Jim Rohn

Beware: This man may change your life around!

I’ve seen quite a lot of motivational speakers such as Tony Robbins, Les Brown or Steve Jobs but no one is like this great man. His unique words, voice, tone and sense of humour are so inspiring. I don’t think there are exact words to describe how wonderful he and his speeches truly are. We can just watch & feel it by ourselves. In brief, he’s just simply phenomenal! There are not so many videos of his available online quite a lot of his videos available on YouTube.  But just from those available, which I’ve been listening everyday, I’ve learned lots of fantastic lessons – which would change everyone’s life! One of them is the short video above about 4 questions everyone should ponder: Why? Why not? Why not me? and Why not now? It seems too soon to say that he – his speeches, has turned my life around but he does make a dramatic impact on me right now. Thank you, great man!

I recommend you to go to his official website to get more information about his tapes and videos. You may also follow the facebook pageabout him to receive his wisdoms daily.

ps: Thanks my bro for letting me know this great man.

http://www.jimrohn.com/

Sucking less everyday

As a programmer, I should be unhappy with the code I wrote yesterdays. If I am not, its means either:

– my codes were so well written that they can’t be improved, or
– I haven’t learned anything (new) from yesterdays

Well, either way, albeit good or bad, is the kiss of death for me as well as any other programmers!

…
Broadly speaking, we all used to write shitty codes, design shitty posters, do shitty stuff and such. We did and we “HAVE TO keep doing so” *. It’s not depressing at all. It’s a typical way a humble learner could improve. But only the best learners realize they sucked; the worst and normal learners hardly do or do very late! That’s why they never try to seek for new knowledge and information seriously and constantly.

It’s not our job to be better than anyone else, we just need to be better than we were yesterday! And the nearest yesterdays are, the better we become!

And now comes the interesting question HOW – how to suck less everyday?
…
to be continued

* We must do the best within our domains of knowledge and abilities at this moment in time. By saying ‘we should keep doing shitty things’, I mean the importance of self-development and improvement that we should if not must improve ourselves further to realize that we did a terrible job yesterday. That’s what learning really is and how important it plays in life. I believe, the day we stop learning would be the last day of our lives!

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!

66 things to do before 22

Life is too short to live someone else’s dream; to do something we don’t love & to forget to challenge ourselves!”

1. Write & constantly update a compelling list of 66 things to do before 22
   

   Art & Sport

2. Learn the basics of a martial art.
3. Learn how to play Guitar; then sing & record a signature song
4. Draw some “masterpiece” pictures   // which I feel outstanding regarding my drawing ability 
5. Take a dance class/ Learn how to dance
6. Get in great (sexy – healthy) shape! 
7. Get 6-pack abs [got 4 abs already] 
8. Learn to play piano
9. Push up by 3 fingers [1 attempt failed]
10. Do a 100 consecutive push ups [‘ve failed three times (twice in 2010 & May 2012) but will def try again – 70%]
11. Earn a medal and a trophy // football
    

    Languages

12. Be able to speak 4 foreign languages (basics) (English, French, Chinese, Japanese …) [60%]
13. Know how to say “Hi, Good Bye” in 50 different languages [40%]
    

    Traveling

14. Take a trip throughout Vietnam (North to South) to visit more than 40 provinces & cities
15. Go to unvisited places in Hue [60%]
16. Live in a foreign country
17. Travel to 10 different foreign countries (Singapore, Malaysia, Myanmar, Indonesia, Laos, Campuchia, Thailand, Philippines, China, Australia) [30%] => Travel to 10 different foreign cities (Malaka, KL, Tioman, Langkawi, SGP, Phuket, Bangkok, Changmai, Taiwan, Hongkong, Borocay)
    Watch some World Cup 2014 matches (Go to Brazil)
    Watch some Manchester United matches (Go to England)

    Life & Entertainment

18. Have some photos taken of me that I really like [80%] // see my photos 😀
19. Meet one of my idols // shit i missed the chance!!! grummmmmmmmmm
20. Learn to drive
21. Shoot a gun (real one)
22. Stand up in front of a large audience and tell a great joke
23. Master a few fancy dinner recipes // made with <3
    Drink a full bottle of wine
24. Master at least 1 really cool magic trick // I failed badly when performed it in front of ‘real audiences’ 😀
25. Make others drunk while I’m still fine
26. Get a new stuff (car, mobile, etc.) where I am the first owner
27. Walk in a girl’s shoes !?
28. Go on a ghost tour
29. Ride a horse
30. Get a tattoo => wear earrings!?
    

