Summary – Use emotion
The following story is one of the many interesting stories published on the net.

The Story

Once there was a school with quite a unique problem. The girls at the school were beginning to use lipstick and like everyone else who just started a thing, there were lipstick prints all over the mirrors of the school bathroom.

This however was a problem to the janitor since he would have to clean the mirror every single day.

One day he reported the problem to the school principal and she immediately called up all the students to the bathroom (of course in groups). She then explained that the lip prints were causing problem to the janitor who worked very hard to keep the school clean.

She even asked the janitor to demonstrate how difficult it was to clean the lips prints. The janitor took out a long handled squeegee, dipped it in the toilet, and cleaned the mirror with it.

Since then, there have been no lip prints on the mirror.

/end story

As you can probably notice, the solution is so simple and effective, it is amazing why we can’t come up with it in the first place.

So how can we come up with an amazingly effective solution to other daily problems in our life?

I don’t know about you, but when dealing with people, I personally believe that any solution can be very effective provided we can tap into the people’s emotion.

Let’s look at the story for example. The janitor use the toilet water to induce the feeling of disgust in the students and in the end, he manage to solve the problem completely.

How I Apply It In Real Life

I’m having the same problem here in my mill. A lot of my workers prefer not to wear the safety helmet during working. Of course they will be wearing them when I’m around but I really don’t think they are wearing it during night time etc.

So what I did is to gather a lot of pictures from the internet on accidents that happened to people who did not wear their safety helmet. There are pictures of dead people with their head slice into two, iron rod penetrating the skull etc. Seriously, they are the kind of pictures you wouldn’t want to show your children or you will have to pay for their therapy for years.

Immediately after I show these pictures, almost everyone wear the safety helmet (day and night). I’m really hoping that the pictures can stir the fear inside the workers. It worked! Problem solved!

– I wonder –
How else can we use emotion to solve problems?

——– Personal Note ———-
You must not confuse this with emotional blackmail. Emotional blackmail is a method used to get what you want but via dirtier means. For example, using guilt to make your relatives become slave of the house or by using jealousy to ruin a marriage etc.

Like all other great tools, in the right hand, it will become a blessing. But in the wrong hand, it will become a disaster.

Photo Credit – Katie Tegtmeyer

Summary – God only gives us two hands

I have unofficially taken a very long leave from blogging. It’s been 3 months since I last wrote an entry. And to tell you the truth, it’s like torture thinking about my unupdated blog.

I have actually been transfered to Sabah and there are a lot of things I need to do for the past 3 months; pending jobs to be finished, examination to study, new mill to familiarize.

If there’s anything I can learn from all the experience is that “When life gives you 1000 things to do, prioritize”. These are a few tips to be better at prioritizing that I’ve learnt the hard way.

1) Check with your religion first

This is actually a no brainer. But when you are in doubt on what to do, check with your religion. What are the priorities in your religion. Religion in my opinion, is a handbook to living your life. It should be able to solve every question you asked.

Even for an atheist, I still believe that their principles and attitude towards life will be their religion. Stick to that and you know you will do fine.

2) 80/20 Pareto Rule

I’ve said it before and I’m going to say it again, this rule rocks! For the benefit of those who are not familiar with it, let me try to explain the whole idea. According to Pareto, if you have 100 workers in your company, rest assured that there are 20 of them that can do 80% of the job. Once we have identified these 20 workers, you can actually sack the remaining 80 workers and still manage to get 80% of your business done.

The same goes to your daily job. Identify the 20% of the job that if you finish it, you can smilingly go back home knowing that you have finished the vital jobs of your day.

3) Review Review Review

I repeated the word “Review” three times (four times if include this one) because it is the best word to help you manage your life. Our priorities change with time. Immediately when we wake up, our most important priority is to brush our teeth. Once we do that, we have to review our task and identify the next most important priority. In this specific example, the next most important thing is to put on a suit and go to work.

This Reviewing process can sometimes be just as fun as playing an adventure type computer game, where you finish one task after another.

4) Most Important Task

For some, finishing off one task after another can be very exhausting. I personally believe this tool, which is called “Most Important Task” or MIT for short, is the best way to go for you guys. Before you go to sleep tonight, identify the 3 most important tasks that you want to be done tomorrow. When you wake up tomorrow, focus all your energy to get these 3 done at all cost. Once they are done, treat yourself with an ice cream or a walk on the beach. You know very well you deserve it.

Of course, there’s no point if you identify your 3 most important tasks of the day as eat, sleep and watch television.

5) Categorize your goals

This is another great tools that you can use to ensure that all your goals are met. First, categorize all your goals into three groups.

Group 1 – Life goals

• You have to put all your life goals here. These are the goals that if met you will be satisfied with your life. Typical examples of life goals are live longer, travel around the world, become famous worldwide etc.

Group 2 – 10 years goals

• 10 years goals are goals that must be met within 10 years. Some examples of such goals are like becoming a manager, lose 100 lb of weight etc.

Group 3 – Now goals

• The Now goals are goals that can be achieved now if we start working on it. An example is like this blog post I’m working on. If I do it now, I will finish it today.

Once you have identified your goals’ categories, try to work on each category of goals in one day. You could for example, aim to save $50 and put it in your travel-around-the-world fund, jog for 30 minutes and finish your blog post in 1 hour.

You might not notice it, but you have basically achieved your three most important goals in just 1.5 hours today. Isn’t that great?

Conclusion

Prioritizing has always been the challenge to productivity. I guess that is why God only gives us two hands. It is to remind us that there are just so much we can do, so we have to choose what we want to do wisely.

– I wonder –
Any other techniques to prioritize better that you can share?

