Yifei's Rough Drafts

When you find yourself in an unfair system...

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 09:32:35 -0400

You can do three things about it:

Change the system.
Get on the advantaged side of unfair.
Accept it as is, move on.

On Politics (and Getting What You Want)

Thu, 20 Oct 2011 00:10:00 -0400

If you wanted to make $1000, you could collect and recycle aluminum cans. $0.05 a pop. Several shopping carts a day. It would add up in the long run.

But you wouldn’t.

You’re not particularly excited by the prospect of dumpster diving. It’d be vastly more interesting to make money some other way.

***

If you wanted better coffee at your neighborhood Starbucks, you could petition the company to carry your favorite roast. With enough tenacity, you just might succeed.

But you wouldn’t.

You don’t care enough about the problem to dedicate months of your life to it. It’d be vastly easier to find a cafe with better coffee.

***

If your goal is to change the laws and policies that govern your world, you could educate yourself on the issues and campaign/protest for your viewpoint. With enough tenacity and patience, you just might succeed.

The question is, would you?

Image credit

Metaphor

Thu, 29 Sep 2011 23:58:13 -0400

The boy’s hands bleed
Into the splintered wooden oars
Attached to the waterlogged raft
On which his brothers and sisters sleep
As he rows through the darkness
Over rough and uncharted waters
Watching the waves on the horizon

Threaten to wash away everything and everyone he’s fought dearly to protect.

"Self-discipline is not self-suppression. Suppression is when you resist and fight against your..."

Tue, 23 Aug 2011 23:47:37 -0400

“Self-discipline is not self-suppression. Suppression is when you resist and fight against your desires, keeping them as buried and unexpressed as possible. Self-discipline is when your highest desires rule your lesser desires.”

- David Deida, The Way of the Superior Man

The Golden Ticket

Mon, 08 Aug 2011 13:50:31 -0400

I tell you the difference between me and them
They tryin’ to get they ones, I’m tryin’ to get them M’s
One million, two million, three million, four
In just five years, forty million more

A deep psychological riff separates you from the homeless bum on the street. You might think it obvious that any able person can work a job and make a living. If the bum believed that, would he be a bum for very long?

The same psychological distance separates the middle class from the deca-millionaires and billionaires. In their world, owning and commanding immense resources is no big deal. They have a clearer mental map of how money is made, and more importantly, they know from experience that it’s possible.

If you had the mindset of the wealthy elite, would you be middle class for very long?

Peace of Mind

Sat, 30 Jul 2011 10:30:29 -0400

“This too shall pass.”

“When in doubt, take responsibility.”

Why I don't discuss politics

Wed, 27 Jul 2011 00:41:54 -0400

Imagine a circle.

You’re in the center. Your family and closest friends form the innermost ring. Your acquaintances form the next ring. Your community, your city, your country form the ones beyond that. Keep going in this fashion until you reach the edge: all of humanity, the world, the universe.

Now look back to the center. How far does your influence actually stretch? For most of us, the answer is not very far.

While a man’s influence is something that grows over time, for now, I’m more interested in the circles that are closest to me — rather than global matters that are beyond my control.

For now.

Don't be a schmuck

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 21:13:51 -0400

A schmuck is someone who hasn’t earned your respect. A schmuck is clueless — an outsider who violates unspoken rules of the game. A schmuck is beyond saving.

Schmucks don’t get their business plans read. Schmucks don’t get their texts returned. Schmucks don’t get your full attention in conversation.

The thing is… we’re all schmucks to somebody.

The key is to recognize when you’ve been labeled as a schmuck — and to show the offender that they’ve made a terrible mistake in judgement.

Unless you can play on even ground, there’s little sense in playing.

Reject Suffering

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 16:29:02 -0400

We are all capable of feeling pain and doubt and loneliness and exhaustion. I urge you, however:

Refuse to allow yourself to suffer.

Pain is a reaction to the environment. It’s your body’s way of sending a message: “Don’t touch the fire” or “Eat something.”

Suffering, however, is submission to pain. It’s allowing yourself to play the victim, relinquishing control and adopting a passive stance.

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is a choice.

Get to know the difference.

Impractical Truth vs. Effective Lies

Wed, 06 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0400

The bigger your world view, the smaller you know you are.

Sheltering yourself in a bubble doesn’t make you any bigger.

But it does make you feel bigger. And that allows you to act bigger.

