whether we like it or not, we can't stay still in this life simply because being human, we're living in time.

a metaphor to illustrate this is like we're on a boat in an open sea. the wave will take us somewhere whether we like it or not, with or without any effort on our side. we can steer the boat to go to a certain direction, paddle to make it move towards that direction faster, but sometimes the wave is just too strong.

I'm not a sailor, so I don't know anything about sailing, but I suspect that as a sailor, you need to know how to read nature (wind, sky, wave) and even though you can't control nature, you can adjust your action so you can use your knowledge about nature to your advantage.

With life, I think it's very important to realize that we're going somewhere and sometimes things don't go according to our plan, so it is important to learn how to read our circumstance and use that knwldge to adjust our action accordingly in order to drive our life towards the direction where we want to go. 

Two things on this subject of self-evaluation:

1. A line that's been hovering on my mind: "I need to find myself, so I can give myself away." This has to do with my desire to make my life count based on what I contribute. For this reason, I have been searching inside myself to assess where I'm at now, where I want to be (which is closely related to my view when i was younger), and what I need to do to get there.
2. Tomorrow I'll have my informal focal review. It's informal because I haven't been at Yahoo! long enough to qualify for a formal one, but I've been there long enough to show my peers and manager my strengths and weaknesses.  For this review, my manager asked me to rate myself from 1-10 in areas: my design ability, finance domain knowledge and where I am at Yahoo vs where I want to be here.

what if I truly believe that:

• problem = opportunity
• limitation = invention and self-discovery
• lack of resources = focus
• criticism = advice
• victim of theft = validation

How would this change the way I design, create, and live?

"I am a sincere believer in the idea that miscommunication and mistakes are evidence that you are doing something. Especially when you are doing both. Doing something right is highly unlikely. Thus doing something wrong is almost usually guaranteed. If you don't do anything at all, in the short term you win because you do nothing wrong. Which immediately looks better as compared to the person that's messing up all the time because they're trying to get something done for the first time."  -John Maeda

the above is an excerpt from John Maeda's blog titled "Setup for failure = setup for success ". 

Last night, on my flight back from New York, I tuned in to an episode of Inside the Actor's Studio with martin lawrence as  the guest actor.

Towards the end of the show, a first year acting student asked martin for something to motivate her to keep on going despite of all the rejections that she received.

Martin responded by saying that you can have 10,000 failures and have the 10,001th opportunity to be your  big break. You have to be destined to prove your critics wrong.

From the same blog entry, John Maeda says:

"Having good luck is proof that you're iterating over and over and over and because you're failing so much, your potential for success increases."

In conclusion, we should take comfort in knowing that we're going forward; not in the situation we're at. Look inside and ask ourselves if we're advancing in our personal journey.

are the optimal number of words for every line of text so users can read comfortably without losing their place on the paragraph (a problem that could occur when te lines get too long).

A challenge:

How can I show my love and passion in my design, have fun in the process of designing and allow users to experience all these in the end product? 

Today John Maeda gave a presentation on simplicity, promoting his book with the same title, at Yahoo! campus in Sunnyvale. Luckily for people who can't be present physically for that presentation, there was a webcast.

So bunch of us from the Santa Monica office, watched the presentation in one of our conference rooms.

The presentation was not like what I expected, although it was as inspiring(if not more so) than what I expected.

I expected something very technical or academic from a very serious presenter since the only exposure to Prof. Maeda's work that I had was through using his "Design by Numbers" book and application.

The presentation was very lighthearted and refreshing. Prof. Maeda told many jokes, verbally and visually while sharing his wisdom without putting himself on a pedestal. 

There were many interesting things said and shown in that presentation, but one thing that really sticks with me is seeing simplicity not as the answer, but as a question.

It's not about making things work better of more productive. It's about life appreciation more than design or programming principles (although his law of simplicity would probably work very well in those domains also).

If anyone ask me how I would describe my impression of that presentation in one line, I would say: "Wow! That guy really knows how to enjoy life!" So simplify your life so you can enjoy it more.

"I just refuse to take offense," she said. Then she explained, "If a person is stupid or ignorant, it's his problem, but if  I let his stupidity offend me, it becomes my problem." I overheard this at a coffee shop last weekend.

We can't control how other people act and behave, but we can control how we respond to their action or behavior.

Just drop it.

This is also true in dealing with critics, clients or supervisors.

Whatever they say or do (or don't do), you're in control over your own feeling. You always have a choice on how to respond to what they throw at you. Evaluate yourself and take any valuable input that could build you up, but make sure that you don't let any negative emotion slow you down.

Refuse to take offense. Keep on running.