Rejecting Temptations in Stores

Seeing things in store:

- go and walk MUJI then feel like buying storage to store the spectacles
- struggle to want to buy the neck pillow , when I have 2 plastic air pillows
- go past NIKE then feel like buying the $248 flower shoe

It is at those physical stores that I am tempted to buy, in the first place I didn't even desire not want to buy.

That's the good thing about online shopping so you can directly find what you want to buy. But that is also bullshit because there are random offers online as well.

Since, I didn't even intend to buy those things in the first place, maybe the best thing to do is to avoid all these physical shopping or to an extent online shopping - it means less decision fatigue.

Spend the time physically cycling around and enjoying nature instead.

A store is designed for you to buy things - the more we stay away from that, the less we need to exercise our limited discipline muscle to reject that.

Did IPAD add value to my life?

I bought a refurbished Ipad 2 justified by the intention to go for TranSiberia railway in 2013: It was to serve as a storage space for the photos taken ( with my old camera), as well as a mobile computer access– which is very useful either to book hotels or simply to clear emails on the go. Last but not least, was to act as an E book.

On the con side, the IPAD has been stealing my sleep. It has become my device where I waste more time on: Playing FIFA 13, Marvel Heros and watching Running Man or some other drama. It is made possible by some drama app, but I suspect also because I made my working space so uncomfortable to sit for long periods.

For all its benefits in that 2 weeks of travel, maybe one can just do without it and bear with the inconveniences for 2 weeks. One thing that irks me is that as the plane ascends and descends, I wil end up having to bring along a physical copy of a book.

As for photos, I have lost my camera and hence, I am just making do with my Iphone!

Just looking at these 2 sides of comparison, I have to say that the presence of an Ipad depreciates instead of adding value to my life. In general, it is within my own control to spend less time surfing on the internet, but the physical presence and convenience of Ipad makes it tougher to do so.

Sell that Damn Thing!

Shopping through a Mall in a holiday...

Malls:

Actually deciding to walk through the malls on a holiday gives me the impression that I am doing something equivalent of :

Surfing around the TV looking desperately for anything of even minor interest - like Chinasmack and BBC?

I would go through shops after shops, looking for the "Good deal".  I would "discover" new technologies in be inspired by new uses that I never knew existed.

To make things worse, now when I spot a deal - the living an examined life portion of me becomes a real pain in the ass as Yvon Chounaird puts it.

 Is this top sustainable?  Maybe I should look for something on Patagonia first? Can I trust H.E by Mango? I really like that discount on the Mizuno Shoe - but do I really need another pair of running shoe. 

Gosh, in a sense - shopping has become a chore. Yet, don't buy clothes equal to not being trendy.

Reflections from KL trip June 2014 - shopping?

You kind of realized that you don't enjoy shopping anymore - you used to go overseas and then you wouldn't mind walking around in the malls, buying something makes you feel that you have accomplished something.

Now, perhaps, maybe with Leo Babauta's article that there are adverts everywhere and with online shopping that allows you to be very specialized in your shopping - you don't really need to step inside inside a mall.

As I have learnt in IKEA, all the shops are designed to make you buy things - by avoiding them in the first place, there is less tendency to buy things.

No matter which company is it or how particular they are about the manufacturing process, there will be resources consumed in the production of any product - hence the only way is to consume less.

On a side note, it also becomes a little scary when there seems to be nothing to do in KL - even worse when many people's definition of time well spent is to drive half an hour on the road to look for something nice to eat.

It does seem that only UNESCO world heritage sites or some major nature sites are worth visiting.

How the first interface matters for the management of emails

Thus far I have more or less succeeded in checking my email only a couple of times a day and trying to focus on the task or work at hand.  And in a high speed environment like IKEA, I have not really succeeded in being successful - there are times where I am behind in some pieces of work.

Yes, theoretically, let's take up to 3 working days to send and reply emails.   However in this pressure cooker environment, it doesn't really work that well.  And to be honest, perhaps my email trick last time still covered my ass as an inefficient guy - yeah I know that I should spend my time at work instead of clearing email, therefore, I clear my email after work while travelling on the train or using smart phone.  Therefore, actually I am still using time (OT) to cover up my inefficiency. 

There is really something to learn in all sort of situations - in these recent months where I have lost appetite to clear personal or work emails and being in a fast pace environment allowed me to eureka this morning how broken my system is and what I can do to fix it. 

