The main idea of the book is: we all have the same hours in a week (168).  How come some people can achieve so much more and balance so much more than the rest of us?

168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think

There are two main points.  First, take a cold hard look at how you are using the 168 hours.  Don’t “think” or “guess” it.  Be brutally honest.  Record your activities every hour for a whole week and review it.  Chances are we waste way more time than we expect (TV/chatting/chilling).  Chances are we do real work a lot less than we claim.  Chances are we do not spend most of our times doing things that fall within our core competencies. 

Laura argues that there is enough time to achieve everything we want, if we really want to.  But, we cannot leave our hobbies or pleasure to happen by chance.  We have to actively plan and manage these activities if we want to get the most out of it.  And to maximize, we should focus on our core competencies.  Companies have been doing that for decades, but we have not brought that into our daily lives.  If you don’t like a task and it does not fall under your core competencies, the suggested route is to: ignore it, minimize it, or outsource it. 

The second part basically says no matter what job you are doing, there is always someone that could do it for a lower pay.  The hyped saying of “doing what you love” is not enough anymore.   For true security, you have to do what you love AND love what you do.  Only then will you be able to excel at the job. 

Few questions were asked to help find your true calling:

• If you did not have to work anymore, what would you still be doing? 
• If someone paid you a lot of money away from a job, what job would be really hard to walk away from? 

Through these questions, I realized my true calling is to be a porn star.  I remember years ago, there were articles mentioning the porn industry lacks Asian guys.  Not sure if they are still hiring.  Not sure if my wife would be supportive of this career…

My Impressions: Build Your Network Build Your Bottom Line

This was the other “free gift” after I got an offer “I could not resist” to subscribe to Entrepreneur magazine for a year…

Sorry no link with the picture this time because I didn’t see it on amazon. 

So we learn in Bschool that networking is one of the most important things to be successful in a career.  I have seen time and time again how people with less “skills” or “talent” easily surpass their peers in terms of advancement opportunities.  Taking a close look at those scenarios (of course very limited sample size), network is often the striking difference.

Some people are naturally outgoing, for them, they just need to “refine” each time they meet people.  But for naturally awkward and introverted people (like me), just getting out of the house is extremely difficult.  First three years in Pittsburgh, I rarely went out.  I didn’t go out to meet friends, I don’t go out to eat, I don’t go shopping, I don’t go to the movies.  It’s not a “oh poor Johnny he has no friends” type of thing.  It is more of a, “I am so happy I can sit in my chair, watch my free youtube and drink my beer with nobody judging me or bugging me.”  I’m actually very happy to sit on my chair, alone, at home, with that beer.   

The book serves in time for a quick reminder to myself for what do I really want out of life?  Am I happy with “just having a job” right now?  Content-wise it is real short. I wouldn’t call it a book.  I would call this a manual. 

Succinct, simple, lots of templates and examples, exact procedures.  I thought it was pretty good value for being a “free gift.” 

To try to summarize the main message of the book:

Three stages:

    1. Visibility: Get out there, meet people, referrals

    2. Credibility: Be really knowledgeable in your field, integrity, responsible

    3. Profitability: Mutually beneficial relationship

Other Important Points:

• Profitability is not found by bargain hunting, but cultivated from farming. 
  -> Reminds me of a saying from long ago basically saying you should do things fast with things to be fast, and slow with people to be fast.  If you are fast with people…  It actually becomes really slow…  Somehow I can’t say it as artistic as I heard it.  It sounded much more inspiring when I heard it…  Sorry!
• Increase your network data base to 1,000
• Always be sincere and ask: How can I help?  -> Some people do this to me, and I always feel warm and fuzzy inside.  I am naturally inclined to trust these zealous helpers…  This is a very strong contrast to people that keep raising more questions and problems when there are already plenty that haven't been solved...

