The M Society

WashingtonPost

Nobel Prize-winning behavioral economist Daniel Kahneman has found, however, that being wealthy is often a powerful predictor that people spend less time doing pleasurable things, and more time doing compulsory things and feeling stressed.

People who make less than $20,000 a year, for example, told Kahneman and his colleagues that they spend more than a third of their time in passive leisure — watching television, for example. Those making more than $100,000 spent less than one-fifth of their time in this way — putting their legs up and relaxing. Rich people spent much more time commuting and engaging in activities that were required as opposed to optional. The richest people spent nearly twice as much time as the poorest people in leisure activities that were active, structured and often stressful — shopping, child care and exercise.

Kahneman and his colleagues argued that many people mistakenly allocate enormous amounts of their time and psychological focus to getting rich because of a mental illusion: When they think about what it would mean to be wealthy, they think about how enjoyable it would be to watch a flat-screen TV set, play lots of sports or get a lot of pampering — our stereotypical beliefs of how the rich spend their time.

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Get Rich Slowly:

1. Successful people know what they want
2. Successful people don’t just think, they act
3. Successful people have insatiable hunger for knowledge
4. Successful people are curious and are not afraid to experiment
5. Successful people build their networks
6. Successful people are passionate about what they do
7. Successful people are persistent and patient

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I walk a lot recently, and that gives me a lot of inspiration. Normally I would depart early so that I could enjoy my walk to the destination, however I do need to rush to certain places once in a blue moon. When I was in rush, I tend to use shortcuts to reach the destination quickier. Today when I was walking, I saw the signboard “save the grass, no shortcuts”. What a creative slogan. Then I look at the pathway of the shortcut, there are only sands but no grass grown on it.

Shortcuts In Life

A lot of people tend to believe that there are shortcuts in life. They think that there are ways to become rich quickly. They think they can become successful easily. It’s not true. Some people may become rich quick, but most people don’t.

Many people spend their time looking for ’shortcuts’ and refuse to use the proper way to reach their goal. Most of them end up staying at the same place without moving forward, or stuck at a dead end.

Shortcut is Based on Experience

Looking for shortcuts to reach your goal isn’t a mistake, but looking for uncertainty without moving forward is wrong. A lot of shorter way to the destination is based on your experience and observation. Do not look for an easier path blindly and naively. Trials and errors are essential. Looking for shortcuts is like you staying at your suburbs for 10 years, and during this 10 years you find different ways that can reach your house.

Some Shortcuts May be Furhter

Sometimes when you see a sand trail across a grass field, and you will think that it is the shortcut. That might not be true. That path might be a further way. A path which a lot of people walked before doesn’t mean that it is the shortest way. Don’t follow the footsteps of others. As I said, trials and errors are important. You can learn from others but don’t imitate them.

Shortcut is Faster, But It’s Not Safer or Smoother

Shortcuts might be able to reach your destination in shorter time, but that doesn’t indicate they are safe or no obstacles. Some shortcuts might be steep, where you can fall and traumatize yourself. Some shortcuts might be in a dark street, where you might get rob and lost all your money. Some shortcuts might be full of rocks where you will hurt your legs.

Use shortcuts wisely. It’s like the example I given previously, you know thousands of ways that can lead to your house. Normally you’ll use the common way to go back to your house, then why should you sometimes use other way which has longer distance? It might be traffic jam or accidants happen on the common road you use. When this happens, you can use the other ways you know to reach home faster, even though it’s further. Shortcuts don’t mean shorter distance, but shorter time.

You May Missed A Lot Because of Shortcuts

Try to use different ways to reach your goals so that you know which one is the quickest. Don’t just use only one way. Sometimes slowing down you might experience a lot of nice things. For example, today I chose to walk a longer way and I met a cute girl.

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In life, you can’t deny the fact that there are some losers living in this world. These people are normal people, like everyone else. When I was in my schooling years my teachers always says “There is no loser in life, only winners.” And I tend to believe in that phrase. Now I wanted to change that phrase “There are many losers in life, not all are winners”. It’s the fact, LEARN to ACCEPT IT! Working in the society is a different ball game and if you observed carefully, you will notice that there are truly losers out there. Let me tell you some happenings that I came across with and you might laugh because you also seen it before.