    Education

31. Get a degree in 2 years
32. Write 10 awesome articles that I can be proud of [100%] // done, the list is coming soon 🙂
    

    Career

33. Be asked to teach others something (be their teacher)
34. Write a 20-page book // I’m writing sth called “How to date any girls you like” to help you vastly improve your relationship. However, I may not be able to publish soon as it’s related to some ppl around me.
35. Write a short story // Got one… sad <3 story – wanna write 1 more…
    
36. Start a blog // used to be hoanghuuthinh@blogspot.com & now this site 🙂
    
37. Own a (personal) website // huuthinhhouse.com
    
38. Make money from selling something I make // I make quite a few but never sell leh 🙁
39. Make passive income // Yea I did! :xx
40. Get a job before 20
    Ask for a raise
41. Become a public speaker => give my first public talk // trying!!
42. Win an award or a contest I enter (online & offline)
43. Have an editorial published in the paper/magazine
44. Find my loves (those I can spend a straight 24 hours with them everyday!) [80%] // I did ya. I did.
    

    Personal Development

45. Take an IQ test  // Guess what my IQ was? 😉 I took it @ http://iqtest.dk for quite a long while before. My English was not so good back then, which probably decreased my IQ. haha. Should take another one soon 🙂
46. Understand how fortunate I really am
47. Break my “dull” patterns of activities often
48. Make new year resolutions – write down, do then review them later on // 2011 resolutions..
49. Read & Write reviews for 20 books  [80%] // soon soon
    
50. Write in a journal for a full month // keep a good note from now onwards
51. Live with purpose
52. Learn how to say good “NOs”
53. Possess some powers of persuasion
54. Make an impact on others’ lives // Give, sometimes sacrifice & don’t expect the return
55. Be a man – Be a gentleman ^^
    

    Love & Relationship

56. Fall in love – true love // to love & to be loved
57. Make someone really happy // yup, I think I did!
58. Date someone older than me
59. Go on blind dates // want some more. lol
60. Kiss someone in the snow <3
61. Research my family tree
62. Forgive my parents for whatever they did wrong
63. Find someone who can really understands me
64. Develop a close friendship with people of different generations
    

    Contributions

65. Donate little by little till S$ 1.000
66. Give blood

Updated Fri, Apr 6 2012, Sun, July 15 2012 Thu, Nov 17 2012, Sun, April 14 2013, Wed, May 1st 2013, Wed, May 22nd 2013

* The red ones are those I am attempting to do
* The strike-through ones are those I have completed
// My comment on a challenge
[ ] My progress
[] Deleted task

YOU SHOULD HAVE A SIMILAR LIST OF YOUR OWN! Share it with me in the comment below.

Tips:
– The first thing that I’ve learned from writing and doing this list is to try not to get yourself overwhelmed. Writing 66 things to do is so exciting; but looking at brand new 66 things to be completed is scary. So what I did is I recalled if I have done anything special before, wrote it down and crossed it (but I don’t think any single task in my list is straightforward. It’s kinda challenging for anyone to complete it). Doing that made me motivated to keep doing other tasks and less overwhelmed, which would likely cause procrastination. But don’t overdo it, self-satisfaction also leads to procrastination.

– The second thing is to try to break a big task into smaller & easier ones that you feel it’s can be achievable in the near future. Say if you’re overweight, don’t try to get 6-pack abs straight away. Instead, try to lose weight first. In fact, many tasks in this list are subsets of big challenges that I want to do in my lifetime. Again don’t overwhelm yourself, writing “to be a millionaire” while you’re broke is utterly impractical and useless as you’re unlikely to achieve it soon.

– Last but not least, it’s not necessary to have competitive tasks. Generally, for those that’s in my speciality, I usually set higher standard or more difficult tasks than the rest. Moreover, in my opinion, the important thing is for you to challenge yourself. So try to get out of your comfort zones and do different kinds of new stuff. Don’t just go around doing things that you’re good at. Set and do formidable tasks! (Feel free to change to more interesting tasks)

I’ll upload & share with you guys about those challenges I’ve completed. Just click on the strike-through titles to view it. Stay tuned!

