There are many things that I’m going to say that may have seemed completely obvious to me five years ago. However, until certain scenarios allowed me the luxury of experience, I was completely unaware of their significance within an organization. Hopefully, this list of observations will help you no matter how big or small you or your organization is.

1. “Experience is what you get, when you don’t get what you want”. I think I have a stellar resume filled with interesting projects for someone my age, but if you ask me to write a ‘failure resume’ it would probably be 10 times longer. Am I afraid of failing? Yes, and sometimes the outcomes are irreversible, yet, the most rewarding lessons we learn often come from failure. I know no one who understands this better than Jacqueline Novogratz. She’s done an amazing job of collecting information from her failures. Listen carefully to her here:

2. If you do want to fail, the best way at it is either being a micro-manager or stripping everyone of decision making. I’ve once had a friend (let’s call her Anna) ask me why her organization was focused on services instead of equipment sales when the latter had much better margins. The answer was always well hidden, but here it is. Services were listed on her time-card as hours whereas equipment sales were not — management was more concerned about making their number of employees justified. (In other words, management tried harder to look busy than profitable.) Further, they stripped employees from a lot of the decision, probably unaware of the problem they were creating. If we’re diligently overseeing everything at once, mistakes are going to be made and we’ll lose sight of the bigger picture. In short, we can never lose by giving people the dignity of decision making.

3. That being said, it’s probably better to make your organization more transparent to the people within it. I believe that people want to do their best in general as long as they’re treated fairly and they’re given a chance to prove themselves. Because of that, it’s a great idea to open up some of the problems to the bottom line. After management was laid off at Anna’s company, the new management made it clear where their financial was weak — service and sales. She then developed a system of keeping track of her customers and items they may need in the near future which not only made the customers happy, but increased the company’s sales as well.

4. Someone has a problem — Rejoice! Problems are good. Solving them gives us opportunities. Because finding the problem is often half the battle, we should often embrace them. As one female CEO has said, “find problems your company needs help on, and move forward with it”.

5. Like Anna, you don’t need to be promoted to address a concern. Letting someone else empower you to tackle a problem is something they teach you in high school.

6. If you’re not having at least a bit of fun, stop doing it. The most important thing in life, is simply to be happy solving the problems you are solving. Most people you meet will convince you that their 40-hour-a-week job does not define them — that cannot be further from the truth. If you’re going to spend 40 hours a week for several years doing something, it’s probably going to define you to a great extent and is going to affect your day-to-day happiness. To that I’d say, ‘choose your work wisely, and dream big’.

7.  Lucky number 7. Sometimes I think I’m very lucky, but in retrospect, there has always been a significant action that precedes my rendezvous with Lady Luck.

8.  And yet, at the end of it all, the most important thing is to be happy and feel loved.  Without that, everything else is a moot point.

For my little sister, Crystal.

Don’t you just hate it when that happens? But while I’m not out and about, and raising all hell, here are a few things that are on my list of birds to kill:

• Business books
• Study for the GMATs (hey, it’s possible)
• Try to fit a third world visit into my busy schedule
• Learn Spanish

I guess this means I may still subconsciously be on my extended vacation.

But probably like you, all I want is to make sure the wheels spin again — I’ve been rusting for a month too long now and I can sense it by the diminishing speed of my once lightening-face sassy retorts. I can be beat, so long as I can claim my pride and sass.

Anyway, what I really want to say is, “It’s on”.

A part of me wishes I could’ve came up with a catchier title, but to me, anything Jacqueline Novogratz is catchy enough.

I’m wary that a lot of non-profits reap incredible benefits for it’s board, and at the same time, are inefficient because they lack business sense. But with kiva, and other micro-financing organizations, we’re definitely on track.

Go ahead and admit it. Aid, welfare, donations, and any kind of handout is a big reason why a lot of our problems are perpetuated. I have no solutions to add just yet. You’ll have to wait for my September issue.

With love from San Jose California,
One, Winnie Tong

1. It is often said that unhappy people are usually more successful and more creative than their happier counterparts — those who are not content are always in want of more — more money, more honeys, higher social status, etc… while “happy” people just stay as is. Personally, I think the correct term for those people are “blissfully ignorant” and “power hungry emotionless jerks”. I’ve met plenty of very happy and very successful people — The secret of their success? They all enjoy what they’re doing.

2. I travel on the corporate dime a lot, and when I do, I come into contact with a lot of older people who enjoy giving me financial advice. Really. That’s all they talk about. Maybe it’s because I look like a spoiled brat? I do look 18 sometimes. “Hi kid, nice to meet you. By the way, are you working? If you are, you must learn to save, save, save! How much are you saving? Is your 401k maxed?.. etc..” But take it from a person who grew up witnessing the self-destruction of the baby-boomer generation all my life … I’ve seen how much debt some of you can get into. Yet despite all this frantic plea for me to save money, I’ve never once heard anyone tell me important financial lesson #2: Invest — Invest directly and indirectly (in yourself and in others).

3. The younger generation is less likely to be religious, and we aren’t any “less” moral for being so. At the same time, we are not “agnostic” nor “atheist” because both those terms begin with a postulate of a God. Much like postulating that there isn’t a Santa Clause, one wouldn’t call themselves asantaclausist. It seems trivial and provincial to narrow down your life philosophy into something that was never meaningful to you in the first place. That being said though, it doesn’t mean religion is meaningless. The foundation of morality and the historical/cultural value of the Bible, Koran, Confucius, or any holy scripture is something that I strive to understand. This is not “religious tolerance” as some may believe. It’s called religious sampling, cultural appreciation; we are no longer just a Christian nation, but a Buddhist nation, a Muslim nation, a nation of believers and non-believers.

