Summary – Newton’s First Law of Thermodynamics
Let me share you a secret. A secret about a technique that if done correctly, you can literally find energy to do anything you want. You can finish up your work, and still have the energy to play with your children (We all know this require infinite amount of energy). And after the children went to bed, you can continue doing your other chores with the energy as if you just woke up from bed.

Interested? Now if only you can wired $20 for the secret to my bank account, I will email you the secret.

I’m just kidding. But don’t you think this unlimited energy is worth all the money in the world. I do. I sometimes feel so tired at work, it doesn’t make any sense since my work does not require me to do a lot of physically demanding things. And how many times have you seen a construction worker that works almost 15 hours daily doing heavy lifting most of the time, and still they can come back tomorrow for more work.

The fact is this energy comes from the mind. We all know this. Now let me share with you the correct way to harness this power.

I’m referring to the first law of thermodynamics – The Conservation of Energy. According to Newton, energy cannot be created and destroyed. It can only be transfered from one form of energy to another.

Obviously Newton was referring to the actual energy like heat, electrical, solar etc. I am just extending the law to cover our mind energy. First a disclaimer, this is just a personal application of the theory. You should never use this concept in real life physics examination.

The Mistake We Did
That said, this is what we usually do, We are feeling very tired after an 8 hour of work, the children at home are waiting to play with you. It’s the only time they see you all day so we can’t really blame them. When we reached home, we make a mistake of trying to create energy. We try to summon any energy left in our body to just entertain them. And according to Newton’s First Law, this is not possible. And that is why we will feel even more tired after that.

The Secret Is…
The secret to unlimited amount of energy is actually to transfer them from one form of energy to another. How else do you think that construction workers gain their energy. They kept reminding themselves that the money is for their family back home, and that if they didn’t work, they will not be able to provide education for their children. They are actually drawing their energy from their responsibility and love for family. And that is why they will still have the energy to entertain their children when they go back after work. They are at the time drawing the energy from the happiness brought by the children’s smile and laughter.

Just like singers getting their energy from the crowd, or a father carrying his sick children to the hospitals on foot. These are all real evidence that such energy transfer really exist. We just need to apply it in our life and voila, you are going to be amazed with the things you do.

So will everyone else.

– I wonder –
Where else can we find our source of energy to be transfered?

———- Personal Note ———–
This is my new source of energy. My 3-months old Zafirah.

Photo Credit – Suchitraprints

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Summary – Most results takes time.. It pays to be patient.

Today’s entry starts with a person. It’s Alice. And Alice was sent to a motivational speech this morning, where the speaker talked about fulfilling her life purpose and make full use of her life. The speaker equipped her with all the right tools and her motivation is at the maximum level. So high that she is walking as fast as she can just to start doing her work.

People are actually noticing the change in her pace. She is finishing up all her work, and to their surprise, she even stays up until late at night to plan the for a presentation tomorrow. Truly a super worker.

Do you know what in her colleague’s mind when they saw her working that hard? It’s sad actually, but they are actually betting that all this momentum will be over in a week, two maximum. And you know what? For a reason that I will disclose later, I actually agree with them

Why do you think this happen? Like most people, she has failed to realize one of the biggest mistake we do when we are highly motivated. Allow me to elaborate.

The Mistake – She Expect Results Immediately
Succcess is not a one day thing. Realize this fact before you even attempt to being success. Alice may be working as hard as she can but if she expect to find job satisfaction overnight, she will be disappointed.

Just like a car, when it is first invented, it is just a box with wheel going downhill. Then the inventor wants to maneuvre the car and avoid all the trees, so he invented the steering. Then maybe it rains, so he put a roof on the box. For a car to be beautifully and efficiently designed takes hundreds of years and there’s so much more areas that we can improve.

Imagine improving our life.

So take your time improving your life. Be patient, in fact be very patient. As long as you are moving forward, you will reach there. I promise

How to avoid this mistake
1) Quantify your success
This may sounds like a fancy word but it really is not. People can always say “I want to be successful”. But when we asked them to define successful, I don’t think they will know the answer.

So find your answer. What is success to you. Maybe for Alice here, her success is to get an acknowledgment from her boss that she had done good. So once she know her definition of success, she will need to work on it. Maybe producing daily summary of work done, or proactively suggest ideas in a meeting.

She will be successful when the boss recognize her or know her name.

2) Aim for little success
This is the most important solution of all. You need to wake up everyday knowing that you will somehow be achieving your success that day. Imagine you waking up to the day you will be promoted the new General Manager of the company. Wouldn’t you be excited to work and perform even better?

That’s my friend is one of the secret to sustaining motivation. Aim for the little success everyday. For example, Alice will aim today to finish a job and handed it to the boss by hand. And when she does exactly that, she has succeeded in the day’s aim.

I’m sure she will continue this excellent quality through out her life if she wants to.

– Personal Note –
What’s your little aim for today?

