Me

Three things I learned about myself at MBA school

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The most valuable thing I got out of MBA school, aside from the friendships and connections, was definitely what I learned about myself while I was there. There were a ton of things. Here are three:

 

1. I have a strange tolerance for risk

In one of my 1st year classes, we did a test involving questions in regards to money. This was to test what is known in behavioral economics as prospect theory, which describes the way people make choices based on their perception of risk. A normal value function looks like the following, which shows that people are loss averse.

English: Value function in Prospect Theory, dr...
English: Value function in Prospect Theory, drawing by Marc Oliver Rieger. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

That is, losses hurt more than gains feel good. Not me, mine was inverted. That means things that appear risky to people don’t really appear risky to me, and things that appear risky to me others don’t find risky (I am extrapolating the results and generalizing here). This explains a lot to me and was really eye opening. While others are “playing it safe” with their stable job and steady income I’m “taking a gamble” and choosing my own destiny. While to most, I’m the risk taker, in my opinion “playing it safe” is a dangerous illusion of certainty where the stakes are highest. The rat race is a game nobody can win and a game I choose not to play.

 

2. I am mercilessly efficient with my time

While my classmates were busy networking, practicing their interview skills, going to workshops to polish up their resumes, and spending an inordinate amount of time on homework, I was rock climbing, going to jiu jitsu, and hanging out with friends. I never went to a networking session, or an interview or resume workshop, and never spent too much time on homework. Was I worse off? Maybe a little, but I don’t think so. I was always in class on time when I showed up and usually the first to leave. I never stuck around to chit chat or kill time between classes or anything like that. In effect, I was just being efficient with my time so I could do the things that make me happy, such as hanging out with friends and heading to jiu jitsu to train. I never did more homework than I needed to. I always skipped optional homework exercises and readings. Did my grades suffer? Not really, I did well on the things I enjoyed and pretty average on the things I found boring. If I were more studious, would I have done better? Perhaps, but there is a law of diminishing returns that I just didn’t want to deal with. My time is my number one resource, and it is limited. I wanted to do the things I wanted to do and I very rarely compromised on that. I was obviously not the most popular kid in school for doing this, but I never went back to school to become popular. I made some great friends and those friendships will last a lifetime. That’s good enough for me.

 

3. I am good at what I love

As mentioned in point 2, I am not good at “doing school”. I was, however, very good at doing things I enjoy. If I like it, I’ll be passionate about it and take a proactive stance on it. I’ll also spend a disproportionate amount of time on it. I don’t know what the cause and effect here is (am I good at something because I like it or do I like it because I am good at it), but I did learn at MBA school that this is how I am. I did very well in certain courses (even getting an award for the highest mark in the class in one) and just didn’t care for others. There was some courses that I enjoyed but was very average in, but I never did above average in a course I disliked.

 

I’ve been out of school for a year now, and I must say that learning the above 3 points about myself has had the most impact on how I spend my days. Of course I learned a lot more during my time in school, but these 3 points have had the longest lasting effects on me at the moment. Who knows, maybe in the future other things that I learned about myself will emerge as more important. I definitely learned a lot about myself at school so I wouldn’t be surprised.

 

The lesson for you? If you learn something about yourself, use that to your advantage and don’t throw out those lessons. You’ll likely be better off for it.

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Business, Projects, Stories

First bit of PR for Rentything this week

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It has been a great and busy week for myself and Rentything, as we got our first bit of PR courtesy of TechVibes. That post resulted in hundreds of likes, tweets, and shares. My own social network really went with it and spread the love. I was floored by all the positive love and responses and words of encouragements I got from not only my friends and family, but also complete strangers. It was a great feeling and affirmation that I am on to something. I couldn’t be more thrilled. Check out the article here.

Technical

Backbone vs Ember vs Angular vs Knockout Review

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In the summer of 2012 I wanted to learn javascript. I had played with all of these web services for years that were doing some magic in the browser I just didn’t understand, but wanted to learn. Javascript was the secret sauce. Somewhere along my travels, I came across some lightweight Javascript MVC frameworks that were getting a lot of attention and gaining in popularity. These were Backbone, Ember, Angular, and Knockout. During the month of August, I decided I’d give each one a spin for a week and decide on which one I wanted to use to build my first full fledged web application (Rentything). Below are my thoughts that I can recall in regards to each.