I have tried Leo Babauta's method of email processing time and having an empty inbox and parking work emails into a "Pending Action" folder.   However, after some time, I do forget about those " Pending Action" because they are not the first email interface that I see. 

Of course, I can transfer everything to a To Do List but that will take heck a Lot of time.  And suddenly, I realised the ridiculousness of applying the 3 days reply as well.   Why should I reply sponsorship requests in less than 3 days or a day once it appears in my inbox  - I have more important work to do. 

No matter what, the first interface that you see is the inbox - therefore if a non urgent email sits in your inbox - it is taking your attention away from other more important emails. 

Moving Forward:

1. Create more filters to remove certain types of emails from the first interface. 
2. In email processing time: 
1. Reply and act now if I can do that with a minute
2. If not, if it is a not important email - move it to "Slow" folder and act on it when free  - examples: sponsorship requests which I need to research into the organisation, general story emails on customers
1. Leave these to be acted on at those 3-4 pm where the energy is really low.
3. Leave the important to be acted on email in my inbox!

Something about Trekking:

Among my group of friends to count blessings for will be my trekking friends.   They have been an inspiration to me in that ½ of them would have done one of the following:

• Taken a career break of at least 6 months
• Mid career switch to the social sector

Perhaps it is that most of them are a couple of years older – so perhaps they have all worked enough that most of my peers would not have to do a rethink on life and career.  It helps that most of us are single too with less obligations.

Yet just maybe, it has got something to do with trekking.  Trekking for days in the wild often strips you down to the most basic comfort – you may realize that one may not need that many things in life or that you appreciate the basics like food and warmth in life better.

Perhaps too, that the sheer danger element in some treks means that we trekkers are already more predisposed to taking risks or it may mean that we condition ourselves to be more deeply engaged with life.

However the best part of all is the conversations: You walk for hours before seeing some scenery and so you may have long conversations with one or two individuals.  The best part though is the dinner around the campfire:

For about 3 hours, everyone is gathered around. With no mobile phones, no one is disconnected.  With just darkness around you, no one will wander off.   With no music or TV screens, no one is distracted and you only see the face of those in front of you, hear those who are truly around you.

Synchronised but not to notify:

Years ago, I started and delighted in having a mobile data plan to my phone - that was when I truly delighted on being on top of my work.  I like the fact too that i didn't spend my working hours clearing emails but rather doing these during my transportation time - leaving my fresher hours at work to do real productive work.

When I enabled synchronisation, the settings were always chosen at the longer intervals e.g an hour: for battery life as well as to really focus on tasks at hand and avoid being distracted.

Recently this year, I started to disenable notifications especially those of social media apps like Facebook - afterall, you realised that it is mainly non trivial stuff and it wouldn't die to check it once a week or less. Besides, I kind of realised the "more" life I had on Facebook, the less "life" I had in the real life.  I often accessed Facebook more as a form of escapism from the real work that I had to do.

Recently, it became a pain to see the notification lit on my mobile flashing away. That is when I finally hit on the best solution:

Synchronized but not to notify.

For all emails as well, such that when I hit the tab to acess, the emails are there for me to clear when I am standing in a queue etc. That is the reason why I like have emails synchronised - to make productive use of times that is wasted like in queues.

But I will avoid all the notifications that keep flashing on my phone and keeping me on tenderhooks.

Reaching the pinnacle of my physical limits

As I read Yvon Chouinard’s “ Let my people go surfing” about how he goes surfing , climbing and see pictures of his snow cap climbing, I realized that I am probably at that age where I better do anything physically challenging that I want to do.

Kind of realized that even though I have been climbing many peaks in Malaysia, I there is not much of a real danger usually – nothing of that like ice climbing.

This is what Yvon Chouinard has to say:

“Doing risk sports taught me: Never exceed your limits. You push the envelope, and live for the moments when you’re right on the edge but you don’t go over. You have to be true to yourself; you have to know your strengths and limitations and live with your means.”

There is only a few times where I can vaguely recall such moments.

The time will pass when I am no longer capable do doing things like free running, skate boarding or Jeet Kune Do.  If I don’t do it now, perhaps never. 

Lost of that ability for guilt free play

The lousy thing abou growing up is losing this ability to just play guilt free.

