Yu-kai Chou

Influential people are generally too busy with their emails, meetings, tweets etc

There are always benefits when more influential people know about you and think positively of you. If they like you, they are able to give you shootouts, advice, connections, and all that good stuff. However, it’s often very difficult to get their attention since they’re always bombarded with all sorts of things.

Twitter creates that opportunity for you to contact them instantly. But still, you’ve tweeted out to them before, and either they completely ignored you, or they responded back, made you feel great, and you know they forgot about you right after.

Engage your followers those you follow

Most advice out there tell you to engage your followers. I can’t agree more with that. However, if you want to get non-followers to know who you are (read: not to “follow” you), you’ll need to do more than that.

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Your Core is your driver

It all starts here. Your Core. Without your core, you are easily swayed by others, you become a product of conformity, and you cannot be a leader. Your Core is what stops you from being an NPC (Non-playable character) and allows you to become the Hero.

Have you ever talked to someone and you instantly felt that there was something about the person that made him/her respectable or even intimidating? And that person may not be very physically large, particularly good looking, and he hasn’t said enough things for you to truly conclude that he is highly intelligent. Nevertheless, it seems like he is really smart, knows what he is talking about, and you can really rely on him. That is usually because he has a strong Core. He believes and trusts in himself, and that conviction spreads to others.

My own story on discovering the Core

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Power Coaching: Life Coaching for highly motivated and ambitious individuals

For 2010, I am starting a series on Power Coaching. That’s basically teaching people how to become powerful in whatever fields they are in and things they care about. It is similar to the common Life Coaching, but more geared towards ambitious individuals who does not just want to live a comfortable and stable life but want to become the best in what they do and become influential and impactful in this world.

This would be an extension to the FD Lifestyle that I created in 2005. (Check here to see my presentation at Google on it)

Is Power Bad?

I first want to make a disclaimer that “Power” has a slightly negative connotation, as people say “power corrupts” and how the rule of nature is the “powerful exploiting the weak.” However, I believe power itself is neutral.

Power just allows one to make something happen, so it could be used to do extreme good, or extreme evil. In the context of this blog, Power simply means being resourceful and influential enough to create an impact in whatever you care about.

Finally, since I like to draw analogies from the gaming world to this world, Power is just a common phrase in being really strong at something (and isn’t that where a lot of passions lie? Many people couldn’t do what they want in the real world so they decide to be a hero in a virtual world).

Again, I am not teaching you how to gain “freedom” or create passive income that allows you to chill at the beach all day. Sure, these would be very useful in becoming powerful, but that’s not the end goal. The goal is not to let you live a “free” life but to let you live a “fulfilling” life. It’s the life of “With great power, comes great responsibilities.”

If you were playing a game and you had absolute “freedom” in running around, going to town, the fields, eat and buy stuff, but you don’t have a mission, would that be fulfilling? Probably not.

This blog will be about how to beat the game.

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Today is the first day of a new decade.

Yes, some argue that 2011 should be the beginning of the new decade, but I don’t care. At least my bank uses the format 1990-1999 and 2000-2009 to determine one period. Perhaps if I failed on my goals this year, next year I will say “NOW is the beginning of the new decade. ROAR!!”

But lets hope not.

THIS is going to be the year. This is going to be the year where I straighten out everything in my life, where I finally launch the long-boiled fleet of Carriers, D-Web enabled Corsairs, handful of Arbiters, and of course a couple observers.

I’m not going to make a “New Years Resolution.” I don’t think they really get met much. It’s more like a joke that appends “expected to fail and renewed the year after” (and I do have high respect for those who actually meet their NYR for an entire year). Instead, I will create principles of how I should live my life in 2010, a “plan” or “strategy” on how to become a stronger character on my server, conquer harder quests, and beat the game of life.

Here are the things that I think are essential in 2010 for me to convert all the things that I have built up to into actual success:

2010 is the Year of Hustle

I like to think through a lot of things, contemplate how everything comes together, see trends, match personalities and parties, and analyze everything on each step while I am taking actioning. As a result, my execution might be slower than it could be. This is the year where I WILL improve my execution and hustling. After all, in our industry the first to market usually does not produce winners. It’s the ones that execute the best that are the winners.

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We have huge blindspots

Most of us want to become better at what we do or become a better person in general. The problem is that we have too many blindspots for ourselves to really find out what we really need to work on. When something goes wrong, we can think of a hundred external factors for that reason, but we genuinely cannot see our own faults.

And when it comes down to it, most people WANT to know their flaws that they don’t see themselves. The problem is, it’s considered impolite for people to tell you of your faults when it is not completely necessary. Most people are non-confrontational, and not everyone takes criticism constructively.

Use the magic mirror around you

The solution to this? Just ask. I have experienced and seen numerous times when someone randomly asks, “What can I do to improve myself?” And immediately, almost without thinking, people give the asker a very constructive list of things they can work on. It’s like they’ve been thinking about it all along but never felt comfortable enough to share it.