My Impressions: Influence - The Psychology of Persuasion

Nearing the end of November.  I have started 39 books in 2016 and just finished book 29.  Likely I won’t hit the 50 book mark…  Maybe next year.  In my defense a lot of the books I started are “textbook style” such as Excel 2013 Power Programming with VBA…

Anyway, so how I stumbled upon this book was because Tai Lopez’s youtube advertisement kept on hitting me.  I was just trying to stream my favorite Miley from The Voice and Tai kept on showing up between videos showing off his huge mansion and fancy cars trying to persuade me to buy his course and become a wealthy man like him.  I researched his course, I read about reviews, I tried really hard to evaluate how dope his method is.

Look at how lovely Miley is!

The truth is, I found his video quite captivating.  I was curious to keep on watching it…  It was long, I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t really stop. 

I came across one reddit post basically saying his ad has more learning value for sales and marketing than his whole course he is trying to pitch (inclined to agree).  Tai’s ad packs all the psychology of persuasion in his video ads (though clumsy), and that in itself is kind of an art piece.  The original poster then mentioned this book for reference…  So I thought, read the source!  And here we are.  

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Revised Edition

Now the content is pretty tight.  Every time I read a new example, I think to myself, “Damn, the real estate agent used that on me,” or “Oh that’s what happened at the car dealer.”  Chapter two talks about the rule for reciprocation: Krishnas giving people a ‘gift’ – a book, and then asks for a donation.  This exact thing happened to me at the O’Hare just a few weeks ago.  Apparently this rule is so powerful that people feel obligated to give even if they don’t like the requester.  I didn’t.  I hate it when people ask me for money and make it feel like they are doing me a favor. 

The main idea is, over the centuries, humans have evolved in such a way that like Pavlov’s dogs, we are conditioned to behave certain ways without thinking about it.  Press the button, something happens.  Many of the examples from the book still hold true.  But the same time, some of these techniques have been over-exploited so much that people now have an auto-hate response towards them.  The really scary ones are the revolutionized methods based on these principles that haven’t been publicly recognized.  This is war.   

I recommend people to read it and safeguard yourself...

My Impressions: What's Your Business Worth?

So apparently mass e-mail marketing does work.  I ended up subscribing to Entrepreneur magazine…  They e-mailed me a discount deal: $5 for a whole year.  I believe material and labor costs more than that.  Yet, I opted for the $8 dollar electronic version (which has no variable costs).  I would’ve preferred just a PDF file instead of having to download their app and all that bullshit.  But I guess it is their way to combat piracy. 

Anyway, one of two “freebies” of subscribing to Entrepreneur is this book.  More ads!  The purpose of this book is to try to convert business owners into customers and subscribe their service at bizequity.com – a valuation tool for entrepreneurs.  There were lots of “case studies” on how their online valuation tool was amazing and helped create value to business owners.   If anybody ever uses this tool, please let me know if you found it helpful.  Sharing is caring.  All the marketing in the book seems to suggest value for small businesses with detailed records.  I highly doubt small businesses have that level of detail in record keeping…  Honestly, even large companies have shit data.  As for the rest of the book, meh, still had some value in it. 

Cover to cover (electronic) was 135 pages, I went through it in about an hour.  But I’ll save you all the advertising for the tool and you can soak up an “entire book” of knowledge in 2 minutes. 

Basically, everybody should know the value of their business, but more often than not people don’t.  There are lots of potential scenarios that could be better dealt with knowing what the business is worth:

   • Kicking people off / bringing people on the team

   • Divorcing your spouse who is also a business partner

   • Estate and inheritance planning

   • Selling / exiting

   • Negotiations

   • Getting loans and investments

The more well-informed you are, the less likely you’ll be taken advantage of. 

Unfortunately, “Wall-Street” valuations that are used on large companies may not be relevant for small businesses.  There are a lot of tax-incentives for a small business owner that may not be reflected through a discounted-cash-flow model or 6x EBIT.  Running your own business also aligns enterprise value and managerial incentive 100%.  Your enterprise IS your well-being.   There are no conflicts of interests or principal-agent problems. 

Similarly, when a small business owner asks for a loan at a bank, the bank asks:

   • How much do you make?

   • Pull credit profile

These two factors generally do not accurately reflect a new startup that has a lot of upfront investment with very little sales.  So then yada yada yada the book tells you to buy their service and they will perform magic and give you a number. 

