Saturday, October 25, 2008

7 Habits of the Highly INeffective People

For those who are familiar with Stephen Covey's "7 Habits of the Highly Effective People"....here are something else.....I got it from HERE

Happy reading.......

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With a twist to the common list of habits that are useful to establish, here are 7 habits that you do best to avoid. Just like finding habits that can be useful for you it’s important to find habits that are holding you back. Most of these 7 habits can easily become such a normal, everyday part of life that you hardly notice it (or how it’s affecting you). I’ve dabbled with all of them quite a bit. Not surprisingly I didn’t get much of the important stuff done.

I´d also like to add that these are just 7 broad habits you can establish to become highly ineffective in most parts of your life. I pretty sure there are several more.

1. Not showing up.

Maybe you’ve heard this quote by Woody Allen:

“Eighty percent of success is showing up”

One of the biggest and simplest thing you can do to ensure more success in your life – whether it be in your social life, your career or with your health – is simply to show up more. If you want to improve your health then one of the most important and effective things you can do is just to show up at the gym every time you should be there.

The weather might be bad, you might not feel like going and you find yourself having all these other things you just must do. If you still go, if you show up at the gym when motivation is low you will improve a whole lot faster than if you just stayed at home relaxing on the sofa.

I think this applies to most areas of life. If you write or paint more, each day perhaps, you will improve quickly. If you get out more you can meet more new friends. If you go on more dates you chances of meeting someone special increases. Just showing up more can really make a big difference. Not showing up will not get you anywhere.

2. Procrastinating half the day. To keep it short, my 3 favourite ways to get out of a procrastinating state are:

- Swallow that frog. What´s this means is simply to do the hardest and most important task of the day first thing in the morning. A good start in the morning lifts your spirits and creates a positive momentum for the rest of the day. That often creates a pretty productive day.

- How do you eat an elephant? Don´t try to take it all in one big bite. It becomes overwhelming which leads to procrastination. Split a task into small actionable steps. Then just focus on the first step and nothing else. Just do that one until it’s done. Then move on to the next step.

- The Get around to It Paraliminal. I find this guided mediation to be very useful. After 20 minutes of mostly just lying on my bed and listening I’m far more productive for a few days. I don´t feel the urge to sink into that procrastinating state or the need to find out what’s new over at one or five of my favourite websites.

3. When actually doing something, doing something that isn’t the most important thing right now.

One of the easiest habits to get stuck in, besides procrastinating, is to keep yourself busy with unimportant tasks.

To be effective you probably need some kind of time management-system. It might be something really simple, like using the 80/20-rule at the beginning of each day. The 80/20 rule, or the Pareto Principle as it´s also known, says that you´ll get 80 percent of your results from only 20 percent of your tasks and activities. So you need to focus most of your energy on those few important tasks to be effective.

When you have prioritized using this rule just write down the top 3 most important things you need to do that day. Then, from the top, start doing them. Even if you just get one of the things done, you have still done the most important thing you could do today. You may perhaps prefer some other system, such as GTD. But however you organise your work it’s still of highest priority to find the most important tasks so you don’t spend days, weeks or months doing busywork that isn’t that essential anyway. Just getting things done faster isn’t that useful if the things you get done are unimportant to you.

4. Thinking too much.

And thereby seldom taking action. Paralysis by analysis can waste years of your life. There is nothing wrong with thinking before you do something. Do some research, make a plan, explore potential upsides and problems.

But compulsively thinking and thinking and thinking is just another way to waste your time. You don’t have to examine everything from every angle before you try it. And you can’t wait for the perfect time to do something. That time never comes. And if you keep thinking you’ll just dig yourself down deeper and deeper and taking action will become more and more difficult. Instead you just need to stop thinking. Shut of your mind – it just helps you up to a point – and go do whatever you need to do.

5. Seeing the negative and downsides in just about anything.

When you see everything from a negative perspective you quickly punch a hole in your own motivation. You find faults everywhere and problems where there are really none. You cling to details. If you want to find a reason to not do something then that’s no problem. From a negative viewpoint you can find ten reasons every time.

And so very little gets done, you whine to anyone who wants to hear – and many who don’t – about how crappy your job, life and boss is. Which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy as you create the life that is appropriate considering how think and see your world.