How to Do What You Love

How much are you supposed to like what you do? Unless you know that, you don’t know when to stop searching. And if, like most people, you underestimate it, you’ll tend to stop searching too early. You’ll end up doing something chosen for you by your parents, or the desire to make money, or prestige—or sheer inertia.

Here’s an upper bound: Do what you love doesn’t mean, do what you would like to do most this second. Even Einstein probably had moments when he wanted to have a cup of coffee, but told himself he ought to finish what he was working on first.

It used to perplex me when I read about people who liked what they did so much that there was nothing they’d rather do. There didn’t seem to be any sort of work I liked that much. If I had a choice of (a) spending the next hour working on something or (b) be teleported to Rome and spend the next hour wandering about, was there any sort of work I’d prefer? Honestly, no.

But the fact is, almost anyone would rather, at any given moment, float about in the Carribbean, or have sex, or eat some delicious food, than work on hard problems. The rule about doing what you love assumes a certain length of time. It doesn’t mean, do what will make you happiest this second, but what will make you happiest over some longer period, like a week or a month.
Unproductive pleasures pall eventually. After a while you get tired of lying on the beach. If you want to stay happy, you have to do something.

As a lower bound, you have to like your work more than any unproductive pleasure. You have to like what you do enough that the concept of “spare time” seems mistaken. Which is not to say you have to spend all your time working. You can only work so much before you get tired and start to screw up. Then you want to do something else—even something mindless. But you don’t regard this time as the prize and the time you spend working as the pain you endure to earn it.

I put the lower bound there for practical reasons. If your work is not your favorite thing to do, you’ll have terrible problems with procrastination. You’ll have to force yourself to work, and when you resort to that the results are distinctly inferior.

To be happy I think you have to be doing something you not only enjoy, but admire. You have to be able to say, at the end, wow, that’s pretty cool. This doesn’t mean you have to make something. If you learn how to hang glide, or to speak a foreign language fluently, that will be enough to make you say, for a while at least, wow, that’s pretty cool. What there has to be is a test.

So one thing that falls just short of the standard, I think, is reading books. Except for some books in math and the hard sciences, there’s no test of how well you’ve read a book, and that’s why merely reading books doesn’t quite feel like work. You have to do something with what you’ve read to feel productive.

I think the best test is one Gino Lee taught me: to try to do things that would make your friends say wow. But it probably wouldn’t start to work properly till about age 22, because most people haven’t had a big enough sample to pick friends from before then…”

Những câu nói ấn tượng (I)

…Nói đi thì cũng phải nói lại, bất hạnh lớn nhất của 1 thằng đàn ông là có 1 cô vợ không ra gì! Nên nếu bây giờ bạn cứ lao đầu vào học hay đi làm mà bỏ bê chuyện tán gái và bạn không biết bạn thích cái gì thì khi thời điểm đến, đời sẽ dúi vào tay bạn 1 cô gái, có khả năng cao là ***! Theo quan điểm của mình thì mình phải thử tất cả các thứ trước khi thời điểm đến. Đừng ngại thử, đừng giới hạn bản thân, lắng nghe với mọi quan điểm, nói có với tất cả các cơ hội: cơ hội làm giàu, cơ hội thành đạt, cơ hội tóc vàng, cơ hội tóc nâu, …
…Thực sự tớ nghĩ nếu tớ vẫn còn đang ở Việt Nam thì tớ vẫn sẽ đi chơi điện tử sau giờ học…”
Duhocsinhmy- youtube

Những câu nói như thế này sẽ khiến nhiều người cảm thấy “xấu hổ” – nếu như họ còn biết xấu hổ.

Đừng tự hào ta nghèo mà ta vẫn giỏi mà phải hỏi vì sao ta giỏi mà ta vẫn nghèo?”
… Có lẻ đã đến lúc người Việt ta cần tư duy lại là “Nghèo là nhục” thì mới mong đất nước phá triển được. Chứ lúc nào cũng tự hào mình giỏi mà trong tay không có 1 đồng tiền thì đúng là chẳng thể nào mà giàu lên được!”
Bình luận – thuật lại

Liệu có có khái niệm “giỏi kiếm tiền”? Hay tiền đơn giản chỉ là thành quả của những gì chúng ta suy nghĩ và làm? Nếu vậy, khi một ai đó không có tiền, liệu có đáng gọi là bất tài hay “nhục” không? => Cần phân biệt những người thành đạt, thật sự giàu có với những kẻ thuộc tầng lớp trung lưu, thích khoe mẽ, tỏ ra là mình giàu – nâng giá trị ảo những đồng bạc cắc (tiền) – những người này không phải ít trong xã hội.