Writing a book has become a new business model.  Blogger James Altucher explains the benefits of this writing a book business model:

   • Much more memorable handing out your book at networking events than just a business card

   • Instantly establishes you as an expert

   • You have hot leads and warm eye balls going through your [free] book that’s promoting your [not free] product

   • Quenches your thirst for attention

I guess this is one of those books.  

My Impressions: One-Minute Tips for Effective Memorizing

So I was in Asia for a bit over two weeks doing my thing, came back and got lazy.  For me, Asia trips always seem to be a mission.  Tons of friends and family to see and often times it feels a bit overwhelming.  Anyway, one of the more relaxing parts of my trip was just chilling with my MBA classmates in a book store.  Cheng Ping book store!  The biggest (?) bookstore in Taiwan that could probably be listed as a tourist hot spot.  They still have a lot of traffic and seem to be thriving (as compared to Barnes & Nobles and Borders (who?)…).

Recently, I’ve been trying to learn A LOT of things (Ruby on Rails, Japanese, Esperanto, Morse Code, Acupuncture, SQL, VBA…), I felt like the RAM and storage of my brain was starting to reach its capacity.  In grade school, I could memorize an essay word-for-word after reading it maybe 2-3 times.  Now, I can’t even memorize a sentence for a presentation if my life depended on it.  I went onto the ‘improve your brain’ section and found this book to help my memorization. 

Translation is One-Minute Tips for Effective Memorizing, and I could not find an actual English translated version.  I read the whole book in an hour while I was intra-commuting on the Hi Speed Rail. 

Basically, the author sucked at studying growing up, then found his own system of memorizing a whole bunch of stuff efficiently.  In Asia, high competition and the massive amounts of tests for students to go through growing up -> memorization and test-taking skills seem to be an important skill for one’s academic achievements. 

Challenge Your Own Beliefs

The biggest take away for me is we should question ourselves and our beliefs more.  Author gave an example of how some people say, “Yeah, I was never good at studying” or “Yeah, I have a bad memory.”  But how often do these people actually spend time studying how-to-study or study memory and practice those skills?  Studying is a skill.  Memorization is a skill.  To conclude one’s lack of talent without actually testing its limits is dismissing a lot of potential and value…

We can extend that self-challenge to other aspects such as:

   • Yeah, I gain weight easily even if I only drink water -> have you studied calories and tracked your intake/output?

   • Yeah, I suck at public speaking -> Have you took courses and actually tried to improve?  Video tapped yourself, took notes, consciously putting effort and  making changes?  Or you just said some stuff without preparation and people fell asleep?

List goes on and on.  I suggest everyone to challenge themselves and really question that self-doubt.  You may be surprised. 

Myths of Memory

Anyway, given that premise on challenging your methods of memorization, author lists out some myths of memory/study.  Some seem to make sense, some I’m not sure.  But I guess the fun is finding out what works for you.  I always find it fun to constantly challenge the authority.  But here are the author’s conclusions:

   • Is writing things down better?  Answer is, only if the actually test is a writing test.  If the test is multiple choice (which seems to be the norm now), rote memory on a flash card is probably more time efficient.

   • Is it better to remember a “whole” concept at the beginning or small compartments?  Answer is small compartments, although you may want to “understand” the whole concept at the beginning. 

   • Is sitting down to study the best way?  Answer is studying out loud while you walk around is more stimulating to the brain and activates more senses.

   • Is finding a quiet library the best place to focus?  Answer is go find somewhere with background noise (like a subway…).  You want noise, but not comprehensible noise (like music with lyrics).  

 

Color Technique

Then finally, one of the memorizing techniques I found intriguing.  Colors.  We should use more colors in our study.  Author suggests up to 4 colors: blue (take notes with blue), yellow, green, red.  Either have 4-color papers to take notes on, 4-color pens to takes notes with, or even 4-color post it’s.  Have a cascading system, e.g.:

   • Blue: never before seen material

   • Yellow: Seen but can’t remember well

   • Green: Can remember the answer within 30 seconds

   • Red: Can instantly recall the answer

For test taking people that are cramming the last few days or hours, you should focus on turning everything from green to red and just sacrifice the blue and the yellow.  But for others that have no testing pressure, this method categorizes your familiarity with the subject.  It is then a lot easier to know where you should focus on and what to study.  The only “practical” question I have not figured out is, isn’t that a lot of writing and re-writing?  Maybe someone should make an app for this.  If you have a better way, please share and show that you care. 

