This life is your experience, you have control over it, no one else.
Meet people, students, faculty! Find your people.
Be wrong often.
Ask for help
Worthy of your time
Be Nice
Shower your world with the best of you can offer.
Category: life-strategies
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A linear life is a nice idea. But as 2020 has taught us, life is way more like a game of chutes and ladders. We’re up. We’re down. We’re sidelined by a global pandemic. Unexpected change can feel disorienting, but according to author Bruce Feiler, navigating through is also a huge opportunity for growth. Bruce sits down with Jessi to share the chutes and ladders that lead to his new book, Life is in the Transitions: Mastering Change at Any Age.
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Talks at Google: Ep 84 – Ryan Holiday: “Stillness is the Key” http://talksatgoogle.libsyn.com/ep-84-ryan-holiday-stillness-is-the-key [00:41:15]
Routine, having enough, saying NO, doing what is most important early.
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At work, what would change, would people truly miss you?
In your personal life, what would change and who would mourn you?
Now, start to do more of what is important and less of what is not valuable.
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While listening to a podcast about the child free life (not childless life), a reminder that there is no script for life.
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My gift for you this year is PRESENCE.
May you be utterly present in your life this year. Deeply aware of YOUR magnificence and of everything around you. Conscious of what makes you flow more freely. Confident in who and how you BE. Grateful for every moment. Living NOW.
Birthday Blessings! -
It is often not possible to get all three
1. job satisfaction and meaning
2. money
3. lifestyle
Most jobs can give you 2 out of 3. You may have to adopt a side hustle to fullfil the missing piece.
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Who Is On Your Team?
Taking a journey alone is not only difficult, lonely but also not sustainable. Starting with simple personal goals such as exercising. If I am only accountable to myself, I can skip a day, skip a week, skip a month, I only have to answer to my nagging self. If I have a team of friends who are waiting for me every day, every week, then meeting them to start exercising is what I look forward to and exercising is just part of what we do together. For example, I started https://sfbadminton and built up a network of people who love badminton and are competitive players. There are 80 people who are part of the SF Badminton social group. Having a team/group is why for 18 months I have been playing badminton consistently every week twice to three times.
Alone – So Easy To Give Up
For 19 weeks, I write an email newsletter that I sent out to 500 engineers every Friday sharing tips that I think they will find useful. I don’t have a team, it’s just me. I have made it happen every Friday, but it’s a difficult task to keep on going. I’m able to keep pushing because I know at the end, if I can keep this pace up for 3 years, my Friday Tips will be a habit and will be a great forum for a team I can bring around the weekly habit.
Team – So Easy And Fun
I am part of team of 5 people to find interesting topics for the company to hear about and we run a weekly tech talk series. We do logistics coordination for the speaker, we help the speaker to get setup, we run the Slack channel for questions during the speaker session and then we follow up afterwards with recording for people who couldn’t join. We provide a great service for all of our engineers as well as give the speaker a great experience. Doing this project is super easy because I have teammates I can lean on. We take our different roles in order to make this series of tech talks useful. I look forward every Monday to work with my team. None of us have to worry about going on vacation and the tech talks will get dropped.
Who Is On Your Team?
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I have recently started a media detox program of not reading online news, online blogs, social networks (Twitter, LinkedIn, FB, Instagram). Instead I am focusing on listening to interview based podcasts and reading physical books.
During this journey of reassessing how I spend my attention and time, I also started powering off my cell phone after I get home until I wake up the next morning.
This is the beginning of a long journey towards changing my life habits. During this discovery phase, I have stumbled upon (virtually) several people that have influenced me deeply.
One such person is Tim Ferris. Through his books (Tribe of Mentors, Tools of Titan) and podcasts (Tim Ferris Show, Tribe of Mentors), he has exposed me to life stories of people (authors, athletes, thought leaders). Most important of all, Tim Ferris has exposed me to books that have influenced the people he interviews in his book and podcasts. For example, Maria Popova is a writer who reads, thinks and writes on brainpicker.org. She reads a lot of books and spend hundreds of hours a month researching and writing. That is her full time ‘job’ if you can call it that.
