With most generation Y changing job more than 5 times in their twenties
and switching 5 careers (such as developer, project manager, accountant)

The word ‘career’ is as outdated as the newspaper’s ‘classifieds’

That’s why I like the term Careering, it makes it a verb & an action.
It something that you do, rather than something that you have.

So smart careering is to work to acquire new skill in-order to reach your next dream job.

You can take some careering actions:

• Find a project to under take
• Find opportunities to present your projects
• Join & participate in a professional association (PMI, Toastmasters, AMA)
• Volunteering
• Become a hobbypreneur
• Reading & commenting on blogs or any non-facebook social network
• Start a blogs or a podcast
• Go to conferences & meet people.
• Switch jobs or roles in your department or company
• Take on different responsibilities
• Learn to delegate
• Take classes & get a certificate
• . . .

There so many ways to improving your skill & network that will broaden you & you careers

I’m not advocating to job hop, but to find & get opportunities … to create options for your future.

Also I have been working in IT all these years & I’m currently in a large implementation project. I want to document some lessons learned & usage of technologies.

This is a careering move as well, as I see this blog somehow go down in google ranking every week, my old blog remain in the first page. I just want to make sure people will be able to see my post, when anyone google me.

I still know in my heart that teaching and leading are intertwined & the importance of improving teaching skills. That’s why I know eventually I will come back to this blog.

Thank you all for reading & support,
Ian

From my experience, if something doesn’t work, it might not be the idea, but the implementation/approach or part of it doesn’t work. Rather than on giving up, I am going try, try, try again … in order to find a way that will work for me.

Software has versions 1.1, 1.7, 2.0, 3.0 & 11.2.6.43
 … why can’t approaches to tasks or habits

Here is my re-adjustment 1.1:
I know doing this at least 1 hour per day will work somehow, but I am going to re-adjust the habit.
Rather jumping between the blog & studying, I am going to take at least 1 hour per day to either work on blog related task or studying my PMP. (Project Management Professional)

I will also keep a task list to complete, like read through & determine task to applying for PMP.

   What if you take a 5 minute bike ride everyday?
           That is not overwhelming anymore!

This gave an inspiring moment from listening to an old podcast while working out. It talked about setting daily habit & the exercising example on this post. (Unfortunately, I could’t find the anymore anymore)

A small daily habit just makes goals more do-able!

This is surprised me; Kids do homework everyday to learn better … while somewhere along the way … we have lost the concept of daily habits. This idea seem so simple, but so powerful.

Setting daily habit is much more different than monthly or even weekly habits. Even with weekly or bi-daily goals, I find myself reasoning excuses to do it the next day; While daily just forces you to do what needs to be done.

These two habits to my challenge to myself that I will do:
- I am going take 1/2 hour everyday to work on some part of the blog (such as making notes)
- At least 1/2 hour per day to working PMP or GMAT

How’s everyone’s first week?
Do you have resolution or goals for 2010?

Both resolutions & goals seems similar, but I just found it’s better to defining goals.
After trying resolution for a few year getting no where; Last year was just health & a blog; both were accomplish.

This year I am going to attempt more than last year. After my last 2 post with a year in review & my next decade goals, I have developed goals for 2010.

By writing it down, I am committing to reach these goals:

• Certified as a PMP: Always been a goal

• Take the GMAT: For my MBA goal

• Go to SXSW: Ever since I heard Malcolm Gladwell’s talk at SXSW, I always wanted to go.

• Get a Mentor: I just need careering advices

• Developing 1 iPhone App: Learn more about the mobile applications

• Maintaining Health & Exercising 2-3 Times/Week: Just because …

What are your 2010 goals?

 Make sure to:
   - Write down your goals
   - Keep it somewhere
     (it’s in my iGoogle)

When you write goals down, you will find out what you are really willing commit to.

Honestly, this was a simple year with simple goal to focus on health, keeping up with the blog.

This is my look back on my accomplishment:
- Health (Nutrition & Exercising)
- Regularly Blog
- Lead in a team
- Taking over role/responsibilities
- Experiencing large project with management of constant changes
- Finally completing the PM continue education Certificate
- Taking my first real vacation in my years of working (for the sake of relaxing)  =)

Lessons learned:
We have a choice in our decision
It’s not what you think, we have have unconscious choice during life such as: deciding to listen, pay attention, taking action …

Teaching/Mentoring well can make all the difference
I found using my teaching skill, I was able to help coworker on learning a new system in 1-2 days & keep on seeing productivity improving. Then I compare with people (me included) whom had to learn by themselves & the impact in productivity & confidence.

