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I’ve always oscillated between spirals and cycles in everything that I do. Getting habits to stick, eating well, staying fit, new business ideas, whatever. In my last post, I said all efforts at changing habits went off the rails once I stepped out of my comfort zone. Indeed, I am/was at the lowest point of this cycle. I’m happy to say that this weekend I’ve crossed that point.

I used to be very self-critical about my tendency to oscillate. Recently I completed the Strengthsfinder Assessment which provided insights into why.

The Strengthsfinder Assessment is a psychometric test that looks into your strengths. It takes 34 attributes (such as Discipline, Strategic, Command, etc) and arranges it in order. Your Top 10 “Strengths” are attributes you should develop. Accordingly, your last few strengths will be your weaknesses.

6 out of my top 10 strengths are Strategic, leaving it very clear where my edge lies. “Discipline” and “Consistency” ranked 34th and 31st! Well, that explains my poor track record in the last 33 years in exactly those two domains.

It also highlighted something about the nature of a cycle that I did not notice. Consistency and Discipline connote steadiness. Whereas, the implication about a cycle is that there are both high points and low points. I berate myself for being “weak” and “lazy” during low points. But what about when I’m operating on the other end? My energy and motivation levels might be off the charts. It has felt that way sometimes. I do believe that’s a strong positive to take away from this.

For me, the other key take away is to recognise myself for who I am. I now realise oscillations between cycles is a inherent feature of who I am. It would be unrealistic to ever expect a high level of consistency or discipline. Better to track the amplitude, period and frequency of oscillations.

By tracking, I would be able to control it. One way to leverage this is to be more aggressive on the upswing. And to be more conservative and prudent on the downswing. It would be a good way to supercharge personal and business growth. And to use the downswing periods to relax and recover.

Swings on either extremes are quite taxing mentally, on me and the people around me. This is worse when they happen at the wrong timing. With control, I can time it right to maximise opportunities and minimise disruptions.

Who thinks psychometric assessments are useless? I love them.

My oscillations are most visible in my weight and general fitness levels. I get fat and unfit in my low points. In the past, I have swung upwards on the oscillation cycle with different methods. Going to the gym, badminton, cycling, and later the full complement of triathlon sports. This time I’d like to try one thing I’ve always wanted to— Muay Thai (Thai boxing).

I squinted at the road in front of me. My brain was so fogged, I wasn’t sure if I took the highway exit, although it was five seconds ago. After a few seconds, a familiar signboard came into view. I heaved a sigh of relief and pulled over by the rest stop. I was already falling asleep as I reclined my driver’s seat. I sank back into the seat for a 10 minute nap. It was 1 am.

It’s been a year since I resolved to change my life. I posted sporadic updates on this blog until, on Christmas eve 2018, I wrote one last post and disappeared.

What happened in the last six months was remarkable. As a quick recap, in July 2018 I decided to change my life by changing my habits. I made a list of five habits to change and tracked them. I followed through to the end of December. In this December 11 post I alluded to a few potential breakthrough deals. There were three such deals, and any one of them would make a difference.

Before I get to that though, some updates on the habit-changing effort. In January I made the mistake of “improving” my Airtable habit-tracking setup. I tweaked the format to better reflect what I wanted to achieve. Surprise— It didn’t catch on. I couldn’t get used to the new format and stopped tracking all habits within the space of a few weeks. There’s an important lesson to learn here: Don’t do things that mess up your good habits.

By mid March, I had stopped on all habit-changing efforts. But this wasn’t because of a lack of tracking. Out of the three potential deals, we secured one in early January. And before that contract was even drawn up, we secured another huge project in early February.

So what happened was that the five months between February to the end of June was the most hectic in of my life. Never has more been at stake. We were so far out of our comfort zone, we couldn’t even grasp the edges of what we didn’t know.

Now, in July 2019, we have delivered both projects. It wasn’t perfect. A little rough around the edges. Many lessons to unpack. A few ruffled feathers. We delivered what we said we would. But we could do much better at client management and communication.

It was an ambitious effort, and the bad thing was that it took us to the brink of burnout. I thought in July we would be able to take a short break. Hahahahahaha. Nope, no way. I looked at the calendar and my soul-crushing conclusion was: Break? Check back in August.

