The Problem

Have you ever had that day where you just don’t know what to do, despite the mountains of things you can do? It worsen when you actually know what you are supposed to do but you just don’t want to do it. Am I making any sense here?

For example, you know you have a blog entry to write, the ideas are pouring but when you switch on your laptop, you just end up spending your day browsing through millions of other blogs or socializing via twitter instead. At the end of the day, no entries were written. And there goes another day of your life.

This is NOT another case of procrastination. It’s more like doing everything else except for the one thing you need to do. It happens to me all the time and I’m sure it happens to you too. Can I ask? How do you overcome it?

Ths Solution

This is how I overcome the problem everytime I encounter it.

I am often overwhelmed with a thousand things to do, like researching, visitting others’ blogs, stumbling interesting articles etc, when all I really should do is write an article here in Lesson In Life. What I will then do is to rediscover what my immediate role at the time.

There is only one rule to this technique – There should only be one role to play at any time.

If I am a blogger, I should be blogging.. Period. Something is definitely wrong if I declare myself a blogger when I’m not even blogging. Realizing this immediately gives me more focus and clarity to write. Try it, you will be amazed that something so simple can do wonders.

The same goes to your career. Something is definitely wrong if you are a fireman but you like to show off how brave you are by creating fire.

Or if you are an assistant manager but the manager has more work on his table than you.

Conclusion – if you are a blogger, you blog. Everything else should take second place. Apply this to everything in your life, and your life will be so much simpler.

- I wonder -
If you can pick any one role to accomplish something today, what will you be? A blogger? A kitchen slave? A student? or others?

——— Personal Note ———–
What I usually do when I am supposed to be writing

Photo Credit – Striatic

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Imagine you are jungle trekking with a little boy. This boy is holding the compass and only he knows where the north is. You are supposed to go north all the way.

After a few minutes walking, you ask the boy, “Where is the north?”

The boy shows you the direction, “This way sir.”

You see that there is a mountain in front of you. You then suggest to the boy, “We are going around this mountain.”

The boy starts wondering, “Maybe the direction is not important, it’s the destination.”

After another hour, you ask the boy for the direction. And when he showed you the direction, “It’s a 12 o’clock sir”.

Feeling a bit bored with all the trekking, you decide to have some fun. You said, “Instead of 12 o’clock, why not we walk in the 11 o’clock direction. What harm could that slight deviation do?”

From your answer, the boy conclude that a slight change of direction is acceptable as long as you know where you’re going.

Now guys, imagine keep dismissing his answer everytime he answers the whole trip. What will he become?

• He will no longer believe that he is right or that his opinion matters

• He doesn’t even bother to look at the compass when asked for direction

• He may make up his own direction just to have fun

Now imagine that the little boy is actually our conscience. Wouldn’t it be a disaster?

It often start with the smallest thing like a white lie. Also it is usually done with very good intention. We tell lies to protect our loved ones from getting hurt for example. We then tell more lies to cover the previous lies we told. After a while, lying to someone become as natural as everything else in our life. And we are starting to feel that lying is never wrong.

When it reached that level, it’s as if the little boy has totally given up on us.

Now if you would excuse me, I would like to go check on my compass boy and maybe have a look at the compass before going to bed. Hopefully they are repairable.

- I wonder -
Tell any white lies lately?

———– Personal Note ———–
I just came back from my long Aidilfitri holiday. And as usual, I never feel excited about working after a long holiday. It’s been a long day and drive so I will leave you with an Aidilfitri photograph of the family (Me, the mrs and Zafirah)

Have a happy Aidilfitri

Compass Photo Credit – Matti Mattila

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Today is Aidilfitri here in Malaysia. I am now in Kedah with my family for the celebration. Again, Aidilfitri is all about celebrating the successful one-month fasting for muslims. In other words, we are celebrating for winning the battle against desire all month long.

I’m sure you too have your moment of being a winner in your own battle. It can be -

• Successfully finished up all your work for the week beating that procrastination to the floor

• Overcame your mental block to create and deliver one of the best presentation ever.

• Walked away from a shopping sale when your desire was screaming at you with 100 plus reasons why buying makes sense.

Everyone has their own battle to win. As long as there are choices to make, there will always be a battle in our head, between reason and logic, the greater good or the immediate result.

It is a nice thing to win a battle. However there are 3 facts that you should know about winning. And you may be surprise that you never realized these before.

1) The battle starts 10 seconds after you win.

Yes, you may be doing your victory dance, but the truth is immediately after about 10 second you have been declared a winner, the war restarts.

If you just won over that procrastination instinct and finished up all your work, rest assured that you will start procrastinating other work that comes after that. You may be given another assignment, and you’re putting that off to another time in the future since you just won that war. As a matter of fact, the war against procrastination just restarted with that decision. It is really a never ending battle.

2) The battle will be harder.

I’m sure you will agree with me. Once you become number one, you will see that the work to maintain being number one is usually harder than the work to get to number one. It may be due to the pressure, the expectation or maybe the higher standard you just raised.

The same goes to your recent success. If you manage to deliver powerful presentation and your boss loves it, he will expect better performance from you. Of course delivering creative presentation is a piece of cake for you, but when pressure and high expectation is involved, you may not be able to outdo your previous self.

Still, this doesn’t mean that you should only deliver moderate quality performance in your work. You just need to know the fact that success comes with the element of pressure and expectation. Knowing this beforehand will help you cope with it better.

3) The enemy might have learnt from their mistake.

Things that don’t kill you will only make you stronger. This applies just the same to the elements you just beat. Let say, you just walked away from the shopping sale with excuses like “I will buy them some other time”. The time will come when such excuse will no longer works. You just don’t feel the excuse as effective as previously used.

Conclusion – You may ask, how then can we make the next battle easier? Unfortunately, the next battle will always be harder, and all we can do is to realize this as early as possible. This way, we can be more prepared.

- I Wonder -
How do you celebrate your victory?

———– Personal Note ————-
I don’t know about you, but everytime I manage to achieve my small victory of the day, I will treat myself to a cup of hot chocolate. That is my luxury of the day.

Photo Credit – Notsogoodphotography

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Good news to everyone in Penang, Malaysia. It turns out Penang is the next area in Malaysia to be covered by wimax. Apparently P1W1max is given the green light to building the infrastructure, including base stations to provide the wimax services.

I am no where near Penang, but from the way I see it, it shows that nationwide coverage may not just be an empty promise.

You do remember the promise right? 25% of Malaysia covered by year end.

Quoting – “P1 commercially launched its WiMAX services in mid-August, the first operator to do so in Malaysia and the Asia-Pacific region. The company has said it plans to extend coverage to major cities in Johor, Penang, Kedah, Perak, Negeri Sembilan and Malacca by year-end, in line with its mandate to cover 25% of the peninsula’s population. Its services are currently available in selected areas in the Klang Valley.”

Can’t wait

Source – TheEdgeDaily

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