Photo Credit – OmniNate

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Summary – Motivation for the demotivating little task

It’s spring cleaning today in my house. And I must say that even though I’m cleaning the house on the go daily, when it’s time for spring cleaning, there are always a lot of things to do. It can be very demotivating to see so many things to do when you are already doing so much cleaning it on the go.

The amazing thing is these things to do are just small tasks that you can do immediately like putting away newspaper for recycling, or wiping up the dust on the furniture, or arranging the DVDs. Little things that somehow there’s so many of them, you just feel very very demotivated.

I don’t know about you but I find these techniques to be quite effective especially for motivating us to do all the tedious small tasks.

1) 100 Items And You’re Done
Whenever you are picking up socks or taking out the garbage. Count and shout the number of task you have done. An example –

You are picking up socks, shout “ONE!”
Then straight away do the garbage and shout “TWO!”

The rule is you must not stop unless you have done 100. I’m getting excited even writing about it 🙂

2) The Amazing Race “Insert Your House Here”
Cleaning the house is not a one time thing. You will be doing it for the rest of your life. Why not make it a race. Create a list of things to do and do all the thing on the list (duh!). But you will have to time how long it takes you to finish the list. For example you take 3 hours this week. Next week try to do the same task in 2.5 hours. If you break that record, make a big deal out of it. Go out at a fancy restaurant with your loved ones to celebrate.

I wouldn’t tell her what’s the occasion though. 🙂

3) Soundtrack Yourself
Burn a cd of songs that you really like. Play it while you’re cleaning. You can sing to it, you can even dance to it, but promise yourself that there will be no repeat for the playlist. When it’s over, it’s over. So motivate yourself by saying that if you can’t finish by the time the songs are over, you will have to do the work without any music.

Hopefully the fear of boredom will help clear the area a bit faster.

4) Attack The Giant First
Just like in war, we need constant motivation through out the war. In this war for cleanliness, it is recommended that you do the bigger thing first. For example, moving the heavy furniture. Do this first and the rest will feel like the easiest thing to do.

5) In-Law’s Visitting Scenario
This is actually my favorite. I noticed that I can clean the house faster and better when I keep convincing myself that my in-laws are coming. I notice this when they actually came to my house a few months ago. My house never looked cleaner. 🙂

6) The One-Minute Rule
This rule is actually proposed by Gretchen from The Happiness Project. According to the rule, anything that you can do in one minute time, should be done immediately. No question asked. For example, you come back after work and you see an umbrella misplaced. You can of course choose to ignore it and do other thing. But if you are applying the one minute rule, you will pick up the umbrella and put it to its rightful place. Why? Because it will only take you less than a minute to do that.

– I wonder –
Any other ideas on how to motivate ourselves doing those tedious little tasks?

———– Personal Note ———–
Now that we have a new member of the family, our daughter Zafirah. The mrs and I have come up with an agreement that one of us will have to look after Zafirah at any time. I’m telling you. A lot of my existing schedule were thrown out the window 🙂

But I’m more than happy to do that just to see her smile. Did I tell you that she is now smiling 🙂

Photo credit – Givepeasachance

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Summary – You want something, go get it. Period!
MBBDDH is nothing new actually. It’s a negative attitude that may very well be the one thing that will bring us down irregardless of what area we are in. That I can assure you.

MBBDDH stands for “Maybe Busy, Better Don’t Disturb Him”.

Have you ever wanted to call a long lost friend but in the end, you just cancel it because you think that he may be busy, and you are only disturbing him? He may actually be wondering why nobody is calling him? In the end.. it’s everyone’s lost since the friendship is ruined.

MBBDDH is not an attitude specifically for calling long lost friend. We are actually doing that in most of the things in our life.

Example 1 – The Blackout.
The electrical supply to your house is cut off. you just leave it as it is thinking that somebody else may have called to report.

• Result – you spend half a day without any electricity.
• What you should do – Call the electrical company to report. They may be able to fix the trip in just a few minutes.

Example 2 – The Promotion
There’s a vacancy for a job superior than your position now. You don’t go to your manager for his recommendation, you just hope that they will know that you are qualified.

• Result – the human resource had employed another person for the job.
• What you should do – Get recommendation from your manager and go to human resource asking to be considered. You must promote yourself even though you consider yourself as a very popular employee 🙂

Example 3 – The Broken Heart
You like a girl, she seem to like you too. You befriend her, flirting every now and then but never officially tell her that you like her.

• Result – After one year of being friends, she think that you just want to be her friends. And she move on with another guy.
• What you should do – tell her that you like her.

Conclusion – I remember a quote from the movie “The Pursuit Of Happiness” which goes something like this – “If you want something, go get it. Period!”

That short sentence is one of the most effective words I’ve ever seen. When we want something, why do we let our shyness, or our fear to stand in our way. Those feeling will never help us achieve what we want, so why bother entertaining them. Toss them aside and just go ahead.

– I wonder –
Any other example of where MBBDDH attitude is used?

Photo Credit – Hamed Masoumi

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