Not too long ago I saw Zach Barf's movie where he cheats on his pregnant girlfriend. It was an ok movie, nothing bad or really good. However, there was one line that sticks with me.

"You only fail if you stop trying."

Cliche. could be a form of self-denial, but… that could also be true.

Couple days ago, I had a conversation with my manager about prototyping.

The objective of prototyping is to fail as many times as possible, as fast as possible.

It reminds me of something that I read about a tip for learning Go(a strategy board game) that a japanese master gave his student. He said that to master that game, the student needs to find 100 ways to lose as fast as he possibly could. 

The reason is to learn from our mistakes and rule out possibilities. If we fail early, we wouldn't invest time in something that doesn't work. 

So failure is a way to provide direction. 

In my new job, I'm surrounded by so many smart and creative people. Overwhelming and intimidating.

On one hand, it's great to be surrounded by such crowd because that'll push me to be better, on the other hand, it's humbling to realize that I'm no longer "special" here.

Few things that I think could promote growth for the designer in me:

1. go beyond the cosmetics by trying to understand the essence of the problem/opportunity at hand.
2. explore. try this. try that. what if I do this? what if I do that?
3. have fun. get lost in the activity and enjoy it.
4. take risk. doing something daring is part of having fun
5. surround myself with  things that would inspire me. inspiration is the source of creative life
6. look inside, not outside. i need to stop comparing myself with others because it could only produce stagnancy or paralizes me.
7. take a break to gain new perspective. sometimes the best way to improve on a design is to take a break. get away from it for a period of time and get back to it with different perspective
8. push myself. I need to intentionally push myself to go a step further or to try something I'm not confortable with. this would be the hardest thing to do of all items in this list.

Things are changing rapidly in my life.

It started out with the decision to explore the potential employment at Yahoo! couple months ago. I didn't think I would get it, but here I am today at the end of my first week there.

I'm still trying to settle in this new environment that feels so different from NY. I got most of the external things taken care of (apartment, car, etc.), but on the inside, I'm still not here yet. 

That also applies to my new job.  I've started to realize few things that indicate how i'm still in my old job internally although I'm physically here.

Changes are scary, even if we wanted them to happen, because changes always demand adaptation on our end. Adaptation always means venturing into unknown territories. Everything unknown is beyond our control and not being in control is very uncomfortable.

That's how I feel as a grown up man, which is very different from how little kids face change. Yes, they also have the fear, but their curiosity bring out the sense of adventure in them. They see the unknown as a new territory to explore, not as a raging sea that would cause them their lives. They know that they'll get to the end of that paticular journet just fine. They have faith.

That's what I often lack when I face changes in my life. I need to remind myself that everything's going to be fine so I can enjoy the adventure ahead of me.