Another interview based podcast is Design Matters with Debbie Millman. She started out many years ago interviewing designers & artists. But has since expanded her interviews to cover bloggers, authors, and other passionate ‘humans’ (I like the word). Today I just discovered books from Anand Giridharadas, author of ‘True American’, ‘India Calling’. The author claims that he accidentally come across Trumpism in 2011 and that our nation is now torned between those who used to rule America for the last 400 years vs the new minority majority. The next 40 years will be full of tension as the nation readjust to the power shift. For people who want change to happen sooner, be patient. In the arc of history, we are already changing very rapidly.
Reading: I read books. I get more recommendations for more books. I read more books.
Thinking: I listen to Piano Dreamer radio on Pandora, and I think.
Writing: I write blog posts inspired directly or indirectly by the books I read.To those who have questioned my habit. Yes I do watch videos. I watch BWF badminton videos. I watch the shows that my family want to watch with me. That’s it.
Will you join this detox program and get back your attention span?
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Taking Back Control Of My Privacy
- Goodbye Infinite Scroll Media : LinkedIn App
- Goodbye Twitter @ tonytam
- Friends Don’t Let Friends’ Data Be Stolen #deleteAllFacebook (Instagram,WhatsApp)
- Life Strategy #1: Why I Am Only Reading Long Articles and Books
Google Activities
This is the hardest one yet. I love the convenience of Google maps, suggestion browsing history, Google Now voice control, Gmail. I have 7 gmail accounts for different purposes.
Today I went to Google Activity at https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity and turned off all activity tracking and also deleted all activity already saved on Google for All Time.
- Also remember to delete your Google Maps timeline https://www.google.com/maps/timeline
Plan Going Forward
I plan to keep all my activity private until I make a decision to trade off privacy for convenience. Fingers crossed that this will work!
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Recently I have made choices on how I spend my time and this has helped me decide what I say YES to and more importantly what I say NO to
Optimize for time over money
If I had to choose between taking muni or Lyft to work, I choose Lyft. Muni takes 45 minutes for a 4 mile trip to downtown San Francisco. Lyft costs more, but gets me there in 20 minutes. I pull up my laptop and write a blog post while I’m in Lyft.
Optimize for attention
I install a free AdBlocker, but I donate $15 for it in order to get rid of ads on webpages. I pay for ad free Hulu, ad free YouTube, ad free Crunchyroll.
I stop reading news and just read books and the Sunday newspaper delivered to my home.
I listen to Piano Dreamers radio when I write, read and not music with lyrics because I can only single task, no one can multitask!
Optimize for family
My family comes before almost everything except my own health. Spending time with my daughter, my wife & my parents always bubbles to the top.
Optimize for deeper meaningful relationship
I only have 2 really close friendships, that is all I have time for. And even that I don’t spend enough time nurturing.
I spend time mentoring several women at work and I try to spending meaningful time with them to help them with advice they are seeking.
Optimize for long term
My time and interaction has a long term focus. Long term is 10 years, 15 years. So I optimize for long term vs short wins.
Optimize for scope of impact
I spend time to have deeper impact on a single person, but I optimize for larger impact. For example, I may spend hours mentoring a person but I might distill that work into a blog like impactfulengineer.org to help hundreds later.
Optimize for no regret
I say YES to anything that I will regret when I am dying on my deathbed.
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Taking Back Attention
I’m going on a detox program with media
- Goodbye Infinite Scroll Media : LinkedIn App
- Goodbye Twitter @ tonytam
- Friends Don’t Let Friends’ Data Be Stolen #deleteAllFacebook (Instagram,WhatsApp)
Thank you brain trust member : Seth Godin
After I have done my detox, I find this gem in my email
Your laptop and your phone work the same way. The reviews and the comments and the breaking news and the texts that you read are all coming directly into the place you live. If they’re not making things better, why let them in?
- Seth Godin
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I have removed Facebook
I have removed TwitterFeb 8th, 2018 – Today I have removed the LinkedIn app from my phone. It was a difficult decision because I have been using the LinkedIn app to catch up posting from my professional connections as well as messaging people on LinkedIn.
Why?
- I’m trying to read more long form content, LinkedIn postings have trained me to do the thumb swipe and scroll continuously, bookmark articles that I want to read later. I don’t want to be trained anymore by infinitely scrolling apps.
