The Art of Just Do It (JDI)

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You heard about the Just-Do-It method numerous of time. Countless of gurus and non-gurus had mentioned this simple yet magical method of getting things done. No doubt, you might have implemented this method with varying degree of success. Then, somehow, along the way, something happened. You don't think that JDI is just a simple one-step method anymore. There is something more complex, deep, and philosophical about JDI. This simple and profound method failed to work for you because you don't grasp it true meaning. Right? RIGHT!?

The truth is the phrase "Just Do It" is rather vague. This means different people can define different meaning to this word. Below are a few examples of what JDI may mean:

• Do the first thing that comes into your mind

• No prior planning / Plan as you go

• If you don’t have the necessary resources to complete the task, improvised and use workarounds.

• Mind like water / React to the current situation and needs

• Do the task regardless of failure or success

• Ignore your emotion resistance / Do the task regardless of your current mood

•  Do the task until you have completed it even if the quality does not met your expectations / Sacrifice perfection for completion / Finish what you started

• Do the task now / There is no appropriate time to do the task

• If you can't predict the outcome, don't worry about the outcome until it happens / Don't cross the bridge until you have come to it

Which of the above is the true meaning of JDI? The answer is "All of the above”. You see, JDI is not so much a method as it is a philosophy - an inadequately-defined philosophy. Don't worry; I will try to define this philosophy to its utmost completion in this article.

The JDI philosophy

There are three components of JDI: The creative process and The Drive to Completion and The Warm-up. We can also categorize the virtues above into these three components.

The JDI components

The Creative Process

Our brain is split into two hemispheres: right and left hemisphere. Generally, one side of our brain specialized in linear thinking while the other side specializes in abstract thinking. In any task completion endeavor, we generally have to use both sides of our brain in order to get the best results that we can from ourselves.

When it comes to planning and strategizing, we rely more on our linear thinking capability. Planning is a highly linear, logical, and proactive process, provided that we know how to use the appropriate planning tools. Our options and choices are evaluated objectively; least we made the wrong choices. The consequence of our actions, and futures threats are made provision for.

When it comes to actual execution of our plan, we rely more on our abstract thinking capability. Generally, our plan contains milestones and objectives that we need to achieve but lack the step-by-step information on how to achieve our objectives. Thus, our abstract reasoning, lateral thinking, creativity, and reactive nature are relied upon to provide the instructions and solutions that our linear thinking cannot provided.

Following the JDI philosophy means using our creativity to provide the instructions for our task. However, JDI should only kicks in when we are dealing with the process of executing our plan. Planning still comes first.

The process flow showing how JDI plays into task completion

The Drive to Completion

The process of completing a task doesn't just involve planning and plan executing. There is a human condition called emotional resistance. Generally, emotional resistance happens when you don't feel like doing what you are supposed to do without a valid justification. In other words, you are not "in the mood" of doing the things that you plan to do or consider important to do.

There are many causes for emotional resistance. Below are some which you may recognize:

• Financial anxieties - debts, bankruptcy, lack of money

• Relationships issues - broke ups, divorces, infatuations

• Job issues - lack of progress, late starters, lost of opportunities

• Too much happiness issue - sudden increase in wealth, requited love, promotions

As you had read from above, our emotional resistance towards our current task doesn't necessary originate from bad events in our life? It can originate from good events too. Heck, it can be anything. Therefore, it is (usually) a waste of time to overcome our emotional resistance thru root-cause analysis and root-cause treatment. It is easier and faster to overcome our emotional resistance thru good-old fashion discipline and drive.

Our drive for task completion regardless of our emotional resistance is the other vital component in JDI philosophy. The drive to completion comprises of our willingness to sacrifice our short term-comfort, and to work hard and long in order to met our objective regardless of the odds, the circumstances, the venue, the available resources, the time of the day, our moods, our disability, our predicaments, our emotions, and our expertise. Lastly, the drive for completion stresses that completion takes priority before perfection.