So now here we are, one year on. I can safely say implementing good basic habits work. Get more sleep, get more exercise, plan and prioritise, and reflect often. That was all! By doing so, it took us from the edge of death to where we are today. It is still way too early to call this as a breakthrough or success, but at least our survival is safe for the time being.

I woke up from my nap in the car, engine still running. My first thought was that this happened a year ago as well. Late night, long-distance driving when tired. Rushing from task to task, unable to cope with information and work overload. During the five months of superhuman effort, I didn’t manage to keep up the five habits. And if this continues, I already know what will follow— downward spirals, problems blowing out of proportion, cascading effects. As night follows day.

This year of tracking and reflection has yielded incredible results. Mistakes we made revealed a different sort of bad habit. Bad habits around mental models, planning and management attitudes. This is the challenge for this year. How to develop habits for growth and scale while avoiding burnout. As we grow, so do we further develop and flex our muscles, and learn and reflect from our past.

In Haruki Murakami’s Killing Commendatore, houses play a central role.

There’s the protagonist’s own home, the setting for his separation with his wife. Murakami uses this house to explore the protaganist’s evolving emotions about his marriage.

The protagonist then moves to a rural mountaintop village. He occupies the vacant house of a deceased famous artist. He discovers the artist’s secret work, Killing Commendatore. That house and painting remains the principal setting for the rest of the novel.

There’s also a Jay Gatsby-like character. He lives in a huge, beautiful mansion across the valley from where the protagonist is staying. This mysterious mansion is a key plot device in the story.

In the novel, each house represents something that was lost. The houses reflect their inhabitants’ lives and stories. It channels the charaters’ emotions as they search for meaning in their lives. (The grand theme of all Murakami novels). As the characters interact, they experience different expressions of the houses.

This week, I encountered that for myself.

I stayed in my in-laws’ for two nights this week. Both nights, I worked late, typing and scribbling away as dawn beckoned. Sitting in the living room alone, I felt like an unannounced guest borrowing the place. Like someone who pops into a neighbourhood hotel lobby to use the wifi.

My parents were traveling in Shanghai. One night I stopped by my parents’ house at 10pm to borrow my dad’s car. I had spent twenty years growing up in this house. The house was dark and quiet, no signs of life. The house was on hold, paused while its inhabitants were away. I moved out two years ago. The house had wiped all traces of my presence. It had no space left for me.

On Wednesday, I spent a night in my own house. My wife and daughters stayed put at my in-laws’. The condo was quiet, lacking its usual inhabitants. There’s something unsettling about entering a quiet empty house, especially at night. Like I’m intruding, disturbing the peace. Without my family, it doesn’t feel like my own house. It looks the same, but feels less solid. Like an alternate reality inside a mirror world.

Last Saturday was Winter Solstice. A big day for the Chinese. I spent it with my grandma. My father built three houses next to each other. My grandma stayed in one and we stayed in another. It’s a big and empty house. It was built to house a new generation of memories. But it housed empty artifacts and dust for more than 300 days a year. Meanwhile, old memories disappeared. They aged and rotted along with the hardwood timber frames at my grandpa’s old shophouse. Chipped away by weather and termites.

As an architect and builder, we only ever provide up to half of the complete picture. An empty container, like Tupperware made of bricks and concrete. People fill in contents and change the container forever. Gives it a patina of human connection and individual meaning.

Why did early AirBnb users prefer staying in strangers’ houses? Before the explosion in cookie-cutter instagram designs and professional property managers. Is everyone so lonely, craving for the chance to glimpse into the window of another soul? Searching for a human connection in this ocean of manufactured modernity?

 

There’s nothing like real pain to make you reflect on your mistakes and wise up. We raised five hundred thousand ringgit in debt October 2016 to grow our business. 

In the months that followed, we made all the standard business mistakes and more. The upshot of it was that, by June 2018, all the money was long gone. The business that resulted is not big enough to service the debt when it comes due. The time left to grow our business to the required level is running short.

What followed was a period of demotivation and deceleration. It added a significant amount of stress and pressure on to us. Towards the end of June we welcomed a second child to our family. That drove it home to me that we had to change and change fast.