Khi nào bạn nghe một người phát biểu 1 điều trái ý mình mà trong lòng vẫn còn tức giận thì bạn chưa hiểu tự do tư tưởng là gì!” Câu nói đó cũng đơn giản thôi như chúng ta từng nghe và biết đến cái “tự do, dân chủ”. Mình cũng biết là như thế, nhưng kì thực chúng ta phải áp dụng nó vài trăm năm. Mình phải thấm nhuần nó vào trong máu như người Mỹ. Cái đó rất quan trọng, mình tưởng là dễ nhưng không (chưa) làm được… Chúng ta chỉ nói được mà không làm được…
… Mỗi người nhìn mỗi hướng. Người nào cho rằng mình đúng là quyền của người ta. Nhưng cho rằng là mình đúng không có nghĩa là mình có quyền kết án người khác sai..”
Nguyễn Ngọc Ngạn – thuật lại – youtube – backup link – official-vietface-link

“Tự do, đa đảng” hay phải là dân trí cao?

Giản dị vậy thôi – Vui chơi là chính 🙂

Best Practices: HTML

HTML is the language of the web, of Facebook, of Twitter, etc., which billions of people use everyday and which has thoroughly transformed the world in the last 2 decades. Surprisingly, it’s relatively simple and very forgiving of mistakes (wow that’s awesome!), and therefore, pretty easy to learn.
Having said that, it’s not that easy to write good, clean & semantic HTML codes. You may have DreamWeaver auto-generated 400 lines of code just for a simple page, which actually requires only 40 lines of “quality codes”. Well, some people strive to achieve it at all time; some claim it doesn’t matter and some don’t even know what the heck it is!
Alright, each of us may have our own styles of writing “producing” codes but the fact is that semantic HTML codes not only help your teammates understand your ideas faster and easier, thereby speeding up your project development, but also (together with CSS and JS as a whole) help decrease your page loading times. So, for big businesses or for those who are serious, it’s now no longer just a matter of choice: you’ve got to write good and semantic HTML codes.
Okay, let’s now specify some best practices when writing HTML:

Use HTML elements for their intented purpose:

• Make use of HTML5 new semantic elements: List of new HTML5 tags
• Use <ul> for menus; <blockquote> for blockquotes
• Each section/article must have a heading using <h1>, <h2>, <h3>,…

Bad Semantics

<div class="article">
 <div class="article_title">Smurf Movie Kinda Sucks</div>
 <div class="the_content">Not surprisingly, this weeks release of
    <div class="darkbold">The Smurfs</div> kinda sucks.</div>
</div>

Good Semantics

<article>
 <h1>Smurf Movie Kinda Sucks</h1>
 <p>Not surprisingly, this weeks release of
    <strong>The Smurfs</strong> kinda sucks.</p>
</article>

Avoid meaningless markup

Limit containers usage:

• Make use of HTML5 semantic wrapper elements (header, nav, footer, article, section, figure, etc.)
• Consider before adding any additional wrappers (divs) (for style purpose only)

Use Class whenever appropriate

• Create (then later apply) class in elements that have any chance of being repeated on a page and in different locations
• Utilise multiple classes assignment to a given element

Avoid Classitis: (the over-use of class definitions)

Keep CSS out of the markup (Never ever use in-inline CSS)

Minimize use of IDs:

• Use (about) 1 id per page only – in the main wrapper or recommended in the body tag
• the rest used only for JS selector

HTML class/id naming recommendation:
While naming a class or id is just a matter of choice, we recommend to use hyphen “-” for class and underscore “_” for Id:

• Class name: content-wrapper
• Id name: unique_element

How to best name a class:
Describe what the element actually is (its context) NOT where it is (left or right, col_1 or col_10) or what it looks like (big or small, rectangle or square, red or blue) – describing but NOT specifying the content they enclose)

• Name a wrapper as “content”-wrapper
• Minimize abbreviation usage unless popular ones:

This reference only specifies some best practises when writing HTML and is not a full starting guide to HTML. Instead, you may wanna start to learn it @ http://htmldog.com/