what exactly I’m supposed to do. The truth is, once you started studying at tertiary level, you were expected to be independent and figure this out yourself.

There are actually a lot of skills you must master during your studying. And you will notice how useful these skills are immediately after you finish studying

Allow me to list the top 5 skills you will need and how to nurture them..

1) Stress Management
The world is cruel out there. People screaming at you all the time, impossible deadline, back-stabbing etc. Believe me the time will come when you are so stressed that you get up and start walking very fast without realizing it. That is the early sign you are under stress.

• Learn to be ignorant. Learn to listen with one ear and let it pass by out of the second ear. Somehow we can do that perfectly in a lecture, why not try it somewhere else? Of course this is specifically for stress related talks.

• Find your inner peace. I personally walk or run to calm myself. Find yours.

• Learn to file the stress away. Set another time to worry about it. For example, you heard the news of computers being hacked, just worry about it when you are in front of the computer. Why worry now when you can’t do anything about it.

• Start meditation. Meditation doesn’t have to be a complicated thing. You can actually just do the basic of meditation.

• Apply the Donkey’s Famous Lesson. Read the story here

2) Leadership
Everyone will be a leader in one way or another. Actually for you to be promoted, people will be looking for this quality in you.

• Be a good follower first. Join clubs if you can. There, observe the leader of the club and see how effective he is. Learn from him.

• Be charismatic. Would you like to be led by someone who look like an addict? Behave like a leader. That means well dressed, confident and charming.

• Decide confidently. Practise this, but remember.. the key to good decision is firm, fast and justifiable. Now decide on your choice of dinner for the night.

• Learn to identify strength and weakness. Pick 10 friends of yours at random. Secretly identify what are their strength and weaknesses. Maybe Ali is good with grammar but are to shy to give presentation.

3) Lifelong Learning
If you think all the learning stop with your graduation, think again? It’s a typical wrong assumption made by students. Learning never stop.

• Start with one. Choose one subject that you love the most. It must be something you really love. Go to the library or surf the internet and research everything there is to know about the subject.

• Learn to speed reading. You will learn and focus better with this technique. One method is to scan the articles for points like what I’m doing here.

4) People Skill
Communicating with people may be one of the hardest thing to do. Everyone is unpredictable and to make sure everything is going according to plan requires specific skill when it comes to people.

• Plain talk. When you are on a bus, try to talk to the stranger besides you. But please don’t just talk to only those of opposite gender to you. That would be unfair Here’s some tips to avoid being clueless in a conversation

• Plain listen. Once a week, make time to listen to your friends talking. They may be sharing their problem. just listen. You don’t even need to give your suggestion.

• Public speaking. I’ve actually wrote an articles on some personal tips to be better public speaker.

• Haggle / Arguing Skill. For a start, always try to haggle when you buy something. You may not get that price you want, but at least you will get the experience. Not haggling is one of the 5 mistakes we did unknowingly while shopping

5) Self Motivation
The time will come when you are down from failure etc. Who will you call? You can’t expect your parents or lecturers to motivate you. Pick yourself up.

• List down your three motivation keys. Everyone has their own method to get motivated. Maybe a quote or a story. Establish these and remind yourself of them everytime you’re down. My personal key is the quote “Shake it off and take a step up”.

• Bookmark motivational websites. A shameless promotion would be bookmarking LessonInLife.com

• Achieve mini success everyday. Nothing more motivating that success. So set easy goal to achieve everyday. Once you succeeded, it will give a positive remark on you. Maybe aim to save $200 every month for 3 months. That should be easy.

• Get up from your mini failure. Remember those easy goals you set? If you fail to achieve them, I would call it mini failure. Get up from those failure. Start again if you must. But remember to write down in writing every details about your come back. When you need motivation, you can always refer back to that record.

- I wonder -
Anything else you might want to add?

——- Personal Note ——–
Speaking of finding my inner peace to calm my stress level, I first noticed that I need to walk it off when Filantera (my younger brother) had an accident back in 1990, if I’m not mistaken. I automatically walked around my house again and again while praying for his safety. Alhamdulillah, he’s safe

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I have countlessly stress that learning is the best way to grow. You should be able to learn new thing your entire life. Take the computer for example, the minute you buy one, you will see newer and better product in the market the next hour

However I must admit, I too have had quite a rough time during my study. I experimented with a lot of methods to make studying as effective as possible.

I think it would be best for me to share a method I created and I can guarantee you that it is one of the most effective method to study. At least one student would agree with me – My previous self

I didn’t actually have a name for this method. But if I have to name it, I will call it 3 Size Decreasing Method.

Step 1: A4 Sized Notes
The same as every method of studying. It revolves around reading notes. First you will have to copy everything there is to know about the subject on your A4 papers. Let’s take blogging for examples

By now you should have 20 A4 papers of everything there is to know about blogging. Bear with me, It starts from planning, name, hosting, free or paid, registration, first post, theme, widget, about page, traffic, network, advertisement, money making, and many other details.

If you can memorize all that, that would be cool. And this method will no longer be needed to help. However, if you can’t remember every details. Try step 2.

Step 2: Half of A4 Sized Notes
Fold your paper into two and tear them into half. You should have 20 half sized A4 paper by now. Great! all you need to do now is to summarize the whole 20 pages into these 20 half page.

The only rule is your handwriting should remain the same size.

You can do however you want, you can categorize the notes, or put it into note form, or just by drawing pictures. It’s all up to you. But no cheating. The objective is to summarize one page of information into half page of information.

The next step is important. Now you must read the entire new notes and with every page you read, try to connect the summary to the original notes on your full sized A4 papers.

Step 3: Quarter of A4 sized Notes
You know the drill. This time summarize all the information from your half sized paper into these new quarter sized papers.

Remember, maintain normal handwriting font size. using the same example – blogging, I would by now have these as my points

• Concept Planning & Goal
• Technical Planning
• Writing Techniques
• Appearance
• Accesories
• Networking Strategies
• SEO
• Traffic Optimization
• Miscellaneous

I guess I just need 1 piece of quarter sized A4 paper.

Conclusion – The overall idea is to connect between summaries and the details. By collapsing the datas into summaries, we can expand them at will. And with some practice, all you will need is just to remember the summary and you can elaborate on the expanded ideas effortlessly

I’m not sure if this method is already being used or published by other people. But I can very well say that this is the best method I developed personally and used to study. You are welcomed to try

- I wonder -
You must have special methods to study. Care to share?

——— Personal Note ————
There are a lot of funny methods I see my friends practising. Once when I was in Form 5 (that’s about the age of 17), there was a friend of mine who actually studied at the grave. You see, my school is located very near to this royal grave. And that grave is very well lighted with fans and all.

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