By asking this very simple question often, you will constantly find things you are blinded by and can improve on. This works especially well when you ask people who can benefit from your improvement (like being more considerate to loved ones, setting more accountability for the team).

For instance, if the Queen from Snow White had a magic mirror as good as the “straight-forward friend”, the mirror would tell her that her problem is not that she’s not fair enough, but “You are too vain, self-conscious, and jealous of others. You can never be happy if you can’t accept yourself. You should just be happy with who you are and love life.” I consider that an infinitely better solution than trying to poison an innocent girl to death.

Set up Mirror Alerts

Often times, even after we know we need to improve something, it’s never instant, and we usually make the same mistakes over and over without realizing it. So after you know what you need to improve on, a good follow up is, “Thanks! Can you remind me every time I do that again? Sometimes I’m not aware of it…” And now you gave people the permission to harass you whenever you screw up. Pretty awesome.

What straight-forward advice have you gotten from friends, or one’s you have given to friends?

Reading is good, but socializing is more fun! I look forward to your ideas and experiences in the comment section!

You cannot lead effectively if you worry about yourself

This week I was playing a game of full-court basketball with my father. Unlike my Co-founder Jun Loayza, I am not good at basketball because I never really trained in the basics of dribbling, manuevering, and strategies. As a result, everytime I am point guard, I don’t do it very well.

This struck me as a bit unusual. Wikipedia explains the point guard position as, “The point guard, also known as the “1″, is the team’s floor general and the best ballhandler on the team. In football terminology, the point guard is a basketball team’s “quarterback.” The point guard is essentially the team’s captain, and his job is to make his teammates better and to hand out assists.”

Growing up, my talents have usually been around strategizing, analyzing, coordinating, and bringing out the potentials of people. I led and coached a state champion chess team, and I’m usually the calm guy who is more emotionally stable in tough situations. In essense, I seem to be built to be a good point guard.

But I’m just not a good point guard.

Why? It’s because I suck at basketball so much that I end up worrying about my own stuff.

I’m alway afraid that someone will steal my ball. I’m thinking about dribbling instead of doing it naturally. I’m thinking about “what should I do next? What should I do next?”

As a result, I am unable to 100% focus on my teammates, which is what a leader should do.

If you are a leader, you should:

1. Make sure you know/do your stuff well enough that you don’t have to constantly be pinned down by your own stuff
2. You must put the team before all your personal welfare. You must elevate from taking care of yourself to taking care of the people you are leading. Leadership requires sacrifice (and followers sacrifice for great leaders too)
3. You must seize every opportunity to bring the best out of people. Your job is not to be the shark that shines in your ecosystem but to be the ocean that contains and nurtures all the sharks that will shine for you.

The US government is said to be $65.5 Trillion in debt. For perspective, this is more than the world GDP for one entire year and four times the US GDP for one year. In other words, the US Government literally owes the world to other nations.

Right now the federal government is behaving like its US citizens who borrow from tomorrow to solve today’s problems. The US borrows money from other countries to help the irresponsible people and companies clean up the mess they made and hope to “one day” be able to pay it back. As you know, when the people can’t pay back their debts, they go bankrupt, and the banks/lenders fail along with them. If the US keeps getting more debt without promise of making MORE money back, it will end up bankrupted too. The other countries will then end up like failed banks and fall too.

Now I’m not a doomsday person, and I like to stick to positive and actionable steps, but I do want to emphasize that in this environment EVERY dollar must be spent to its maximum efficiency. I guess we could call it Stimulus Optimization.

What the government should do

I’m going to give you what I believe is the best strategy for Stimulus Optimization, and then layout the logic that got me to this point. (Note: since we’re talking about an economy at large, I’ll be doing a lot of generalizing for demographics. I obviously know not ALL people in that demographic are like that).

1. Money should stay circulated in old lower income males, small businesses (but not large corporations), social enterprises and non-profits.
2. Money should be put into industry-creating technologies, but not just for technology development but also the commercialization of the technology. The government should support tons of startup people but pay them just enough for them to survive.
3. Money should be put into essentials of society like Education, Healthcare and Tech Infrastructure.

Some of this may seem unintuitive, or possibly biased/humanitarian, but I do believe that this is most economically efficient. Let me explain why.

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Myles Bennett Dyson is my Hero

Most of the time, a person’s role model or hero from a movie is the main character, his/her master, or the loyal supporting character (and sometimes the Villain).

For those of you who have seen Terminator 2 (If you haven’t, I strongly urge you to stop reading this blog and go watch it. Not for my sake but for yours), you might be a bit suprised why I chose Miles Dyson as the role model. It’s true, in a film that is action packed with robots killing each other with big weapons, Miles Dyson does play the role of the wimpy scientist that is powerless and unrespected.

But if you looked deeper into his character, you’ll find that he is actually one of the most respectable people you may know.

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