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?

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

Do you play Starcraft?  If you have, you’d probably agree that there are strong parallels between strategies used in the game and techniques used to run a business (or even your own life e.g. optimizing your day-to-day expenses and income).

When you get attacked, is your defense strong enough to survive the attack?

Are you optimizing your efficiency?
Do you have sufficient resources?

When playing Starcraft, you must constantly be aware of what is happening all over the map, whether it be your opponents or your partners.  In the process of staying aware, you must make sometimes up to 100 decisions per minute to expand efficiently and eventually win.  Below are seven mantras that surround these types of decisions and are crucial to success in any Starcraft battle AND in starting/running a business.

1. Teamwork and Communication. When you are playing on a team with other players, you MUST work together and communicate in order to succeed.  Without a mutual strategy and technique, the team will almost surely fail and get destroyed.
2. Optimize Efficiency. In the game, you must prioritize the way you build and generate troops to optimize the speed by which you create the strongest army.  If you are not efficient, you will be destroyed over and over again by someone who is more efficient.
3. Strategy and Direction. If you just build aimlessly, you will be inefficient and lose.  You must have a very clear strategy and direction in order to defeat your opponents.  If for instance you have no clear plan to defend your base, your opponent will simply find your weak spot(s) and destroy you.
4. Knowing Your Competition. You must always observe the type of races you are competing against before starting to build.  Each race has its own unique weapons and strategy sets.  Without observing your opponents first, you won’t know how to defend against or defeat your opponents.
5. Having All Bases Covered. In any Starcraft battle, you must have all bases covered.  If you plan to attack someone, you must make damn sure that your homebase has sufficient defense to block off any attacks while you are away from home.  This ties back to #1 in communication with your team members.
6. Constantly Gaining Resources. In Starcraft, you constantly have workers called ‘SCVs’ mining gold and gas.  Normally, you’ll have around 15 SCVs obtaining resources, and that’s ALL they focus on doing.
7. Adaption. Depending on the map chosen, there are many variables that affect the strategy by which you should build your troops.  For example, variables include the number of entries to your base or whether the resources at your base are infinite or limited.

If you ask me, I think every entrepreneur or business owner should play Starcraft to simulate your business techniques in the game. As you play, you will notice your weaknesses, because they will recur over and over again.  Chances are these weaknesses appear in the way you run your business (or your life) as well.  Better to find these weaknesses before they wreak havoc in the real world!  Hell, enough application of business techniques in Starcraft just might be more efficient then sitting in MBA courses…

Warning: If you’re an avid user of Facebook, you might not like (me or) this post.

Did you know that 1 out of 14 people in the world now use Facebook?  That’s 500 million+ people.  A pretty ridiculous amount of users if you ask me.  If you don’t often use Facebook often, you are not cool.

Although Facebook is a great place to stay updated on friends’ lives, most of the time spent there is a waste of time.  In fact, it’s a massive distraction from productivity.

Why?

Because so many Facebook-addicted folks post content in the form of:

• useless, meaningless updates
• incorrect grammar / typos
• narcissistic photos
• unnecessary pleas for help (ex: Omg, I need a boyfriend. / I’m so depressed right now…)

What do you actually GAIN from refreshing your news feed and checking these types of friend updates?

NOTHING.

An addiction to Facebook is basically an excuse for doing something more productive.

Facebook is, however, a wonderful and perfect creation for all narcissists of the world a.k.a. those who frequently post photos of themselves left and right, believing the world will flock happily to each and every new photo of his/her face in a new setting (which sadly is very commonplace — because those viewing have nothing better to do with their time).

Let’s think about this.

If you use Facebook 2 hours a day…

That’s 60 hours a month = 720 hours a year = 30 days a year = an entire month in a year of WASTING time.

Imagine all the things you could do in thirty days’ time. You could visit New York, start a new interest like playing the guitar, get started on an MBA, etc. etc.

As Alvin Toffler mentioned in his studies, by consuming loads of information, you end up absorbing nearly nothing.

What’s interesting about all this is that it’s not Facebook’s fault that so many people are addicted to it.  It’s kinda like an overplayed song.  It’s not the song’s fault that it’s overplayed…

I leave you here with a quote from Tim Ferriss (author of 4-hour Work Week):

There is a psychological switching of gears that can require up to 45 minutes to resume a major task that has been interrupted. More than a quarter of each 9-5 period (28%, or 134.4 minutes) is consumed by such interruptions, and 40% of people interrupted go on to a new task without finishing the one that was interrupted. This is how we end up with 20 windows open on our computers and nothing completed at 5pm.

Bottom line: Stop distracting yourself with Facebook and focus on getting something actually important done.

The ironic part of this post is you’ll probably end up reading it as an imported blog post in Facebook. :p