When I was in Sibu, I bumped into one of my old schoolmates. It’s been ages since I saw this guy. Then we greet each other and have a little chit chat. He told me his life wasn’t that good. He’s working somewhere (which I don’t know) and his salary is not sufficient to sustain his life. He told me his girl (which happens to be one of my friends) dumped him and he asked me for her contact number, so that he can persuade her back. For a moment, I pity him. After we finish chatting, my instinct told me he’s a loser, there’s no need to pity a person like him. He’s totally a loser. He should apply for a better job. I told him to resign his current job and look for another job with higher pay, but he insists with the reason “The boss is kind towards me” and therefore he doesn’t want to resign. I was like “BULL SHIT!”. If his boss is kind towards him, he should have given him a higher pay, and the reason he is kind towards him is because he is naïve and totally a good sucker to suck blood from. He is 30 years old, and he still thinks like a loser, dress like a loser, smells like a loser, talk like a loser and born loser. Someday, sometime, somewhere he will still be a loser if he doesn’t wake up and think like a winner.

There’s another person whom I get to know from my dad everyday stories and I’ve seen that man myself. The story goes like this, this man (Let’s call him Peter), is the only son of his family. His parents owned a coffee shop and had been operating the coffee shop business for a decade or so; and John was a gamble addict. Every day he did nothing except gambling ranging from mahjong to footballs. As days goes by, his bet went bigger and bigger every day, until one day, he falls. He was in thousands and thousands (I mean hundred over thousands) of debt. He doesn’t have a proper job, and therefore his parents use their savings, sold their only home, cars and lands to pay his debt. Their coffee shop which was located at the corner lot of the shop houses was forced to close down due to the rent that they can’t afford. And now, they move to a smaller space to continue to operate their coffee shop business to sustain their life. Almost every day, my father and I would have a morning tea at their shop, and I heard John’s dad complaining that John is still addicted to gambling and even worst of all he’s borrowing usurious loan. My god, John is 30+ years old and this guy (or should I say loser?) who made his family falls into a terrible position and he’s still gambling like there is no tomorrow. Some people just never change; loser will always remain as loser.

In life, we will meet losers and will be surrounded by them. Learn to keep away from them, because they are like vampires (sucker) sucking positive energy from us and make us look like one of them (sucker via loser). Don’t be a loser, BE a WINNER!

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Today, I’m going to share with you all about momentum. This is how my physic teacher starts on his momentum lesson during my secondary school years. He explained that “The effect of motion is called Momentum”. The formula for it, is p=mv, where by P is momentum, M is mass and V is the velocity.

Don’t worry everyone, I am not going to give you a physics lesson today, The Momentum I’m going to talk about is something which you have to devote a lot of time to study and apply to your life, to your job, and even to your relationship. It is something that keeps you going further and further, harder and harder than ever before without slowing down or stop. Let’s take running for an example, you are running 20km/hour when you want to increase the speed up to 80km/hour, you will have to keep the momentum to maintain that speed, that momentum to keep you at 80km/hour.

Let me share with you a story about the real meaning of momentum. In the past three years, Youth camp was organized by Swancity Toastmaster club, my hometown TM club. Now, to plan and organize this youth camp, without earning money, seeking for large and generous sponsorship, and devoting a lot of time to work it out as a successful camp required momentum, and I can assure u, it was not easy. I’ve been with the team to organize it and the organizing team had so much momentum that, year after year, youth camp came out to be such a successful youth camp despite all the hard work and obstacles we went through. And the team deserves a big round of applause because we are the man behind all this great momentum. And we still continue with this momentum to organize more successful youth camps in years to come (An incoming 2008 camp, falls on 21st March – Easter Day, 4D3N).

For a personal experience, I love the power of momentum. It feels great when you do things with great momentum. One of current my momentums is to train my golf skills into an amateur stage, so that I can go in to a 18holes golf course. I’ve devoted lots of time on my momentum for my golfing. For you it might not be golfing, but the same principle applies to all things, life, business and relationship. It’s funny when I say momentum keeps you alive, it is like your soul, without it, you are just a walking “corpse”, and people do agree with this statement.

No matter how accomplished you are, no matter how well you think you know your field, you have to maintain that momentum to remain vigilant about the details of your field. You can’t get by on experience or being smart.

No matter what you are managing, don’t assume you can glide by. We are all capable of losing our momentum and there is no reason to put your self into that position. Momentum is something you have to work at to maintain.

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I set up a new goal two days ago, which is to swim a total distance of 1000 km in 2008.  After having a new goal, I immediately go and sign up on the second day.  The following day I, which is today, I swam 1000 metres.