I believed we screwed up because we had poor work habits, processes and systems. Habits appeared to be the limiting factor. The fundamental unit underpinning both processes and systems. If you have poor habits, you have poor everything else. So I started by fixing that.

Changing habits is a long process. It may take years or more before it becomes a part of you. But the key thing to remember is that results take much faster to materialise. It will take years before it becomes second nature to prioritise important tasks. But the benefits appear in weeks and months. 

One thing that has struck me is that you can’t solve today’s problems today. Today’s problems are a result and consequences of actions in the past. Since the causes are in the past, there is no way to fix today’s problems without inventing time travel.

What you can do today, is to change your future. What you do today will not solve today’s problems, but it will affect your life a few years down the road.

For example, maybe you are struggling financially. You could use an increase in your salary. But your current job and pay grade is a result and consequence of decisions in your past. Decisions resulting in your current network, education history, previous experience, et cetera. 

There is almost nothing legal and ethical that you can do today that increases your income now. But you can do a lot today to increase your future income.

Put another way, what you do today will affect your life three years down the road. Whether you think about it or not. Whether you care about it or not. Whether you want it or not. Whether if you’re even aware of it or not. 

Seen this way, it’s only common sense to invest the time and effort to do the right thing today. It may seem like just another day, another 24 hours. But this 24 hours will compound. Your future you will either thank you or hate you for it.

Hence my commitment to changing my habits. My belief is that only with good habits can we create better systems and better processes. That, in turn, will allow us to make the right decisions. And over time, the right decisions will create the desired results.

What is the right thing you should do today?

I was feeling pretty demotivated and down when I wrote yesterday’s post. Seeing that I wrote it at 3am, and that the post started with “I couldn’t sleep”, you might have figured that out.

Writing always calms me down. After getting it off my chest, I felt good enough to go to sleep. (I was quite wired and buzzed before that, with caffeine, stress and adrenaline).

When I woke up today, I was still feeling demotivated. I spent the first hour of my day editing yesterday’s post. Over breakfast, I finished reading Positioning by Al Ries and Jack Trout. And then I summarised the last two books I had read in my Bullet Journal. Positioning was one of them, finished minutes ago. The other was Good Strategy, Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt. Both great books packed with insights and good advice. I learned a lot while reading them. During the journaling I scanned through both books again. I wrote short notes on everything I thought was interesting.

I read that many people take handwritten notes not to refer to them later, but to remember them better. That’s exactly what I do. I have been taking notes forever that I never refer to, starting from preparing for high school exams. But the act of writing them down by hand leaves strong impressions in my memory. Also I write them in my own shortform sentences. It doesn’t always make sense but it’s okay because nobody reads them, least of all me. Before I can write anything down, I have to understand the concept in my mind. I do a lot of my learning this way. 

After all that, I went out for a work-related errand. Bought a coffee on the way back. By the time I was ready to start doing “real work”, it was already sunset.

But doing all the writing and journaling put me at ease. I had calmed down. Stopped feeling so out of control. I was ready to put in some serious work.

We had an early dinner. Then I spent the next five hours in a productive marathon work session. I stopped for several minutes-long breaks play-breaks with my daughters. 

My early posts talked about which habits I chose to incorporate and why. I never got around to Habit 3, which was to post four blog posts a month on this website. The objective of the habit was to get me writing on a consistent schedule.

And the above story illustrates the power of writing for me.

Another 3am night. Can’t sleep. On July 1, 2018 I started a journey to reset my life. The 18 months prior to that had been extremely tough. I was struggling, but I kept it from everyone else. Only my wife knew, and her sacrifice was bigger.

My strategy to get things on the right track was to replace bad habits with good ones. I took pains to track the habit changes as best as I can. It went well for the first four months. As the initial positivity boost wore off, it got harder to stick to the new routines. The low-hanging fruit was gone. It was getting harder to see the effects of my efforts.

As I tackled the harder obstacles we were facing, I could see the bad habits relapsing. Data doesn’t lie. I continued to track every day. Patterns of habit relapse correlated with general challenge indicators.