- The 2nd posting on LinkedIn is *always* an advertisement which I cannot block on my mobile phone, but I do block using Chrome extension AdBlock. I already pay to get rid of ads everywhere I can, LinkedIn does not offer that option
What’s Next?
- I still extract more value from LinkedIn by connecting with my professional network for interviews for ImpactfulEngineer.org. I will only use LinkedIn.com on my Chrome browser and observe how I use the site keeping in mind that I optimize for time, attention and deep connections. See How I Optimize
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On Saturday April 8th, 2018 12:15am I decided to make my twitter.com account @tonytam protected. It is one of the many steps of media detoxification. Once in a while, I do get exposed to something of value from the 250+ people I follow on Twitter.
But the price of admission for these nuggets of information is likely my attention span for scanning news / information, instead deeply reading the content. Twitter is the easiest platform to scan and not read because the people who tweet optimize their words to fit 140 characters in order to generate the most impact with their words.
What I’m going to do instead is to export my Twitter account information, print out the people I follow and do research on their work and find long form content (books, blog posts, podcasts, speaking engagements) and consume those more thoughtful content instead.
Next Steps
- Generate a new long hash password for Twitter and set the verification phone number to be my wife’s and my home number so that it will be difficult if I wanted to login again
pdf : People followed by @tonytam on Twitter
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This podcast episode from one of My ‘Virtual Brain Trust’, Seth Godin, has given me a framework to talk about how I’ve structured my life around longer term vision leading to the right short term actions.
Seth Godin’s Akimbo Podcast
Finite and Infinite Games
The idea is that there are finite games and infinite games. Finite games is liken to short term thinking and infinite games are very long term vision.
Give it a listen: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/akimbo/e/53873622?autoplay=true
- You only need to listen to the 26 minute mark.
Show notes https://www.akimbo.me/blog/episode-7-game-theory-and-the-infinite-game
Also related Simon Sinek: The Finite and Infinite Games of Leadership: tech talk at Google
The original book Finite and Infinite Games by James Carse
Tony’s Infinite Games
For example, some of my long term visions (Infinite Games) are
- Playing badminton until I am 80 years old
- Having a trusting, open, loving relationship with my daugther
- Helping my daughter have meaningful work for the next 40 years of her life
- Having zero regrets if I were to die in the next 2 hours
These long term visions drives me towards the right short term behaviors
- I do not compete in a lot of badminton tournaments and I don’t train super hard to avoid injuries
- I talk to my daughter about my own parenting choices, I model behaviors that I want her to do
- I do not push her to top name colleges just because they are top ranked. I do not push her to majors that is not right for her. I recommend to her to not chase to enter an elite college just because it’s hard to get into. She does not need to play the finite game of college admissions.
- I imagine what I would regret on my death bed, or at my parent’s death bed. If there is something I think I will regret not doing, I make myself do it asap. I tell my family that at this very moment in time, I do not have any regrets if I die. My wife tells me that she believes I have done everything I want to do.
My own interpretations
- Finite games have definite beginning and end. They usually have teammates and opponents. There are rules that are known and some are unknown. Most importantly there is a scarce resource that is coveted. There usually are winners and by definition losers. Some finite games are entrance to coveted colleges like Harvard, the Stanley Cup, getting the next promotion at work.
- Infinite games are those where there are no rules. Players who play at infinite games are playing for the long game. They don’t focus on opponents because they themselves are their opponents. They choose not to play the short game or finite games. They create a category. For example, instead of playing the game of the $10,000 computer, IBM made the $1,000 PC for every home. Apple put a supercomputer in the pocket of everyone that knows your location and is always connected. Podcast creator for Overcast put out the app for free to create a bigger pie in the Podcast marketplace.
- For young people: When we focus on the infinite game, we plan 30 years ahead. If we put our horizon 30 years, is the entrance to Harvard that important? Should we instead find the college that best suit what we want to be doing for work for 30 years? Is making a lot of money really what we want to be our vision for our life for 30 years?
- For parents: If we extend our horizon out 30 years for our children. In our daily interaction, what is really important? Is putting away dishes 100% of the time really important? Or is giving her a hug every single day and telling her you think her art is really good and she should continue? For the long term, is it better for her to get perfect homework and grades or for her for fail a few times and for her to seek out help from friends and teachers so that she learns how to recover from failure?