This is why science will lose to fundamentalism.

The Owner's Mindset

Fri, 13 May 2011 00:00:00 -0400

A simple mental exercise:

Imagine that you financially own your surroundings. The building you’re in, the street it’s on, the land deed itself — all under your name. The people around you are employees and loved ones — your tribe, your people. The bathroom towels and the paper stationary bear your mark. Pat yourself on the back, Mr./Ms. Monopoly Moneybags. You’ve done well.

Now picture somebody littering in your building. Or hearing of about a threat to your staff. Or witnessing a car accident happen on your street. Would you look around sheepishly, waiting for someone to tell you what to do? Would you hesitate? Ask permission?

When we don’t fear the reprimand of others, we naturally do what we intend to. When we feel a personal responsibility for the outcome, we naturally take necessary actions.Thus in the comforts of our own homes, among friends, we’re all natural born leaders.

Perhaps leadership in the outside world is merely a matter of expanding the bounds of your living room.

Your Life, As a Widget Factory

Wed, 04 May 2011 00:00:00 -0400

Input and output. Efficiency and yield. These are words that I unexpectedly found myself using while thinking about recent work/life progress.

Yes, it’;s brutally objective. Sure, it’s heartless and inhuman. Yet that’s precisely why I found the “my life as a factory” analogy useful in this situation - because most of us have a tendency to sugar-coat our mistakes and look past our blemishes. Through the cold, calculating frame of a manufacturing manager, whose sole job is to run a lean, efficient production process, I was able to do some of the best damn introspection and planning that I’ve done in years.

Maybe you’re not so extreme. Fair enough. You’re probably still after the same things I am (and most people are) though: more time, more money, more freedom, more of what makes you happy. The ability to see yourself as you are (as opposed to how you’d like to be) is a tremendously powerful tool for plotting towards those goals. And the factory is a powerful analogy:

What are you actually producing? At home? At work? In society?
How much resources do you spend on it?
How can you raise your output?
How can you lower your costs?
What if you had to do it in half the time?
Where are resources being wasted?

At worst, you’ll reaffirm what you already knew. At best, you’ll stumble upon one of those inconvenient truths about yourself that nobody had bothered to tell you.

Yes, you should smell the flowers, eat the chocolate, and drink plenty of wine. Enjoy life for all that she offers and appreciate the heck out of being human. But when it comes down to self-evaluation, consider being a bit of a machine. Scrutinize without mercy. Analyze without emotion. And know that your human life will be richer because of it.

Social Self-Suppression

Fri, 15 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0400

Every morning, thousands of bleary-eyed commuters stand shoulder to shoulder with complete strangers on Boston’s subway system (the “T,” as we lovingly call it). It makes for a fascinating display of social norms.

An interesting phenomenon occurs whenever a seat is vacated on the T. If there’s an elderly passenger nearby, nothing surprising happens, and the seat is graciously offered up.

But if no immediate obvious claim can be made (whether by proximity or need), a kind of tension settles over the individuals standing in the vicinity. The same thought crosses their minds: “Dare I take the seat?”

And yet, oftentimes, nobody moves. A few people glance furtively towards it, and then look around nervously, watching the group for signs of competition. As if to say, “Does anyone else want it? If someone else wants it, they can have it, since I don’t want you to think I want it that much…”

What makes this situation even more fascinating is, if the train makes another stop while the group is in limbo, new passengers will make a beeline for the open seat. Without hesitation, they will claim it, leaving our other contestants silently fuming.

There are many possible explanations for this. We may be reluctant to be percieced as too self-interested, for fear of incurring backlash from the group. We may hesitant to upset status quo. We might be too consumed with our gadgets to act.

In any case, it’s led me to consider the numerous other circumstances where we suppress our own wants, due to the presence of other people.

In many cases, this is a good thing. But I can think of many more cases where this kind of tendency limits an individual’s experience of life. To err on the side of safety - of not offending or upsetting anyone - is to live in a sterile bubble, regulated by social norms and socially enforced conformity.

This is still an incomplete thought. But try to notice this behavior in yourself and others. Does it make your life better, more socially connected? Or does it keep you from getting what you actually want?

Wrong About Everything

Sat, 05 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0500

It’s possible that I’m wrong about everything.

Perhaps individuals have no right to aspire to great deeds. Ambitious thoughts might be the hallmark of narcissists and elitist pigs, and it might be the meek and mild-mannered who are the most accomplished in life.