The Warm-Up

There is a quasi-component of JDI which is called the Warm-up. This component shares a lot of similarities with The Creative Process thus why I called the Warm-Up a quasi-component. We engage in our Creative Process throughout of our effort to complete tasks as outlined in our plan while we only engage in the Warm-Up prior to sufficient planning.

In real life situation, our mind more often than not tends to become blank whenever we engage in planning processes. By blank, I mean that our mind totally cannot think or output any meaningful thoughts for the current plan. This peculiar human condition may seem counter-intuitive at first. However, this condition is actually your brain trying to tell you that it doesn't have any good ideas and your own brain is currently not the best source of information for plan creation.

 

This is the part where we need to engage in some mental warm-up for our brain. By warm-up, I mean that we should seek out relevant external information and inspiration for our plans. Try not to engage in resources intensive warm-up (don't spend too much money or time) for the warm-up process. This is because the Warm-Up process is riddled with false starts. Without proper planning and analysis, false starts are just inevitable.

 The Warm-Up process flow

Limitations of JDI

Now that I have covered all the three components of JDI, it's time to describe the limitation of JDI and what JDI is not about.

#1 JDI is not the be-all-end-all

If your goals are anything more complicated than a pre-school project, a plan is mandatory. You need the best plan that your brain can produce in order to achieve your goals.

 A lot of people would mistaken believe that JDI means not needing a plan because they stumble upon the Warm-Up component which takes places prior to proper planning. However, without a plan, your resources would not be managed properly and you will never be able to produce the best outcome possible to you.

Most people would think that JDI is the be-all-end-all of goal achievements. However, this is only true for simple goals where false starts and wasted resources are easily waived. It would be suicidal to just do it if you cannot afford to lose the resources that you are about to invests in the tasks.

#2 JDI does not come with priorities steering

JDI is the workhorse of task completion and the use of JDI should be limited to such. Any issue involving conflicting priorities of two tasks or two goals should be deal with proper priorities steering techniques (see Principle of Least Importance on how to do so). You can't "just choose it" when it comes to priorities.

#3 JDI does not come with emotion management

The Drive to Completion of JDI philosophy may cause harm to your emotional well-being in long term unless you know how to manage your emotions. I will leave emotional management to another topic. For now, just know that suppressing your emotions doesn't necessary erase those emotions. The suppressed emotion may come back to haunt you a hundredfold.

End Note

JDI is used the minute task-to-task completion activity and it is useful to generate ideas for our plans, combat our emotional resistance, and drive us to complete our tasks. I hope that I had explained in a satisfactory manner on what JDI philosophy is actually about.

Let me know if I have missed out anything. In the meantime, stay focus and stay happy.

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The Purpose of Life: One Size Fits All Answer

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“Begin at the beginning. Go until the end and then stop.”

So where is the beginning? Obviously, the beginning starts at you yourself. If so, which part? The purpose, of course. All actions start with an intent (or a reaction). All intents come from desires. Then, where does our desire comes from? There are several of sources, actually. Below are some:

• Lacking – What want what we lack.
• Upbringing – What we are thought when we are small shapes our ambitions and dreams significantly.
• Envy – We want to be better than other people.
• Sustainability– We want things that would improve our live and ensure our longevity

Let me make it clear, the beginning of our action does not start from having a purpose. Our actions start from what we want. The better we are at understanding what our body and mind want, the better we can align our actions to our want.

So, why is the title of this article is about purpose then? Where does purpose fits into our life? Am I saying that your desire matters more than your purpose in life does not matter?

Yes.

Okay, here’s the one size fits all answer to the purpose of life, the question of why you exist in this world. There is no purpose. Specifically, there is no pre-defined purpose for you to exist in this world. Your existent may as well be a coincidence.

Let me tell you this. Until the day you die, God (or saintly representatives of God) will not talk to you. The is no divine being that is going to tell you what you should or have to do in this world. The only people who will tell you about what you need to do or have to do are other people who claim to have been made contact with God.

