Thời Gian

Người ta thường nói thời gian vô tình, thời gian hững hờ. Nhưng thật sự thì Thời gian vật lý (physical time) tự nó chẳng có ý nghĩa gì. Thời gian tâm lý (psy time) & cách ta sử dụng thời gian mới thật sự quan trọng.

Người ta bảo: Ngày vui qua mau. Vâng, khi ta vui thì thời gian trôi qua rất mau. Những cuộc hẹn hò, những trận đấu bóng quan trọng qua nhanh như chơp mắt. Những cuộc nhậu nhẹt, những ván bài hay game lại thường kéo dài “thâu đêm suốt sáng” cũng là bởi lẽ vậy.

Ngược lại, cái ngày đầu tuần đi làm, 15′ dò bài cũ, khi ta buồn, thất tình, lo lắng, chán nản thì thời gian dài – dài lắm; cảm giác thật lâu, thật xa vời vợi…

Thức đêm mới biết đêm dài.
Thức tình mới biết tình dài hơn đêm!

Nhưng sự thật thì buồn hay vui thì 1 ngày cũng sẽ có 24h tiếng – không hơn mà chả bớt. Vậy nên hãy cứ vui lên; hãy làm những gì mình thích; hãy dùng thời gian sao cho hữu ích. Đó thật sự là lựa chọn của mỗi người vì chẵng có ai có làm hay quyết định dum bạn được (This is just words – not applicable nor practical ;))

Doing nothing is doing ill

Tình yêu làm thời gian qua mau;
Nhưng ngược lại thì thời gian cũng làm tình yêu qua mau.

time heals all wounds!?

Time may heal all wounds, but there will always be scars!

So how to actually heal those wounds? One is to let time make you forget, and at the same time, you also have to forgive it yourself.
The other is to find someone who is forgiving of your scars (forget your past if it’s bad) and more importantly make you feel like it just doesn’t exist or doesn’t matter at all.

Miracle may happen in the process in such a way that scar is really gone. But if it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t matter. You already acknowledge it and no longer care…

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Overview

Private victory:

Habit 1: Be Proactive

Principles of Personal Vision

Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind

Principles of personal Leadership

Habit 3: Put First Things First

Principles of Personal Mangement

Proactive people focus their efforts in the Circle of Influence. They work on the things they can do something about.

A mission statement is not sth you write overnight. It takes deep introspection, careful analysis, thoughtful expression and often many rewrites to produce it in final form.

The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.

“Start with the end in mind. ”

Writing your mission in terms of the important roles in your life gives you balance and harmony.
It keeps each role clearly before you. You can review your roles frequently to make sure that you don’t
get totally absorbed by one role to the exclusion of others that are equally or even more important in
your life. p.137

An effective goal focuses primarily on results rather than activity.

Public Victory

Habit 4: Think Win/Win

Priciples of Interpersonal Leadership

Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, then to Be Understood

Principles of Empathetic Communication

Habit 6: Synergize

Principles of Creative Cooperation

Revewal

Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw

Principles of Balanced Self-Renewal

Common Sense: common, make sense & wrong!

I had a good chat with a close friend of mine. We was talking about lots of shitty stuff that we don’t usually do. Among them was the common sense. After a while discussing, we both came to a same conclusion that: most of the so-called “common sense” are surprisingly wrong! In other words, most of those routine “principles” we apply in daily lives are unfortunately just fallacies.

Here is our own definition of common sense: Common sense are those which make sense, are very common and basically wrong!

Common sense is nothing more than a deposit of prejudices laid down by the mind before you reach eighteen.” — Albert Einstein

The first two characteristics are straightforward. Because they sound right, “make sense” and are pretty easy to understand, they’re very common. But why are they intriguingly wrong? Well, it’s a well-known fact that the poor (& the middle class) is far more than the rich; the fat (& the skinny) is far more than the fit; the sad is great deal more than the happy? And you know something, they – the majority, interestingly share a common trait: they’re using & following common sense, which the minority don’t.