Perhaps the future has already been written. My daily struggle against the status quo could be nothing more than the senseless thrashing of a caged animal, and the best thing I could do for myself might be to shut up and do what I’m told.

Perhaps I did not pray enough, or to the right God, or with the right symbols. Heaven might be the paradise that I scorned and refused, for placing my faith in tangible things and attempting to construct my own meaning.

Perhaps I spent far too much time looking for truth in everyday things. It could be that life is too complex for my simple mind to understand and that the search for truth is a selfish indulgence that leads only to cynicism.

Perhaps sex is a sinful act, a lower desire to be suppressed and buried out of sight, out of mind. It could be that my lack of shame is a sign of a deep depravity that rots me from my very core.

Perhaps my admiration for achievement is a misguided. It could be that we are all insignificant in the long run, and this might be proof enough that leading a quiet, uneventful life is no different than changing the world.

Perhaps things were indeed better in the past. Perhaps the world could do without my meddling. Perhaps I know nothing about the things I feel strongly about.

It’s possible that I’m wrong about everything…

But don’t count on that.

Roman Emperors, Peacock Theory, and Why Your Life Story Matters

Sun, 13 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0500

I’ve loved biographies ever since I was young: Benjamin Franklin, Marcus Aurelius, Alexander of Macedon… Their stories taught me that there are no limits to what man can accomplish.

More recently, such reading made me realize a startling fact:

No matter how much a man accomplishes in life – at best, history remembers him as a singular, exaggerated incident: He was the first U.S. president. She conducted the Underground Railroad. He invented the incandescent light bulb.

Taking a step back, it’s easy to see why this is. People are complex. Caricatures, generalizations, and illustrative stories are essential shortcuts for making sense of the hundreds of complex personalities we encounter on a daily basis.

So when forming our first opinions about others, we most often start with their most obvious attribute. The same applies when others are forming their opinions about you.

Peacock Theory

Some of you may already be familiar with this clever piece of dating advice: When going out to a bar, wear an accessory that stands out – maybe a hat, or sunglasses, or even a tattoo. Something so obvious that the other people can’t help but comment on it.

The peacock theory, as applied to life in general, is to carry with you a story that:

Provides an easily remembered attribute about you
Differentiates you from the masses

If you can accept the idea that people you encounter will remember only one thing about you, what do you want them to remember?

A Great Man is One Sentence

Most people walk around with a very vague grasp on their own identity. Their lives are unexamined, whether by neglect or fear or self-denial. The people who defy this rule, are the people who stand out.

So even if you’re not sure how you want to go down in history, you can start by cultivating your defining attribute today.

What makes you worth remembering?

The Modern Feudal System

Fri, 11 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0500

In the past, you had to be born into nobility. If you were, you could control the land, the wealth, and the armies. And leveraging these, you could shape the world in any way you pleased.

If you were born into the peasantry, you were less fortunate. Your opportunities were limited to the craft you were born into. Your duty was to serve obediently and to raise your children to do the same.

Fortunately, we no longer think in terms of lords and serfs, peasants and kings. But if you pay attention, elements of the old feudal system are still very much in place. The wealth is still controlled by the elites, and the world is still shaped by the few. The masses are still stuck in a perpetual rut.

The difference is that our modern feudal system is one of self election, not blood relations. Circumstances still matter, but much less than before. You can choose to be a peasant just as easily you can choose to join the nobility.

The key is not armies or land, but the knowledge that such a choice is even possible. To join the nobility, the first step is to realize that the way the word is, is not the way it must remain. That through deliberate action, anyone can shape the world into what they please.

Most people, I suspect, never fully reach this realization.

The Rise and Fall of Joey - A Tragicomedy in 5 Acts

Thu, 10 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0500

ACT I

Teacher: Work hard. Put in your dues. You’ll be rewarded when you grow up.

Joey: Okay. Can I go to the bathroom?

Teacher: No.

ACT II

College Dean: You’re graduated now.

Joey: Woohoo!

Bank: You owe us $100,000.

ACT III

Jenny: Wanna go travel the world, make art, and live out our dreams?

Joey: Can’t, gotta pay off these loans. Wanna get married, buy a house, and have kids anyways?

Jenny: Okay!

ACT IV

Joey: Have fun at college, son.

Joey the 2nd: Yay!

Bank: You owe us another $100,000.