Disclaimer: This is from a newbie’s perspective who was simultaneously learning javascript through Code Academy. If you are the type who spends any time whatsoever debating whether x framework is truly MVC, or not a framework at all, or something else even remotely resembling an already formed opinion of the four frameworks in question, this post is not for you. Also note that by the time you are reading this the information is likely outdated, as these frameworks have been moving at lightning speed. And finally, I am doing this writeup largely from memories of how I felt using the frameworks from 8 months ago, and my memory is terrible. You’ve been warned.

Knockout.js
First up was Knockout. Immediately I was impressed. Their website was beautiful, well documented, and had some amazing interactive tutorials. I watched some screencasts and was very impressed. Things just worked. I had no troubles picking up the syntax at all. There was just one problem, no router (that’s the thing that takes you from /page1 to /page2 and so on)! I tried using Sammy, Davis, Pathjs and a bunch of other javascript routers out there but couldn’t quite get them to play nicely with Knockout. Rats, unfortunately it was a dealbreaker. Sigh, I was almost in love. I am not sure if Knockout has a router built in these days as I haven’t looked at it since. Knockout, you’ll always be my first.

Ember.js
Next up was Ember. It was hard. It promised all this awesome stuff and the site looked cute and I wanted to learn a little bit of templating and Handlebars sounded cool so I figured I’d love this framework, but sadly I did not. Frustrating was what it was. I spent hours just trying to get really basic stuff going that took me minutes with Knockout. The reason, I’m not sure. I think the team behind Ember came from existing open source projects and so had an opinionated way of how things should be done. And I guess that opinion didn’t fit into my pea brain. Another reason, the documentation really sucked. I mean terribly. I would literally spend hours copying and pasting documentation straight from their documents and all I got were errors that I didn’t understand and had no idea how to troubleshoot. I cursed a lot using Ember (if you could call it using). I was glad to move on.

Angular.js
Angular was awesome. I really loved using it. Pretty easy to understand, although their website left a lot to be desired (disorganized mostly). I really loved the form handling capabilities. I was like “Oh snap, that shit works and I don’t have to do a thing”. Everything was going peachy but then I hit a juggernaut of a roadblock. These things in Angular called directives. I wanted to use a Bootstrap carousel, which with every other framework or library, simply required you to declare the Bootstrap script like you would any other. Not with Angular. I didn’t understand. So I asked what the heck was going on in the forums. People replied saying I had to write a directive thingy. So I went looking into what that was. Man oh man, I was WAY in over my head. So I backed away. Dealbreaker, again. Sigh. Don’t make me go back to Ember, please God no. Only 1 framework left. Backbone, man up and do what you do, only let me understand you while you’re doing it.

Backbone.js
I didn’t know what the hell was going on. Everything was confusing to me on their website. There were no examples, there were no simple tutorials. The website was filled with jargon that I just didn’t understand. I was thinking oh man I am seriously lost. But Google to the rescue. I must had done every single tutorial that was available on the first three or four pages on Google. They all did things slightly differently. It was annoying, but I also began to see the power in the flexibility of Backbone. Slowly but surely I started to get it. I put it through the paces and I didn’t run into the roadblocks that the other frameworks did (Knockout’s lack of router, Ember’s terrible documentation, Angular’s complicated directives). Still, aside from Ember it was the least enjoyable to work with. I found it repetitive in certain tasks and lacked some of the cool things that made the other frameworks strong, such as Knockout’s two way data binding sorcery. So I started looking around to see if there were any libraries built on top of Backbone. And yes, there were a ton. I tried Knockback, which combined Knockout and Backbone, but it had its own way of doing things which was just another thing for me to learn. Then I came across Marionette, and it made my relationship with Backbone so much nicer. With Marionette, I actually started to enjoy working with Backbone.

So after all was said and done, I chose Backbone for Rentything because it had what I needed, didn’t have terrible documentation, didn’t have any deal breakers, was the most mature of the frameworks with the most plugins and largest community, and Marionette saved me a ton of time with it. Just in time, too, as I was about to give up on learning javascript completely.

