I’ve flown back to the US early to go on sort of a personal retreat, on the outskirts on Stanford. It has been a good time to take stock of life, and plan for the future.

I’ve also had the chance to go the almost 3 month backlog of entries in my notebook, to organize them into my reference system. These three months have been an incredible time for me, in terms of idea generation, understanding myself, and forming my mindset about things in life.

Going through them, I’ve also realized that I generate many ideas, but keep them to myself without sharing them, hoping to do them someday. Yet I increasingly realize doing stuff is as much having the idea, as is being in the right place at the right time, with the right skills. More important than that, everyone thinks their idea is great till they share it with others, as Scott Belsky observes.

I’ve decided to try to share any new ideas I have on this blog- even startup ideas, and commercial ideas. It’s a recognition that I’m not in the position to make them happen (at this point in life), and also a recognition that I might be wrong in thinking a particular idea is good, or in a holding a particular mindset. Having someone call bullshit on me, and the opportunity to correct my thinking may be more valuable than the idea itself in the long term.

By putting ideas out in the open also forces me to recognize the valuelessness of ideas, as anybody can take them and do them. For an idea addict like me, this is important in making me realize the key is in implementation (overcoming obstacles, adapting to ground situations). On another level, it forces me to recognize the value of ideas, by sharing them. If an idea can help the world anybody benefits, regardless of who does it in the end.

Life has been up and down recently- I have become better in my academics, though certain recent events have given me a certain heaviness of heart. Though painful, they have allowed me the moments of introspection that have allowed me to understand myself.

I realize I live life very much in the moment, and as an idealist and optimist. It has been a wildly enjoyable way to live life (in my own quiet way), as it magnifies the joys and highs of life. Yet it entails a certain emotional recklessness that magnifies the pains and the lows.

This is all a very dangerous thing. I have observed that the most passionate idealists often become the most bitter cynics, after repeated failure or disappointment. For them, despair is the product of hope betrayed. They allow themselves to slip to irrational conclusions, based more on emotional disappointment than on logical deductions, to condemn what they used to love.

I choose otherwise. I choose to leave this time focusing on the happy things, and with a great respect for the ones involved. I leave also with the knowledge of things I’ve not done right, and things I need to do to improve.

Heaviness of heart, for failure or loss of love, dulls into a low pain. Yet the vicissitudes and vagaries of life assure that this will happen again and again, in magnitudes that will dwarf this to nothingness. I can only hope each time will leave me stronger (and wiser), with an optimism for better times to come.

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It was interesting to hear the speakers’ thoughts on many issues. Among them, Eddie Teo, the chairman of the PSC (the body that administers and gives out scholarships) spoke to us about the scholarship system and our responsibilities- read it here (or here if you don’t have a ST membership). I had always admired him from afar (after reading his open letter a year ago), and he spoke with the same candor and wisdom from his years of experience.

Tourists at Harvard Yard touching “the piss foot”…

I wrote about my thoughts on my scholarship a year ago, but had put it off this year as I had a mini-crisis at that time. Sitting in SingSem made me reflect once again on how I thought one year ago, and how it has changed. The little experience I’ve had has allowed me to better understand the opportunities my role gives me, as well as the limitations and responsibilities being in the Civil Service entails. A youthful “change-the-world” idealism is increasingly tempered with a pragmatic understanding of how systems work, and how to work in them.

The Civil Service isn’t Silicon Valley, and my experience in Stanford has arguably given me an unrealistic yardstick to measure it. Where Silicon Valley prizes dynamism, and encourages you to move quickly on your own agenda, working in the government (or any large organization) trains you to work as part of a larger team. A friend who works in Google tells me that the organization is become more and more bureaucratic as  it grows bigger. Perhaps what is needed is the art of intrapreneurship, where one applies the same dynamism and ideas while working within the rules and limits of the system. I have much to learn about that.

Much has been happening in Singapore, politically and socially. Certain trends scare me, but that is perhaps a topic for another time (and, perhaps, not on this blog). I won’t be writing much over the next few weeks as Computer Science has been tough. I am working hard to reinvent my comparative advantage, and acquire a new skill set to bring back to my job in the future.

This point is pretty similar to the previous one (action-orientedness), but it was so well put I had to highlight it:

“Shipping is when you release something… the final act of execution that so rarely happens.”

“Shipping is an active mind-set rather than a passive circumstance… instead of becoming someone who’s a wandering generality- who has lots of great ideas and ‘if only, if only, if only’, you are someone who always ends up shipping”

“Godin believes the source of obstacles to shipping is the lizard brain… primal tendencies to keep us safe by avoiding danger and risk… everytime we get close to shipping, the lizard brain says ‘They’re gonna laugh at me”, “I’m going to get in trouble”… [and as a result we don't ship]

“The reason why Godin has failed so many times is because he has shipped so many times”

[Godin] is comfortable with the risk of failure because that… is the key to being able to execute. As a result, [he] has made ideas happen again and again.