Remember the days where I will just wait for 10.30pm on Saturdays night to watch the Chinese movies on TV and I will happily be sleeping in late on Sunday.

Now that we learn life is limited, we are hesitant to do this.

Yet at the same time, everything will be gone in 5 billion years - so what is worth doing?

Perhaps, though it is too much to expect someone to keep working - afterall, Lincoln looked forward to his theatre nights - even though he has watched those plays endless times.  Everyone needs to relax.

It is kind of neat to live in the days of Salmon Chase, where he will lament if he worked on a Sunday cause he is not following God's words to rest on Sunday.

Realised that I have this tendancy to sink down into mindless games etc, if I find that I have lot of personal tasks to do.

Again, regardless of how we regard the issue of 5 bilion years, the most precious is again simply to limit each task and enjoy the process - this is the only thing we can hold onto.  THE PRESENT. 

Clothes, income and my style.

For most of my growing up years, I have always dressed simply – Most of the time, I am one of those sloppy dressers who wear T shirts and Bermudas for lessons in NUS.

One of the reason I give myself to not dress better is really because I was living on pocket money – I can’t be spending my mom’s hard earned money from working more than 10 hours a day on looking good?

This perhaps explains why this recent few years, my friends may find that my style has been a little one the wild side (or mildy put: funky) for them to accept.  Cause I feel that I now make my own money.

The end result: Over this 3.5 years of working, I owned over 21 button shirts – T Shirts are even more countless because of the sheer number of events that I joined.

What are some of the thoughts that hold me back from clearing them?

•            I have been reluctant to clear them away via donation to Salvation Army mainly is because these shirts cost me money – even if they are cheapo event T shirts of lousy material.  I just feel that to get  my money’s worth, I have to wear them  out even before I donate them! 
•           This probably has got to do with my younger years in childhood and teenage whereby money was not aplenty.

Why do I suddenly want to clear away so many of clothes?

•      It is really the entire “Less is more” movement I am into this 30^th year after reading “The Power of Less” and “Steve Jobs Biography”.  I kind of believe that less things in our life helps to clear up our thoughts.
•  How does more items in life create a more cluttered mind?  Deciding what to wear when you have many clothes to choose from is just many of the small decisions that we have make throughout the day that can lead to decision fatigue.
•  This is perhaps with a linkage to our evolutionary past as hunter gathers that our ancestors never had much material stuff, and our brain is not wired for so many possessions.
• Because I have the time now to think and slowly savor.
• For the environment – the less things I owe, the less resources I consume. And this is really what I use to motivate myself to donate things that are still rather new  – for a completely new race event shirt that I don’t really want to wear can go and clothe another poor individual.
• I don’t why it took me so many years to be hit with this point, perhaps, I really felt it only due to Story of Stuff and Patagonia – Don’t Buy This Jacket advertisement. 

How to make new buys?

•      Looking bacd, I realized that in the past, there were really a couple of times where I bought things that may not have fitted that well because they were on discount. 
• It could be due to my slightly not well off childhood or simply the entire consumer culture that lead me to behave that way.
• So now it must really be:
•  Does it fit well? ( I used to buy clothes that may be a little big because it is on a discount)
• Does it look nice?
• We often are keen to buy things at a discount because we believe that it will save us money that will allow us to buy more things. However, if I only want to own a few items – I really don’t need more things. And seriously, I can’t get round to finish wearing all the clothes if I have too many. 

There is something else that peeves me about buying things that are too cheap.  I remember seeing these 3 watches that are going for $10 at Chinatown.  $10 bucks! I walked away depressed because I just thought that at the back, how may workers are underpaid, what safety standards are being ignored and what environmental pollution is not being managed.

Hence my new mantra will really be:

Buy LESS, Buy Well.

We do not need that many items in our life – we can do with less and we will feel more relaxed for it.

Buy well and not merely just for discount so that someone else is compensated fairly and hopefully my item will last for a long time that I need not buy a new one for years – so far I only have faith in Patagonia for that.  Let me continue my experiments on brands and update again.

Book reviews and Gist of Information Management

Steve Jobs: "It takes a passionate commitment to truly understand something, chew it up and not just swallow it. Most people just don't take the time"

Most people just don't take the time - it is the same thing mentioned in Road Less Travelled when the author declare that he just does not have good mechanical hands to repair his car. 

How do we get the time?  Really it is to decide what is not needed to be done. 