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Update: Holy cow, that was preachy.

Update 2: Stalk much?

I can hardly believe it’s already 10PM. Again.

Every day, little tasks become a battle against the clock as we slowly learn to surrender our sleep, diet, and exercise. And as technology makes us more readily available, the seemingly unimportant quiet time driving can be taken up by a phone call from a colleague or a customer.

There is hope though. Thanks to New Scientist, you can finally Teach Your Brain to Stretch Time. What lovely timing.

All sarcasm aside, if there’s anything you can take away from the article, it’s that many things come before a job — simple things such as soaking up sun and cozying up next to a fireplace with a cup of hot tea with a person you love dearly. Because I’m not so sure we’re supposed to watch 40 hours a week fly by and let the stress of it spill over to the other 40 you have left. Because maybe that’s why we get fat with age and not because aging causes us to get fat. Because, shit, I’m twenty-ish and each proceeding year seems to spin faster than the last.

I think Robert Levine was most accurate when he said this:

“Time is our most valuable possession. Until the biomedical people can make us live forever, the closest thing we have is to stretch the moment.”

Another thing to consider is the universal fact of how a shorter work week and frequent breaks can actually increase productivity. From an article in Zenhabits:

“This no-rush attitude doesn’t represent doing less or having a lower productivity. It means working and doing things with greater quality, productivity, perfection, with attention to detail and less stress. It means reestablishing family values, friends, free and leisure time. Taking the “now”, present and concrete, versus the “global”, undefined and anonymous. It means taking humans’ essential values, the simplicity of living.”

With all this in mind, here are a few ways to help you slow down, increase productivity while simultaneously increasing enjoyment you can get out of our short little lives:

1. Can’t get out of bed in the morning? Purchase an alarm clock that gradually wakes you up via your favorite tunes or morning radio program. During my college years, I had mine tuned into NPR. It was a great way to jump start my brain while staying in touch w/headline news, and a great alternative to the standard obtrusive alarm clock beeping.

2. During business travel, I always request a free room upgrade with a jacuzzi. 4 out of 5 times, I get what I want because I’m one of their elite members and you can too if you’re a member of their hotel. When that’s not an option, simply soaking in a bathtub at home is a surefire way to relax.

3. Clean as you go. Every time my brother leaves our apartment, he takes trash bags with him and throw them along the way. There is never more than a couple dishes in our sink. We take a few minutes out of our every day to clean our clutter. Containers are your friend. Space is peace. And your mail (and email) should always be sorted. I learned this the hard way.

4. Take a tea break, and eat lunch outside and away from your desk if you can.

5. Cook in bulk. If your cooking is good enough, you’ll enjoy having it three consecutive nights a week. Hey, the boyfriend doesn’t seem to mind.

6. Listen to something stimulating when you’re stuck in traffic. Audio books, NPR, Forum, and itconversations rank pretty high on the list. At least for me, it makes sitting in traffic a pretty exciting time of day. (Sometimes, when i’m parked outside my apartment after sitting in traffic for the past 30 minutes, I’d continue to sit in my car in order to finish a program)

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Other fantastic links on living slow and simple:

Think Simple Now shows you the basics on how to live an uncluttered and simple life.

Zen Habits shows you how to take control of a crazy life.

Slow Down Now says multi-tasking is moral weakness. (Stay in bed! Get that extra hour of sleep!)

Edit: Due to complaints about my numbers being too generous.

This letter was recently written to my friend Dave to confirm his fears about the seemingly miniscule number of available females within the Bay Area. Upon demand, I have published it here so all can have a good laugh and possibly a good cry after reading it. G’luck.
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Dave is a perfectly smart, handsome, well-educated, and generous young stud, yet he can never seem find a (perfect) date. Probably quite like you, his expectations are high– too high. And like most geeks who are virgin to the dating world, most of his interactions with women consists of checking out “hot and geeky babes” pages on digg or oogling over Natalie Portman in Star Wars. Geeks expect their next girlfriend to be a Natalie Portman in brains, wealth and good-looks, and to have bodies of victoria’s secret models. This is a terrible assumption. I’m not telling you to settle for less than what you deserve, but I’m also suggesting that dating a Natalie Portman is a tad bit out of line. Here is why.

(more…)

It’s one of those articles that I think should be included in a Manager’s handbook: New York Times Article .

Here’s a little snippet from it:

Let’s begin with what I call the “Cookie Monster Experiment,” devised to test the hypothesis that power makes people stupid and insensitive — or, as the scientists at the University of California at Berkeley put it, “disinhibited.”

Researchers led by the psychologist Dacher Keltner took groups of three ordinary volunteers and randomly put one of them in charge. Each trio had a half-hour to work through a boring social survey. Then a researcher came in and left a plateful of precisely five cookies. Care to guess which volunteer typically grabbed an extra cookie? The volunteer who had randomly been assigned the power role was also more likely to eat it with his mouth open, spew crumbs on partners and get cookie detritus on his face and on the table.

There are certain qualities that I think are innate to us, including the quality of anticipating cliches. Need I explain any more? Do I need to tell you that power somehow eludes us? However, I do think most of it comes from giving people too much credit to begin with. The problem is with us, putting up with this behavior instead of scoffing at it.
And right after I say this, Paris Hilton decides to make a spectacle of herself.