Building your creative confidence

There are a lot of inspirational stories in this TED talk by one of the persons I admire the most, David Kelly of IDEO. He talked about how a lot of people lost confidence on their own creative ability along the way and henceforth, just resigned themselves to being the non-creative type. David quotes psychologist Albert Bandura’s experiment, a process Albert calls guided mastery, where he used a series of small successes to turn fear into familiarity and cured people of lifelong phobias. Similarly, the same may be applied to creative confidence. What’s amazing is that these people were not only cured of their phobias, they had less anxiety about other things in their life, tried harder and developed resilience and self efficacy – a sense that you can change the world. It’s perfectly logical how that happens because you have just proved to yourself that you could overcome the greatest challenge in your life, which is such a powerful revelation. Given that the “side effects” are so attractive, why don’t You also embark on a small step of success towards that today?

Meanwhile, I am very interested in Stanford’s Design Thinking Boot Camp taught by David Kelly himself and if anyone will like to sponsor me for it, you are most welcome!

 

Excel in your thirties

Excel in your thirties – this article has been circulating around facebook quite extensively recently. Point 3 asks you to “Stay away from miserable people!” which is perfectly understandable given that negative energy drains you. But I’d say one regret I have is that I wasn’t there for some of my friends when they were at their lowest point. Everyone goes through ups and downs, periods we haven’t be proud of and were horrible company but heya! I got through some of these because my friends were there for me. People who are chronically depressed I’d stay away from too but what I’m really trying to say I guess is that be compassionate towards friends whom you really care about, invest a little in their well-being, even if it’s awful to be around them when they are angry/sad/suicidal. Consider it paying it forward 🙂 which by the way, is an excellent movie!

Dessert challenge: Julie and Julia

On my flight to hk, I finally had the chance to watch this movie. Learning pastry at Le Cordon Bleu, I always saw Julia Child’s books on the shelves but never fully understood her story. Meryl Streep did an amazing job in my opinion portraying Julia’s jolly light-hearted but tenacious (tenacity’s my recent new fave word) character. In the movie, Julie (Amy Adams) idolized Julia and decided to set a goal of completing all 524 recipes in her book within 365 days. She started blogging about it and attracted so many followers she finally published a book herself.

So realistically, I cant be baking a cake every day cos that will just be an utter waste of food; there’s only so much butter and sugar that my family can consume. But I shall do a three-course dessert supper for my friends some time in 2014. Maybe more than once, depending on how the first one goes. And it shall be restaurant-style plated and as délicieux as as it looks! Oh, and it’s invitation only 🙂

Smart Product Packaging

My fave is the cheese one, I checked out their website, the “lead” in the pencils are truffles, pesto and chilli. Prob not practical for restaurant chefs but I can imagine how it’d thoroughly amuse house guests when asked to sharpen cheese for their own salad!

http://www.emlii.com/7f10b33/41-Exceptionally-Beautiful-Product-Packagings-That-Will-Steal-Your-Heart

Unlocking the power of your subconscious

So a new revelation from my “Science of Everyday Thinking” course on Edx is that our subconscious is always functioning in the background. The example used referred to an assignment that you were given on the first day of class. Even though the deadline may be two weeks down the road, it helps to just start thinking about the assignment immediately for ten minutes or so. Reason being that your subconscious will begin to process the assignment and continuously work on it even though you are not actively thinking about it.

I do the same when playing candy crush, except I never drew the parallel to my subconscious. So I try to be disciplined, whenever I fail to break a level twice, I assume I’m having bad form and stop playing for a while. I then do better the next time I try (most of the time anyway).

To be honest, I’m not sure if I agree to the argument entirely but really, the reward-effort is pretty high, so why not try?

Members Only – RelSci

I believe that RelSci will increasingly become a force to reckon with.

Per their website:

RelSci gives you the information you need to be successful. Close a deal. Win a client. Raise capital. Get the inside track. Meet new partners. Enter a new market. Achieve a new level of influence. Pinpoint the right board member or executive. Connect to a donor.

