Finding Your Way
Today I reread The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi, one of the world’s foremost treatises on the way of the warrior. More than three and a half centuries after his death, Musashi is still known as one of the greatest swordsmen of all time. He was also a master painter and calligrapher.
What strikes me most about the book is the depth of Musashi’s commitment to his own craft: killing in combat. He believed very strongly that, in the way of the warrior, the only thing worth focusing on is killing. The warrior does not show off, try to impress others, try to win fame, or engage in mock battles. All he does is kill, as effectively as possible. For Musashi there should be nothing else in the mind.
I am personally no warrior, though I have spent time in the military. But I continue to believe Musashi’s book holds lessons for us all.
5 Damn Good Reasons To Get Your Sorry Ass Out Of The House
You know the stereotype of the overweight, sloppy, working-from-home nerd sitting in front of the computer all day in his underwear?
Yeah, I know. It’s not a pretty picture. You can stop visualizing it now. It makes my flesh crawl.
Some people actually think that this is a dream lifestyle. Personally, though, I think it’s a terrible lifestyle.
So here are my top reasons why you should get your sorry ass out of the house before no one ever hears from you again. [...]
How to Have a Great Day at Work
There’s a great article in this month’s Harvard Business Review called “The Power of Small Wins”, by Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer. The article is targeted at managers and shows them how to give their teams positive inner work lives, so as to maximize productivity.
What it really is about, however, is simply this: How to have a good day at work.
Today’s entry is targeted at ordinary people, not at managers. Managers can simply read the original article. Instead I’m going to talk about how we can use the authors’ findings to create good days for ourselves at work. [...]
Need More Hours in a Day? Here’s How to Get Them
Those of you who read my other blog, rainy blue dawn, know that I’ve been experimenting with polyphasic sleep since the end of last year. The idea behind polyphasic sleep is that taking several short naps a day at regular intervals decreases the amount of sleep you need at night, giving you more waking hours in a day. I wanted to see if it really worked. So I tried it for three weeks. Although there do seem to be some limitations, by and large it was quite an effective experiment. In other words: I did manage to get more waking hours into a day, with only minimal decreases in alertness. [...]
Interview: Shimona Kee (Part 2 — The Freelancing Life)
Leonard: So how has it been? How did you manage to get back into the scene?
Shimona: Well when I came back, in spite of having a culture shock I fell right into the Singaporeanness of having goals and being an overachiever (laughs). My first month back I was like, “I need gigs, I gotta get gigs, I have to earn money!” Straight back into the Singaporean mindset. But God had other plans and He said, nope, no gigs for you.
So it took me a while to actually get going with the gigging and all that, because the scene here has changed a lot. But basically I spent the first 1.5 months or so being very free. So during my free time, instead of sitting around and sulking that I had no bread and butter, I actively tried my hardest to prepare for when I did have gigs. Because from my prior experience when it gets busy it gets frickin’ busy. [...]
Interview: Shimona Kee (Part 1 — The Freelancer’s Journey)
Shimona Kee sings for a living as a musician in Singapore. Today we talk about Shimona’s personal journey, and on Monday we’ll hear from her again about the freelancing life.
Leonard: When did you first start freelancing?
Shimona: Probably somewhere around 2001. I sang in pubs and restaurants, all that.
L: And what were you doing before that?
S: Studying. Poly. It kind of overlapped. Towards the end I started getting involved in music outside of poly. I used to do a few of the poly roadshows, I took part in this competition called The Big Break, started singing in pubs—especially this one at Somerset, called Swing. At Cuppage. It was very well known back then for jamming. Around midnight, 1 a.m., it got very packed with a lot of musicians, because musicians have a very strange social life. By the time you finish work it’s what time already, so you go to a lot of each others’ gigs, hang out. I did that for three years, but back then I was just fresh out of school and just happy to do what I liked. I didn’t really make a very good living out of it. Then towards the end of those three years I kind of got fed up with the whole thing—it’s not easy, it’s much harder than most people think it is to be a musician in Singapore [...]
How Much Are You Willing To Put In?
I spent a good deal of last week (and of the last few weeks, come to think of it) dancing.
And on Saturday I took part in my first-ever salsa performance on stage. Reasonably challenging and interesting choreography, too!
This was a major milestone for me, because never in my life have I been a decent dancer… until perhaps now. (I’m still not brilliant, but I am good enough to go on stage without embarrassing the heck out of my teachers.) [...]
How to Deal with Boredom and Burnout
When we’re kids we all love learning.
(I’m not just talking about the classroom here; many kids who would otherwise be avid learners are bored out of their minds in classroom settings. Sad but true.)
Kids love to learn. New games, new jokes, new dirty words. Sports, places to go, how to fiddle with new toys.
And we don’t lose that tendency after we grow up. We’re a thinking, learning species. The desire to learn is hardwired into our DNA.
So when we stop learning, or feel like we’re not making progress, we can get very discouraged. [...]
Institutionalists vs. Individualists: Which Are You?
Today I’m talking about two different kinds of people: institutionalists and individualists. [...]
Feeling Buried?: 5 Surprising Strategies to Get Back in Control
A schoolteacher’s work is never done.
When I was still a teacher I routinely found myself buried by work. Not just lessons to teach and papers to grade, but also questions to set, meetings to attend, students to counsel, a website to maintain, vendors to deal with, booklets to design, data to collate, events to coordinate… it was rewarding work, but it went on endlessly. And sometimes you simply had to grit your teeth and deal with the sense of having too much that was urgent and important all at once.
So how did I deal with it? Here I’ll share five simple strategies I picked up during my schoolroom days. All of them require you to do something other than work for a while – anything from a brief moment to a few hours. Here they are, arranged in order of time required: [...]
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Elsewhere on rainy blue dawn…
- Spring April 15, 2012
- Pablo Neruda: Tonight I can write the saddest lines January 6, 2012
- On returning home January 6, 2012
- Back to the old ways December 17, 2011