Alexis Tung's Blog

An Idea is Worthless

But The Execution of the Idea can be Priceless

Posted in Personal Improvement

Knowing a lot is a good thing. However, knowing too much bounds us by the limitations of common sense. It is important to challenge the things that we learn by asking, "How is knowing this going to limit my thought process?" When making decisions and trying to solve problems, it is important to always challenge assumptions. You can read up on ways to do so from books by Edward De Bono (my favorite is the one on lateral thinking).

Posted in Personal Improvement

Occassionally, we stumble upon the accidental nuisance. This person becomes a nuisance to us without even knowing that he or she is becoming one. We cannot blame them as they are not doing it on purpose. An occassional accidental nuisance myself, I would appreciate it if people just alert me to how what I am doing is affecting them rather than attacking me personally. For instance, it is more useful to say, "I am kind of busy now, can we talk another time?" than, "You mind shutting up, i have no interest in whatever you are trying to say."

Posted in Personal Improvement

How well do I perform under pressure? How can I identify people who perform well under pressure? How can I improve my ability to perform under pressure? Does this have anything to do with stress handling techniques?

The thing is that some people seem to perform well under pressure, for instance, people who do well in exams. However, their natural smarts made sure that they did not feel that much pressure during exams after all. These same people, when put under a non-academic, stressful (at least stressful in their perspective) situation, might react in an unpredictable way.

When I watching the anime, Akagi (on mahjong), one thing that I learnt that under highly stressful situations , some people go into an automated mode. Meaning, that they will keep on repeating certain habits that they have when they are highly stressed. In the anime, the main character, Akagi, exerts a lot of stress onto his opponents. Following this, he mentally records their 'stress habits'. For instance, one player will go into hyper defensive mode when he is highly stressed. This makes the player highly predictable, enabling Akagi to bring about his opponent's downfall.

Posted in Personal Improvement

I noted today that while exercising the left brain is good in helping control impulses, it is also important to establish ground rules. For instance, before entering a store selling clothes today, I told myself that I would not spend over $50 in clothing. I used mental sums to help to stick to this ground rule. In order to establish good ground rules, it is important to know oneself. For instance, I noticed that when I watch too many episodes of Animes featuring plenty of food, my right brain goes into overdrive and it becomes near impossible to control the onslaught of 'hunger' messages circulating around my brain. Therefore, I will need to set the ground rule that I can only eat guava fruit when watching the show. When I start thinking too much about other types of food, I will need to pause the show and focus on left brain dominant activities.

Posted in Personal Improvement