If you don’t ask … you don’t get
During november, my boss stated there will be no vacations for the first half of 2010 due to the big push for the project go-live (unless it was already approved); at least that was everyone’s interpretations. Although I really wanted a week for SXSW in March … so I asked … and I got approved. Sometimes our assumption/interpretation can be just wrong, that’s why we need to ask.

The difference commitments can make
Going to the gym regular can be tricky … and sometimes down right hard; Not Committing vs Committing to health makes a real difference.

Teaching gains respect, especially when you leading them in the future
After training the people I lead in my area, I found more respect & commitment to the task I requested to accomplish from people that are younger & older than me.

My biggest surprise was the power of teaching & mentoring. I always enjoy it & I do it to help others to waste less time on things than I did. The surprise came when I saw benefits on the teacher side in the business world. I was also surprised at there is such a un-relatedness between teaching & training. (after going in so many training sessions)

This exercise was fun! This post is definitely one that I’m going to revisit.

I am definitely recommending people doing a year-in-review for themselves, it quite refreshing!

In the last decade, we have seen:

• the first black US President in the White house
• how the world unite to help the Tsunami in one end of the world
• the empower of public voice through multiple web innovation
• every other business model being changed through the web (Newspaper, advertising, book publishing, globalization of business)
• the improvement in standard of living in many countries through globalization
• power of 1 individual bringing Apple back to life & became the most respected company
• no more film for cameras
• the ability to reconnect with people I met 10, 20 years ago through facebook
• …

Wow! That’s pretty impressive for the world within a decade.

Now when I look back at my last 10 years, it was interesting but I was hoping for more 10 years ago back in my college days. While writing this, it really feels time is running much much faster then I am. (I know, I know, it’s not what you did, but it’s about what you going to do)

As we get older, we find out:

“It’s not about how much time you have, it’s how you do with it.”

To take my first to achieve more in the next decade, here I will declare my 10 year look-forward:
- Being in a leadership role in a business organization
- Travel to a few countries in Europe and asia, plus at least 1 place per year
- Experience a full-time MBA program
- Mentor at least 3 person & being mentored by 3 persons
- Own a house/apartment with my own family

- Making my memoirs worth reading

P.S.: I still can’t believe I can access any info any second in the palm of my hand

Create a Mantra

Guy recommends instead of writing vision & mission where no one remember it; a much better alternative would be 3-5 word mantra. A few keywords that describe your purpose.

Here are some example from Guy’s post:
  Nike: “Authentic athletic performance”
  Target: “Democratize design”
  Wendy’s: “Healthy Fast Food”

In my opinion, the process of creating vision & mission is still really beneficial to the writers, because you get clear what you should be focusing on. After that creating a mantra would be a good idea. When strategizing in the future, I would:

1. Create a mission & vision: For the executives/self to reflect on
2. Create the mantra: To share & inspire others & self

After reviewing my mission & vision, I realized already got mine, which is: 
Teach, Lead, Careering.

Problem: Once will is lost, you have unconscienceously given up … you are then just waiting for failure to hit.
Question: How to can you avoid such failures?

Here is a 3 simple step answer:
1st Step: Identify/Admit you have given up & imagine the outcome
     Once you identify the problem, then we will be able to foresee coming train wreck

2nd Step: Then you decide between these 3 choices

Continue in Limbo: Decide to put No change
Completely Give Up: Give up and do something else
          OR pass it on to others
Climb Back Up: Determine what you need to do breath life back to your project/job

3rd Step: Take those action

If you stay in a losing situations, it will just eventually blow-up. So the 2nd step is the key point to make us take control of such losing situations. Once a decision is made, a momentum will grow towards motivation to take action.

I had experience this so many times, and this is the most effective way that I have found to recover motivation toward a project/job/business.

We are all trained on the ability to learn for 12 years in grade school, plus the extra few year in university in learning a specialization; But what differentiate people in school & work is the willingness to learn.

At my full-time, I notice on days I’m willing to learn & improve, I would take the initiative solve issues & push to learn how things work. While on days like the day I had today, I was on semi-autopilot in front of the computer, such as doing spreadsheet work, doing some system/issue checking & e-mails … . The good thing, because if I’m able to recognize this is happening, I’m able to reverse this.

