Good morning! I hope it will continue to be good well into the afternoon. So this week is actually my last week in Calgary before I head back to Ottawa, and as such, I’ve got lots of things on my mind– school, moving back into my place, errands which have to be run before I leave, people I have to see, etc. But I came across this interesting post on 37signals this morning, and I thought I’d put in my two cents. Here is an excerpt from that post:

“Last week at our full-company get together, each person was asked to say two things to the group: 1. What do you want to get better at? 2. What do you want to learn?”

In my opinion, there are tons of questions which we need to ask ourselves more frequently, and these are two of them. I think all too often, we have really vague answers to these questions, and then become dissatisfied with the way we conduct ourselves in life. If you don’t really know what you would like to get better at, how will you become better at it? Furthermore, if you don’t think about HOW to get better at something, it won’t happen. Whatever it is you would like to get better at will remain at the same level always. The same goes for learning something. If you don’t (1) know what it is that you would like to learn, and (2) HOW to learn something, it won’t be learned. For the purposes of this post, I’m not going to go into the ‘how’, just the ‘what’.

So I’m going to answer these questions about myself. To be honest, I haven’t given these questions any great amount of thought, but I was inspired by Jason Fried’s response in the original post– he wrote that he wanted to stop being a “drive-by teacher” (as something to get better at), and that he would like to learn the technical side of something which, up until now, he has only been designing for. (As a designer + developer, I know exactly where he’s coming from– most people are inclined towards one or the other and not usually both, so the less-intuitive side needs more work constantly).

1. What do you [I] want to get better at?

I want to get better at following through with the plans and projects which I set up and/or start. I’m pretty bad at starting something, then running out of steam midway through, then setting the project aside for indeterminate lengths of time. Sometimes it never gets done. Sometimes I pick it up later and finish it, but this doesn’t happen very often. I’d like to see a project through from conception to completion, with no large breaks in between, even if it doesn’t turn out the way it did in my head. It’s a learning experience. And it means I’ll no longer have those half-finished projects taking up my headspace (not to mention physical space) and making me feel guilty every time I think/look at them.

2. What do you [I] want to learn?

If I had to pick specific things, this answer would be a mile long. I’m serious. There are just too many specific things which I would like to learn, from web languages (Ruby on Rails, HTML5) to spoken languages (Spanish, Tamil) to gesture-based languages (American Sign Language) to cooking (Indian, Greek, Italian) to practical things (manual transmission/stick shift), to artistic things (pottery, screenprinting, crochet, typesetting/typography), etc. The list goes on. But if I had to pick something general…

…It would be that I want to learn how to properly slow down, stop worrying, and just live life as it comes. I spend too much time worrying about the future, the past, previous experiences, upcoming experiences, what people think of me, and what people might say about me. Especially during school (which is why thinking about this now is a good idea), I get very stressed out. It seems like there is never any time to just unwind and relax. For sure, Chi-Kung helps, as it is meant to (and this already goes a long way towards being able to completely unwind), but the more tired and stressed I get, the more petty things I start worrying and thinking about, which doesn’t help. I realize this is maybe not something which I can “learn”, but certainly something which I can set as a goal, and aspire to.  

Also, in Shaolin Wahnam (which I am a member of), it is said that there are two ways of looking at everything: the negative way and the Shaolin Wahnam way– these are perceptions of reality. Here is an example of this (from the Wahnam website, in an article written by Sigung Wong Kiew Kit):

“You can see the same principle operating in daily life though many people may not realize it. You are given a difficult job by your boss. Because you are a Shaolin Wahnam student and view everything the Shaolin Wahnam way (instead of the negative way), you perceive your difficult job as an interesting challenge and do your best. As a result you later gain a promotion – by your boss or by yourself becoming your own boss after having gone through challenging training.

Most other people in the same situation would have different perceptions. Some would try to pass the job to someone else, like you, knowing that they would still get the same pay. Others might do the job grudgingly and produce mediocre or poor result. The reality is the same – a difficult job to be done – but due to different perceptions of the same reality, the outcome can be very different.”

My goal of taking life as it comes has everything to do with this perception change. If one gets mired in the negative way of looking at things, everything becomes impossible, and this mindset builds up over time into something hugely detrimental and instable. If one can see the positive in everything which happens, it becomes much easier to deal with life as it happens, without massive mental stress. Of course it is beneficial to understand both the positive and the negative, but it’s always more beneficial in the long run to believe the positive side and take the better perspective.

There you have it. Some very introspective answers to two very simple questions. What are your answers?