Now, I am not saying that I don’t believe in God. I just don’t believe that God will ever give me a purpose in this life. Think about it, if God really wanted me to perform certain type of role in life, then God should have cometh to me at an earlier stage, preferable, during my adolescent years. But did God do that? Nope, nada, zit. Ergo, God have given me a free a reign.

So what is life anyway? What is the point of life anyway? An intermission to heaven? A dream? An endless drift of unfortunate events?

A vacation trip. Life is like a going to a vacation trip to somewhere where you don’t particularly like (like Thailand). You are stuck on this trip and you can’t just end it. However, even if you can’t do anything about it, you might as well enjoy it. You might as well sample the local cuisine, learn one or two things about the local culture, and visit some of the local attractions. The main thing is to learn to enjoy yourself rather than being stuck in the hotel room until the day you die check out.

So then, how am I supposed to know what I am supposed to do in this life? So what role am I going to be performing for the rest of my life? What great feats am I supposed to be capable of?

This isn’t a very hard question to answer. What you want to do in life depends a lot on your upbringing. Your life dreams and purpose can be trace back to your childhood. What inspires (or scars) you when you are a kid will define what you want to do with your life.

Still can decide on a purpose? No sweat, there are only three categories to choose from. Those categories are:

• Making money – Being a filthy rich entrepreneur or business mogul.
• Being famous – Being a artist that can sing, dance, act, paint, escape, joke or any a combination of those stated. 
• Being intelligent – Being an expert in something and getting recognized by it. Don’t forget your PhD.

Okay, maybe it’s too late for you to plan ahead for your life dreams now.  Maybe you are too old or too tied up with obligations. Then your life dream might as well be being ordinary - having a family of 2.3 kids, a house, a car, a stable job, and enough money for retirement.

That’s it. There is no sin to be

ordinary. If you choose to be “ordinary”, then that’s all you need to think about. That’s all that you need to focus all your energy and time on.

Have fun with your life. Stay happy and stay focused. Peace out.

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3 Thinking Myths: Thinking too much make you crazy

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Using our brain to think, plan, and strategy is important. In the process of evolution, animals lose features that are not used. So why does human being carry around a huge brain? Why to use it, of course. Our brain is the nexus for our survival this cut-throat human civilization.

Those who are able to use their brain well will progress thru life. Those who does not will face extinction. However, there always about of people in this world who would discourage others from thinking. Or at least mislead them into thinking differently. Below are three common thinking myths:

#1. Thinking too much will makes you crazy.

As a kid, I used to hear that thinking too much will make you crazy. Crazy as in having mental illness and being confined in a mental institution. It's was hard for me to deny this belief especially when it came from my parents. It's really does discourage me from thinking.

But is thinking too much really does cause you to go crazy?

There are many causes to mental illness but thinking is not one of them. See WebMD LLC for more information. Link: http://www.webmd.com/anxiety-panic/mental-health-causes-mental-illness

There is probably some basis in what my parents have advised me. Mental illness can be caused by anxiety, depression, paranoia and the inability to "move on" in your life. I rephrase what my parents have taught into:

"Thinking long and hard is okay as long as you have the capability to cope with traumatic and abusive past or current experiences in your life."

#2. Thinking doesn't consume much energy

As a kid (again), I heard from one of my teachers that thinking consume little to no energy at all. If Albert Einstein were to go to work, where he would think all day long, the amount of energy he needs can be replenish by eating a small bean.

This is utterly not true. When idle, our brain consume 20% of our energy while only consist of 2% of our weight. When we think, our brain consume much more energy.

There is such thing as mental exhaustion. Our brain is a muscle and just like any other muscle in our body, sufficient rest is need in order for our brain to perform in peak condition.

Therefore, when you in an intensive thinking session, take short intermission of rest. Clear your mind and meditate. This greatly prolong your thinking session.

#3. You only uses 10% of your brain. Genius uses up to 100% of their brain.

While studying, I attended a motivational course where the instructor for that course states that only 10% of our brain is being used. That is like using only 1 out of 10 of our fingers. The rest of the motivational course is about learning how to tap into our sub-conscious and unconscious mind in order to maximize our brain usage.

