Do you eat your vitamins on a daily basis?
Or do you skip out every few days because you forget?

Not gonna lie, I’m the latter.  And you probably are too.  You see… I realized that vitamins are what separate the successful people from the mediocre-ly successful ones.  Michael Jordan probably practiced on time every single morning 99.9% of the time, Jamie Foxx practices the entire movie script before the first rehearsal – so much that he even remembers the lines of his co-actors, etc. etc.

It’s the super small (deceivingly small) things like remembering to eat your vitamins every single day that shape you into a consistent, reliable, and consequently successful person versus a person that just eats them when they remember.

Do you want to be mediocre?  Or do you want to win?

Eat your vitamins for the win.  I’m starting today. How about you?

Image courtesy of ABC News

I’ve recently been reading books about success, efficiency, and productivity and discovered a very interesting topic with varying opinions:

How much information should you digest on a daily basis?

While some believe absorbing excess information is unhealthy and unnecessary, others vouch that reading the news everyday and staying on top of current events is crucial to one’s ability to succeed.  Tim Ferriss, for instance, writes about information diet and how he hasn’t read the newspaper in years and only reads Inc. magazine to stay on top of his game (purposefully exaggerated IMO).  Others like actor James Franco are knowledge whores and keep their minds exercising and moving at all times with new information, from Wikipedia:

“Having received permission to take as many as 62 course credits per quarter compared to the normal limit of 19 while continuing to act, he received his undergraduate degree in June 2008 with a GPA over 3.5.  He moved to New York to simultaneously attend graduate school at Columbia University‘s MFA writing program, New York University‘s Tisch School of the Arts for filmmaking (NYU), and Brooklyn College for fiction writing, while occasionally commuting to North Carolina‘s Warren Wilson College for poetry. He received his MFA from Columbia in 2010. Franco is a Ph.D. student in English at Yale University and will also attend the Rhode Island School of Design.”

OK James Franco is an extreme case lol.  Of course it also depends on one’s definition of ‘too much’ information.  I personally have made it a habit to read the news everyday (almost every hour actually) and find that it helps keep a social conversation flowing (though that’s not the reason why I follow the news).

What are your thoughts?  Minimalist or Know it all?

Free up your time and focus on what you love to do and the more important things by hiring a virtual assistant to take care of the other stuff.

I took a look at my daily tasks recently and realized that I was spending wasting some time everyday on trivial tasks that my imaginary kid brother could accomplish under intoxication.  Something needed to change.

After recently reading books like Tim Ferriss’s 4 Hour Workweek and other motivational reads,  I decided recently to hire a virtual assistant to help me take care of errands and research that I’d rather not waste time on.  It’s been a week now and I’m quite satisfied with the results.  Here are some tasks that my assistant has taken care of in only the last week:

• Posting craigslist ads
• Researching whether the ‘How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying’ musical is worth watching (and best prices)
• Finding the top 3 sites (traffic-wise) to post used books
• Contacting a few websites with miscellaneous inquiries
• Hiring and communicating with other contractors to work on coding jobs

My assistant works in India, has perfect English capability, and has exceeded my expectations and performed on time and with quality results so far. He works from 9PM to 9AM PST and basically takes care of my work while I am asleep.  He has saved me at least 10 hours of time (and hassles) in the last week at the cost of only $5 an hour.  In my opinion, money well spent.

Depending on your workload, you could be saving yourself much more than 10 hours a week.  I found my current virtual assistant through Elance but there are many other options like Brickwork (not recommended, the quote they gave me was totally overpriced).  I may hire more assistants in different disciplines overtime as workload increases.

Do you have a virtual assistant?  Please share your thoughts.

Yum…. Pho. The popular Vietnamese bowl of transparent noodles with a satisfying soup base and the perfect combination of peripheral sauces and vegetables. The beauty of Pho is that it makes the very thought of Vietnamese food so clear and focused in a foreigner’s mind. When you walk by a pho place, chances are the restaurant name has ‘Pho’ in it. You know exactly what you’re going to get if you go in and sit down. It’s the perfect business lesson — focused, clear, and give the customer what they are expecting.

In comparison, the food served at Korean or Chinese restaurants (for example) is generally more vague. You aren’t clear right off the bat what you’ll be eating should you enter. If you place a Korean restaurant next to a Pho restaurant, a hungry passing foreigner would at least know right off the bat what they’ll be served if they enter the Pho restaurant. Whether he chooses it or not is another story, but just the clarity of the business is a win right away IMHO.

I think you’ve become successful when an average Joe can name what you do within 3 seconds after hearing your brand. Try the following:

Apple = iPhone. GOOD.
Samsung = … tv … tablet … phones… BAD.

Eminem = angry white guy. GOOD.
Kid Rock = … had that one rock-ish/rap hit…. BAD.

IKEA = home stuff. GOOD.
Sears = … appliances … clothes… BAD.

Caltech = engineering. GOOD.
UCLA = …. bruins … white racist chick … poly sci? BAD.

Simpler = win. Complicated = mediocre. Your thoughts?

Take a look at this image… do you have yellow fever? For list of symptoms see here.

In my last entry, I talked about the beginning of mainstream presence for Asians worldwide. And as many of you know, I have a band called Cool Silly. Well, we decided to make use of our production and writing skills and pen up a track about this very topic (video below).

The song we wrote is called ‘Yellow Fever’, our video features all your favorite Asian characters in a fun light: Jackie Chan, Maggie Q, Jin the MC, YaoMing, etc.

