Yes, I mean you.
I'm bored seeing somebody trying to tell everybody how good they are, how experienced they are in certain things - including myself.
Yes you're good, but can you really be perfect? Do you know everything and mastering them? If not, face it.
Humble is not about "not bragging about what you have" - you can shout of course - but when if you don't know something, just don't act as if you know.
Admitting "I don't know" is not a shame.
June 10, 2009
April 24, 2009
How, and Why
I used to focus on WHY instead of others, because I thought it is more important to know the reason behind, and for whatever you do, you need to have a valid reason to support your journey.
I think I wasn't wrong, but I realized sometimes the WHY may not come easy when you seek for it. My opinion is: some questions you just can't answer it now, but later. You get what I mean.
We're answering the questions posted by ourselves in the past; and the future us will answer our questions, too.
So I thought it might be more practical to focus on HOW.
How can I achieve this, that and that?
How can I make this better, better and better?
How can I maximize the potential of this, that and that?
How can we paint the color of our life, maybe?
I think I wasn't wrong, but I realized sometimes the WHY may not come easy when you seek for it. My opinion is: some questions you just can't answer it now, but later. You get what I mean.
We're answering the questions posted by ourselves in the past; and the future us will answer our questions, too.
So I thought it might be more practical to focus on HOW.
How can I achieve this, that and that?
How can I make this better, better and better?
How can I maximize the potential of this, that and that?
How can we paint the color of our life, maybe?
March 14, 2009
If you think it is something viable
Then go ahead and do it.
To be frank, I can really feel him. A lot of things happened for the past few months. I had my time to rest my body and soul during this revival period, thinking about many things, restructuring my thoughts and reorganizing what I've learned for the past one year and doing something that I'm totally not familiar with.
I achieved some, failed some. Met good people, and being disappointed by some others. I started to believe that there's actually a gap between people, thinking gap, all sort of gaps. No one will ever feel, or think exactly your way.
But the point is, you have to keep moving. Keep starting when you believe and stop thinking too much about failing. You can't fight for your visions while you're starting with a loser's mindset, no?
I'm at the midst of starting a few things. While believing that I can do it, I would love to share this quote with all of you.
And this was the header of JASONGAN.COM for January & February 2009.
The only thing worse than starting something and failing... is not starting something - Seth Godin
To be frank, I can really feel him. A lot of things happened for the past few months. I had my time to rest my body and soul during this revival period, thinking about many things, restructuring my thoughts and reorganizing what I've learned for the past one year and doing something that I'm totally not familiar with.
I achieved some, failed some. Met good people, and being disappointed by some others. I started to believe that there's actually a gap between people, thinking gap, all sort of gaps. No one will ever feel, or think exactly your way.
But the point is, you have to keep moving. Keep starting when you believe and stop thinking too much about failing. You can't fight for your visions while you're starting with a loser's mindset, no?
I'm at the midst of starting a few things. While believing that I can do it, I would love to share this quote with all of you.
And this was the header of JASONGAN.COM for January & February 2009.
February 25, 2009
Learn to sell yourself
As the first step into marketing.
Was talking to a confused friend about her career, I didn't tell her that I've been thru the similar route not so long ago.
When you have experienced certain things, you tend to get confused about your ability, your situations, even you're not sure if the path you've taken is correct or otherwise. You started to question. Likewise, when you're in the business long enough, you will probably lose your initial focus.
This could be quite dangerous. For a business, few area you should take care of their directions: R&D, management, customer service, marketing.
You've probably learned enough to sell a couple of years ago, eventually your company move on to the next level, maybe your marketing strategy is standing still.
Marketing strategies should grow faster than your R&D or others, it should be at the front line of any business. In order to do so, you need to find a marketer who is able to identify your USPs, no matter how it changes, she or he must be able to find out immediately.
For a person, an employee especially, you are the marketer who is selling. You need to identify a few things: your skills, your attitude, your connections.
Trust me, the best thing you can reward yourself is to invest in these 3 areas and it will become your sharpest marketing spear in your next round of job hunting.
Was talking to a confused friend about her career, I didn't tell her that I've been thru the similar route not so long ago.
When you have experienced certain things, you tend to get confused about your ability, your situations, even you're not sure if the path you've taken is correct or otherwise. You started to question. Likewise, when you're in the business long enough, you will probably lose your initial focus.
This could be quite dangerous. For a business, few area you should take care of their directions: R&D, management, customer service, marketing.
