I am what I write

Watching Mario Teguh in Metro TV irritates me a bit. Hehehe… Yeap. I saw this guy talking about “dream” on his show called “The Golden Ways”. It is not because he says something wrong about it. Well, probably there’s nothing wrong with it (at least if he puts it in a right context). But the concept that he talk about is merely just theoretical and less practical. For example, he encourages the audience to have dreams and try to achieve it. But, what then? How to implement it in daily life?

I watch this show with my parents and I said to them, “I am sure that I am a better motivational speaker than Mario Teguh.” Hahahaha…  I also talk about dreams and goals to my students. But, I try to make it as clear as possible and as practical as possible. I usually quote the words of Brian Tracy or Stephen Covey to motivate my students.

For example, when talking about goals, I asked my students to write down his goal and then I quote Brian Tracy, “A goal that is not hand written is merely a wish”. Then, I also explain that a goal can be anything. It doesn’t have to be a career achievement, amount of money, houses, or cars. It can be anything; such as goals about families, socials, knowledge, etc.

After having a goal set, what else should we do? We have to do the first thing first. Okay. First Thing First is the concept that I learn from Stephen Covey. In our daily life, we usually have some tasks to do. Stephen Covey differentiates these tasks into two entities; important task and urgent task. What is the definition of urgent? It’s easy. An urgent task is something that if we don’t accomplish it soon, then we will miss the moment. So, urgent is about time. For example, hanging up a phone is an urgent thing to do. If you don’t do it soon, you will miss it. Urgent and Important are different. So, what is the definition of important? Well…. An important task is a task that supports our goal. That’s why we need to write our goal down at the first time. By writing it down, we make it clear what is important to us. When we are dealing with our task in a daily basis, always try to remember the goal that we write. If the task helps us to accomplish our goal, then it is an important task. If it is not, then, it is not important and we can stop working on it.

Urgent task is easier to do because it is easier to see. Most people trapped on their urgent tasks and easily forget the important ones. Those people will never accomplish their goals. Important task is harder to do because it is harder to see. Sometimes, we even face difficulties on knowing what tasks are important. That’s why we need to have a clear goal. Always remember that every task that supports our goal is an important task, and so otherwise.

So… I think it is easy to remember. First, we have to differentiate a goal from a wish. The best way to do that is by writing our goal down. Second, remember that urgent task differs from important task. We have to focus on important task, not on an urgent one. And then, we have to be discipline on doing all of those important tasks that we have defined.

Wednesday, December 17, 2008
19:06 @Zooby Burger

The day didn’t go as I wanted….

I planned to write something in English today. I italic the word “something” because I want to emphasize that it’s different from “anything”. Yes. It is different. And this paper, a thing that I am working on, is excluded from the “something” that I talk about.

Actually, I spend lot of days thinking about something that I want to write. There are many subjects that pop in my mind. It varies from a light to a heavy one. But I don’t know why I couldn’t just let myself to start. The reason I finally work on this writing is because I just want to push myself to write, at least, anything. Hopefully, this paper leads me to write another subject, a subject that I truly want to write.

For your information, it is really really not easy for me to start writing. I really need to push myself this hard to make me write. Seriously  So, probably now you begin to ask: why do I push myself this hard just to write a piece of paper? The answer is quite easy. It is the way I practice my English. I want to improve my writing skills in English to, at least, the same level as writing in Bahasa Indonesia.

Well, I read so many books. I learn from a lot of people. And they all talk about the same thing when it comes to learning. The best way to learn anything is, they all said, by practicing. In the past few months, I read and listen a lot of books. [Yeap. I read and listen. Some books that I read are audobooks. An audiobook is merely a book which read and recorded in audio format. All of the audiobook I listen are read by its author]. And I can mention at least two books that talk about practicing; they are “Outliers” and “Brain Rules”.

The first book, Outliers, is a book about successful people who were able to reach their maximum potentials and went far beyond everyone else. The word “outliers” itself comes from statistics. In statistics, the data that go far beyond the average value are called outliers. I really paid attention on reading the book when I open a chapter about The Beatles, since I am one of their fans. It said that before The Beatles launched their first album (1962), they perform 8 hours a day for about two years (from 1960-1962).

The second book, Brain Rules, is a book about how our brain works. It is written by John Madina, a scientist who is specialist on Brain Studies. The book said that every brain is wired differently, depends on our activities. It said that when we are practicing something, for example practicing playing basketball, it doesn’t just have an effect on our physical shape. What more important is it is effecting the way our brain wired. A great basketball player like Michael Jordan probably has all physical ability needed to play baseball. However, his brain isn’t wired in a way good baseball player’s are. That’s why he failed on his baseball career.

There are a lot of other books that also talk about why practicing is the best way to learn something. A motivational speaker like Stephen Covey and Brian Tracy also said that. In every book that Brian Tracy writes, he always says something like, “Do this over and over again until it become automatic”.

So, even if I have to spend nearly two hours just to write this piece of paper, I know that I have learned something right now. I have just practiced my writing skills, something that I have to do more often. And today, finally, I write a paper  It is not the kind of paper that I planned. But, it’s okay. I will try to write again as soon as possible.
20:41