As John Scully says of Steve Jobs:

It is about what we choose not to do.   Many of us complain about the lack of time to do housework, learn cooking etc. 

And yet, we can be so bored staying at home - that occasionally, we go out for the sake of going out. While doing that, we think that are are not really doing anything productive - or at least I do.

I have already established that information that you don't use immediately is " useless" information - until you have less noise in your life, can you use your limited will power, discipline etc to do the things that are really important. 

With that being said, it is time to be ruthless in clearing book notes again - the many many many many books I have read and taken notes.  " The world is flat" may be good while I read a couple of years back, now perhaps less so. 

Looking back at the dozens of evernotes i made from all the Principles of Persuasions newsletters, bookmarks from Diggo ( in year 2009 especially when I was unemployed) all the way back to the Google Notebooks with all the Springwise Idea cuttings ( That probably came around 2006 when I first go onto information on the net aggressively), it is crazy:

• Collected lots and lots and lots of ideas that had no immediate applications. 

In this modern day and age where search is more powerful than proper organising ( Witness Tags over folders), there is no need to horde information as in my previous post. 

In Summary, Information Flow management will be:

1.  Restrict as much as possible like Pico Iyer:
1. Less information will fatigue your brain less, less decisions to be made
2. That's why all those monks are all so peaceful - less things to make decisions on. 
2. Choose and then focus like a laser - Information will come thanks to search.

This is actually similar to social behavioural change management - Community Based Social Marketing has shown us that providing information is not enough to change behaviour - a complete package of removal of barrier, incentives is needed.  And in that, complete intensity is needed. 

First Thing First

There must be something about this book, that resulted in me asking Rama to buy this book all the way from India after reading Meijun’s version.  Even though, I don’t find the book as impactful to want to keep it, still I should say, reading it is therapeutic. 

I think the biggest takeaways I had from this book was really:

• The enemy of the best is the good.  This really is the core of the book - First thing first.  A lot of things are worth doing but you only have limited time. 
• Circle of influence vs circle of concern. There are many things of which we may be concerned about like the US Elections, there are only certain things that we have an influence over. Work on our circle of influence and it will grow to encompass more and more of our circle of concern. 
• Perhaps List - feeling stress about the list of bucket list and to do list that gets longer and longer, put in on a perhaps list - something that you don’t do but you feel fine as well. 
• Roles - This serve as a useful reminder of the various roles that I have in my life and reminds me to keep them balanced. Roles. No more than 7 for effective management.

The problem:

Many more were achieving goals but were feeling less happy and fulfilled.  For every one thing that I have done, I can think of ten others that I should have done. 

Time management essentially ignores the reality that most of our time is spent living and working with other people who cannot be controlled. 

The Question:

Am i doing the right thing before “ am i doing things right”

Anything less than a conscious commitment to the important is an unconscious commitment to the unimportant. 

Hence we just let urgency over take us.  For example, in a survey that asked “what is that one thing you know that you did superbly well will improve your life immensely ?” 

A great majority of people answered:

• Better communication, 
• Better planning and organizing. 

But we often don’t work on these.  Because they don’t act on you, you have to act on them - they are not urgent. 

The quick fixes:

Married Singles.  We don’t take time to nurture the seeds of shared vision, selflessness, caring and tenderness. 

Children.  We take the shortcuts - we are bigger, we have the authority.  We can talk down and impose our will. We can try to shift the responsibility for training them to schools or daycare centers. 

Find the purpose of why you are doing certain things:

It is not to prioritise your schedule, but to schedule your priorities. 

The burning “yes” that empowers us to say “ no” - peacefully and confidently - to the less important things in our lives. 

The key to motivation is motive.  It is the “ Why”.  As Leo Babauta says now too. He says no longer wants to lead a goals oriented life. 

If a goal is not connected with a deep “why”, it may be good, but it usually isn’t the best. If it is connected , we need to push our thinking and feeling until we break through and create and open flow between the passion of vision and the goal. 

How do you get there? 

Connect with yourself more. Understand yourself. 

Keep a daily journal , Review your mission statement, and set aside time each week to connect with your inner compass.

I am glad that I reflect frequently ( as an alternative to a daily journal) and I now create a “Momento Mori” that pops up whenever I switch on my laptop so I am always reminded. 

Plan weekly, Daily is usually fighting fire. 

