Is it Better to Be the Fastest in a Slow Group or a Slow one in a Fast Group?

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For the last 5 years, I have been running the 15K hot chocolate run with a friend. We have been late to start the race for the last two years so ended up running with folks that are much slower than our speed. As soon as I crossed the start line, I started passing people left and right. At first, it was a great feeling, but then I started getting blocked to run any faster as there were simply too many walkers. ...  read more

New Year Inspiration – 5 Ways to Become a Better Version of Myself

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Happy New Year!  Wow, its already 4th week of January.  Where did the time go?  I have been meaning to write about my new year aspirations.  I am sharing them to help me be more committed.  I hope they can also help you.

Last week, I saw this great article – In the New Year, Become a Better Version of Yourself.  It inspired me to come up with these five way to  become a better version of myself.  All of them are hard for me, but they are also great aspirations for the year – how to evolve who I am as a professional and a human being. 🙂

Be Patient with myself and others – I am not a patient person.  I tend to interrupt people in discussions.  I get impatient when people are slow to understand or respond.  I like to rush my kids when they are slow to shower, clean up, brush their teeth. You get the picture.  This will be one of the hardest one to adhere to..  I think deep down I believe if I just rush others and myself, I will get more done.   It sounds silly now that I have articulated it :-).   This year, I will try to work on the following:

  • Interrupt less and listen more.
  • Remember to pause before I react to an unexpected situations.   Let things cool.  Sometimes they resolve on their own.
  • Accept mundane things will take time.  Dedicate the time to get it done right.   This one stems from an experience I had just last week. I upgraded my work phone.  It probably should have taken about an hour.  It took me about 7 hours over 3 days instead.   It was however completely self-inflicted.  I was trying to save that hour by multitasking this while working.  Let’s just say I learned the hard way quickly rushing has unintended results :-). C’est la vie
  • Be judicious about what I must do right away.  As a productive person, I tend to want to do many things a day to feel accomplished – a “hamster” on a never-ending “hamster wheel.” Need to remember that less is more.
  • Be patient with my kids.
  • Allow myself to slow down and enjoy the journey – I am trying to ramp up on a big role this year. Even though I have until April to do it, I can tell I am rushing to do it faster.    I will enjoy this journey much more if I pace myself.

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    Are You Listening to Those Whose Communication Style are Different from Yours?

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    are you listening to those whose communication style is different

    I realized I am probably not listening well to those whose communication style are opposite that of mine!  My 10 year old daughter, Isabel, made me realized this lately.   I am a pretty fast talker who will inadvertently interrupt others when I get excited about a subject. Isabel, on the other hand, is the exact opposite.  She can pause as long as 30 second or a minute before speaking her next sentence.

    Here is one of our latest conversations

    Me: So what happened? You don’t look as excited or as happy as I would expect after a first water rafting trip with your friends?    How was it?
    Isabel: It was okay. [silence]
    Me:  Did something happen?   You look dehydrated.   Was it not fun?   Did you get hurt?  Was it cold?
    Isabel [frustrated]: You never listen to me…I don’t want to talk about it..
    Me: [complete dumbfounded] But you haven’t said anything….
    Isabel [she lets out a ‘ugh”]:I was still thinking about what to say.
    Me: [staring … thinking]: How was I supposed to know that?  You were completely silent
    Isabel:  [she lets out a another ugh and stopped talking. ]

    I have had about 3 or 4 conversations like this with Isabel in the last few months.   Of course, every mother daughter relationship naturally has conflicts as she is getting older and into her rebellious age.   The repeat pattern of our conversation however made me realize that perhaps she was right in some respect.  Maybe I wasn’t listening, at least not the way she was expecting.

    Here is what I learned so far. Hope this will not only help me connect better with Isabel but also improve my ability to listen and communicate with colleagues that communicates differently than me.   When it comes to people who are what I consider a more “deliberate, slow” communicator, I need to remember the following.

  • Let there be silence.  Silence to a speaker like Isabel doesn’t mean she is done.  She may very well be thinking how to phrase her next sentence.   What I tend to do naturally is fill silence with more questions and words.  That interrupts her thinking process and to her, I am aggravating her as “I am not listening.”  It seems that way to her even though I was speaking after she is silent.
  • When speaking, keep it short and open ended.  I was also peppering Isabel with many version of the same questions.  She would receive it better if I just keep it simple – “Are you okay? Can you tell me what happened?”  and stop there to let her decide.  When I ask more questions, I am just frustrating a slow talker like her and convincing her to say nothing more.
  • Listen with the intent to understand vs the intent to reply.  I think I do have this intent with Isabel.  My intend is to understand, but because I am not used to such long pause, I end up coming across more aggressive to her than I realized.  To her, any interruption from me or not pausing to wait through a bit of silence meant I wasn’t listening to her.

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    Aim Low and Get Somewhere – Aiming to Write the Crappiest Article Ever Written :-)

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    This video clip motivated me to write and finish this article.   It is from a Netflix movie I just watched called “Set it up.”  While the movie is so-so, this 1 min clip is funny, practical, and inspiring.  It helped me get over the writer’s block I have had for a month.  More importantly, it will help you get unstuck if you are feeling overwhelmed at the moment.

    I have had trouble finishing any articles in the last month.   Partly it’s because work has been all consuming, and partly it’s because I have been putting too much pressure on myself to write the perfect article.   I have rewritten the intro to a few articles for a few weeks now.   Every week I didn’t publish something just made me pressure myself more to make sure the article I finish is extra insightful and helpful.   I was literally over-analyzing every sentence.

    I realized now that I was trying too hard to please when in fact the reason I started writing this blog was because it is therapeutic.  The reason these articles may help you is because my stories are like yours – fulls of up and downs – mistakes and learnings.  

    It is exhausting to try to perfect anything.  it is never an inspiring goal and actually makes everything we try to do feel like WORK we never want to do.   This blog is not supposed to be work for me.  It is supposed to heal me and perhaps you if you can relate.  So the timing of this movie clip was perfect for me.

    Once you see this 1 min clip – you will understand the title of this post.    Here is some context.

  • Harper, the one crying in the clip, wants to become a sports journalist.
  • She has been working day and night for 3 years as an executive assistant for Kirsten, the most accomplished sports writer in the industry.
  • Harper wants Kirsten to help her with her writing but Harper hasn’t written a single article since she started work there.
  • Now that she has time, she still cannot finish her first article
  • Becka in the clip is Harper’s best friend who gives her some very sound advice to get Harper unstuck.

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    Podcast – How to Develop Your Leadership Skills Today

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    How to develop leadership skills

    Today, we went to our kids’ elementary school’s “Back to School” night.  As I was leaving, Isabel’s English teacher stopped me to gush about Isabel.  Apparently, she took upon herself last month to

  • Organize their classroom’s Chinese and English book library
  • Got a few of her girlfriends to help her
  • Together came up with rules for how the students can checkout books and where returns should be placed when done.
  • Held an opening ceremony in class to introduce the new library and process.

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