What do you do ....

When your friends share different principles from you, those that are moral in nature?

What if those are principles, if held by other people, would hv made you pass harsh judgments?

Should the friendship be a line that I should never cross, so that I could only observe the crime but not step up to the witness stand when condemnation is called for?

On the scales of morality, with each pound of friendship that I place upon its pans - should it lighten the weight of the guilty, or should the guilty bear a heavier burden because of the expectations that I hold him to?

There were times when I had chosen to look the other way, painfully conscious of the inconsistency in the intensity which I believe in my morals and how casually I can choose to ignore them. How else are the worth of my values measured, other than by my actions when I see injustice done?

But.

There were also times when I was looked upon and I was watched. As the waves brought me further away from shore, I chose to give up struggling to see where the currents brought me. When I finally came back ashore, I was always welcomed by the few familiar eyes. Eyes brimming with unquestioned understanding - only the slightest tension in their gaze belie the hypocritical restraint that they had to bear. And I was always thankful each time.

Vu jaDe

Heard this concept from one of the talks given my Tom Kelly. Fantastic stuff!
Deja vu = looking at new things and feeling that you've seen them before
Vu jaDe = looking at things you've been seeing your whole life and feeling like you've never seen them before, i.e. the ability to continually discard old perspectives / mental models and develop new insights

The Fifth Discipline - Systems Thinking

This book took almost an entire month for me. Partly because I was struggling to even finish my work on time. And partly because the book is really dense. There is a wealth of information within - much of which I can't quite relate to nor internalise given my paltry experience with running huge projects and teams.

Nonetheless, this book has already opened my eyes to this brand new subject on systems thinking. And it has very much piqued my interest too! The engineer inside me finally finds a bridge into this whole world of business and leadership which had seemed so alien just a while ago.

(I might have to either make this a living blog entry, or split this up into many many short posts. It is almost futile to summarise a subject as huge as systems thinking into a single entry.)

So here's my first post on this big hairy animal.

One should look past the seemingly random or human-induced processes and outcomes in the world, and think one level deeper as to why these things are the way they are. It is almost certain that one will find a system at work, which can be understood by simple logic. Developing this ability takes practice, and one would need to have a good grasp of how certain typical system archetypes work. However, the rewards are tremendous - being able to see the crux of an issue quickly and more importantly, knowing the point of greatest leverage to execute a solution. I shall attempt from today onwards to figure out the systems underlying the everyday processes that I see!

Another concept that was preached in the book is mental models. Through our experiences and the conclusions / learnings that we reap from them, we gradually develop mental models about the way the world works. These models provide a very convenient and efficient way for us to deal with the world, and allows us to spend more resources dealing with the other things in our life. For e.g., after I develop the mental model that "to improve in anything, i will just have to work harder at it", I have a template that is easily applied to many areas of my life. At work, I would subconsciously throw more and more time at my assignments to improve on my performance. However, this may be a faulty view that is actually limiting me from seeing that my work processes may not be optimal, or that the marginal gains from each extra hour of work decreases so dramatically that I may be better off chewing gum or taking a nap. This is related to a podcast that I listened to recently, which said that we should always remain a little skeptical about all our beliefs. (it gets harder the older we get though)

That's the main takeaways for now. Enough to keep me occupied for a long time to come.
Another good thing about finishing this book is that I'm now in time to buy a new one on my payday tomorrow!

Ahhh - the little things in life.

Running with a Spoonful in Life's Gallery

I'm not even sure if the title is grammatically correct. But it quite aptly summarises the main themes of my life in recent times.

It is actually, shall i say, 'inspired by' "The Alchemist" by Paul Coelho. In the book, Melchizedek told a story where a boy was sent out to walk about a castle while holding a spoon full of oil. He was warned not to spill a drop of oil from the spoon. The boy was so paranoid about fspilling the oil that he never saw the beauty of the castle or its riches. The boy was then sent out again with the spoon of oil and told to pay attention to what is around him. This time he got so caught up in the beauty and riches that he forgot about the oil, and it spilled. The secret to life, according to Melchizedek, or the story (or Paul, depending on which world you prefer to live in) is that the secret of happiness is to see all the marvels of the world, and never to forget the drops of oil on the spoon.

And that leads to the three themes of my life now.

I've pretty much made up my mind to live life like everyday's the last and to squeeze all the goodness (and also all the nasty parts) out of life as much as I can. If my life were a painting, I've basically put down my brush and started sloshing buckets of dulux all over the canvas. If my life were a supermarket, I'm eagerly trying to enter the electronics and fresh food sections at the same time. I enjoy the feeling of aliveness and pursuing things that are meaningful to me. I enjoy running (only figuratively!!) - the freedom of exerting oneself fully coupled with the strain of sheer abandonment. It's akin to living on a fine edge. I dunno how I manage to somehow survive each day, but i usually end each one feeling really zonked out but strangely exhilarated.

But there are many moments worth slowing down for in life. There's been many occasions when I was so preoccupied with sprinting that I constantly have half of myself plunged into the future, and less of me left in the present. And I never failed to regret, each and every time, that I did not savour these moments for all they were worth. My life's gallery has accumulated a sizeable collection of pieces that are blurred and hazy. You know, the kind of photos you kick yrself for messing up as you'll never be able to quite construct the moment that you were trying to capture from the incoherent pixels? I have decided that, where it counts, I'll make really good imprints henceforth. It will be a gallery worth visiting time and time again.

And then there are responsibilities. There are things that you just have to do, people whose interests you have to take care of, promises you have to keep and many more. There are times when I feel like just neglecting all of them. It is certainly alot easier to run and appreciate the scenery with less baggage! Even a spoonful of oil can be really challenging to hold in one's fingers.

So this will be what 2009 is about. I will run. I'll run with all that my lungs, sinews and flesh can let me. I'll be present. I'll allow myself to be fully absorbed in the now when it matters, and take in all the smells, the sights, the sounds, the emotions, with all the eagerness that the depths of my soul yearns for. And I'll guard the oil. Not one drop of oil will drip from the spoon that I hold.

One Minute Manager!

Extracted this off someone else's summary. Haha.

Three key lessons again:

One minute goals
Goals have to be written down in a clear and succint way such that it takes only 1 minute to be digested.

One minute praisings
It's the little praises throughout an employee's day that counts. The trick is to be seen to be "catching" your employee doing something well. (Rather than the usual where employees enjoy "catching" their staff doing things wrong.)

One minute reprimands
Keep the reprimand short and to the point. Concentrate on the action and not the person. As such, it has to be delivered as timely to the action as possible. And then move on.