——— Personal Note ————
My first priority will always be family. However, there are times when something else come up and it’s so urgent that it requires my fullest attention and thus I can only see the family a few hours in a day.

Luckily I am blessed with an understanding wife. Thank you dear. I can’t imagine going through all this without you.

Photo Credit – Redvers

Summary – Don’t just give answers, give them the questions too

One of the biggest fear for anyone attending a job interview is the fear of not knowing the answer to a question. I’ve been there and I can safely say that nobody is exempted from it. If you think about it, it’s a perfectly normal thing. There is no way a person can know everything there is to know about a topic.

However, don’t you think you will have undergone a perfect interview session if you know the answer to every single question? Don’t you think that will make you memorable and in the end hired?

Now would you believe me if I tell you that there is actually a trick to accomplish exactly that?

The Trick

The trick to actually know the answer to every questions in an interview is to give your interviewer a list of questions to ask you (Not literally of course). Allow me to elaborate.

Let say you are an expert in gearbox maintenance and you are attending an interview for an engineering position. Be sure to drop some hint in your answers that you are directly involved in gearbox maintenance. The interview conversation below will show you how.

Interviewer : What are your past experience?

You : I have been working as a maintenance engineer for about 5 years and my job usually covers fabrication, servicing of machinery especially gearbox etc.

Interviewer : Hm so tell us how do you take care of a gearbox?

You : Bla Bla Bla

/end example

As you can see, by hinting that you are involved in gearbox maintenance, the interviewer will usually make use of the topic as their next question. Of course being an expert you will be able to answer the question effortlessly.

Once you know this, any interview will be a walk in the park. However, you may want to first read a few ground rules of using the trick.

Rule 1 : Be very subtle with the hinting

Do not end every answer with the word “Gearbox”. The interviewer will start noticing the effort and it will not end well. If your first 2 attempts fail, try other topics that you are good at.

Rule 2 : Never show off your expertise

A friend of mine had actually memorized one whole book about Machinery Act and he boasted about it in the interview. As a result, the interviewer asked him question from other books and he failed.

Rule 3 : Do not give all the details

If for example, the interviewer asked you about “Gearbox”, don’t explain to him from A to Z. Be smart with your explanation and leave out interesting topics hanging for him to ask. A person who can answer every question asked is more memorable than a person who can answer only one question in the interview.

Rule 4 : Prepare a few real life stories

Everyone loves a story and if you play your cards right, the interviewer will want to hear more from you. They will then start asking the related question about it. That’s an extra point for you.

Rule 5 : Ask questions

Try to shoot some questions to the interviewer related to your expertise. You may know the answer but still ask away. It will convert the whole process from an interview to a mini discussion. Believe me, it will help reduce the stress and more importantly you will be memorable to the interviewer.

The best topic to be discussed is the topic you know best.

– I wonder –
Any other tips to subtly highlight your strength in an interview?

———- Personal Note ————
I just came back from my first semester of Palm Oil Milling Diploma in MPOB. There are 23 lectures compressed in 7 days. To make things even more interesting, the examination for this first semester will be held on 11th May. Wish me luck! 🙂

Photo Credit – DIDEO

Summary – Picture a black dot in your mind. Nobody notices the white background.

How many of you would have agreed with me that positive thinking is just one of the most difficult thing to do?

There are tons of books on positive thinking. Each and every one of them is describing the benefits of positive thinking with great details. Some even come with real life examples. No worries, I’m not going to relist the benefits here. If you are interested, feel free though to read about my other thoughts on positive thinking here.

• Understanding Positive Thinking Once & For All
• The Ultimate Secrets of Positive Thinking

Despite the wonderful benefits of thinking positively, why are we still find it hard to apply it in our life? If for example, you are retrenched from your job, and your girlfriend broke up with you, all at the same time. Will you be able to smile and still think positively? You can do it but it will require your strongest willpower just to create that glimpse of smile.

My Theory On Why It’s That Difficult

I personally believe that we have been trained to make positive thinking difficult since we were children.

Remember when we first learnt the ABCs? We were first taught the 26 alphabets and when we were able to read, we were asked to focus on the 26 alphabets on the books and nothing else. We were never encouraged to describe the white color of the page, and we were usually scolded if we use the book for things other than reading. Do you know that books can be used as cartoon animator? or an emergency fan?

For the record, I have no objection with the methodology of teaching. Children at that age can easily be distracted and allowing them to play with books without any serious attempt to make them read can lead to a sudden jump in illiteracy worldwide.

Unfortunately, the methodoly had indirectly make us more close minded. A book will always be a book to us.

An Accident Is NOT Just An Accident

This is how it affect us now. Take a car accident for example. For most of us, a car accident is just a car accident. While in fact it is so much more than that.

• It is a reminder for you to be more careful next time.
• It is a chance for you to finally learn how to claim for insurance.
• It is a boost in confidence in driving if you manage to avoid the accident.
• It is an experience that you can boast to your grandchildren.
• It’s your chance to practice your emergency response skills like evasive driving.
• You may have saved someone’s life.
• You can finally learn the true value of life.

In short, we just need to learn how to see a book as something else besides for reading. Isn’t that what positive thinking really is? Looking at things from a different and positive view.

– I Wonder –
What else can you do with your books?

———— Summary ———–
It was night time and I was at a boarding school. My friend and I was beginning to get bored with our studying. There he was, another friend who was actually sleeping on the table. Being bored, my friend and I started to stack up books on his chest. It must be around 10 books altogether when he woke up and started mumbling at us.

He must be very sleepy since he believed that we were doing an experiment to determine the maximum force needed to be applied on the chest before a sleeping man wakes up. At least that’s what we told him. Good times. 🙂

Photo Credit – JustReenie