I don’t plan ahead weekly.  Perhaps, I need to again, once I start working. I guess it helps that my calender is in weekly view.

At the end of the day:

It is really knowing your roles and priorities. 

Is it more important to schedule your time to efficiently solve the problems created by conflicting expectations ... or to take the time to work with others and clarify expectations up front?

Knowing your roles, and final destinations allow you to be more spontaneous in planning. 

Wisdom vs Knowledge:

Alfred North Whitehead:  “ Knowledge shrinks as wisdom grows: for details are swallowed up in principles.  The details of knowledge which are important will be picked up ad hoc in each avocation of life, but the habit of active utilization of well-understood principles is the final possession of wisdom.”

When you get enough of the gist of things, you don’t need the specifics.  Just like the story right at the beginning of the book - when Steven’s daughter was upset that she is losing control of her life with the birth of the child. However, her life was to be unbalanced in the short run. There is a time and a season for everything under the sun.  Be governed by some internal compass, and not by some clock on the wall. 

"The Lazy way to Success" by Fred Gratzon

Of course the only way to do a book review of this book is to do it the lazy way! Hence, I have chosen to take photos instead of typing it out: 

The lazy way – is to have fun doing it. 

I like how he actually uses many examples to emphasis his messages - like how he finds many examples throughout great discoveries that each and everyone of these scientist was having fun while doing it, or didn't intend to find it in the first place.

From Richard Branson, I have already learnt the importance of pursuing your passion, but that is just like one piece of evidence from only one person. In this case, it was important for me to see it being repeated by so many different scientists, athletes, and musicians – name it, you have it.

The goal is not important – what matters most are that you enjoy it. 

This is an illumination to me as well? But to be fair, it is in at this stage of my life. My target was not about making more money on the surface, it was about making a difference to the world. However, underneaths that, perhaps, there were also mixed feelings of making money and making a name for myself.

As I dispelled the need to leave a name for myself, I found myself taking to his proposal of making sure that you enjoy the process. I didn't choose a major that I enjoyed – I chose one to make a difference - hence I chose environmental engineering.

Do something that you get into the state of flow, you will enjoy it and get better at it.  From there, you will accomplish success in that field.

“A first rate soup is better than a second rate painting” Abraham Maslow. 

If you are doing something natural to you and good for the world, the world will come around to help you

This is where perhaps; he may be exaggerating a little bit. But with quotes from Buckminister:

This is where it applies to me most now: However, for nature and circumstances to fall behind you – you often need to make a commitment.  A  commitment - some action that requires an act of faith that demands something unnatural, something that is a stretch to you.

How does one find their calling then?

On definition of work:

On Leadership:

He basically concurs with Richard Branson and Dale Carnegie: praise praise praise. 

The last few chapters - Subtler is the way to save the world:

The last few chapters are where he really starts to make LESS sense, however it is also a tall order for him to make sense in that last few chapters. 

While quoting Einstein that problems cannot be solved at the same level of thinking as they were created and that Subtler is simpler and better, he proposes that we do nothing   - do nothing in a certain way will be the way to solve many of the world problems. 

In proof that things are more effective at a more subtler level, in organisations:

Leadership-culture trumps strategy. 

In his context, he was just referring that inside of many creative thinking training camps, all it matters more is to have the culture that encourages experimentation and failures in the company. 

Enjoy the process/ kiss the failures

If u want a sure fire way to hit the bull eyes, draw the circle after your arrow has landed, so he cites example of side effects being the gold mine.  The most famous will be story of the discovery of penicillin. 

Education don't teach you what is important. 

I don't have a solution to his suggestion that education does not teach you anything important. I don't have a better solution, how do you teach students to know thyself? However, I agree we are so much off the scale that perhaps even ensuring the minimum amount of self awareness teaching will be a good point to start with. Here are my proposals to education:

• At the teenage years, to start encouraging students to ask about who is thyself
• Teach philosophy – that is one of the best way to start questions about thyself.
• Teach mediation – as the Singapore Googler suggest. Acknowledging that mediation brings benefits and hence like physical education – make it part of the curriculum.

The Lazy Way to Success In Sum:

Do what you enjoy doing, that will get you into flow. Then you no longer have to work hard because it is not work to you. When you make the final big commitment, and it is a cause good for the world, the world will come round to support you.  And because you delight in the process and perhaps, not be so stuck in the search for the final outcome, your eyes maybe opened for the gold mine that are actually the side effects.  And yet, to begin with, you have to learn to know yourself in order to know what gets you into flow! 