I started this blog in July to change my habits and through that, to change my life. After four months, I have discovered the following:

• My efforts have had small positive effects on my business and relationships. But it feels to me that the real repair work is still a ways ahead.
• Am I kicking the hard-work-can down the road? How do I tackle the big things in a sustainable way? It still seems like there is soooo much more to do.
• Old characteristics, behaviours, and habits keep trying to seep through.
• I seem to have changed, but I also seem to have stayed the same.
• If I look carefully, 99.9% of my old habits are still there.
• Keeping a detailed log appears to be the only reason why I haven’t relapsed completely to old habits.

TL:DR- they seem to work, but change is slow and difficult. 

Well, that’s not unexpected. Some habits have been around for decades. I guess four months is baby steps.

Sometimes I update my log once a week, sometimes once or more times a day. When I update less, it’s harder to stay on track. The more often I update my log, the more I put in some effort to stick to the new habits that I have set. I infer that this is the right cue to help build the new habits.

One thing I noticed is that a few important cues during the day are the biggest trigger for relapse. When those cues appear, it is very easy to succumb and relapse to old habits. Like, to pull up Netflix once I sit down at my desk after dinner. Or, to open social media apps once I wake up. Or to look at the clock, see that it’s 11pm, and think: “Right I can still do an hour of work” and then end up going to bed at 2am.

 This GQ interview with author James Clear on Key Moments struck the nail on the head. I am introducing a Key Moments table to my Airtable Habits Log. By tracking the cues during the Key Moments, I hope to reduce the poisonous effects of old habits cues.

I realise all this sounds incredibly nerdy. But I’ve always known I have a huge nerd in me. Cue Flora rolling her eyes. Well. As long as it works. 

Last saturday evening an old friend Stephen sent me a message on Facebook. He had flown into Kuala Lumpur from London via Bangkok, and would be here for a week. Was I free to meet up?

We met up the next day. He visited our place with his fiancee. We chatted and caught up for about an hour and half, and had a beer together. Then they left for dinner.

We touched on it during our conversation, the fact that it has been 10 years since we met. It didn’t sink in till later though.

We were working together in the same architecture firm during our year out placement. The company comprised eighty-plus architects and engineers. In the whole firm, there were only three East Asians. Me, Stephen, and a middle-aged senior associate. Both of them had grew up or spent a long time in the UK. I, and another Brazilian lady, were the only foreigners.

I was a very quiet person at that time. (I still am, mostly). To be honest, it was because I couldn’t yet hold a conversation with the British. I had nothing to talk to them about. I kept to myself and did my work.

I didn’t apply for any jobs in Scotland, where I was studying, and no London firm replied me. The only reply, interview and later offer was from this practice. It was in a small garden town in the Southeast of England, 30 minutes away from London by train. The kind of town that existed in Enid Blyton’s books.

One cold evening, Flora and I went to a shopping mall the next town over. It was a rare occurrence, to visit a shopping mall in the next town on a weekday night. We probably only did it that one or two times throughout the entire 10 months we were there. I don’t even remember why. But anyhow, we were there, and I bumped into Stephen. We became friends after that.

It’s an unlikely friendship, but that was the norm. In those years, I had a knack of striking random friendships with people (always guys). We introduced our girlfriends to each other, who became our fiancees and wives. We started on our careers, progressed through life. And every once in a few years, our paths would cross somewhere around the world. We’d meet up and get a beer together. I don’t know why things turned out that way, but those are great memories.

 

My elder daughter is down with Hand Foot Mouth Disease (HFMD). It’s difficult for us to see her in pain.

Last Friday night, I was on one of my long night drives back into KL. I listened to Shane Parrish’s podcast with Jennifer Garvey Berger. Developmental coach and author Jennifer talked on the theory of adult development. Particularly, about the development and makings of effective leaders.

Initially, young adults have “a self-sovereign mind” where your own thoughts take precedence. Other people’s perspectives are hard to grasp (Sounds like all young adults a.k.a. teenagers I know).

As you develop, you then move through three phases. The first is a socialised mindset, where you live by other people’s perspectives. Then, you move on to a self-authoring mindset, where you develop your own thoughts and systems. Finally, the third phase is a “self-transforming” mindset. Your own systems and other people’s beliefs coexist together.

According to Jennifer, leaders tend to go through the cycle earlier and faster. This is because leading involves understanding other people’s perspectives.