Here’s the music video for our song:

What is this so-called ‘Yellow Fever’?

Well, let’s take a look at a few definitions in Urban Dictionary for this term:

1. A mental disease that afflicts the Wapanese, the fanboys, and the otaku. Symptoms of this condition are;

(a) A sexual obsession towards females of Asian descent.
(b) An obsession towards Asian media and entertainment, primarily anime, hentai, manga, and other Japanese media.
(c) A sudden urge to imitate anything from Asia. For instance, learning Japanese and eating sushi just for the sheer sake of trying to be “Asian”.
(d) Thinking that one knows more about Japan than the Japanese themselves, despite never setting foot in that country or at lest reading about it.

2. Sexual obsession felt by a non-asian (Usually white, usually male) towards asians of the opposite gender. Symptoms of yellow fever include stalking, halfhearted attempts to learn Japanese/Mandarin/Cantonese/Korean and whacking off to Sailor Moon video’s.

3. The best infliction to have ever hit caucasians. Signs of having contracted yellow fever includes extreme attraction and affection towards Asians of the opposite sex.

Genius definitions if you ask me. Needless to say, this track is about the recent influx of Asians and Asian Americans in mainstream media and entertainment.  Enjoy and remember: sharing is caring!

Question: do YOU have yellow fever?

If you’re an Asian dabbling in the arts, now is the time to man up and charge forward full throttle. NOW is finally the beginning of mainstream presence for Asians worldwide. Let’s take a look at a few legends in the making that are paving the way:

Pop/Hip-Hop Group Far East Movement who opened for Lady Gaga in Japan and went double platinum with 2 million sales of their track ‘Like a G6′.

No not Kobe, but the king of Taiwanese/Chinese pop Jay Chou who recently starred alongside Seth Rogen in ‘The Green Hornet’, which made $33 million in its opening weekend.

Alexander Wang, talented fashion designer adored by many influential artists including Rhianna and Kanye West.

And of course there are many others. Ten years ago (or even five years back), such stars / collaborations simply didn’t exist for Asians in a white-dominated society. Asians were perceived simply as unnecessarily smart math geeks and kung fu specialists. Now there are smart, talented Asians and Asian-Americans dominating their industries all over the world. Needless to say, this is an inspiring time for all Asian artists.

Perhaps it’s the fact that more and more people all over the world are recognizing the power and influence of China, given the fact that nearly half the world resides there. In other words, China equals a treasure chest of cash, cash, and more cash… and every one wants in on this nearly untapped market.

Regardless, this is an encouraging time for Asians worldwide. Slap on your confidence and take that leap forward. This is YOUR time.

Bruce Lee once said “be the water”.

If you’re an entrepreneur, I say be like a cockroach.

Yes cockroaches are tiny little creatures, BUT they’ve expanded to 4,500 different species (according to Wikipedia) and have been existent all over the world for a very long, long time. They’re also damn hard to kill and pretty much impossible to wipe out.

Here are some notable …respectable… characteristics of cockroaches (passages from Wikipedia):

They’re all about teamwork:

Research has shown that group-based decision-making is responsible for complex behavior such as resource allocation. In a study where 50 cockroaches were placed in a dish with three shelters with a capacity for 40 insects in each, the insects arranged themselves in two shelters with 25 insects in each, leaving the third shelter empty. When the capacity of the shelters was increased to more than 50 insects per shelter, all of the cockroaches arranged themselves in one shelter.

They survive through the harshest situations:

Cockroaches are among the hardiest insects on the planet. Some species are capable of remaining active for a month without food and are able to survive on limited resources like the glue from the back of postage stamps. Some can go without air for 45 minutes. In one experiment, cockroaches were able to recover from being submerged underwater for half an hour.

They’re tough fighters and just won’t take DIE for an answer:

It is popularly suggested that cockroaches will “inherit the earth” if humanity destroys itself in a nuclear war. Cockroaches do indeed have a much higher radiation resistance than vertebrates, with the lethal dose perhaps 6 to 15 times that for humans.

I don’t know about you, but I think every business / entrepreneur should definitely have these three traits.

In the future, if you’re an entrepreneur and you’ve hit a roadblock, just think to yourself…

WWACD a.k.a. What would a cockroach do?

Image courtesy of blingcheese.com

Do you ever feel like Bill Murray in ‘Lost in Translation’?  i.e. in the wrong place

List 1:

• Coffee cream in beer
• Fur coat in the desert
• Forks and knives in the closet
• Folk music in a night club
• Girls in a gay bar

List 2:

• Animals in the zoo
• Alcohol at Woodstock
• Toothpaste in the bathroom
• Christmas in New York
• Jazz music in Starbucks

Look carefully through the items in list 1.

Now look through those in list 2.

Can you see the differences between the two lists?  It’s all about context.

Yes, context.

List 1 is full of items in the wrong context.  And list 2 is items in the right context, stuff that we are used to and comfortable with.

I realized recently that no matter how awesome or talented or amazing you are, if you’re not in the right context or place, it really amounts to …nothing.  If you’re crazy about web startups, you should be in Silicon Valley.  If you want to be a musician, L.A. or New York… and so on and so forth.

Without the right context, you could be wasting your time.

Shouldn’t Mr. Storm Trooper be at war in space?  WRONG context.
FAIL.

Enough said.  RIGHT CONTEXT.
SUCCEED.

Are YOU in the right place?

Storm Trooper image courtesy of halfagiraffe.tv