You've probably learned enough to sell a couple of years ago, eventually your company move on to the next level, maybe your marketing strategy is standing still.
Marketing strategies should grow faster than your R&D or others, it should be at the front line of any business. In order to do so, you need to find a marketer who is able to identify your USPs, no matter how it changes, she or he must be able to find out immediately.
For a person, an employee especially, you are the marketer who is selling. You need to identify a few things: your skills, your attitude, your connections.
Trust me, the best thing you can reward yourself is to invest in these 3 areas and it will become your sharpest marketing spear in your next round of job hunting.
January 6, 2009
The future of a new brand
Lays on your hand. Because it is not the brand that you're selling, the products and services your brand represents are.
Bear in mind, doing business is about creating customers, says Peter Drucker. So the point here is about the value your organization, or your product, your services, and your brand carry and appeal to your customers.
So let's put one thought in our mind starting from now: We're not good. (See my previous post, if you hadn't already)
Yes, forget about good. Dell thought they're good until HP quietly took over a big sum of their market shares. Does MAS not good? But they were comfortably letting AirAsia change the game rules.
Bear in mind, doing business is about creating customers, says Peter Drucker. So the point here is about the value your organization, or your product, your services, and your brand carry and appeal to your customers.
So let's put one thought in our mind starting from now: We're not good. (See my previous post, if you hadn't already)
Yes, forget about good. Dell thought they're good until HP quietly took over a big sum of their market shares. Does MAS not good? But they were comfortably letting AirAsia change the game rules.
January 1, 2009
CHANGES are CHANCES to CREATE
This was my new year greeting SMS to all my friends for Jan 1, 2008. I'm glad that many people liked it.
And it is true, as change is the only constant thing on earth, I believe there's a lot we can learn from it.
I started following this manifesto since 2008, and 2009 Bruce Mau did some changes on his Incomplete Manifesto For Growth (or Change).
It is good to read some inspirational articles when you face uncertainty in life. I especially enjoy reading these intelligent stuff. Like this Imcomplete manifesto, some strike me and triggered some ideas, some that I'm strong disagree with.
But that's the thing, intelligence is always about disagreement, agree? Enjoy.
1. Allow events to change you.
You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.
2. Forget about good.
Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you’ll never have real growth.
3. Process is more important than outcome.
When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we’ve already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.
4. Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child).
Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.
5. Go deep.
The deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value.
6. Capture accidents.
The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions.
7. Study. A studio is a place of study.
Use the necessity of production as an excuse to study. Everyone will benefit.
8. Drift.
Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism.
9. Begin anywhere.
John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.
10. Everyone is a leader.
Growth happens. Whenever it does, allow it to emerge. Learn to follow when it makes sense. Let anyone lead.
11. Harvest ideas.
Edit applications. Ideas need a dynamic, fluid, generous environment to sustain life. Applications, on the other hand, benefit from critical rigor. Produce a high ratio of ideas to applications.
12. Keep moving.
The market and its operations have a tendency to reinforce success. Resist it. Allow failure and migration to be part of your practice.
13. Slow down.
Desynchronize from standard time frames and surprising opportunities may present themselves.
14. Don’t be cool.
Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort.
15. Ask stupid questions.
Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant.
16. Collaborate.
The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential.
17. ——————————.
Intentionally left blank. Allow space for the ideas you haven’t had yet, and for the ideas of others.
18. Stay up late.
Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you’re separated from the rest of the world.
19. Work the metaphor.
Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for.
20. Be careful to take risks.
Time is genetic. Today is the child of yesterday and the parent of tomorrow. The work you produce today will create your future.
21. Repeat yourself.
If you like it, do it again. If you don’t like it, do it again.
22. Make your own tools.
Hybridize your tools in order to build unique things. Even simple tools that are your own can yield entirely new avenues of exploration. Remember, tools amplify our capacities, so even a small tool can make a big difference.
23. Stand on someone’s shoulders.
You can travel farther carried on the accomplishments of those who came before you. And the view is so much better.
24. Avoid software.
The problem with software is that everyone has it.
25. Don’t clean your desk.
You might find something in the morning that you can’t see tonight.
26. Don’t enter awards competitions.
Just don’t. It’s not good for you.
27. Read only left-hand pages.
Marshall McLuhan did this. By decreasing the amount of information, we leave room for what he called our “noodle.”
28. Make new words.
Expand the lexicon. The new conditions demand a new way of thinking. The thinking demands new forms of expression. The expression generates new conditions.
29. Think with your mind.
Forget technology. Creativity is not device-dependent.