That’s all I got.  

My Impressions: The Well-Grounded Rubyist

So, I have been “trying” to learn Ruby on Rails for a long time now.  Like a few years.  I’m like a super failure at this task.  One excuse I have is that Ruby on Rails is a newer language and the learning material are not as developed and mature as others, such as VBA and SQL.  I’ve come across a lot of shitty tutorials for VBA and SQL, but also some really good ones (see at end).  But so far, I have not come across good ROR tutorials, maybe because it is too broad…  I’m still hopeful though, and trying different ways of learning at a snail pace. 

Honestly though, I a real class or tutor will help a lot more in ROR learning than trying a book or online tutorial…  I mean, take it from one that’s failed at this for many times.

The Well-Grounded Rubyist

After going through the first 15 pages of google search on how to learn ROR, I came across this book.  Many people suggested on forums that this is a must-have book for ROR n00bs.  That would be me.  So, I ordered the book. 

Anyway, this book is pretty thick.  I got through the first ¼ understanding it fairly well.  The middle half was like, I “kind of got it theoretically,” and the last ¼ was just like…  Still in English?  No idea. 

The truth is, this book was not meant to be a tutorial.  It would be unfair for me to treat it like one.  This book is a manual.  The author tries to balance that appropriate details from something “a three year old would know” to “this could really help even an advanced person.”  That’s a hard task, and I have no idea if he accomplished it or not, because I’m not even a three year old. 

I do “feel” the book will be a very important reference as my experience continues to grow (provided I don’t just say fuck it and quit – recently I’m debating this). 

I bought another ROR book, one that is meant to be a tutorial.  If I remember correctly there are over 600+ pages.   Will be back here when I’m done with it………….

Now, the best tutorials I've come across: 

Best VBA tutorial ever: 
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNIs-AWhQzckr8Dgmgb3akx_gFMnpxTN5

Best SQL tutorial ever: 
https://www.khanacademy.org/computing/computer-programming/sql

My Impressions: Innumeracy

The title intrigued me.  Often times we hear people throw out illiteracy a lot, but not so much innumeracy.  As someone who tries to be precise and accurate, the frequent inaccurate claims make me uncomfortable.  I tend to take communication very literal and numerical.  If I could, I would even try to group my communication thoughts in a binary way: yes or no, black or white.  Not always a good idea to do that, but there is some appreciation to see I’m not the only one like this.

In a world where overemphasis and exaggeration is focused on very select topics while everything else is being masked, our inherent expectations on how the world operates is also constantly changing unconsciously.  Further adding to this is the constant bombardment of our self-select filters in social media.  Parts of this book provide big data results on situations we may be way off.  I think this is important because it helps realign our benchmarks…  And if our expectations were way off “reality,” then we can finally start asking questions again, being truth to oneself, and the world we live in.  

Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences

The book wasn’t as nerdy as I expected.  I would label the exercises and tricks in the book in two labels: The easier level and the harder level. 

The easier level consists of cute tricks that appear often in intro-math courses or brainteasers online.   An example would be what are the chances of two people having the same birthday in a room full of people?  Questions similar to this often have answers that are very different from “most people’s” expectations, and the math is easy enough to kind of get it. 

The more complex questions walk through some calculations – like in school we have to “show our work” to demonstrate our thought process and how we arrived to our answers.  I assume most people for the most part would just be bored and skip right over………  Then there are some parts I would think of as more “philosophical” like whether extraterrestrial beings exist, or, if we each share Julius Caesar’s last breathe, and try to use math to calculate an answer.  At that point, I’m still kind of curious, but more at “Ok, so what?  Who cares?” 

