]]> http://briangoins.com/blog/2011/08/this-light/feed/ 0 http://briangoins.com/blog/2011/05/the-korean-chronicles-ibalsso/ http://briangoins.com/blog/2011/05/the-korean-chronicles-ibalsso/#comments Sun, 29 May 2011 05:00:43 +0000 Brian http://briangoins.com/blog/?p=1058 I’ve been in South Korea for the last few weeks, on a project for my job. Even though it’s been a business trip, and mostly consisting of work, I’ve had some good experiences/memories that I want to start sharing before they’re lost forever.

The first thing that pops into my mind is a couple of weekends ago, when I ventured out in pursuit of a haircut. I spent a little while in the room, committing as many Korean phrases to memory as I could manage, with the intent to use them on my journey. “Ibalsso eodie isseoyo?” (Where is the barbershop?) “Ibal jom juseyo?” (Please give me a haircut?) I’ll skip the disclaimer on the accuracy of my Korean. Just know I took a relatively organic approach to learning, armed only with a basic Korean-English dictionary, the intermittent advice of English-speaking locals, YouTube and random internet articles.

I stopped by the concierge on the way out to ask him where the nearest barbershop was. To my surprise, there was one within walking distance from the hotel. I started running the phrases I remembered by the concierge. The phrases didn’t come out as smoothly as I would have liked, and noticed a slightly worried look on the guy’s face, so I went back to my room to practice some more before leaving.

There were a bunch of phrases that I found on the internet about giving specific directions for a haircut. However, few of them applied to my type of hair, and I was discouraged by the sheer number of these phrases. I resolved to fill in the gaps in my knowledge with hand gestures, and left the room.

The barbershop was just short of a five-minute walk from the hotel, in an apartment complex down the street. When you arrive at the complex, you are bombarded with a whole bunch of signage that really helps you realize how far away from home you are. Advertisements high up, and titles of restaurants and shops closer to the ground, all in Korean. At this point, I can read and sound out Korean words, but I couldn’t tell you much about the meaning of these syllabic combinations.

I walk further up into the complex, looking for any sign of a barbershop. I encounter this old man sitting under the shade of a tree. I walk up to him with a hello, and he reaches out to shake my hand. I return the handshake, and the man pulls me down toward the bench to sit beside him. Little surprising, but he was a nice man, so I sat and enjoyed the weather for a second.

I am literally in the middle of asking the old man where the barbershop is, when the concierge from the hotel trots up to me. One thing I’ll never forget about South Korea: I found that the people who hold customer service positions there take their job very seriously. After I got over the shock that this man had hurried all the way from the hotel to help me, and thanked him a few times, he led me to the “hair shop”, and introduced me to the lady inside before he left.

I soon found out that I needed more words than I possessed at the time, if I were to make the transaction go smoothly. There was a hello, after which I was guided to the cutting chair. I asked for a haircut, and was met with a response, the meaning of which I had not the slightest clue. I told her I didn’t speak Korean well, and we commenced a game of charades around the type of haircut that I wanted. I usually rock a dark caesar, but I left with somewhat of a fade that day. Unexpected, but not disappointing. The lady was skilled with her soft clippers and scissors, I just wish I wasn’t so unskilled at speaking Korean.

Conundrum: How can I complain about the lack of time that I have when I waste so much of it? I’d bet that I spend about 5-10 minutes out of every hour similarly lost in thought or distracted in some other manner. During any period of work hours, that’s almost 20% of my productivity out of the window. Which brings me to the challenge that I presented to myself this morning, and now to you: strive to squeeze every last drop of time out of your work day. Time is too valuable of a commodity to waste. Here are a couple of suggestions on how to maximize your time.

Start Earlier. The easiest and best way I’ve found to add productivity to my day is to tack a couple of hours to the beginning of it. Waking up a few hours earlier jump-starts my day and gives me time to do things that I usually am not able to get to during the chaos of my regular day. Not to mention I seem to have a great deal of energy after I eventually emerge from my drunken stupor of sleepiness. Even if you just get up an hour earlier to get yourself a good breakfast, that’s an hour well invested into the rest of your day. That meal will mean the world to your energy level and focus.

Not a morning person? Fine, starting earlier can mean shaving time off of your morning ritual so you can get to work earlier and get a jump on your tasks. (To add to this point, I read an article on TheStreet.com this morning that had an interesting take on your career as an investment. Great point for the young professionals out here.)

Work Smarter. Working hard is commendable, but working smart separates you from your peers. From the cubicle to the stage, nobody cares how many late hours you spend on your grind if you’re not producing any notable output. Concentrate on your results, not your effort.

The most important things to keep in mind as you’re striving to work smarter are your goals. Set them at the beginning of your day, or the night before. Go as far as to break them down into modestly sized tasks. That way, you can improve your focus throughout your day by dedicating chunks of your time to each of your tasks.