30. Organization = Liberty.
Real innovation in design, or any other field, happens in context. That context is usually some form of cooperatively managed enterprise. Frank Gehry, for instance, is only able to realize Bilbao because his studio can deliver it on budget. The myth of a split between “creatives” and “suits” is what Leonard Cohen calls a 'charming artifact of the past.'
31. Don’t borrow money.
Once again, Frank Gehry’s advice. By maintaining financial control, we maintain creative control. It’s not exactly rocket science, but it’s surprising how hard it is to maintain this discipline, and how many have failed.
32. Listen carefully.
Every collaborator who enters our orbit brings with him or her a world more strange and complex than any we could ever hope to imagine. By listening to the details and the subtlety of their needs, desires, or ambitions, we fold their world onto our own. Neither party will ever be the same.
33. Take field trips.
The bandwidth of the world is greater than that of your TV set, or the Internet, or even a totally immersive, interactive, dynamically rendered, object-oriented, real-time, computer graphic–simulated environment.
34. Make mistakes faster.
This isn’t my idea — I borrowed it. I think it belongs to Andy Grove.
35. Imitate.
Don’t be shy about it. Try to get as close as you can. You’ll never get all the way, and the separation might be truly remarkable. We have only to look to Richard Hamilton and his version of Marcel Duchamp’s large glass to see how rich, discredited, and underused imitation is as a technique.
36. Scat.
When you forget the words, do what Ella did: make up something else … but not words.
37. Break it, stretch it, bend it, crush it, crack it, fold it.
38. Explore the other edge.
Great liberty exists when we avoid trying to run with the technological pack. We can’t find the leading edge because it’s trampled underfoot. Try using old-tech equipment made obsolete by an economic cycle but still rich with potential.
39. Coffee breaks, cab rides, green rooms.
Real growth often happens outside of where we intend it to, in the interstitial spaces — what Dr. Seuss calls “the waiting place.” Hans Ulrich Obrist once organized a science and art conference with all of the infrastructure of a conference — the parties, chats, lunches, airport arrivals — but with no actual conference. Apparently it was hugely successful and spawned many ongoing collaborations.
40. Avoid fields.
Jump fences. Disciplinary boundaries and regulatory regimes are attempts to control the wilding of creative life. They are often understandable efforts to order what are manifold, complex, evolutionary processes. Our job is to jump the fences and cross the fields.
41. Laugh.
People visiting the studio often comment on how much we laugh. Since I’ve become aware of this, I use it as a barometer of how comfortably we are expressing ourselves.
42. Remember.
Growth is only possible as a product of history. Without memory, innovation is merely novelty. History gives growth a direction. But a memory is never perfect. Every memory is a degraded or composite image of a previous moment or event. That’s what makes us aware of its quality as a past and not a present. It means that every memory is new, a partial construct different from its source, and, as such, a potential for growth itself.
43. Power to the people.
Play can only happen when people feel they have control over their lives. We can’t be free agents if we’re not free.
And it is true, as change is the only constant thing on earth, I believe there's a lot we can learn from it.
I started following this manifesto since 2008, and 2009 Bruce Mau did some changes on his Incomplete Manifesto For Growth (or Change).
It is good to read some inspirational articles when you face uncertainty in life. I especially enjoy reading these intelligent stuff. Like this Imcomplete manifesto, some strike me and triggered some ideas, some that I'm strong disagree with.
But that's the thing, intelligence is always about disagreement, agree? Enjoy.
1. Allow events to change you.
You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.
2. Forget about good.
Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you’ll never have real growth.
3. Process is more important than outcome.
When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we’ve already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.
4. Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child).
Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.
5. Go deep.
The deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value.
6. Capture accidents.
The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions.
7. Study. A studio is a place of study.
Use the necessity of production as an excuse to study. Everyone will benefit.
8. Drift.
Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism.
9. Begin anywhere.
John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.
10. Everyone is a leader.
Growth happens. Whenever it does, allow it to emerge. Learn to follow when it makes sense. Let anyone lead.
11. Harvest ideas.
Edit applications. Ideas need a dynamic, fluid, generous environment to sustain life. Applications, on the other hand, benefit from critical rigor. Produce a high ratio of ideas to applications.
12. Keep moving.
The market and its operations have a tendency to reinforce success. Resist it. Allow failure and migration to be part of your practice.
13. Slow down.
Desynchronize from standard time frames and surprising opportunities may present themselves.
14. Don’t be cool.
Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort.
15. Ask stupid questions.
Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant.