One important mention in the book is we were taught basic math in grade school, but we were never taught how to apply them.  If we stop and think about that for a second, and really think about all the other subjects we were taught and if we could apply them in real life…  The thought scares me.  Of course, there is the easy blame – the education system.  But the same time, we should also be responsible for our own education, shouldn’t we?  Nobody has responsibility over our own learnings and maybe we should take more ownership of it. 

Yeah, this is an odd post.  I’m just going to stop abruptly because my thought process just shut down.  

My Impressions: The Purpose Driven Life

I am rather cynical, narrow, and shallow.  Reading this book has been tough.  Writing about my thoughts about it, as it relates to religion makes it even tougher.  

The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here For?

 

Previously, I had Christian friends.  But I understood very little about the religion.  There were words and phrases that constantly got on my nerves.  What do you mean XXX!!  Why you say/do that!!  Since this book is in a way, a how-to-be-Christian book, it helped me understand the religion and mindset of Christians better.  A lot of the same “words” being used by Christians versus non-Christians actually mean very different things.  This is something we easily overlook when we take the meanings of words literally, when the context is very important. 

In terms of morals and the way to live life…  What bothers me is when friends ask me for advice and they may first ignore/refuse my suggestions.  But later on, they would do them because it is the right thing a Christian would do, or God and the Bible says so.  How come the same actions seem to be so much more profound if we add “God says so” or “the Bible” says so.  I did them long before I read the Bible…  This is really frustrating for me.  Anyway, some of these things include:

• Forgiving people (or, God has a plan for everything that happens)
• Stop worrying/resenting
• You’re not persuasive if you’re abrasive
• We were all created uniquely with our own flaws and strengths (or, God gave us our own unique identity)
• Screw nagging
• If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem
• Being the best version of you (or, God has not called you to be the best in the world at anything!  He has called you to be the best you can be.) 

This book is probably useful for two types of people.  First, people like me that are very new to Christianity and constantly getting angry talking to a Christian due to the lack of mutual understanding.  Second, this book is also very useful to strong Christian believers.  A lot of these motivational/finding your strengths type of self-help tools sound so much better and convincing to a Christian when God says it is the right thing to do. 

Religion is such a tough subject like politics and martial arts.  One of my old teachers used to say, “People seek confirmation, not information.”  How many people that argue about these topics really have an open mind and could change their stances?  Instead, we just add a lot of abrasion and noise and damage a lot of relationships.  Live and let live.  

My Impressions: Strengths Finder 2.0

I took the survey for a company training.  HR sent out an e-mail saying we’d get a free book if we joined the training, and anything free is appealing to me so I jumped on the opportunity.  At first, I read through the results of my testing.  I had some preconceived thoughts.  Then I went through the 30-some pages in the book, and had slightly different thoughts.  

StrengthsFinder 2.0

 

The main theme of the book is: Focus on strength, not on “fixing” weaknesses. 

My results are values I hold highly and strive to be.  I hope and aspire to these strengths, but I guess it is hard to measure if I actually own them.  I’m not sure if the survey actually measures my “strengths,” or measures what “I want my strengths to be.”

Some very important points the book briefly mentions:

• Overcoming deficits is an essential part of the fabric of our culture.  Underdog who beats one-in-a-million odds is always inspirational and motivational.  However, it masks a lot of problems, and it blindly leads you down a path where you naively think you can be a better someone you’re not, rather than focusing on being that super good someone you could be. 
• You cannot be anything you want to be – but you can be a lot more of who you already are. 

Not like Myers Briggs where they actual have something more specific to the top.  Instead of reading all my top 5 strengths separately, I’d like to read about them combined.  What specific advantages does this combination of strengths build me up for?  Of course, it would be super difficult.  With 34 listed strengths and listing out all combinations for groups of five would be a super huge undertaking. 