So to recap, from a newbie’s perspective using terrible reconstructive memory from events that happened 8 months ago:

Best Website: Knockout.js
Worst Website: Angular.js

Best Documentation: Knockout.js
Worst Documentation: Ember.js

Most Fun: Knockout.js
Least Fun: Ember.js

Easiest to Learn: Knockout.js
Hardest to Learn: Ember.js/Backbone.js

Most Mature: Backbone.js

Largest Community: Backbone.js

Most plugins/libraries: Backbone.js

Hardest Component: Directives in Angular.js

Things have probably changed dramatically since then. I just started scanning through the frameworks websites as I am writing this, and it looks like Knockout still doesn’t have a router, Ember’s documentation still sucks and they know it (and are working on making it easier) according to http://emberjs.com/blog/2013/03/21/making-ember-easier.html , Angular now has a lot of contributors who have made tons of directives for Bootstrap and other things, and since I’m most familiar with Backbone, I know they recently released version 1.0.

I think for any projects in the near future, I’d probably give Angular another go as the community has grown drastically and it was a pleasure to work with. For smaller projects, I’d definitely go with Knockout since it was just so fun. Backbone has been great, but only after I’ve stacked it with quite a few plugins/libraries to help speed up development. I’d like to try working with a framework that just pleasantly works out of the box next time. My own javascript knowledge has grown a considerable amount since I gave these frameworks a go, so I am sure a second time around will be much less painful.

Business, Projects

I guess I should let you know what I’ve been up to. Introducing Rentything, a peer to peer rental marketplace

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I woke up this morning and did my usual morning routine. I got some coffee, read the news, and checked my email. Today I got a special email saying something along the lines of “Congratulations, you’ve been featured on Beta List”. Sweet, I got featured. For those of you who don’t know, Beta List is a service that allows early adopters of new technology to discover the latest internet startups. It’s also a good way to get some exposure to your baby service. I clicked on through to the feature http://betali.st/startups/rentything and was surprised to find over 200 tweets, and a whackload of facebook likes to the project I’ve been working on: Rentything, a peer to peer rental marketplace allowing anybody to rent anything from anyone. That’s the punch line, I suppose it needs some work. Anyway, now that Beta List has featured it I guess it’s out in the wild now. I shared this story on my personal Twitter and Facebook and was blown away by the positive responses and love I got. And here I thought I was some weirdo loner who does shit that weirds out normal people (actually, that’s probably still true, but I digress).

Rentything peer to peer rental marketplace

 

I meant to write about Rentything here sooner, but I just never had the right moment to do so (I guess now is good…surprise!). It has been a tough year so far as I’ve tried to find my rhythm. I’m not there yet but definitely making improvements. Rentything has been a load of fun to make (most of the time) and something that I think has real value for some people. It’s a problem I personally had when I helped my parents move last summer and never had the abilities to borrow certain tools that we needed only temporarily. So in a way I built it for myself, and I am hoping it helps solve an issue other people run into as well. But it’s more than that. It’s access, it’s discovery (ever want to try canoeing or rock climbing or something else but didn’t have the equipment?), it’s convenience, and it’s money savings and earnings (people will earn money using stuff they already own… and rent stuff at hopefully competitive prices). In tough economic times, nothing will put a smile on my face more than knowing some family or individual was able to earn a little bit extra thanks to Rentything. If I hear that even once, I’ll consider it a huge success.

 

So, will it work? I don’t know. There’s a whole heck of a lot of reasons on why it will fail, and only a few reasons on why it will succeed. I’m aware of this, but I’m not too concerned about it either. I didn’t build Rentything to become an internet millionaire or something, I built it because I needed to. Rentything’s success or failure is largely irrelevant to me, but what is relevant is the skills I have picked up (javascript, what!), the skills I’m improving on (marketing, copywriting, seo, etc), the skills I’ll need to reawaken (customer support?) and the skills I will undoubtedly need soon/now/too late.

 

Life is short. I have my life’s mission to complete. Rentything is a great first step in that direction. Check it out at Rentything.com

 

P.S. With that, my blog will take on more topics now including the technical, the business, and the journey (although I was already doing that last one).