16. Collaborate.
The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential.
17. ——————————.
Intentionally left blank. Allow space for the ideas you haven’t had yet, and for the ideas of others.
18. Stay up late.
Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you’re separated from the rest of the world.
19. Work the metaphor.
Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for.
20. Be careful to take risks.
Time is genetic. Today is the child of yesterday and the parent of tomorrow. The work you produce today will create your future.
21. Repeat yourself.
If you like it, do it again. If you don’t like it, do it again.
22. Make your own tools.
Hybridize your tools in order to build unique things. Even simple tools that are your own can yield entirely new avenues of exploration. Remember, tools amplify our capacities, so even a small tool can make a big difference.
23. Stand on someone’s shoulders.
You can travel farther carried on the accomplishments of those who came before you. And the view is so much better.
24. Avoid software.
The problem with software is that everyone has it.
25. Don’t clean your desk.
You might find something in the morning that you can’t see tonight.
26. Don’t enter awards competitions.
Just don’t. It’s not good for you.
27. Read only left-hand pages.
Marshall McLuhan did this. By decreasing the amount of information, we leave room for what he called our “noodle.”
28. Make new words.
Expand the lexicon. The new conditions demand a new way of thinking. The thinking demands new forms of expression. The expression generates new conditions.
29. Think with your mind.
Forget technology. Creativity is not device-dependent.
30. Organization = Liberty.
Real innovation in design, or any other field, happens in context. That context is usually some form of cooperatively managed enterprise. Frank Gehry, for instance, is only able to realize Bilbao because his studio can deliver it on budget. The myth of a split between “creatives” and “suits” is what Leonard Cohen calls a 'charming artifact of the past.'
31. Don’t borrow money.
Once again, Frank Gehry’s advice. By maintaining financial control, we maintain creative control. It’s not exactly rocket science, but it’s surprising how hard it is to maintain this discipline, and how many have failed.
32. Listen carefully.
Every collaborator who enters our orbit brings with him or her a world more strange and complex than any we could ever hope to imagine. By listening to the details and the subtlety of their needs, desires, or ambitions, we fold their world onto our own. Neither party will ever be the same.
33. Take field trips.
The bandwidth of the world is greater than that of your TV set, or the Internet, or even a totally immersive, interactive, dynamically rendered, object-oriented, real-time, computer graphic–simulated environment.
34. Make mistakes faster.
This isn’t my idea — I borrowed it. I think it belongs to Andy Grove.
35. Imitate.
Don’t be shy about it. Try to get as close as you can. You’ll never get all the way, and the separation might be truly remarkable. We have only to look to Richard Hamilton and his version of Marcel Duchamp’s large glass to see how rich, discredited, and underused imitation is as a technique.
36. Scat.
When you forget the words, do what Ella did: make up something else … but not words.
37. Break it, stretch it, bend it, crush it, crack it, fold it.
38. Explore the other edge.
Great liberty exists when we avoid trying to run with the technological pack. We can’t find the leading edge because it’s trampled underfoot. Try using old-tech equipment made obsolete by an economic cycle but still rich with potential.
39. Coffee breaks, cab rides, green rooms.
Real growth often happens outside of where we intend it to, in the interstitial spaces — what Dr. Seuss calls “the waiting place.” Hans Ulrich Obrist once organized a science and art conference with all of the infrastructure of a conference — the parties, chats, lunches, airport arrivals — but with no actual conference. Apparently it was hugely successful and spawned many ongoing collaborations.
40. Avoid fields.
Jump fences. Disciplinary boundaries and regulatory regimes are attempts to control the wilding of creative life. They are often understandable efforts to order what are manifold, complex, evolutionary processes. Our job is to jump the fences and cross the fields.
41. Laugh.
People visiting the studio often comment on how much we laugh. Since I’ve become aware of this, I use it as a barometer of how comfortably we are expressing ourselves.
42. Remember.
Growth is only possible as a product of history. Without memory, innovation is merely novelty. History gives growth a direction. But a memory is never perfect. Every memory is a degraded or composite image of a previous moment or event. That’s what makes us aware of its quality as a past and not a present. It means that every memory is new, a partial construct different from its source, and, as such, a potential for growth itself.
43. Power to the people.
Play can only happen when people feel they have control over their lives. We can’t be free agents if we’re not free.
What makes a brand
is not what you say it is, but what the consumers say it is.
This was the header of JASONGAN.COM for December 2008.
This was the header of JASONGAN.COM for December 2008.
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