Also, there is no “intensity” measure on the strengths.  What I mean by intensity is how strong are these strengths?  If for example, if each strength attribute is rated from 1 to 100…  Person A may have all their strengths scoring in the range from 50 to 60.  And his top 5 strengths would be scored 59 and 60.  However, Person B may have his strength attributes ranging from 0 to 100.   I would’ve liked to see a more in depth relative scoring system.  Instead of scoring the top five strengths among these attributes “relative to myself,” I want to see how my strengths score relative to others.  Is my analytical ability the top 5 percentile? Top 20 percentile?  Or it is actually below average compared with the general population, just that all my other attributes are worse.  But I guess if we are just doubling down on our strengths and being the best me I can be, that relevance doesn’t matter.  Because not like I would get far either if I tried capitalizing on other attributes…

34 strengths in total.  I read through them for my own benefit – to understand other strengths and how to work with people of different strengths.  I do think having 34 of these strengths is too many and a lot of the strengths are variations of the same theme.  For example, I would group these following:

• Discipline/deliberate/focus
• Individualization/arranger/empathy/harmony
• Ideation/futuristic
• Connectedness/include
• Input/intellection/learner

So taking a step back, I’ve read a lot of books and articles on “How to…XYZ” such as how to run a business, how to be an entrepreneur, how to study for an exam, how to lose weight…etc.  There are so many different ways.  Some seem so out of whack, and make me think, “How the hell would anybody do that?”  After reading the different strengths, I visualize a lot of people with these different strengths that I don’t have, and the aha-moment struck.  “YES!!  That is sooooooooooooo her!!”  This gives me a little more insight on the person and how to interact with them.  I realize how some tips that will NEVER work for me seems to be the only way it would work for someone else.  I’ve learned not to dismiss so easily, but take into context. 

Finally, a lot of the improvement suggestions for people of a specific strength also rings a bell to me, “Yes, that person really needs to do more of that.”  This gives me more confidence in “working with people with X strength.”  The familiarity also empowers me to be aware of the potential downfalls associated with my strengths. 

The interesting thing is, perhaps due to self-awareness - the past 2 years I’ve made adjustments that cover 80% of suggested actions for me.  The value of the book is that now I have more ideas for the other 20%. 

My Impressions: Fluent in 3 Months

So…  I’ve been trying to learn Japanese for more than half of my life.  Literally.  Since 5^th grade, my grandfather wanted to teach me Japanese.  I never got all the alphabets.  I got a Japanese minor in college after taking it for 3 years.  Then, I kind of just let it go.  Never understood television shows, never understood manga (my main purpose), never understood what they were saying in Japanese porno (my second purpose).

So about 1.5 years ago, a friend wanted to learn Japanese.  She wanted to set it as a goal.  Then somehow…  Instead of her learning, it became me learning again.  About 1.25 years ago, I went to Japan for vacation.  I found out I couldn’t communicate even on a basic level with the locals.  The locals understood nothing I was saying.  I understood everything they were saying.  They were saying to me, “I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

Anyway, long story short…  I’ve reignited my passion to learn Japanese.  I’ve tried to commit and allocate time on a daily basis.  I read this book hoping to find any tips or tricks that could help me. 

Fluent in 3 Months: How Anyone at Any Age Can Learn to Speak Any Language from Anywhere in the World

I still can’t speak fluently.  But a lot of the methods of learning in the book, I wish I would’ve known earlier.  Like…  More than half my life ago, earlier.  

Here are some of the things I wish I knew:

1. It’s not about the perfect tool

I’ve spent countless hours, days, weeks, months looking for that perfect tool.  Researching the different tools available, comparing the pros and cons, even making my own tool…  Just dive into it.  You know too little to know the difference in the beginning.  Readjust your learning later, when you know what to focus on. 

2. Don’t hold unrealistic expectations on fluency

I always want to be good at what I do – at EVERYTHING I do.  I don’t like to do something and suck at it.  I don’t like embarrassment.  So, the goal of course was to speak Japanese like a native.  But the truth is, my mother tongue (Mandarin) sucks.  My fellow Taiwanese don’t even think I sound Taiwanese.  The Chinese don’t think I’m Chinese.  How can I have a higher expectation at my second foreign language if my native tongue already sucks that bad?

2. 1 Speak from day one

The expectations of being fluent also helps masks the embarrassment when you sound like a n00b when you make that move to talk to people and are not yet fluent.  The truth is, you can’t “speak well” if you’ve never gave it real world experience. 

