I had a great day yesterday. I worked with my hands. I drove a truck around. I did some lab work. I took a shower and wore a blazer. I met new people. I sang Karoake. I had great conversations. I went to bed.

In my quest of self discovery, I realized a few things. In terms of productivity, I am good at getting things started but terrible at completing them. Thinking back, the few times i did well, I had to use a particle method. I started projects with  a flurry of planning, setting up and selling the plan. I then automated everything that followed by delegating all the tasks to others. I then spent the rest of the time building relationships while doing general oversight, fixing any problems that arose.

I also realized that when people interfere with my plans, i get quite frustrated and lose motivation. The rule for me is if you interfere with my plans, be ready to do most of the work in fulfilling that plan. Maybe, if someone is trying to poke into my business, i should ask the person if they are willing to carry most if not all the burden. If the answer is yes, then I will listen to them. If no, then I will tell them to run as fast as they can from me 'cos I am about to do something terrible to them. The problem is that I can't do this with my boss 'cos I am afraid that he will view me as a bad worker. However though, I must be real with him and forget about societal rules. I must level with him as he is about to interfere that unless he is willing to carry out everything himself then he should leave me alone. Tell him to just encourage me and make sure i have everything I need to succeed. No wonder some folk see me as lazy. The have just been killing my motivation.

I also discovered yesterday that being organized was boring. When things go smoothly and like clockwork, all the little fires go out. This leaves me with nothing to entertain myself with. I therefore seems that I must really be interested in the end goal to be able to enjoy something. Either that, or make it so disorganized and spend my time putting out fires (problem solving) to entertain myself. Too much of this though and I get overly stressed.

The question now is how do i automate my work. It means i must always have some other intelligence next to me; be it human or computerised. Automate everything right from the beginning. The question then is what do i do with the rest of my time without looking lazy. Oh, i know it, Learn! I must think about this somemore. Maybe i will spend the rest of the day thinking about it.

Work now is super boring. I have 3 interesting projects, but i am not really interested in any of them. I dont feel in charge of any of them and I dont think any of my good ideas will or even can be implemented. I guess I will just look for things to be automated. Keep coming up with good ideas and chill the rest of the day since I dont really care for the end result.

Kwasi
2013

After staying up till wee hours of the morning on Tuesday/Wednesday, I went to bed early last night. By early, I mean 2:30am. I was working till 1:30am. Sucks. As such, I woke up earlyish and gave a nod to Benjamin Franklin. He coined the phrase "Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise". Because I went to bed earlyish and woke up earlyish, I definitely felt healthy, wise and somewhat wealthy :).

I picked up my swim stuff and jumped into the pool in my apartment complex. Afterwards I soaked myself in the hot-tub for a while to let the stress of work ease away. Looking around I observed the trees around me. One of them had a rich variation of vividly green leaves mixed with deep brown ones. The tree next to it had bright green leaves intershot with golden colored ones. All around me, the trees were changing colors. Looked like death to me. huh! But no, the trees weren't dying. Fall has arrived early. Too early, you say, I agree. We are still a month away from fall season and I am not quite ready to end my endless summer days. I am not ready. Unquestionably not ready. I love summer and I am not ready for fall.

As I dealt with my issue of not being ready to start checking out the fall fashions, I started thinking about the problem of not being ready. I realized that a I missed out on a lot of good things in life simply because I was not ready. For instance, I have been blessed with good girlfriends over the past few years. However, I am still not married. My first relationship did not work out because I was dating a girl 3 years older who was looking for someone to take care of her. She quickly realized that a boy that just graduated from a nice sheltered university has no idea of how to take care of himself more or less take care of someone else. Yep, you guessed it, I dated her because I might have been looking for someone to be my mum. Haha! Nevertheless, she was a great girl and I would have been lucky to marry her. My second girlfriend as much better at taking care of me. It was perfect except she wanted to get married quickly and yours truly was operating on a 10 year plan. Sigh, she would have made a great wife. My third relationship was longer and harder. We got along great and undoubtedly had a connection. I am not quite sure what happened there. Thinking back, I believe she was in a place where she need a lot of love and support to help her discover herself. Having very little experience in helping others emotionally, i failed to recognize this did my best to help her with career and other non-emotional stuff. She was a great gal and would have been a fun wife. But alas, I was not ready. 