Habits

Consistently Consistent

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The single biggest bang for your buck in terms of results is consistency. It is boring and unsexy compared to magic bullets and one shots of awesomeness, but consistency works, plain and simple. I don’t think you’d find a successful person in the world who encourages people to be wildly inconsistent, except perhaps to spark creativity, to break negative habits, and to discover new things. And only for short periods of time.

Consistently doing bad things will lead to further bad things, and consistently doing good things will lead to further good things. Consistency forms habits (and habits are good and bad). Want to start becoming more awesome at something? Figure out what works, then be very consistent in doing that thing. Want to stop? Then become inconsistent at doing that thing.

Want to get good at arm bars? Find out how to do them properly, then do them. Lots of them. Every day. Consistently.

Want to get better at bouldering? Boulder. A lot. Consistently.

Want to get good at x? Find out the best way to do x, then do it. A lot. Consistently. Every day might be too much (if recovery is an issue, or if money is an issue, or time is an issue, or x is an issue). Doesn’t matter, do it at a pace you can do it at, at a schedule you can reasonably do it at. Push too hard, and it’s unsustainable. Push too light, and you won’t see the results as quickly if at all.

Consistency is not a guarantee for success (especially if you are consistently doing something incorrectly), but it is a good bet. In other words, consistency is necessary but not sufficient for success. The opposite is not also true. That is, it is virtually guaranteed that not doing something consistently will bring you results on par with not doing that thing at all.

So how do you know if you’re doing the right thing consistently? Well, that’s a bit tougher. Sometimes, it’s obvious and getting into the minutiae is unnecessary. Want to lose weight? Eat less. Forget about what you should eat, when you should eat it, and how many meals you should eat. You will know when its time to think about those things. For many, getting started is the hard part, so keeping it simple is the easiest way to start and stay at it consistently. Other times, figuring out the right thing is tough. You could ask people. If 100 people tell you to do it a certain way, it’s either conventional wisdom because it’s the correct thing to do or because nobody bothered to challenge it (one is good, one is terrible). You’ll have to decide based on gut feel what to do here. If you get 100 completely different answers, you are in “nobody knows what the eff they are talking about” territory. In that case, ignore everybody, and explore for yourself.

Usually the hardest part is just starting. That’s why I’m a fan of just doing it, observe (and measure!) obsessively, and make corrections as you go. Is P90X better than Insanity is better than blah blah blah… Stop, just stop…. If starting is the hardest part for you, then the just do it approach is a great one. If starting is not the hardest part, then I’d go with front loading the work and doing the hard and boring stuff first, like finding the right material, figuring out the annoying little details, and other deep research like you are some mad scientist with crazy hair, weird mannerisms and bad hygiene (but I’m willing to bet starting is the tough part).

Once that’s out of the way, be consistently consistent. Ready? Ok, go!

Life, Mindset

The Law of Impermanence

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In Buddhism, it is said that Buddha taught 3 facts of existence… they are suffering, non-self, and impermanence. Impermanence is the one that I take to heart the most (but the others are worth reflection as well), perhaps because it is the easiest to understand and the easiest to see unfold in the real world. If you’ve heard the terms such as “nothing lasts forever” and other sayings then you are touching on impermanence.

My buddy has a tattoo of the symbol of impermanence permanently plastered on his body. Ironic? Perhaps. But he’ll die one day, his skin will wither to nothing, and thus it isn’t really permanent. Eckart Tolle says (paraphrasing…also, holy shit, I’m busting out Tolle).. “Even the sun will die some day”

My workout buddy and frequent partner in crime told me that his work let go some people today. Then, predictably, he stated that he thought he was next to get chopped, shrugged his shoulders, and that was that. He then blabbed on about something about Gladiator. I don’t know, I was confused too. Anyway, tangent….But it happens (the layoff, not the tangent, but I guess that’s true, too…Ah I did it again!), especially in a society focused on the bottom line. When/If this ever happens to you, see it not as a setback but rather an opportunity to start something new, because in reality everything is impermanent. Easier said than done, I know (as is most things I recommend on this blog), but just tell yourself “this too shall pass”

And I just read Google Reader is shutting down. I cursed a lot, rage tweeted, and threw stuff. I then sobbed uncontrollably. But I’m back now and all is good. I saw it coming. RSS is dead or dying, at least according to Google. They even removed the subscribe to RSS button from Chrome (you have to download an extension to re-enable the functionality). I understand, I suppose, from a business perspective. They have to consolidate their projects and focus on steering the gigantic ship they have become towards a clear direction. I mean, that’s what businesses are supposed to do I guess, right??