I used to think experience is overrated (in terms of learning, work, everything).  Now, I start to understand the value of experience.  Looking back at my other learnings – Swimming.  I probably drank 2 pools’ worth of water while learning how to swim.  Of course, I was embarrassed, it sucked, and it felt like failure…  But to learn to swim, it was inevitable that I had to drink the water myself.  Nobody else could drink it for me, or suffer it for me.  It’s the only way to go.  Drink quickly, and learn quickly.  Kind of disgusting to think how much pee was in there.  But anyway.  There is a lot of latent learning from just constantly doing and speaking.  The improvements from speaking right away and speaking daily are also non-linear and very difficult to measure.  Instead of trying to measure it, just start doing it. 

Oh, point on experience: 15 years of experience is not the same as one year of experience done 15 times.  

3. Actual Tricks and Tools

If you want to take a class, I suggest taking the very basic class at the beginning of your learning, and near the mid-end.  I’ve took courses in college, courses outside, courses online…  I recommend take a course to setup the basics, then run hard on your own, then come back to the courses when you have a wide reach.  The formal system will stick better that way.   Now here are some actual tools and tricks:

3. 1 Mnemonics

Use mnemonics for vocabs.  Make a story or a phrase out of it.  Use your imagination and creativity.   

3.2 Anki app

There are only two apps I actually paid money for (thank God to the gift card from my internship).  For someone as cheap as me to whip out money and buy an app, it is very difficult.  Anki is also not one of those $0.99 apps.  Bitch costs $24.99!!  I use it every day.  I recommend it.  That should mean something.  The tool is not perfect and there are a lot of things that could be improved…  But so far nothing else comes close. 

Anki is an SRS tool -> think of it as flash cards on steroids.  Instead of practicing every card equally, the app exposes the cards you are not familiar with more often.  Learn some basic coding if you can, and learn some excel if you can.  I’ve created thousands of Anki cards for myself incorporating my own mnemonics. 

I use Anki for Japanese (Kanji, vocab), Acupuncture, and plan to use it for Esperanto. 

3.3 Esperanto

Consider learning this new language created about a century ago.  The aim of this language is to be the easiest among all, and serve as a milestone/connector in learning a new language.  Using the skills of acquiring such an easy language, practicing these skills, then step up to the big boy league and learn your target language.  I just started at duolingo.com.  So far it’s been pretty fun. 

Now go learn that new language and go pick up some cute gals/guys.  

My Impressions: The Passionate Programmer

I wanted to learn Ruby on Rails, so I picked up a few books on programming.  This is a non-technical book, unlike other textbooks I have.  Of all the books, this is also probably the only book I understand related to programming, because the other books make me feel like I’m learning Japanese with a Russian textbook – explanations of terminology/concepts are made up of words and concepts I don’t comprehend.

The Passionate Programmer 1st (first) edition Text Only

 

Anyway, I could kind of identify with this book because the author was a musician, and now a programmer.  I used to play a lot of music and never got anywhere.  Now I’m learning programming, and still not getting anywhere.  So I’m like a failed version of the author, basically. 

The format of the book is a consolidation of blog posts.  Many mini-chapters on different topics.  I would categorize the information as kind-of-a-motivational type of book.  But instead of building all these motivating concepts and ideas in the clouds, this book is more of a grounded book.  The book is more of a “stop finding excuses and go for it” type of book.  

One of the topics: The author mentions how parents are more likely to give us fear-based advice (which is uber true in my family): study hard, get a good job, get a steady job, and get a steady paycheck.   The problem with this kind of path is it is aimed for “not losing.”  Two of my best friends and I have had this conversation, one of them recently.  Basically we often fall short of what we set out to do.  Most MBA applicants set out to get into Stanford, Wharton, Harvard…etc.  But many of us fall short.  We may still go to a great school, but it was slightly lower than our original goal (not saying this in a bad way, or that we are now failures).

Perhaps, if we aim to shoot for the stars, maybe we fall short a bit and only settle for Mt. Everest.  It’d be awesome if we got to the stars, but if we fall short and "only" achieved Mt. Everest, it’s still pretty damn good.  The idea is to go for that big hairy audacious goal.   Wouldn’t it suck if you aimed for the ordinary and fell short of that?