- For yourself: At work, if you extend out 30 years. In your current job, is it better for get the next promotion by stepping over your co-workers. Is it better to be focusing inwards on the next reward or making all your teammates better? Is it better for be known for someone who people love to work with again in the future. So that in 15 years, when you reach out to your network, people will be your promoter behind your back. And they gladly accept any request for help from you?
From Simon Sinek:
- Infinite game players focus on vision, something that is always going to be out of reach.
- Finite game players work at the tactical level
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On March 27th, 2018, I’ve decided to remove all my accounts on the following Facebook-owned apps: Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
- Facebook.com – This is easy because I only have 1 connection.
- Instagram – This is a little harder because I use the message feature to talk to 2 people on iOS devices. So now we have to figure out how to chat from iOS devices to Android while not wanting to install yet another messaging app.
- WhatsApp – This is the most difficult but I decided to bite the bullet and move all 95 members of my badminton social group to Slack.
The people in my social group asked why I am making this move given that we really don’t have privacy anymore
Ad Driven Business Models Have The Wrong Incentives
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Their incentives are to mine our data, the people we are connected to in order to grow their reach and depth of understanding of our behaviors. I’m moving to Slack because their business model is to build a delightful product so that we will pay for it, not to sell ads. These 2 business models drive very different incentives for the employees who work there.
It’s Time, We Can Do It, #deleteFacebook
- My friends are saying they have been in Facebook for a long time now, their privacy is already lost. My argument is that this is like quiting cigarettes, just because you have been smoking for 10 years, it doesn’t mean you should continue.
Friends Don’t Let Friends’ Data Be Stolen
- Like the campaign “Friends Don’t Let Friends Drive Drunk”. Being on Facebook doesn’t just expose your data to advertisers. The ‘friends’ that are connected to you also are at risk of having their data scrapped without them knowing. Even if you protect your data, if you allow any app to connect to your Facebook account, your friends’ data will be exposed as well. See how it was done to 50 million users
I Know It Is Hard
- I know it’s hard to change your habits. I know it’s hard to be FOMO. I know people will ask you to come back to Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp
- I am on the other side now, I know it’s a better place.
- I also know that there are naysayers
- Tony, you have Google, isn’t that the same thing?
- Yes Google knows a lot about me, I use their phone, but I’m not exposing my friends’ privacy. Google doesn’t have the same type of social network.
- Just because I’m using Google, doesn’t mean I shouldn’t delete Facebook
- Tony, you have no friends on Facebook to connect to, that’s why it’s so easy.
- The friends I want to talk with, I see them face to face or I will call them on the phone. Or I will create a private chat room focused on talking to people I have common interests with.
- 500+ friends on Facebook do not need to see me spam them.
- If they cared, they can always follow me on
- sfbadminton.org – I play badminton weekly with 95+ people
- impactfulengineer.org – I interview people and help engineers
- tonytam.org – I blog for my daughter and my future self
- Oh Tony, you are are just weird!
- You can be weird, just like me! Why do you want to be like the other 2 billion Facebook users?
- Tony, you have Google, isn’t that the same thing?
If you need support, ping me.
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Life Strategy #1
I optimize for time, attention and deep thought (see How I Optimize). This is part of what I will say YES to and will guide me in what I will say NO to on requests for my time.
Starting in March 2018, I have disconnected from reading news as a daily habbit. I will read news (nytimes, Twitter) only once a week. If it is important someone will be talking about it, it will be in my weekly newspaper.
I am substituting that hour a day of reading news for
- Listening to podcasts
- Reading books like ‘Tell Me More’
- Planning my long term passion projects like Impactful Engineer
- Learning about how to teach my teenage daughter on how to think through decisions instead of what to do or what to do.
Maxwell Anderson writes about this on Medium:
There can be no real thinking in News reports because explaining takes time (i.e., space). So News is made up of statements rather than arguments, which has a serious effect on our minds. When News constitutes almost all of our reading, we fall into the habit of thinking that opinions are the same as thoughts. The News alludes to a debate but only shows us a clash of opinions. As a result, we forget how to carry on a debate, and fall back on polls.
Tony Tam 