ACT V

Old Joey: I wish I had done more with my life.

~THE END~

Fighting Off the Slog Monsters

Thu, 23 Dec 2010 00:14:00 -0500

You’ve probably experienced this before: a month of nonstop action - pure get-shit-done momentum mixed with caffeine and a vague sense of the days whizzing by.

Then, BOOM, all of a sudden, you hit a wall. It’s not that there’s no more work to be done. It’s not that you’ve reached your physical limit. For reasons you can’t quite identify, you’re stuck in molasses and even the most simple tasks seem to take a mountain of motivation to get underway.

You’re in the slog.

I used to try and fight this feeling. I used to think I could power through it, like the machine I wanted to be. But no, I was just a silly human - which means cyclical highs and lows, sprints and slogs.

So these days, instead of gritting my teeth and plowing forward, I have a much better set of tactics:

First thing’s first. I stop. I sit still. I allow myself to do nothing - for as long as I can stand. By “do nothing” - I mean absolutely nothing - no email, no music, no mindless entertainment. Just me, the silence, and my slowly quieting internal monologue. It’s rare that I ever get past 10 minutes of this.
Time permitting, I try for some form of physical exercise - sprinting, when the weather permits - indoor swimming and weights are good too. If I’m in a hurry, a hot/cold shower can achieve the same effect.
As a rule of thumb, I try to force myself into social situations. Sitting next to me on the bus? Bitch, we’re going to have a conversation. If you’re interesting, sometimes, that’s all it takes to get me back into the flow of things.
And if nothing else works, I try to do a favor for someone else. Maybe writing a nice thank-you note. Or listening to the life story of the elderly woman on the subway (see #3). By putting the focus on someone else, I find the slog seems to evaporate all on its own.

Do you see what’s different about these approaches? They’re the equivalent of restarting the main pieces of the human operating system - the mind, the body, and sense of self.

I’m not a psychologist, and my understanding of this is purely from observation. But consider these ideas, and see if they make sense to integrate into your life.

Why Every Atheist Should Go to Church

Thu, 09 Dec 2010 22:02:00 -0500

Last week, I attended church voluntarily for the first time.

As you might know, I didn’t grow up with religion. How did I feel in the midst of a hundred people who saw life differently than I?

You might be surprised - I felt completely at home. In part this was because the congregation at Reunion Boston was extremely warm and gracious, but beyond that - it was the commonalities that we shared that struck me deepest. They exuded community and preached values. These are things I believe in strongly, even if I find immaculate conception a tough idea to swallow.

By the time the service ended, I had gained valuable insight into the best parts of Christianity… and a deeper understand of my own beliefs.

It begs the question, however, why don’t we seek out learning experiences like this more often?

Perspectives

It’s easy to forget that the majority of people look at the world differently than you. The things you perceive to be beautiful will inevitably be considered vulgar by some of people you meet. You can choose to ignore them… or get into fights. Or, you can choose to take a chance - and try to understand their perspective.

Understanding a person’s perspective is like discovering the key to cracking the code to their behavior. It is a tremendous tool - whether it’s your goal to lead, to inspire, to harm, or to help.

Remember - actively seek out those who think differently, especially those who disagree with you. If you cultivate perspectives, the mysteries of people’s actions - including your own - will start revealing themselves to you.

***

I’ll go back to Reunion again at some point. Not for prayers or songs or forgiveness. But for the people.

A Simple Hack for Advancing Your Important/Non-Urgent Goals

Sun, 05 Dec 2010 11:04:00 -0500

Ever been frustrated by your own seeming lack of discipline when it comes to working on long term goals?

If you’re familiar with the Four Quadrants method, these are goals that fall under the “Important, but Not Urgent” quadrant, containing activities such as exercise, keeping in touch with mentors, working on future income sources, etc.

I used to struggle with this as well. Recently, though, I was inspired to make a quick change that has had a huge impact. After sharing this with them, a couple of my close friends have started using this as well.

Here’s the hack:

Quite simply, I gave myself a quota. Putting numbers around the activities that advance my Important/Non-Urgents and then taping that list to a prominent area of my room - I translated fuzzy, distant goals into urgent, measurable, actionable tasks.

The negative categories for Not-To-Do’s and rewards for hitting goals are purely optional. But at least for me, the simplicity of this single sheet of paper has beat any time-management/motivational/GTD system I’ve tried in the past.