At my part-time teaching job a few weeks ago, I had a new student that did really bad at multiplying 6, 7 & 8. What I find was that she kind of given up on it when she gave no effort in answering question and just said “I hates math”.

Do you see yourself doing something similar? (I did)
This hit home today, I find myself doing something similar. I wasn’t putting as much more effort & I said to myself that I hated doing a particular task.

For kids or grown-up, the will to learn can really make a difference in work & self improvement.

I was always confused about the difference between vision & mission statement … so we were taught the difference were:
   Vision = External purpose
   Mission = Internal purpose
Honestly, I could never under stand what’s the point of it. The company ones usually just seem long & generic most of the time.

On the contrary, It was an interesting exercise; We had to consider what’s important to us & what our life/career meant to us. It put a spotlight on what my direction in life.

This is mine (for now):

• Vision: To show the power of teaching with leadership throughout my careers
• Mission: To improve work-life & leadership through teaching

After the exercise, now I do appreciate mission statement & vision; Especially the process of creating it. It really get you think in a bigger strategic way.

For anyone who want to figure out their career path or bored about their life; I suggest you should try creating a vision & mission statement, you might just be surprise what you find out.

Perseverance is need before success arrives, just look at these examples:

• Edison & his associates had around 10000 light bulb prototype before success
• Henry Ford founded 2 car company before Ford Motors
• The iPod had 4 revision before getting the click wheel right & gain mainstream attention for the device (This includes thousands of prototypes)

As for me, this is my third attempt at blogging, I learn something in every attempt:

1st Blog: Take-Talk
My first one was a podcast notes & recommendation blog. I loved listening to & learning from podcasts; it seems logical to follow my passion to share what I gain from them. I found passion sometimes is not enough to keep me going, because there are spikes & valley in passion.

2nd Blog: Soft Side of IT
With my experience in IT in 10+ roles, it would be a great career move to write about lesson learn in Information Technology jobs. Again it fell off since I had interest in IT, but passion was another story. This also lead to peaks & valley in writing for the topics, plus it was too broad.

3rd Blog: Teach … Lead … Careering
This time, learning from my last few attempts; I regroup & started this new blog (After a few months of break). By learning from failures … this time I made sure I had passion, interest, experience, career motivation & a future before I start. if one part falls off, I can rely on one the 5 things to keep pushing me forward. I don’t know if it will succeed or not, I just know this fits what I want to do.

To gain experience at any new knowledge, skills, industry or anything else; you need to try, try , try again to succeed.

• It takes roughly 7 contacts to make a sale (Many give-up before 7)
• Many entrepreneurship take five or more failure before succeeding
• In current times, it takes people 6 months to find a job

This is what I found from years with my various managers, teaching experience, coordinating projects & leading teammates.

Even when I only have 1 -2 people to coordinate, I try to provide them trust & empower them with any needed knowledge. When that happens they perform better, which allows me to focus improve quality & spend more time in tracking pending issues in the project.

This is important even with grade school kids. I provide trust in their judgement & work with their homework, they gain confidence. Once that is in place, I will trust them to do their work on their own with minimal supervising.

When they know others trust their quality of work; They perform better with less stress, greater confidence, concentration & motivation to work.

Whenever there is trust, the lead/employer will trust the employee with resources (otherwise they are just saying it while not meaning it). This will empower the employees with freedom & decision making to do their work better due to less stress.

End-Note: The more trusts happens → The more you will be able to delegate → The more things you will be able to accomplish

Here is an interest comment that caught my ears:

We rarely learn from success,
all our best learning comes from failures & mistakes.

From working for years in parts of IT & a decade of teaching, I really like this comment.

When I teach, I often allow kids & co-worker to try the system/math problem, so they can learn to figure out how things work & learn to try. Sometimes I do this so much that the kids end up teach themselves. (I just give a few leading comment/questions)

Here is an exercise: Which way do think you learn more from this scenario?
Learning a new computer system at work, when the teacher:
1. Corrects you every moment you might do something wrong
2. Just let you try out the system, even though you are making mistakes.

In the first scenario, you might feel safer because the teacher is making sure you are clicking correctly; but do you think you can really can anything with the system?
While the second scenario might sound scary to play around with a system, you will definitely remember most of the errors or weird results from the mistake.