Firstly, the fact is, we utilize our entire brain. We just don't use 100% of it at any given time. The fact that we only use 10% of it doesn't have anything to do with our mental capacity. Remember where I talk about our brain using 20% of our energy while idle? If we were to use 50% of our brain cells, we probably deprive of energy to the rest of the body.

Then, there is the issue of all those heat generated. The reason why there is massive amount of blood flowing into our head is not just to transfer oxygen for the brain. Our blood also transfer head from our brain. Clearly, there is a physically limit to how many percentage of our brain that we can utilize at any given time.

End Note

There are a lot of other brain myth that I don't talk about. However, I am only interested in those myth that prevent us from thinking hard and strategizing like our very life depends on it. I hope this article helps you to understand more about your thinking capability.

Do you have any thinking myth you will like to share?

 
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How to be a Writer

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I am a writer. It's in my soul to write. How did I know that I am a writer? Well, for starters, I liked to convey my ideas, philosophy, and inspiration. If I were to convey those stuffs, the best way to do it is thru the internet by HTML protocol. That means writing. And the easiest way to publish my writings to thru blogging.

Touch typing

Touch typing refers to the ability to type without looking at your keyboard. I can touch type reasonable well. It's a requirement in my day job to type lines of codes after lines of codes. Do you know how to touch type?

It's is surprisingly easy to learn how to touch type. Just follow the rules below:

* No thinking

* No memorizing

What? What the batshit insane stuff am I smoking?

Calm down. Let me explain this further. It's all about muscle memory. It's like riding a bike or driving a car. You don't need to be thinking about moving your fingers in order to move your fingers. You don't need memorize the layout of the letters. Thinking and trying to recall from your memory would just slow down your typing speed. If you really want to know how to type, just put your fingers on the keyboard and think of a character. Your fingers would automatically move in order to type the character.

Of course, your finger would not get it right the first time. When you hit the wrong key, just back space and try again. Try hitting the correct key for five times. If you still failed, only then look at the keyboard to find the correct key. Remember that we are training our finger mucles here and not our brain.

You just have to type a lot. Don't worry about using which fingers to hit which key because those corrections can be made latter. The first thing you need to have is the confidence that you can actually touch type. Then, you can re-learn touch typing thru the "correct way". Then, you could worry about your typing speed.

Knowledge

Being a writer means you have to read a lot too. Reading is a requirement. You ought to spend as much time reading as you are writing. There are a few reasons why you need to do so. Reading other people’s writing:

·         Exposes you to new ideas

·         Keeps you update with the latest news and trends

·         Helps you in developing your own writing style.

·         Helps with your grammar and vocabulary.

Thankful, there is the internet. So, you can just log on and browse thru the several thousands of blogs that are related to your topic of interest.

I don’t think many writers have problem in reading to increasing their knowledge. The knowledge of grammar and the ability to write in an engaging way should be main concern when reading. When you start out, you will have to spend for quite some time (a year, perhaps) before your writing style mature. You will have to spend that much time too before you are able to write an article of decent length.

Compulsion

Writing is a compulsion or it is nothing. You are either obsessed to write or you don't write at all. Without a strong and persistence interest in writing, you would not ever complete any writing that you start.

So, what topics am I writing about? The general rule is that I write about things that I know, things that I am good at, and things that I am familiar with; which are motivation and productivity. Other than that, I write about stuffs that I came across thru my personal life. Experience, observations, and useful insights.

How do I get the ideas for what I am writing? The general rule that I adopt is that I write the first thing that came into my mind. Unless the first idea that I thought of is really inappropriate, my policy with coming out with ideas is to "just say yes".

Of course, starting a topic is the easiest part. What really counts is the completion of your final published article. To quote the words of St. Jobs of Cupertino: “Real artist ships”. Thus, my personal rule #2 is that I "complete whatever topic that I am writing".

End note

So, if you want to become a writer (or a blogger, author, columnist, whatever), I hope that what I have written is useful to your. If you have any of your own ideas on how to become a better writer, let me know.

In a future article, I will share with you the process that I take to create an article.

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