But anyway, yeah. Impermanence. This is a LAW. This is a FACT. There is no escape. Things change, people change, times change. When you feel like utter garbage, know that it won’t last. When you are sitting on top of the world, that too will end. That awesome job will have its redundant and boring times. That incredible relationship will fade…

So be nice, play nice, and enjoy the ride. And never, ever, forget the law of impermanence.

P.S. I got all nostalgic reading some old posts from this blog in Google Reader that are no longer on the site. I wonder if I’ll get some time to restore some of them, because there are some goodies.

Goals

Focus on Process, Not Outcome

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I forget this one all the time, so I am writing it down here so I can come back and read it from time to time, then bitchslap myself for forgetting again. Too often we focus far too much of our desires on the shiny object at the end of the road, running past everything so quickly that we don’t even get to stop and smell the flowers. That sucks, and it’s unfortunately ingrained in our culture. Having an end goal in mind isn’t necessarily bad (although some argue that it is), but a dogged fixation on it isn’t the healthiest thing for you.

A better alternative is to focus on the process. Let’s go with a few examples. I’ll take them from my life since they are salient in my mind and important to me.

1. I want to learn Spanish. So what’s the desired outcome? Well, I’d like to be fluent and have conversations with people and understand what people are saying. While some people suggest moving to a Spanish-speaking country and immediately start speaking with the locals, that is a tad bit extreme for me. Instead, I use memrise and duolingo. The process is simple. I wake up, enjoy a cup of coffee, and I do my lessons. Everyday. That’s it. Am I moving forward toward my outcome? Yes, most days. Some days, a lesson will totally mess me up and it’ll feel like I just stumbled back a couple of steps. Duolingo especially drives me nuts. Sometimes I just want to put my fist through the monitor. Then I have to remind myself to focus on the process, not the outcome. Just show up and do the lesson. Sometimes I’ll fail the lesson and sometimes I’ll succeed. But there is no question I am better at Spanish now then I was a month ago.

2. I want to get stronger. I want absolute strength but relative strength is more important to me (two people who can deadlift

English: A Strongman exercise: the Deadlift. P...
English: A Strongman exercise: the Deadlift. Polski: Konkurencja zawodów siłaczy: Martwy ciąg. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

500lbs have the same absolute strength for the deadlift, but the lighter person has a better strength to weight ratio and thus is relatively stronger). I’d like to pull 400lbs off of the ground by the end of the year, but trying to pull that weight now would potentially injure me so I’m not even going to bother. Instead, all I can do is show up on deadlift day. I like to use a mental checklist. A checklist written down is even better. Did I get enough sleep? Check. Have I been keeping my stress levels down? Check. Did I eat well this week? Check. Am I excited for my workout? Hell yes check. And here again, sometimes I’ll fail to pull what I put on the barbell and sometimes I’ll succeed. But again, by focusing on the process there is no question I am stronger this month then I was last month. Maybe I’ll reach 400 by years end, and maybe I won’t. By focusing on the process, it is irrelevant. I did what I could every step of the way.

I could go on with examples ad infinity. Focusing on the process instead of the outcome applies everywhere. Career aspirations? Focus on the process: Have you been updating your skills? Networking? Fine tuning your résumé and cover letter? Gotten really specific on exactly what you want, including salary, position, company, benefits, department, logistics, commute, and so on? Did you honestly do everything that you could do to move yourself toward the desired outcome to the best of your ability? If so, the rest simply doesn’t matter because it’ll come. It might not come at the speed that you want it. And it might not be the exact outcome you were going for. But the sheer fact that you put one foot in front of the other and moved towards something opens up entire worlds that were not possible when you started.

Let go of the outcome. It’s healthier that way. And take your own advice, Wong.

 

 

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