It is a very known fact that being merciful to others is a very noble thing to do. Somehow I was reminded of the movie Gladiator where the crowd cheers – “Maximus the Merciful”. Anyway… moving on.

Merciful simply means that we take into consideration our feeling when we can do it either way. For examples, when we wins in a contest. We can be a jerk by making fun of the losers but to be merciful means that we should honor the losers by being humble.

There are some occasion however where we have to be merciless. Meaning – putting aside all our feeling and display less caring about anything. I’m referring to occasion when your time is wasted. Here are some examples:

1) Email
Fortunately for us, Spam Filter was created. If not, I wonder how many hours will be spent just to delete the spam. To be merciless in your email handling is to just read the title and if nothing good can come from reading it, just immediately delete it. If it really irrelevant, put it in the spam filter.

Learn how to filter email properly, and be merciless when deleting emails.

That goes the same thing with writing an email. Email was supposed to be very straight to the point. There’s no need to ask the weather, or how’s the new house. Unless of course the email is meant to ask about the weather and its effect on the house.

Time is everything, and if we can save some valuable seconds from handling email, why shouldn’t we?

2) On the phone time
Unless you are talking to family or catching up with old friends, there’s absolutely no reason you should spend 30 minutes on the phone with your colleague.

Cut it short, just say that you have some other urgent things to do. In fact we really do have other urgent things to do, like living our life 🙂

3) SMS / IM
SMS are generally a short form of short message system, If you are sending / receiving SMS more than 10 times to one person, isn’t it just easier to call that person. I know that SMS is so much cheaper, but is your time just as cheap?

IM or Instant Messaging is very similar to SMS but they are totally free and far more efficient. In fact they are so efficient, I would recommend it. However, sometimes chatting can have a very addictive effect, especially when people are usually funnier in chatroom than when they are in real form.

Log out immediately if you find that your goals have been met, or the whole discussion is going nowhere.

One thing in common with these three points is that family should NEVER be treated mercilessly. In the end, if we neglected our family, what else do we have?

4) RSS feed
This is another time waster. For the benefit of those who might not familiar, RSS feed is basically a method to read multiple blogs simultaneously. The application will retrieve all the new post from the blogs and listed them down for us to read. I am currently subscribed to about 30 blogs and I read them daily.

But of course I am very merciless when it comes to reading RSS feed, I just have a glimpse through what the post is about, and if it is not related to me, for examples, about a convention in Las Vegas or about things I already knew, I will delete it in 2 seconds and move on.

Tick Tock Tick Tock

5) Newspaper
I once a perfectionist, read the newspaper from the front to the back, not missing any news. I was at first trying to improve my English. Then I started to have this desire to know everything there is to know.

It doesn’t take me too long to realize that that is an impossible things to do. And what benefit can I gain from reading about the stock exchange when I am not at all interested in it.

Be merciless with your newspaper reading. Read only the headlines and if anything interest you, read the first paragrapah, if that continues to interest you, scan through the whole articles. Never read it word by word. You may have to start over when you finish 🙂

– I wonder –
Any other things we should be merciless on?

——– Personal Note ———
I am currently the secretary of the Mill’s Safety Committee and we have meetings every 3 months. Generally, the meeting is to discuss any safety related issues.

I have to consistently pull them back to the agenda at hand 🙂 which is not a very popular thing to do.

Photo credit : deonstrauss

Summary – Trying Out New Option Requires Responsibility

One of the most frequently used word of advice from my manager is the words “You Never Know Unless You Try”. This is actually one of the oldest advice in the world, and maybe one of the wisest. But like all powerful things, if not used right, it will become a danger. Please allow me to elaborate on this.

First of all, why is the advice useful? It is because, sometimes we are given a choice like whether to pursue a dream that may not have a future, or do something we despise but guaranteed a future. The keyword is the word “MAY”. We can never know exactly that our dream will have no future. So unless we try, we will just never know.

This is where the danger lies. We can and should never try out everything. Life is full of option. If we want to try out everything, for the sake of “trying itout first then we will know”, we will have a very unstable life. Imagine a student studying mathematics. He actually love everything about the subject, but in the spirit of trying, he drop the subject and start his own business. This may be a good thing, but it turns out, he really dislike doing business in the first place. So that is an example of why sometimes we shouldn’t try everything

Trying in another word is making a decision to do the thing. You will have to be very sure that whether or not you are successful, the choice made is worth doing before you make the leap. You don’t have to be 100% sure. The question you really need to ask is whether that choice is really worth it. If it is, by all means, try it.

you will never know unless you tried, but.. use your wisdom wisely

– I Wonder –
Have you ever made any regretable choice?

———- Personal Note ————
Again, I must stress that it is not my intention to discourage you from trying things out. This is the very foundation of living life.

The article is just to highlight the other side of the equation, to never be stupidly brave to try everything

I am thinking of starting an experiment today. An experiment that if done correctly, we will achieve more in one day compared to what we achieve in one whole week. It’s very easy and I’m sure we can all benefit from it. Ready?

Task 1 : Family
Take note of the time and set your alarm in your phone to 1 hour from now. Answer this question – What two things we can do now (not later, not tomorrow, but NOW) to show to our family how much we love them?

Quickly figure out the answer to that question. To kickstart the experiment, here are some examples of answers :

• I should call my mother over the phone and really talk to her, asking her this and that
• I will write a very short letter addressed to all my family members and put it in writing of how much I love them

There are only 3 rules to the experiment

• We can only do 2 things for each questions, so it is very important to choose action that will have the best impact.
• The answers must be in term of action, not something vague like “I want to be nicer to my parent” or “I will make them happy”. It is also very important that the action is an action we can do immediately. For example, if you’re on a plane, write a thank you card maybe
• You have only 1 hour to finish your task. When the alarm goes off, do the next task. Of course if you finish the first task in 5 minutes, you can choose between straight away do the next task, or wait for your alarm.

Interested? Here are your next task

Task 2 : Spouse / Loved One
What 2 things you can do now to appreciate your spouse?

Task 3 : Career
What 2 things you can do now that will help you be promoted?

Task 4 : Knowledge
What 2 things you can research on the internet now and remember for the rest of your life?

Task 5 : Health
What 2 things you can do now to sweat?

That’s already 10 things done in 5 hours. Not bad! Of course there are more topics to cover and I’m sure you can help me there.

Most of the time, the best way to get things done, is to just plain do something about it. Imagine we spend every hour in our life, doing something that really matters like your answers above (Of course among other things).. That person must be very successful 🙂

– I wonder –
Do you have any other suggestion of questions to be answered and practised?

———— Personal Note ————
Just come back from the mill. There’s a contractor installing gearbox and its corresponding motor. However they left the work unfinished, the alignment is all out. So I have to call up my foreman and work together with him to correct the situation. It’s 1 am and I’m very hungry and tired. Good night everyone

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.