A solution is to realise the limits of a negative perspective. And that your perspective isn’t some kind of 100% true picture of the world. Then try other perspectives. For instance, trying to establish a habit of seeing things in a more positive and optimistic light can be quite useful. In that vein, you may want to try the Positivity Challenge. It´s not easy, but if you do the challenge and try to only think positive thoughts for 7 days it can give you an insight in how much your perspective and beliefs changes how you interpret your world. And what results you get.

6. Clinging to your own thoughts and being closed to outside influences.

It can be hard to admit that what you thought or believed was not the best alternative. So you cling to your thoughts harder and harder and keep your mind closed. This makes it hard to improve and for instance to become more effective. Even really considering the possibility that you can change your life can be difficult in this position.

One solution, obviously, is to open up more. To open up and learn from the mistakes of others, from your own mistakes and from other sources like books. This is easy to say though. It can, as almost anything, be harder to do. One suggestion I have is to, like I said about the previous habit, realise the limits of what you know and the way you going about things. And then just try something new.

Another tip is to read A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle and especially look at the chapters about the Ego. If you stop identifying so much with your thoughts and your Ego, as Tolle prescribes, it becomes a whole a lot easier to let new ideas and thoughts come into your life. And to let go of old thoughts that aren’t useful to you anymore. On the other hand I’d like to add and counter-balance with these tips: don’t get stuck in reading, in just taking in new information either or you might become a self-help junkie. Use the new information, put what you have learned in to action and try it out.

7. Constantly on information overload.

With information overload I don’t just mean that you read a lot. I pretty much mean an overload in all input. If you just let all information flow into your mind it will be hard to think clearly. It’s just too much stimulation. A few more potential downsides to this habit are:

- Some of the input you receive will be negative. The media and your surroundings often put a negative spin on things for various reasons. If you aren´t selective in what input you want in your life then you’ll be dragged into this negativity too. This affects how you think, feel and act.

- It creates an urge to keep up with what’s happening but there are always ten more things happening so you can’t keep up. This makes life stressful.

- It becomes hard to make decisions and take action if your mind is constantly bombarded with information or trying to sort through it all. Personally I find that if I get too much information it leads to a sort of paralysis. Not much get´s done. Or you get stuck in habit #3 and keep busy, busy, busy at high speed with low priority activities.

To be able to focus, think more clearly and take action it´s useful to be more selective in what you let into your mind. When you work shut out as much distractions as possible. Shut off the phone, internet and shut the door. It is strange how much you can get done when you aren´t interrupted every fifth minute or have the opportunity to procrastinate by checking your RSS-feeds or favourite websites.

Now I´m not suggesting that you should stop reading all blogs or newspapers. But think about what you really want to read and what you read just read to fill your time. And have a look at other areas of input where the doors are wide-open.

For instance, you don´t have to let in all the negative emotions from your surroundings. If everyone else are procrastinating or are anxiously keeping themselves busy by doing low-priority tasks at warp speed it´s easy to be influenced by that mood. If you have a door, then it might be good idea to shut it and focus on doing more important things.

Saturday, October 18, 2008

Sony BPM

Now this is a rare thing. I would like to take this opportunity to promote Sony....my pay-master for more than 12 years.

We, at Sony Gulf, are just fresh out of our bi-annual Business Planning Meeting (BPM). This is a meeting where we showcase our line of products to our business partners, distributors and retailers. This is a meeting where we tell our business partners, distributors and retailers our expectations and goals for the next 6 months.


It was my first BPM.....and I was more of a spectator than a participant.....but I guess I did ok in helping my colleagues with their assignments.



Kaka, Sony Ambassador


One of the highlights of this BPM was the unveiling of Kaka as a Sony Worldwide product ambassador. Click HERE to read more about it. Sony is also the official partner of the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa. So, for a few years to come, anytime people are thinking about football, Sony will always come to their mind (hopefully).


Sony, the official FIFA World Cup 2010 partner


As for my department, CTV Marketing, we introduced to our partners the new model line up...including the first ever world's thinnest LCD TV, the KDL-40ZX1. Watch about it HERE.



Gary, Amin, Andrew & me with the ZX1 prototype.


At 9.9 inches thick and can be operated wirelessly (with the help of a media box/center) - well, with the exception of the power cord, of course, it marked the new generation of multimedia entertainment. The product will be launched some time in the early 4th quarter (mid-January 09).