By letting mistakes happen, it gets the person to remember because it makes thing more exciting & no one way of doing thing.

On regular trips, I can recover & get back to things pretty quickly. Although this time, i couldn’t … especially on this blog. It took a week to get most of my core schedule back on track, like Work Schedule, Excerising, Waking up on time… & the 2nd for the other schedule such as this blog. To pull myself back on track, I had to realign several elements of my motivation:

Mindset: Brainstorm some new ideas & make notes … just try to get excited about the project/job/work

Goals: Reminding myself the purpose & revisit the vision/mission/mantra (Update if needed)

Focus: Setting a schedule/time & reschedule when needed, this is to create a sense of urgency.

Environment: Place myself & laptop in a coffee shop without wifi

It took me several tries in both weeks to not get distracted before I was able start writing again.
——————————
Do you have a project you are worked on that almost got dropped off? What did you do to get back on track?

The 3 cause of the curse of knowledge could be:
1. Hearing, not listening
2. Missing info
3. Bad assumptions
(Assuming something is common knowledge)

To recognize the curse is happening:
- Listen
- Read Facial expression
- Are they bored, confusion or just not paying attention
- Looking for reaction
—————————————
To break the situation here are some ways I have gain successful with:

Ask Leading Questions
You can ask questions that you know the answer to:
1. Gauge the others’ knowledge level
2. Provide clarification to others minimal interruptions
3. Show their contraction

Clarifying Questions
This could be trick without looking dumb, but if everyone else is confused then you get a chance to clearing things out & having a new chance to sell the idea again (instead getting ignored)

Statement it in Your Own Terms
It starts with “So what you mean is …”; This might drive the other person crazy, it creates an atmosphere of clarifications

Recognize & State the Situation is Occurring
Just by stating it, this will show everyone is just confused; it builds a common connection while laughing; This also give you a new start with people you have bonded with
—————————————
The curse of knowledge drives also of wasted time, money & failed pitches. These last 3 posts was to shine a spotlight of this issue; If we can lessen confusions, we just might be able to eliminate bad specification/pitches, multiple change requests after the fact or extended meeting … and that would be great.

The core issue is people having missing information. It could be as simple as weird acynoymns.

First, we need to recognize when does it happens.
You know the curse of knowledge is occurring when:
 - Everyone is disagreeing against 1 or 2 people (it could be you)
 - The same topic keeps on coming back
 - Too much arguing
 - Both side is giving incoherent suggestion
 - When someone look confused & keeping quiet (Scare of looking stupid)
 - When someone sounds like they don’t know what they are talking about
These are all signs one or both side being misinformation or misunderstood.

To break this is to make sure the other understand the situation or you just start asking question. That’s the quick version. I will leave the details & the how till next post. (9 days from now, after a sunny vacation … Cheers)

“The curse of knowledge… Lots of research in economics and psychology shows that when we know something, it becomes hard for us to imagine not knowing it.”

At first it not seem that important, but when you can’t delegate because your team can’t produce the similar results as you … it is devastating.

Have you ever experienced someone training you tries explain what to do in one shot … then give you a stupid look when you starting asking questions?

When someone knows how to do something it will seem easy to the person because of their knowledge & experience. Although they try to explain it, but they cannot explain it in Layman’s terms; Even if they want to delegate some tasks,  they couldn’t.  This is one of the power from the Curse of Knowledge.

Next post I will attempt to find some ways to beat this curse.

One thing I learnt was people learning new things set their impression of being good/bad at something very easily.

Steps to learn new things:
1. Never say the word ‘wrong’ … use a positive tone

2. De-emphasis the importance of making mistakes
    (Never make them feel bad for trying)

3. Giving them permission/encouragement to try again

4. Joke & have fun

5. Complement of small success … builds confidence

6. Let go

Just like learning to ride a bike or skating, it might take a bit of time to start, but once the confidence of not falling is gone … the learning speeds up + the fun begins.

This works on adults as much as kids; in my day time job, sometimes I would teach the IT system we are implementing to new team members. Depending on their confidence level, I had applied the above method & it works. With confidence, it takes people 2-3 days to learn 1+ week worth of material.

At the end, the students did their long division on their own & was pretty happy getting a 90-something on their short quiz.

I have been teaching kids for years & I have been applying those skills in the wokplace; But not until when I was replying on Anita’s post that I found myself constantly thinking of more & more points; that’s when I find myself thinking … “I might be able to write a full blog on this topic alone” … So I did, 3 months later (After planning, researching & pushing myself to do it).