To illustrate the point, let’s take a look at some of the most popular “common sense” that are believed and applied by many folks:

• We need to sleep earlier (as much as) in order to wake up earlier (to compensate each other)
• We need to go to gym everyday, doing 10-20 sets of 100 to 200 repetitions of ab cruches and sit ups in order to get 6-pack abs
• We need to skip meals and eat less in order to lose weight.
• We need to get lots of money in order to become rich.
  Here comes another interesting myth among the guys:
• We need to be tall, handsome & have lots of money and such to date sexy, beautiful, long legged girls.

They all seem logical & legitimate right? Alright, let me tell you the truths:

• Have you had a long 10-14 hours sleep, then waking up & still feeling tired and exhausted? Truth be told, it’s not really the number of hours you sleep but the quality of your sleep that matter!
• Have you followed that strict schedule & exercise? Do you get 6-pack abs? If not, go & have a good diet instead (yet again the term “good diet” is really ambiguous and confused)!
• You know what? If you follow that diet, eventually you’ll gain weight instead!
• Refer to my old post “Money won’t make you rich”.
• Have you ever seen pretty gorgeous gals hang out with some relatively short & “ugly”, & “homeless” guys? And this is not rarely at all. Looking for my coming post, “How to date every girl you like”  for the answers.

They are all actually very interesting & controversial topics, which I’d like to go further one by one in the near future.

Dr Jim Taylor in his post also about “common sense” says: perhaps the biggest problem with common sense is that it falls prey to the clear limits of personal experience. In fact, common sense is often used by people who don’t have the real knowledge, expertise, or direct experience to actually make sound judgements. If we know something very well, do we call them common sense? Apparently no, we call them facts. Further, what we believe to be true, have been told is true or even our own personal experience alone are obviously not adequate to draw reliable conclusions.

In short, the little wisdom that we learn after the discussion is simply to stop listening to and make judgement based solely on the so-called “common sense” from now!

Damn, People Still Think A Day’s Got “24 hours”!

A day’s got 24 hours. There are no doubts about that. But how many hours do we really have for ourselves? The answer is (un)suprisingly not many. To illustrate the point, let’s analyze a normal day of an average person:

An average adult sleeps 7 to 11 hours per night – let’s count it 8 hours.

The same person has 3 meals a day with several snacks in between, which takes up approximately 3 hours.

What’s more, they generally spends at least 30 minutes or so on the toilet per day.

Most of all, they devote 8 hours a day to their works, together with about 30-minute travelling times.

All right, let’s do a simple calculation. We have, people spend, all in all, around 20 hours a day just for their necessary and [working] activities. In this case, I am already generous in calculating the occupied time. In many cases, people spend more than 8 hours just lying on their beds, which I also do sometimes. The travelling and personal hygiene times may likewise take more times than those stated. At the end of the day, they have only got twenty FOUR hours to do what they like in a normal (working) day! So, what do people actually do daily?

Waking up after a long sleep, many people do think that a new fresh day has just started and unconsciously ignore the fact they have just lost nearly 1/3 of their day’s time. After doing some personal sutff, they then go to work and only return home after 8-hour working when the dusk is falling.

So, unless we can spend all the meals at our working tables, unless we can reduce the time spent on the toilet to zero, unless we can sleep 5 hours a day – which, if possible, are not good for us in the long term at all, and unless we work for ourselves – our interests, we spend 20 hours per day for something that’s totally out of our businesses. What we have left for ourselves are just… four – 4 hours only! What can we do with these limited 4 hours? Not so much. And for those whose 4-hour lasts from 7 to 11 or 8 – 12 pm, it’s even worse! I usually call that period as “dead hours” – the hours that cannot be well spent. Which and how many classes, restaurants and malls are open till that time to serve you? Obviously, apart from work, we still have at least our family, love and probably kids to worry about. So, the big question is can we cut down those 20 so-called ‘neccessary hours’? Luckily, the answer is “Yes, of course!” With a good time management, we can reduce those “neccessary hours” to minimum. Ultimately, if we can utilise 8-hour working to do what we want to do, we will save a lot of time for ourselves.

Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking, and don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.” – Steve Jobs

In short, I don’t mean to worry you, but life is short and time is limited, so spend it wisely!