Look for these logos the next time you're buying your electronic products


The other new technology is the DLNA enabled LCD TV. Read about Sony and the DLNA technology HERE. It is basically a TV that can be used to access other DLNA-certified devices through a wireless network (not to be mistaken as the wireless internet). Up to 10 DLNA-certified devices can be "hooked on" to the TV. It really is an "out of this world" type of entertainment.


There are other new line of LCD TVs in store for consumers for the next 6 months. Just go to your nearest Sony authorized dealers and distributors to find out more about it.


Sony, Like. No. Other.



Wednesday, October 08, 2008

Leaders and Learning

The long and boring meeting finished at about 430pm (on Wednesday, 07/10/08)…..But the new sales forecast data had to be keyed-in into the system ASAP. So, everyone stayed at the office after the meeting.

My taxi came at about 645pm… I left the office at once…..(but not before meeting Mr Imani who used to be my “driver” back in February). I was feeling very tired and had a slight headache. Probably because of the weather, or maybe because of my stuffy nose.

The cabbie, Mr Azadi, spoke English….and like Mr Sadiq from my yesterday’s trip, he was also a retired teacher. He said that he’d been teaching for 30 years because he retired. He’s in the late 50s or early 60s…maybe about the same age as both my parents.

He had done everything after his retirement….business, odd jobs…..everything….finally he picked up taxi-driving….and "it stuck until now", he said.

When I told him that I’m from Malaysia, like almost every Iranian that I met, he said Malaysia is a nice country which he’d like to visit. He also asked me about the former PM, Tun Dr Mahathir, for whom he had a lot of admiration. I said that he’s a good leader….he’s not had a really “Islamic” style or claiming to be “Islamic”, but he brought a lot of good things to Malaysia. Mr Azadi said that the Tun brought forward a “New Malaysia”.

Although I might not agree with some of his policies, I put respect where it’s deserved. Since he took over from the late Tun Hussein Onn in 1981, he had done a lot of new things….most of them were things that few people thought about then…… the Penang Bridge project, the national car, synchronization of time between the Peninsular and East Malaysia, the punch card system….I can go on and on. He had visions….most people said, he’d been planning his projects even before he became the PM….that’s why he came up with his new ideas only within a few years of taking power.

For me, a good leader is like a magnet….a good leader would just say “follow me” and everyone will do what he/she says… everyone will follow. A good leader instills confidence into his/her people. A good leader is respected by friends and foes alike. A good leader treat everyone fairly….not equally (there’re lots of differences between those two words).

For those who are familiar with the book by the late Stephen Ambrose, “Band of Brothers”…. Or watched the mini series (of the same title) co-produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks….the story portrayed in this book / mini series really epitomized the term leadership.

Basically, it tells a story (based on real-life characters) of a Company of American soldiers going to war during the 2nd World War. It was a company from the 101st Airborne Infantry Division of the US Army, the E Company (Easy Company). Read more about it HERE.

Good leadership had been the paramount factor for the Company to become one of the most hailed companies in the US Army during the war. Read about Major (R) Richard Winters HERE and Lt General (R) Robert Sink HERE.

In a nut shell, everyone is a leader…..a husband and father is the leader for his family, a teacher is the leader for his/her classroom….. But the most important thing is that a person is the leader of his/her own self…..if he/she fails in that aspect, then there’s no use for him/her to be a leader for anyone else.

Me, I’m still learning…..to be a leader for my family…..and a leader for my own self……And I know the learning will never stop….forever.

The late Henry Ford once said: “Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty”…..

And believe me, I don’t want to get old just because I stop learning.

Monday, October 06, 2008

Teachers

I have been living in a circle of teachers all my life....my parents, my sister, my uncles and aunts, cousins and not to forget my lovely wife....You can say that there are teachers in every generation of my extremely extended family....In fact my great grandfather (Al-Marhum Bilal Hj Hassan Abdul Salam) was a religious teacher who came to the Malay Peninsular from the Java Island at the turn of last century.

I met a special person today...going back to the hotel from work.....

I took a cab (as usual) from Ekbatan to the hotel....and it turned out that the cabbie, Sadiq, is a retired teacher. He is two years into his retirement.....God knows why he chose to be a cabbie...maybe he doesn't have any fruit orchards like my parents do.....but the more interesting thing is that he was a high school English teacher.

We talked about families.....he has two daughters.....the eldest is a mechanical engineer, married to an engineer (civil, I think)....the youngest is studying computer in one of the colleges in Tehran....."she's furthering her studies"....he said with utter pride. His hometown is in Shiraz....900km south of Tehran.....he moved to Tehran upon retirement because all his daughters are here.....He wanted to be near them.