By now, you get the picture. If you don't, then I guess you are not ready :). The issue of readiness is not something I have really considered deeply. Being the explorer type, I am always willing the jump into something and figure things out. But one thing i admire about the manager types, is how much effort they put into getting ready for a project. A lot of times, they come across and stodgy, slow and boring. But they tend not to start things unless they are ready. My coworker, Shaibu is like that. He is slow to warmup but he is a good person to have around when he is ready. One talent he has, is the ability to resist being pressured. I, on the otherhand, will give you a quick yes or no answer. Its very efficient and straightforward being a quick decider. Life is way more fun that way. 

Belatedly, I am realizing that at times, I have been to hasty in saying no. Sometimes the best answer is "give me a while to consider it", "I am not ready to start yet" or even just "maybe". This  gives you the time to prepare and consider pros and cons and alternatives. I have said no to several things instead of saying "I am not ready, but please give me sometime and I soon will be. The people who love me would have been happy to give me the time i needed to prepare. 

A lot of times, people pressure you because of the selfishness that exists in all of us. Once we are ready to do something, we assume the other person should be ready too. Neglecting the fact we have had time to consider the issue, we push other people to embark on a grand adventure with us. Its actually a great way to maintain control over a situation. If you are the only one ready in a certain situation, its very easy to have the upper-hand. I bet bosses use this to their advantage (mine surely does). In our need to feel selfish and superior, we rush people around and keep them off balance. I am certainly guilty. I am blessed with the ability to think and analyze things quickly. I use this on my boss all the time. He then pays me back by withholding information from me so I can't out analyze him.  I love my relationship with my boss :), well at least the conflict loving part of me does.

 For people I am not in conflict with, one way i show love to them is give them what they want even when I am not ready to do that. This tends to have some unintended consequences. For instance, because of my lack of preparation, I am not able to give 100% of what they expected. Also, I slowly grow resentful because i feel they don't appreciate the valuable gift that I sacrificed for them. Because I never had the EQ to understand this, many a burgeoning relationship or opportunity has met an early death. I will obviously be considering the issue of readiness closely the next few days and will share what I learn. Enjoy the last days of summer, I know I will :). I love summer. Autumn, please stay away.  At least until I am ready for you.

august 22, 2013

August, 2013
Playing tourist


Last week, I got to play tourist. Where did I go, you ask. Nowhere, I mean right here. I toured the bay area. And I am happy to report that it never gets old. Even though I have been here for 12 years the sights always seem fresh to me

I played tourist with Ezra and Chuks. Chuks was visiting from Ethiopia and Ezra was getting ready to go back home to Ethiopia as well. Since it was Ezra's last week, we decided to make this week a full one.

Our whirlwind week started on Saturday, when we went to Santa Cruz beach. We took a grill and made some hotdogs on the beach. Jennifer Lin and her friend brought awesome salad which really went well with hotdogs. After dinner, we enjoyed some drinks and setup a bonfire. Because of the scarcity of fire rings, we shared our bonfire with a bunch of kids from Iran and Germany. It was mad fun. Despite the fire, Chuks got cold and went to the car. After 30 minutes, Ezra and I joined him and went home.

On Monday, we went to Monterey. We checked out the 17 mile drive and downtown monterey. The natural beauty of Monterey area stunned me. Combined with the joy that comes from hanging out with old friends, it made the trip awesome. It reminded me of the time that I came here with Anne, Wibka and Melissa. That was a really fun time too. We had originally planned to have dinner in there at a restaurant I love called Il vecchio. However, because I had to go into work later that evening we decided to cut our trip short and return to mountain view.

The next day, we drove around stanford and walked through the quad. Chuks and Ezra were inspired. Chuks tried his hardest to appear uninterested but I could tell he wanted to come here for school. It will be great if he came here for post grad. There is no place like stanford. Visiting stanford inspired me. I immediately went to work where all my inspiration was killed. Sigh! I think I am going to need a new job soon.