I can’t not recommend this book. I haven’t been able to put it (by that I mean the iPad) down so far. Find it at Amazon, or the iBooks store.

The easiest and most seductive escape from a project plateau is the most dangerous one: a new idea. New ideas offer a quick return to the high energy and commitment zone…

Although it is part of the creative’s essence to constantly generate new ideas, our addiction to new ideas is also what often cuts our journeys short.

This is really true- when Locra hit a wall, all I could think of were pursuing the many other ideas that were on my mind, and as time passed my interest in Locra waned and things did not move as quickly thereafter. That, I believe, was why Locra never truly got off the ground, even though we had the talent, resources and a solid idea.

Scott Belsky argues that we need to find ways to sustain focus, and find ways to renew our energies to break through the “project plateau”. He argues for “acting without conviction”- opposed to the traditional wisdom of thinking before acting. This is not recklessness but rather a controlled decision to avoid the dangers of waiting, which builds apathy and increases the likelihood that another idea will capture our fancy.

This principle is echoed in TED talk by Tom Werner, who found that 5 year olds regularly outperformed MBAs at building spaghetti towers because they just started building right away. It is also echoed in IDEO’s (the design company) mantra of rapid prototyping, where debate and consensus is passed up in favor of rapid prototyping- a process in which “fledging ideas are road tested early on, exposing dead ends and leading to prototypes that point the way forward”.

I am prone to plan too much. Very often I have found myself spending more time on GANTT charts and achieve consensus, than actual work. The key for me is to balance my natural inclination to plan, and check myself to always remain action-oriented.

If you have lots of ideas, you probably have the tendency to get involved with or start lots of projects…

Energy is your most precious commodity

Another gem from the book, that describes my situation perfectly. At points last year, I was juggling up to 11 project ideas (from the big to the smallest), and taking the lead role in at least 6 of them. Looking back, it’s not difficult to see why most of them failed.

Scott Belsky recommends choosing just 5 projects that matter most- and prioritizing them from Highest to Lowest based on importance, rather than urgency. A project with the highest priority, thus, has economic, personal, or strategic value.

In my case, I came into the summer holidays thinking I would launch 3 projects concurrently, in addition to my internship, spending time with family, and fitness. Instead, I’ve decided I will focus my energy on one project (Gov 2.0) and give myself a time frame to make it happen. Hopefully this will yield better results.

As I wrote earlier, I’ve been reading a really good book called Making Ideas Happen by Scott Belsky. It’s helped to shape many of my philosophies recently- and I’ll write about a few of the lessons I’ve learnt.

Many of you who know me know that I’ve always had a lot of ideas- and have managed to push out very few of them. Scott Belsky argues that it is a problem shared by many people of the “creative class”- right brainers, whose creativity is at odds with the discipline and rational logic required to execute ideas. Ideas, he argues, are useless if you don’t make them happen.

He studies those who are consistently able to produce great work- and finds that the best are not necessarily the most creative, but those most comfortable alternating between the creative phase of idea generation, and then the disciplined phase of idea execution. As Jonathan Harris put it, “the first is a more pleasing way to live life, but the latter is the only way to get anything done”.

This, for me, is really enlightening. I’ll continue to write about the most compelling ideas (for me) from this book as I go along.

It has also been a good time to “sharpen the axe”. I’ve spent time to set up (and test) my personal productivity system (Toodledo and Google Calendar), my knowledge management systems (Google Reader, Twitter and Evernote). I’ve also set up and configured my Macbook, iPhone and iPad- to work with the systems. I’ve also been able to go through my finances, plan for the future. Hopefully, investing time in this “personal infrastructure” will enable me to handle more work in the future.

The iPad has been a new addition to my life, after saving up for most of the year. One of the things it does is encourage you to read books, something I had not done for a long time (I usually just surf around the web). I’ve been reading “Making Ideas Happen“, a book which targets people who have many ideas but hardly ever execute any of them (i.e. me). It’s a really good book, and I’d highly recommend it if you fit the description above.

Work starts next week, and I’m thankful I had some “down time” to reflect and recharge myself. Can’t wait to get back to the grind again- here we go

Anyhow, with the World Cup coming up I’ve turned back to my first love of soccer. Inter Milan finally managed to win the Champs League, testament to the phenomenon of the teams I support only winning when I stop caring about them. I had been crazy about them when I was 14 (started a  “Singapore Inter Milan Fan Club” on Community Zero then, which grew to… 6 members), but stopped caring about them beyond the check-football365-once-a-month.

It’s nice to know that some of the teams I support are capable of winning. Now, just for the Browns to win the Superbowl, and Ipswich the Premier League. Anyhow, this is a great ad from Nike (it’s not the one which, you know, everyone has been sending around).

Thus please excuse the random “no thumbnail” and “please put image here” that you will see all over this blog- I hope to be done by next week.

On another note, I will be creating a wiki-notes platform on eidus.sg to put up all my notes that I’ve taken in class throughout my JC and Stanford career. Stay tuned for that in a couple of weeks.