True, interesting but useless: Dealing with the horde of information

The Beginning of the curiosity:

格物 。 That is the first step of Confucius 8 step to peace in the world - which is also one of the reason why I am always so curious and reading. Next, I think was the literature teacher Miss Boey who advised us to read more and listen to BBC. It was then that I spent nearly every Saturday afternoon was spent reading the entire week Straits Times Forum.

书到用时方恨少 – this was perhaps the guiding principle in the past of why it is always better to know more than less.

Old Model of thinking into the new age of Internet:

It was this idea of always learning that lead to me to horde lots of bookmarks as well as explore many tools to keep track of things of read:

• Before the age of Facebook and Twitter, I will use StumbleUpon to keep good websites that I have read and I wanted the world to read about such as Jared Diamond's interviews on the EDGE.
• Definitely using Delicious was necessary to keep bookmarks accessible across various computers.
• Diggo was used because it allowed annotations of webpages.
  • I wanted to feel that I have actually done work through all these annotations ( However, as Paul Graham said reading is not work),
  • Many services touted annotations on webpages that can be viewed by different users as a ideal feature that encouraged collaboration among internet users but that didn't really took off.

What was the problem with this information hoarding mindset?

The problem if let's say I was looking a software that can convert PDF to Word. I would actually forget that I may have bookmarked such a software before. Before I actually refer to my useful list of bookmarks, I actually just google – that means my bookmarks were as useful as how much I remember. Duh!

The other reason behind all the bookmarking and annotations was simply because of the wide range of reading interest – such as reading about Matt Daemon's water charity work, or carbon trading on a global scale. This is where the circle of concern vs centre of i­nfluence comes in, I may be interested in the global carbon trading developments but seriously there is nothing I can do about it at my current position.

The amount of time we spent on things of our concern instead of our circle of influence is amazing when we include:

• Tools that throw us more information such as facebook and twitter
• All the email subscriptions such as the good work done by The story of Stuff and Guinea worm by Carter Center
• All the worthy authors that I subscribe to such as Gate's Notes and Thomas Friedman articles on New York Times.

In fact, there was even a period where I actually moved many of email subscriptions to google reader so that I will not feel obliged to read them in my email box but only when I feel like checking out my google reader at leisure.

The way forward – tools and mindset:

Here are the things I have done to have LESS information in my life:

• Unsubscribe many podcasts since I have already built up the good habit of switching on BBC radio whenever I am doing laborious work at home.
• I can't do it like Pico Iyer who doesn't have a facebook and twitter account, but now I made a point to move all the social media apps like flipboard, news app like BBC off the homescreen of my Ipad and mobile phone.
  • I have also been succeeding mostly in the good habit of arriving slightly early, hence while using that waiting time to fiddle with my phone – It will be to clear the emails as well as the reading list in Pocket and not get more new information from feedly/google reader!
  • What about staying relevant and updated to the current affairs? I used to watch the Chinese news every evening at 10pm. Again, with the internet, news comes at you, there is no need like what I did when I was young to reach out for the news – in those days, information was just limited to that few channel.
• Now there are very little bookmarks on my browser – they are related to the projects that I am embarking on currently. It takes a discipline to focus.
  • I don't horde all the useful websites of various tools/softwares anymore. Now no information is too precious to be deleted, internet has allowed us to obtain information as and when we need - it is a vast difference from 书到用时方恨少.
• The other bookmarking software that I still use for other bookmarks not immediately related to current projects (hopefully very few) is Diggo. I will use Diggo to bookmark only because it has a feature that features my Diggo bookmarks in typical Google Search, hence reflecting websites that I have bookmarked before when I am searching for information.
• And in the first place to avoid gathering more bookmarks not related to current projects, as much as possible now too, I just use Clearly to only display the relevant text when I read webpages to avoid being distracted by links and go on a reading tour again.

Okay, I know most of the people out there don't have an issue with too many bookmarks in the first place.

For others who read too much things on the internet, most of the information is TRUE, INTERESTING but USELESS to you as long as you don't a use for it in the immediacy.

Life. Religion. Flow.