Think of RelSci as a more “atas”/exclusive version of Linkedin or better still, Facebook! It had taken Capital IQ co-founder Neal Goldman and ~500 employees 3 years to develop the platform and collate an extensive database of the world’s “most active, influential people across business, finance, investing, and politics,” who could potentially fund your business or become an important client. Unlike Linkedin which only provides education and work experience, RelSci also contains detailed information about their family, business partners, preferred charities, fraternities and more obtained from public sources! But you don’t need to be “friends” with these people to access this information, you just need to pay annual membership fees of USD3,000!

What’s particularly sweet is that Goldman is using this database for his own to acquire new clients. His ability to maneuver a meetup with the potential client in itself is proof enough to convince said client that RelSci is a powerful tool. Neat!

 

TOMS new ventures

Some background: TOMS, short for “better tomorrows”, was started by Blake Mycoskie, where a pair of shoes is donated for every pair you buy. This 1-for-1 concept has since been extended to eyewear (pair of sunglasses = sight for someone in need) and other apparel. But Blake has recently announced his grands plans to launch into the coffee business, where every cup of coffee you buy will translate into a day’s worth of water to someone in need. What’s more, he plans to launch one new TOMS initiative every year. He figures that with so many new products, some are bound to fail but if you push one out each year, people are not going to notice the failures as much with so many new products.

I love this guy, he’s such an inspiration, such great foresight too! He had so skillfully combine philanthropy and business to build this hugely successful business model.

I was reminded of my client who was also providing free cataract surgery to the needy in Cambodia. What my client did, was really to try and help as many people with as low a cost as possible. Anyone who came up needing a cataract op will be attended to; there was no screening of wealth level to cut admin costs, he hired doctors through connections to lower their charges, even buying sunglasses in bulk at rates fiercely negotiated down for patients after ops. He received an award of appreciation from the government of Cambodia for the work he has done. In comparison, TOMS 1-for-1 model must require a fair bit of auditing and coordination with the third party handling the donation.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that TOMS has great intentions which translated into awesome marketing which definitely allowed Blake to help more people that he could have without the business. But let’s continue to be creative about how we do charity because there’s so many ways we can be more efficient and effective and have fun along the way!

http://features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2014/03/11/blake-mycoskie-toms-coffee-roasting-co/

http://money.cnn.com/video/magazines/fortune/2014/03/11/ftomscoffee.fortune

Nat Geo – Test your brain

Just wanted to share this sweet little teaser from National Geographic, I like the 2 yellow squares at the end. These optical illusions aren’t new but I like how they are presented in a neat clean ad.

Controversies of subliminal messages in rock music

I’m taking this new course on Edx – Science of everyday thinking and there’s some pretty interesting material that I will like to share.

When you tap out the tune of a common piece of music, such as ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’ or ‘Raindrops keep falling on my head’, how many out of 100 people do you think can correctly guess the song that you are tapping to?

Most people guess 50% but the answer is a staggering…. 2.5%! Reason being that when you tap out a song, you hear the tune in your head and you know when you are not tapping, whether that’s a pause in the song or a prolonged note. My point being that when you already know an answer, it seems exceedingly obvious but if you are not specifically looking out for it, it’s a lot harder to see it than you think.

Pastor Greenwald argues that good Christian (or otherwise if I may add) kids can identify the source of messages conveyed by heavy metal rock songs played normally and thus reject them objectively. However, if there are subliminal messages in these same songs when played backwards, these kids can’t identify the source of the messages and may then confuse them as their own thinking and potentially making ill-informed decisions.

Now, I’d like to conduct an experiment. Pastor Greenwald claims that there is a hidden message when you play Queen’s “Another one bite the dust”. So click on this video link (which is part of the course material) and go to exactly 5:33 before pressing ‘Play’. This is critical as the answer is revealed just seconds before that part of the clip. Can you hear what the message is?

More research has been done on this area, join the course to find out more!

EQ Situation #1

You need to meet with your client’s top management to discuss and make some very important strategic decisions. However, your client contact has invited 20 other middle management persons to the meeting. You think, crap! You don’t want a large meeting that will just create too many cooks in the kitchen and no conclusive results but your client contact has already marked their calenders and don’t want to look bad dis-inviting all these relatively senior managers.

How will you handle the situation?

I recently heard of a rather clever response. Said person lightened the mood by laughing and recalling how he was always so swamped with meetings that he was often secretly happy whenever someone dis-invited him from a meeting, especially if it was on a Friday afternoon!

Nicely done huh?