One thing about me: I’m an aspiring entrepreneur. Whenever the fit hits me, I start surfing through ideas in my head, with the hopes of finding a good one, and dropping the “aspiring” part that constantly haunts me.

Today, it has become clearer that the reason I’m stuck at this stage is because I let my thoughts over-complicate what’s in front of me. I expect my hopes and dreams to be answered with this rare nugget of intricate business genius, that’s so unique that no one else could keep up with it, and I’d be remembered forever for it. Reality is, a lot of good business ideas use tried-and-true models, and rarely is there something novel in that category.

This fact was somewhere buried in my head, thanks to the Engineering Entrepreneurs Program at NC State. However, it jumped out and back-handed me across the face today when I was listening to an old Dan Miller “48 Days” podcast from 2009. He was talking about a time when set up an advertising service between companies and churches in some area. It was a very simple business model: Companies bought ads, Dan distributed them to churches. He made more than enough money to live off of, and it was a part-time effort, so he even had time to spare to work on other business ideas. (To cap it off, he now sells this business idea as a package, with materials and knowledge for anyone to get started with. Talk about maximizing a time-investment!) This isn’t a large-scale, complex deal here, just the classic business scenario of filling a need with an idea.

Thanks for the back-hand, Dan. I’m awake.

Of course it’s natural to want to improve where you feel you are lacking. You may have been conditioned to value being well-rounded, like I had been, and most people I went to high school with who later went off to college. Maybe being not-so-great at something caused a failure in your life somewhere down the line, and you want to prevent another from happening for the same reason. Or maybe you’re just a perfectionist who can’t handle being considered average at anything. There are probably many reasons why this is the most likely inclination for people.

It might seem less intuitive to want to improve on things you’re already good at. Let’s face it: we have so many weaknesses, yet only a few strengths. But there are people who choose this route because they’d rather be great at one thing, or a few things, than to be just good at a lot of stuff. Improving on your strengths allows you to reach higher heights than you could if you were focusing on improving the numerous weaknesses you may have. This truth stands: the farther you travel down a particular road, the less people you see traveling around you. Taking this approach to self-improvement is more likely to land you in smaller pools of peers when it comes to whatever great talent, skill or attribute that you have.

I struggle with this dilemma as well. I spend a lot of time and energy evaluating myself and my current situation, and figuring out how I want to make it better. I’ve acquired a good number of talents growing up, plus  a few dreams that I want to make happen in my lifetime. I find myself cycling my focus through them all as time goes on, instead of focusing on one or a couple. There are times where I feel good having such diverse interests, and then there are times where I feel doomed to a life of mediocrity because I haven’t focused on one thing long enough to become awesome at it.

I wrote this post to provoke thought, not to provide a solution to this conundrum.  The only certain thing I’ve ever been told in relation to this problem is that no matter what, it’s better that I keep doing something rather than burn too much time trying to determine the correct thing to do. No matter what path you take in regard to this topic, keep moving.

The only certainty of time
is the next position
of the second hand.

As the globe turns,
so does the minute-hour-day,
but which way?

The only certainty of time
is that things will never
be the same.

My mind will freeze
this moment of me
spinning out of control,
into a memory.

As time melts away,
I’ll always recall
how I never knew
if I was moving too fast
or not at all.

Rate this poem at Lulu Poetry!

Russell’s first law is about the Power of Vision. He drills into the reader the extent of the power one can wield, by simply freezing a goal or idea in their mind, growing and chiseling it into a vision, and following it with conviction. A lot of us have heard similar messages, but for some reason, nothing changes. We’re all blessed with ideas, but few of us pursue them. While everything from Def Jam Records to Apple Inc. flourishes, the majority of us are left on the sidelines, with a great number of us marveling at something we have the potential to do ourselves.

Let’s be clear: I’m not here to preach everyone numb about freezing their ideas in their mind. While Mark Zuckerberg has formed a huge frozen Facebook block in his head (and probably smaller ice-cubes galore), my ice-maker has been spewing cool water with no signs of frost anywhere. I’m notorious for having a decent idea, pursuing it whole-heartedly for a month or two, and then losing it to frustration, boredom, another cool idea, or just plain lack of conviction. But now it’s time for me, and anyone else who’s tired of not living up to their potential, to change. I believe that this is a good first step.