In these 3 short months, it has dawned on me with extremely scary consequences that the typical Chinese cultural heritage of 先天下忧而忧， 后天下乐而乐 and 流芳百世 point of view which has been a main driving force for me to be involved in environmental work has been slightly invalidated. The truth is – after 5 billion years, the sun will swallow the Earth and there will be nothing left of human civilization to remember what anyone has done.

What else then is left of the motivation to save the environment, especially the whole environmental movement is only for humans as Gaia will go on without us, just as many species were previously wiped out in the mass extinctions eons ago.

Many great people have found immense satisfaction from helping others and serving others. For example, Lincoln’s ultimate ambition was to “ link his name with something that would redound to the interest of his fellow man” - that moment was when he signed the Emancipation Proclamation. Perhaps, we are social animals and seeing the joy on others' face do give us much satisfaction.

Alas! That is one satisfaction that does not come from environmental work cause Earth is not one living creature that will smile at you and warm your heart. Even saving dogs at animal shelters rewards you with warmth!

What about religion? To serve a God's mission seems to be one ideal solution. After books like “ A short history of nearly everything” , “Selfish Gene”, “ The rise and fall of the third Chimpanzee” and “ Guns, Germs and Steel”, we humans really can already broadly explain the existence of life and the subsequent evolution/ development into various civilizations. The only 2 missing gaps are:

• Where did the singularity that created the Big Bang come from?
• Scientists have succeeded in creating the amino acids with electricity (mimicking lightning) using gases present on the early earth such as methane, ammonia and hydrogen. Amino acids are the compounds that make up the proteins in all living organisms. The gap is how did amino acids make the jump to RNA? We already know how did RNA evolved into DNA, subsequently into proteins and the beautiful branch of life.

Videos such as “Who wrote the Bible” removed any last needs of religion for me. Learning that King Constantine had a big role in coordinating the contents of the Bible and that without Han WuDi, Confuciusim may not have risen to be overriding philosophy of East Asia, affects me deeply about my ethical values and religion choices.

What then is left with certainty? Flow.

This seems the only ..... something that will ensure happiness and a state of enjoyment. It becomes a shift from the purpose, the end target to enjoyment of the process.

The destination is no longer important. It is okay that I am not sure what lies at the end, at least I will be sure that I enjoyed the journey.

Best goal is no goal and GMM/GMFM projects.

As our dear Leo Babauta blog - the best goal is no goal

I suspect my contant procrastination to do anything about my GMFM or GMM project till I have to is really because I have got no real passion fr it. 

As Leo writes,

"I know I lived with goals for many years, and in fact a big part of my writings here on Zen Habits are about how to set and achieve goals.

These days, however, I live without goals, for the most part. It’s absolutely liberating, and contrary to what you might have been taught, it absolutely doesn’t mean you stop achieving things."

Well, that's true for me at least. At these days when I sabai and don't work, I am most of the time creating and producing stuff - ICCS, book reviews etc. 

As Leo continues,

"The problem with goals

In the past, I’d set a goal or three for the year, and then sub-goals for each month. Then I’d figure out what action steps to take each week and each day, and try to focus my day on those steps.

Unfortunately, it never, ever works out this neatly. You all know this. You know you need to work on an action step, and you try to keep the end goal in mind to motivate yourself. But this action step might be something you dread, and so you procrastinate. You do other work, or you check email or Facebook, or you goof off.

Here’s why: you are extremely limited in your actions. When you don’t feel like doing something, you have to force yourself to do it. Your path is chosen, so you don’t have room to explore new territory. You have to follow the plan, even when you’re passionate about something else.

What do you do, then? Lay around on the couch all day, sleeping and watching TV and eating Ho-Hos? No, you simply do. You find something you’re passionate about, and do it. Just because you don’t have goals doesn’t mean you do nothing — you can create, you can produce, you can follow your passion.

In the end, I usually end up achieving more than if I had goals, because I’m always doing something I’m excited about. But whether I achieve or not isn’t the point at all: all that matters is that I’m doing what I love, always."

As it is, intrinsic motivation rules non factory production work (TED Talk) , must really try my best to do the only the tasks that I am passionated about. GMM/GMFM was a choice that I made cause I felt that I really should get to know these better. I dislike the projects, but I do enjoy very much some of the technical stuff that I learnt, cause that was really what I went to pick up on. 

Given my recent philosophy escapades, I do agree there is no posterity to remember what has been accomplished and hence what can be better than "I'm doing what I love, always."

Cheers!