He said, he bought an apartment (actually a duplex) in the Ekbatan area. It cost him 140Mil Rials....about USD14000...and he still maintains two houses in Shiraz where most of his relatives reside. The four-room duplex in Ekbatan houses the whole family....him & his wife, his married daughter & her husband and her bachelorette daughter.

He's a very nice and well-learned guy....we talk about oil prices....about development in our respective countries.....about our wives (I told him, to his amazement, that my wife is also a teacher). His wife is a tailor..."the best tailor around...and she even makes more I do.." he said. She has a shop back in Shiraz and still does the tailoring from their home in Ekbatan....He is her un-official promoter, armed with her calling card.

But, him being an ex-teacher still amazes me.....his English is very good for an average Iranian.....above all...I felt I have lot of respect for this guy....a retired teacher...driving a cab....and still maintaining that demeanor most teachers have..... confidence, respect for others and friendliness. It made me fell proud that I, myself, come from a family of teachers....and I am also married to a teacher.

Listening to him talking proudly about his children....made me think about how proud my parents (who are also retired teachers) are, when talking about my siblings and me. I hope one day, my wife and I would do the same about our children.

We parted company at the hotel.....and for the first time in my Tehran days, I tipped a cabbie.....not out of pity....it's because of respect.....He drove through the Tehran's rush-hour traffic without ever complaining.....

Well....he was a teacher...is still a teacher and will forever be one....

That's what being a teacher is all about.....once a teacher, forever a teacher....

To all the teachers out there.....you'll always have my eternal respects.....

Happy World Teacher's Day (Oct 5th, 2008)

Saturday, October 04, 2008

Our First Dubai Raya Open House

We practically and literally "bersilat-ed" from the morning until the minutes before the first guests arrived at about 730pm. They were Abg Azman and Kak Jah with their children.....and their grandkid....

Our first guests....Abg Azman, Kak Jah & family

Soon after, a wave of them came, fresh from their trip to Al-Ain.....I guess everybody was pretty hungry and tired.....They were led by Imran and Zaida.....

Our next guests came in one big wave.....

I was so worried that my small abode didn't have enough space for everybody.....but, alhamdulillah, everything turned out OK....

Thanks to our guests for finishing almost everything that we served......We really appreciated it.....

Our last guests.....Mushil & family and Khairul

The last guests, Mushil and family & Khairul, left at about 1015pm.......

We were really tired.....but really satisfied to have served our guests "dinner".....But please excuse us if there were any short-comings.....

There were those who didn't have the chance to come......but, hey....."Raya panjang lagi.....". They can come anytime....just call ahead.....InsyaAllah, we will prepare something for them....

For more pics, click HERE.

Thursday, October 02, 2008

Eidul Fitri in Dubai

Our first Eidul Fitri in Dubai.....

We got to know that it will fall on the 30th October just the night before.....at about 800pm....we did a quick shopping at the Karama market....thanks to our friends Imran & Zaida.....and started preparing meals and clothes for the Raya.....We slept at almost about 400am....I plan to perform the Solat Sunat Eidul Fitri the next morning which will be held right after Subuh (about 630am). But I got up at about 615am.....so, I missed the Solat Sunat.....We put on our clothes, had a small breakfast and got down to get a taxi to Bro Fudzail's house. He's holding a Raya breakfast. While waiting, a car stopped. It turned out that the couple inside were Malaysian and the wife's a web-friend of my wife. They offered to take us to Fudzail's house.....It's really a Raya blessing for us.....Rezeki Raya.

Here is our Raya itinerary......

30/10/08 (1st day of Raya)

Morning - Bro Fudzail & Dr Azma's house

Noon - Pak Payne & Kak Aisyah house

Afternoon - Bro Azman & Kak Jah's house

Afternoon - Mahadi & Riri's house

Evening - Imran & Zaida's house

We got home at about 1100pm....the girls slept over at Imran & Zaida's....

01/10/08 (2nd day of Raya)

Morning - Cooking & preparing food for guests

Noon - Zainal & Co visited (Apts 215 & 223)

Afternoon - Fadzil & Nor's house

Evening - Karim & Salina's house

Click here for some pics from our 1st and 2nd Raya....

02/10/08 (3rd day of Raya)

- Today.....we plan to go shopping at DCC.....

To Be Continued.....