Where can you see yourself? Calling all dreamers! Think back to the last time you lost 15 minutes fantasizing yourself in a position that was completely unlike your life in it’s current state. You weren’t in a cubicle, you were on stage somewhere. You weren’t taking orders (from your boss or a customer), you were leading the board meeting of your own company. I know exactly how you felt, because I wasn’t writing computer code for anyone, I was developing my own breakthrough software product, or writing a book, or composing a song. Then I woke up to a quiet room, without a web service with millions of users, without even a draft of a chapter of a book. Only some computers, an empty composition book, a dusty Yamaha keyboard, and a bunch of ideas. Sound familiar? Why don’t we ever pursue one of these ideas? I bet you didn’t feel like you were thinking very hard to form those ideas in your mind. If our imagination doesn’t have to go far to get there, why do we always feel like it’s so far away?

I have a feeling that it’s not so far away. I see myself doing a lot of things with my life. One of them is writing. I love poetry, and I also want to sell a million copies of a book one day. I can actually see it. How will I get there? First, I definitely have to start writing more. This blog can be a piece of that. Even simpler, the 50-cent scrapbook beside my bed where I’m jotting down my ideas for my first novel will be another piece of the puzzle. A lot of times it’s that simple: the difference between the people doing it and yourself, is that they’re actually doing it, whatever “doing it” may be.

Now, we’re supposed to be talking about visions here. It’s important that when the right idea strikes you, that you take the time to nurture it, grow it and refine it into a vision. However, I don’t believe that every idea that comes into your head is and should be considered a vision, and worth following. Let’s look at it this way: When I was going through the Engineering Entrepreneurs Program at NC State, we spent a semester putting together a business plan. Teams were formed around great ideas that the students had, and the semester was spent ironing out all of the details so that the idea was as clear and real as we could make it. I like to think that the teams started with ideas and ended with visions. I’m not saying that you have to have a business plan before you can consider your idea something worth following. I am saying that I believe it has to be so clear and real to you that it’s something more than just a good idea. I also believe that this stage isn’t something that normally occurs at the conception of the idea, but more likely after it has undergone some refinement.

I don’t know if Russell would agree with this notion. He describes how he first envisioned his idea of a fashion company which would eventually become Phat Farm in the first chapter of his book. It seems like after he originally had the idea, he couldn’t wait to share it with the world and begin to make it a reality. The snags that he ran into later would be what refined the idea of the Phat Farm, and his resilience to the setbacks and ability to stay true to his vision would make it become a success for him. There’s nothing wrong with that; there is no set of rules to making visions real. And the ability to be resilient and stay true to your visions is probably paramount to when you decide to clarify the details of it. However, I still do believe that taking time to clarify your ideas saves you some headache in the long run, especially when it comes to communicating your vision to others. It’s inevitable that you’ll end up sharing your idea with another, whether it be out of excitement, or more practically, for some form of help. The more time you’ve spent making your idea clear and real to you, you’ll more likely be able to clearly communicate that idea to another, and they’d probably be more inclined to believe in it.

Though I can be painfully optimistic and simplistic a lot of times, I am aware that these things can be easier said than done. Russell stresses the importance of dealing with negativity in this chapter, and I know that’s a big part of the picture that I can’t finish this post without addressing. Nine times out of ten, no matter how good or bad an idea of yours may be, sharing it with somebody will get you dose of negativity in return. It could be in the form of doubt, fear, or even ridicule. Russell tells us that we have to be resilient enough with our ideas to not internalize the negativity. While that is a necessity, it is also a must that you protect your ideas. Each one of yours is a delicate treasure, a gift from God, even, as Russell puts it in the first chapter of “Do You!”. They should be treated as such. If you know a certain someone spreads negativity like the common cold in wintertime, why would you subject your infant idea to their treatment? Nurture it, and do all you can to help your dream, your brain child, to grow into a reality.

Think it. Make it clear. Make it real. I hope 2011 brings happiness and success to us. Be on the lookout for the next post in the “Do You!” Series. Shout-out to Russell Simmons for writing a book that has been a source of inspiration and learning for me.

First off, this year I’ll be publishing the “Do You” series, inspired by the book by Russell Simmons. I’ve recently read it, and found it very inspiring. The book consists of 12 laws which Russell believes will bring happiness and success in life. Each month, I’ll share an article with my thoughts on one of the laws. Hopefully you, as the reader, won’t find the subject matter too cliché, and I can bring to the table an interesting take on these laws, and maybe even inspire a couple of people with some life experiences of my own.

I know I’m nowhere close to Russell Simmons, as far as business achievements and community contribution goes. However, at the very least, I can convey these messages from a different viewpoint: the viewpoint of a recent college graduate, with big dreams and no real plan. I like this viewpoint, because it makes it more real for the general public. Plus, I’ll learn more and reinforce what I’ve already learned by sharing it with others, one of the many ways giving brings rewards. I hope you enjoy this series, and all of the content this year. Much love.

Check out the app mention in the News & Observer’s Under the Dome blog:  Happy Constitution Day. All the best, Bob.
NCICL on the NC Constitution iPhone app: N.C. Constitution? There’s an app for that