On Understanding Your Approach

It doesn't really matter how well you know something, unless you are being held in regard. You learn throughout the years that knowledge is basically an organization of experiences, and somehow you learn to let go of being stubborn in learning something in details.

What I am arguing is simple: You don't have to know everything and the best way to learn something, but you have to understand how you approach learning.

When we talk about approach to learning, it in a lot of ways connects your approach to that of other aspects in life. I believe that you approach everything as if it's new from the very start, and you learn how to deal with it. That is to say, your approach to learning is in fact so fundamental in you that it is the connection cable to the window of the world and how you observe it.

Do you:

a) use feelings to make sense?

b) execute then only to learn from experience?

c) organize the information and understand the connection?

d) learn with verbal aid, i.e. talking to yourself or others?

e) learn with non-verbal aid, i.e. walking around or other physical movements?

...

etc.

Of course, when you learn different things, you approach them with different methods. But what I found out is that there's a heavily repetitive pattern occurring over and over again, individual-wise. For me I usually need time to organize stuff, establish connections and applications, and talk to people to materialize or iterate over what I just learned. 

It's ultimately important for you to understand how you approach something new. Once you grasp, more or less, the way you approach learning in general, you will find out what method works for you and what doesn't, and it is actually a tool for you to regain that good old confidence, telling yourself: yeah it's just not the way for me; and more often it offers you a fresh insight on how to push yourself back into the career / family path that you want but somehow got off course. When it's off course it means you need to learn to fix it, and when it comes to learning, it's about how you approach the grave matters.

It saves my ass a few times already. I hope this helps the rest of you who are somehow stuck in something in your life. Good luck!

On the Imaginary Critic

I do not know about the 'standard' way of creating something. I only have a slight understanding of the creativity process myself through my own endeavors, through weaving prose, composing romantic poems to realizing engineering design. Some stresses a lot on aesthetics, some on the function and some both.

I'd always hated critics when I unveil the product in front of them, and they have everything to say about it. Unfortunately you always take in the bad comments instead of flattering compliments. Someone saying 'It seems to have something amiss' or 'It just didn't click with me' crushes, entwines and harrows the soul. You just learn to be increasingly ignorant over time to these so-called 'unartistic' people who just happened not to have the inner eye for tasteful pieces.

However, somehow, unfortunately, these critics who had voiced their opinions over the years will have such a great impact on your creativity process that you actually embed them in your subconscious. They become the eyes in our minds, casting all those egregious comments, making themselves extremely loud amid the silence of your mind while you're trying to cultivate the complete feeling of your subject. I call these inhuman beings 'Imaginary Critic'. And I find them to exist not just in the creative process, although they are boisterously loud in that particular circumstance.

And the shocking truth is, they are everywhere.

Look around. I am serious. How should you dress? How polite should you speak?

How these external inputs alter the internal workings of the mind, I wish not to explore that here. Instead, I would like to state the exact opposite: these imaginary critics shape our works and in the end produce a extraordinary contemporary piece that provides both aesthetics and functions. The argument is simple, we humanity living as a globalized and inter-weaved society develops over the decades a unique framework of aesthetic senses. These are exactly what our perception of a creative product is made of, the same for all the other fields, for example cultural values etc. We are not being new when we create. We are building on top of which that exists.

You like it or not, imaginary critics are the reasons why you keep changing your art, here and there from time to time, sometimes some minor tweaks and sometimes you simply hate what you are doing so much you throw it away.

Extrapolate that, what about everything else in life then? Should we yield to them, the picky imaginary critics?

I've come to hate my own creation! Now I know how God feels. — Homer Simpson, The Simpsons

On Teaching Something Students Hate

The day started at 7 am and by 6 pm, which is actually now, I found my day to be especially hectic. I just finished teaching my FYP student basics of the Python programming language, 3.2.2. My mind totally went blank after a continuous series of (moderate to heavy) physical and mental 'workout'.

After so many FYP students, this is probably the one I had the most headache of, and surprisingly the first one whom I take the time to actually teach him programming. Not that I want to, but I am cornered, since there are some functions which are needed to treat the data before you plot them. If not, I would love to let him use the new MS Excel which could store more than 1 million rows of data, and do away my troubles (and his, since he doesn't need to learn programming).

I have tried motivational teaching, situational teaching and also spoon-feeding teaching. I found that there are differences in each of the method (of course, you say), but however different they are, there's one similarity all these different teaching styles share: the students simply hate and reject the content taught.

There are things we love to learn in life, and there are things we hate. It's normal. The thing is, sometimes you need the skills you hate to learn to perform. And that's where the dilemma kicks in. Whenever I tell students that they have to know it nonetheless, they groan or frown or throw tantrums. In their minds. I can see it. I feel the pain in them. I really do. I wish I can do away the pain, or inspire them to love what they hate at first sight, to no avail of course, no matter which style of teaching I employed. So, the question is, which style of teaching will make them learn the thing fastest? Motivational? Situational?

It turns out the answer is none of the above. I am enlightened today, apart from being extremely tired at this point. There is simply no 'most efficient teaching style' when you are teaching things the students hate, for example, programming in my case. However, if you actually drill them through the real thing, let them perform what they are to perform while learning the skills they hate on the spot, they actually get it. Lightning fast. No motivational talk is needed this time whatsoever.

And maybe that's how we should deal with the things we hate in life, those that we have to face anyway. It kinda reminds me of Nike's slogan: Just do it.

On Whining

It is shone upon me today a light which is illuminating, and I cannot deny nor escape from it.

It is said that the words which are medical in nature are patches of bitter herbs harrowing your ears and your heart when you are digesting them.

I concur.

I never give exemplifying leadership a serious thought until today, when my partner lashed at me on my remarks which reveal the vulnerability of my thoughts. If I am not confident of achieving the heights, why would the subordinates even care about risking the cliff leap and time spent?

It's the awakening call that I have to quit whining or joking sarcastically with the underlying mellows as the backdrop, simply because there are people under me who are feeding of my dream and vision.

Sometimes it crosses me that, as nonsensical as reality is, when more responsibilities ride on your shoulders, you simply are restricted from being honest from inside out anymore. I do hope that I could shed myself some lights on how sincerity operates in a workplace, albeit being pessimistic and all, still have this truthful aura projected that I, despite enfeebled by negative thoughts, still have my heads up, fighting with every bit of strength I could muster before the day sleeps on me.

And fight on I shall.