Is 1000 km a long distance?

If I swim 1km everyday, I won’t make it to 1000 km in a year time.  You might be thinking why I just swim 1 km today.  It is a long term goal, and you can’t achieve it in one day time.  It had been months I didn’t go swimming.  The reason I swam 1000 metres only was to warming up my body to make it getting use to long duration swimming.  It took me half an hour to finish 1000 metres.  1000 km means a heck of 500 hours time to me.

After getting use to 1km, I will increase my swimming length to 2km and then 3km until 5km.

Time

As I said I tried to walk to my destination in stead of using any other transport.  I walked to swimming pool as well.  It took me 20 minutes to get to the swimming pool, and another twenty minutes to come back from swimming pool.  I tried to walk slower today to estimate the total time I needed to go forth and back from swimming pool including the swimming time.  It took me one and a half hour.

I tried to fit the swimming schedule into my timetable, as it is quite packed.  I realized that I can’t swim everyday, but I can swim most of the days in the week.  I had two solutions.  One is I woke up early in the morning walking to swimming pool and swim, or I can swim after work.  Personally I prefer the previous one.  It is because I need not to re-schedule my timetable now.  Another reason is that after work, there are a lot of people in the pool, which makes me hard to swim and would waste more time to finish each lap.  However, there is a disadvantage to swim in the morning.  Besides the cold weather, I have limited time to swim.  I don’t own the swimming pool, and it has its own opening hour.  I have work in the morning as well, which means I have limited time to swim.  I tried to estimate the distance I can swim in the morning, and it is 1 km.  With this plan, I can’t meet my goal.  Swimming in the morning also worries me, as I’m not sure if it will affect my concentration during work.

So I came up with another solution.  Most of the time I can swim in the morning, but some other days which are not so scheduled, I can swim in the evening.  For those evenings or weekends, I can swim more laps.

Shower

I don’t shower in swimming pool.  The reason is that the water pressure of the bathroom there is not strong enough.  I’m kind of clean-freak.  Normally I would come back home and bath, unless I have no other choices.

Why Swimming?

I tried all kinds of sports and I found that swimming is the one that is most effective to me.  Swimming also built up my stamina, which can make me handle the heavy work pressure.  I can also spend time thinking in the water while swimming.  The pool cools my head and I think better.

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This picture is amazing.  People said they gave 100% at work, but is it everyday?

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“Arghh! Where is my key? I thought I put here.”

Is that line often appeared in your life? If it is true, then you are in big trouble. Sometimes your stuffs seem like conspires against you getting lost together. Then you spent a lot of time finding them, and when you gave up on them, they appeared.

Organize Where To Put Your Things

It is important to have a habit to put things back at the same place. Build a rack to put your remote controls. Set up hangers on your wall for you to hang your keys. It is your responsbility to know where you put your things. When you are in rush, sometimes you tend to have short term amnesia. You can’t recall where you put your stuff even though you are damn sure you put it there (but you can’t find it, it disappears by itself).

Your Things Doesnt’ Walk Away

Your things don’t walk appear. They won’t just disappear out of a sudden. You must have placed it somewhere but you recall the wrong location. Finding these tiny things like keys, remote controls, wallet, books, papers, etc. really waste a lot of your time. If you are in an emergency, you will be panic and you might lose sight of the thing even if it is just in front of you.

So please make it a habit to put things where they should be. Clean up your table and drawers. Reorganize the allocation of things, and label them. This helps you at finding your things.

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Do you let people around you giving out their opinions and thoughts? Do you always ignore them?

A lot of people like to talk, but not listening. This is a bad thing to do. It is bad to give out only, but not receiving anything in. Life is about balance, so do interactions with people.

Why Only You Do The Talking Is Bad?

1. You might miss out things others know but you don’t know. Since they can’t tell you.
2. You make people hate you.
3. You are ignorant.

How Can You Fix The Problem?

When you communicate with people, please try to calm down your urge to speak. It is rude to interrupt others when they’re giving the speech. What you can do is let others speak first, then you note down what you want to refute / praise / elaborate in your mind. When they had finish, then only you give your talk. When you finish saying what you want to say, please ask others for their opinions and if they have any questions.

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I think this ‘life instruction’ is pretty useful. You can consider printing it out and stick at a place where you can look at it often.

• Have fun.
• Do not hurt people.
• Do not accept defeat.
• Strive to be happy.

Life is as simple as that.

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