Most of the time when students ask for help, they already know what to do. Usually what I do is to just ask leading questions to inspire them to figure out what they to should do … and their face lights up when they figure it out themselves.

Here is one simple way to inspire others through a situation:
1. Use leading questions to point people to a direction
2. Give them confidence/permission to take action
Note:
 Please don’t make them feel wrong if they took a different direction than you expected

3. Make sure to watch their reaction when they see their results unfold in front of them

The main character Tom began the movie working at greeting card company; he was pretty good at it. Although he studied architecture & we see hints of passion for it.

At first we see him working adequately glad for his job of 4 years. To him it was a job that he could find after college to pay for expenses. Slowly we see him moved to a position that leads to a outburst. After quiting, he started to work hard for his passion of architecture.

Questions: Can you imagine that happening to you?

What will you go for after the outburst?
- Begging for the job back
- Look for another similar job using your work strength/experience
- Search for your true passion & work to it
- Fore go the money & go for your current dreams/passions

The interesting thing I saw was that after a few year of taking a regular job; He had saved up and he could negate his reason for taking his old job (expenses) & go for his passion.

To provide an impact, I often let the error ride through the problem & ask them to find the turning point. (Many times the results are interesting)

Luckily there is no correct way to live, lead or work through careers. When you look back, you will find the different decisions or non-decision steer you to where you are at right now. You know when you take a wrong turn to a restuarant; Instead of an illegal U-turn, you can continue driving and park at an restuarant that catches your eye & try something new. It might just become your favorite new restuarant.

You can always gain something from errors that happens in life, the tricky part is to embrace it.(not ignoring it)

Next time when you realized an old error occured. Acknowledge it, then let ride and see the outcome … at the very least you will learn something from it.

Caution: Evaluate the impact before deciding this approach (please include emotional impact of others as well) if results are too risky, then take some corrective actions immediately.

The ‘dots’ are something you will do or have done that gives you unique experiences.

How? … Try something new!
When you try something new, you will:
- learn something from it
- get to meet new people/network
- have some fun
- do something worth remembering (no matter it was good, bad or ugly)

These dots are the part of your life that can & will generate future opportunity or serendipity. I’m pretty sure anyone of you can think of at least one relatable scenario … those scenarios were created by these dots.

Of course when do something new, you will be able to teach it, lead it and gain new skills from it for careering.

I was having coffee with a friend from my computer science undergrad days. We found out we both liked programming in our teens, which led us to our degree. Beside our degree, we found how our 1st job affected our career many years late.

He start as a programmer for new products at a IT firm … then a developer for the university in a new research program … then work for a small software firm … Now, he is a senior developer for a startup.

I started as a teacher for a part-time job & a data analyst using enterprise softwares for full-time …….(See my LinkedIn)…… Now, I’m a business lead for a systems implementation; as a lead, I often guide & teach my colleagues.

My friend have got 1-3 man programming team, doing every other thing to get products to work; giving him a edge in startup environment. As for me, beside working with big systems, I constantly help people, business & IT work togather through describing complex ideas with other experts. Every dot in our pass has influenced the pther dots in our career.

None of us knew or planned our current position we are in. When we look back, we were able to see what & how we got here; just as Steve Jobs described.

Steve Jobs’ story ends with (5 min within the video):
“Believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn path, and that will make all the difference.”

1. Introduce: Tell them what you are going to them
A good intro get the listener to pay attention (even kids). Usually it takes 2-3 sentences to get your audience interested or something that your audience would be able to relating to. With any complex ideas, make sure to take your time to make the idea to be relate-able.

2. Show: To explain & show what to do
This is what we usually do when teaching, mentoring or presenting … drawings help.

3. Summarize: Tell them what told them
Just give a direct overall summary of the idea or process. (For presentations, 1 slide is enough for this.) This is for everyone to “make sure” they understand. Remember, this is to get a sense of understanding of your idea by your audience & not making anyone feel dumb. Plus, this part is also allow Q&A, so nothing falls through the gap.

Although the explanation step is what we usually do when teach. Although step 1 & 3 are as important. Even though this might take 1/4 more time … Done well, this will save you another trip. If the listener is surprised from what you are about to say … how are they going to remember lesson? So introduce it, show it, then them what you told them.

You only need one good lesson to learn something.