I found that my experience fits what she described. In the early days of trying to build a company, I devoured biographies of leaders and tried to copy them. Needless to say, it didn’t work. I’m now trying to build values and beliefs that work for us. That looks like Phase 2. 

Over on the parenting side, I spot similiarities to this adult development thingy. In the beginning, we had our own idea of what kind of parents we wanted to be. We weren’t interested to listen to others. 

Soon, we realised that was quite stupid. We then listened to what our own parents, other parents, and society told us. And after that, we started having discussions about the values and beliefs we want to impart to our kids. This is where we are now, and it’s heck of a difficult discussion. As if the regular parenting chores and pressures aren’t enough. I often find myself wondering, gosh, this is really difficult. I didn’t sign up for this!

But of course it’s not all bad. Seeing an infant grow and develop under your care and love is quite an amazing experience. Knowing that you are moulding a piece of wet clay into an exquisite thing is really something.

Anyway, I hope her HFMD goes away fast.

The first Haruki Murakami book I read was Kafka on the Shore. I picked it up in Fopp, a discount books and music chain store in Glasgow. I was browsing through the shelves with Flora and a few friends. Murakami books filled the shelves and the display tables. Price stickers plastered on the book covers said £5 for 1, or £12 for 3. I chose Kafka on the Shore and two others at random, mostly based on their book titles. It was the spring of 2010.

That was my introduction to the world of Haruki Murakami. I was an immediate fan. I got quite obsessed, making repeated trips to Fopp to feed my growing Murakami fandom. By the end of that summer, I had finished reading all Murakami books published in English at that point. I had a nice little row of all his books on my bookshelf— Everyone who saw it commented on it.

He is a master novelist, and his magical realism books were well written. The narrative and plot were fresh and exciting. More than that though, his books resonated with me in a very strong way. I believe it was because I was in the right headspace at that time. The right wavelength, if you will, to connect and relate to his words. His words drew out a part of me I didn’t know existed.

Murakami’s writing, both fiction and non-fiction, made me realise something about myself. Up to then, (and this is something I never told anyone), I always thought it was natural to want to fit in, to blend in. I had to play the part, act my role. What role is that, I’m not very sure.

His stories made me understand that it was okay to be different from other people. That the richness in life came from richness of experience. By seeing and doing things based on values, and not based on what everyone else was doing.

It wasn’t a conscious thing. I’m only surmising with 9 years of hindsight. It could be my bias. It might be completely unrelated. But starting that summer, together with Flora, we began to carve our own path. Not based on what I felt would fit in the most, but what was important to us and to me. Things that invited blank stares and an “ummm..” from my peers at that time.

I don’t mean that his books made me change. They didn’t. I’ve always been the curious sort, always looking for new experiences. But I was hesitant of appearing strange or “different” to my peers. I felt guilty about not conforming. It made me feel like I was doing something wrong. Getting a glimpse into Murakami’s world made me realise that there was no need to feel guilt.

Murakami’s critics are aplenty. Most criticisms revolve around his works not being “Japanese” enough. Or the fact that nearly-identical tropes and themes appear in ALL his books. (One more story about empty wells and cats, and… I’m going to have to cook pasta and listen to jazz.)

The critics might have a point. I’ve read every single Murakami book published in English. All the Murakami books that I read after the initial binge left a weaker impression. That is, books published after 2011, starting with 1Q84. They strike me as lacking, missing something core to my original experience. I don’t know if they were not written or edited well, or my wavelength has changed. I guess it’s a bit of both. Novelists change and evolve, and so do readers. The evolution of their styles and values may not be parallel. Put another way, a slight deviation in direction can lead to big differences down the road.

His latest work, Killing Commendatore, was recently released. I went out and bought a copy as soon as I could. I enjoyed it. Not as much as I did his early works, but much more than his other recent works. His storytelling was back to top form, but the actual plot itself could use a little more.. action. Some chasing of wild sheep would be nice.

I’m not an academic or a literary reviewer. I don’t know if his books are “worthy” additions to the canon of classics or not. I don’t really care. What I do know is that the six-month reading binge back in 2010 expanded my mind many times over. It was like waking up in the morning and seeing a brand new world, full of possibilities. Like Calvin and Hobbes’ final comic strip. The one where Calvin says – “It’s a magical world, Hobbes, old buddy… Let’s go exploring!”