I’ve worked in 3 Fortune 500 companies, none as an IT or programmer.  However, a lot of the pointers in this book can still help me become a better marketer, better pricing analyst, or a better supply chain service rep.  This book is not limited in benefiting programmers who want to be better programmers. 

I thought the book had points that were rather original and creative.  There are a lot of “common sense that is not so common” type of topics.  E.g. many people think being a specialist in one field is, knowing only one thing and nothing else.  But what a specialist really should “be” is someone who knows a lot about many things, but is very, very, very good at one thing.  Looking at my work experience, there ARE a lot of specialists that are in the former category, instead of the latter. 

I recommend to give this book a read.  Stop finding excuses to do extraordinary work and become that passionate _________!!

My Impressions: Reminiscences of a Stock Operator

So, I was reading book reviews on amazon for another book, “Expectations Investing: Reading Stock Prices for Better Returns” -> Which hopefully I’ll get to some day.  But that review actually mentioned this book, “If you want a confusing investing book full of fun (but useless) war stories, read the fictional Reminiscences of a Stock Operator or 99.9% of nonfiction investing screeds.”

I wouldn’t disagree.  It was a book full of fun!  This is probably not as fun for people not interested in investing/speculating/gambling…  But I thought it was a lot of fun.

Reminiscences of a Stock Operator

This book is a storybook.  The book does not teach you how to invest, the 10 steps to get rich, or even much details.  However, I would disagree with the book being useless.   Written nearly a hundred years ago, I can’t believe so much truth still holds.  Even today, just now, I was very frustrated and ANGRY at a business situation I have.  I took the matter pretty personally.  Then, I realized I just read this few days ago:

Normal business hazards are no worse than the risks a man runs when he goes out of his house into the street or sets out on a railroad journey.  When I lose money by reason of some development which nobody could foresee I think no more vindictively of it than I do of an inconveniently timed storm. Life itself from the cradle to the grave is a gamble and what happens to me because I do not possess the gift of second sight I can bear undisturbed.

Being in business is never going to be smooth.  I will again and again make mistakes, or face unpleasant situations, or work with unpleasant people…  Unavoidable if I want to walk this path.  Then I must remind myself, I consciously chose this path.  These problems are part of the journey, and I need to manage these situations better instead of being angry all the damn time. 

There are unreasonable people that get into business.  There are unreasonable and dumb people that I will cross-paths with.  I may even have to work with them, work for them, or work under them.  It’s going to suck.  But I should manage what I can manage.  That is myself.  That paragraph will probably be very important to me for the next few years, to keep me sane.  That is a lot of value for me already. 

I didn’t take a lot of notes reading this book.  I did copy a lot of quotes that struck home with me.  100 years, and the game is still the game.  So, just a list of cool quotes from the book…

• My mind was untrained and my ignorance was colossal. 
• The game taught me the game.  And it didn’t spare the rod while teaching. 
• The beauty of doing business with a crook is that he always forgives you for catching-him, so long as you don’t stop doing business with him. 
• The average man doesn’t wish to be told that it is a bull or bear market.  What he desires is to be told specifically which particular stock to buy or sell.  He wants to get something for nothing.  He does not wish to work.  He doesn’t even wish to have to think.  It is too much bother to have to count the money that he picks up from the ground. 
• My one steadfast prejudice is against being wrong. 
• All stock-market mistakes wound you in two tender spots your pocketbook and your vanity
• Of course, if a man is both wise and lucky, he will not make the same mistake twice.  But he will make any one of the ten thousand brothers or cousins of the original.  The Mistake family is so large that there is always one of them around when you want to see what you can do in the fool-play line. 
• [the average American] He will risk half his fortune in the stock market with less reflection than he devotes to the selection of a medium-priced automobile.
• A man can excuse his mistakes only by capitalising them to his subsequent profit.
• To learn that a man can make foolish plays for no reason whatever was a valuable lesson. 
• The big money in booms is always made first by the public on paper.  And it remains on paper. 
• All I asked of them was judgment in timing the selling and intelligent unselfishness in order not to be unintelligently selfish.