Book Smart vs. Street Smart

I have been reading some fascinating books, and delightedly discovered an interesting phenomenon.

There are A students and B students.

B-students don’t know everything about anything and are excellent at nothing. B-students do, however, know something about a lot of things, and they can complete almost any task with some modicum of competence. There is no one thing they do well. But there are many things they do well enough. B-students are not stupid. Their penchant to understand everything about nothing and a little bit about a lot of things is that they get bored quickly with any one task.

A-students, on the other hand, know a lot about one thing, whether it is technology or marketing or sales or finance. And they do this one thing extremely well. If they don’t do it well, it bothers them. A-students want to do things perfectly all the time.

Most born entrepreneurs are B-students, and most well-trained managers are A-students.

A-students are better off going to an investment bank, or to a management consulting firm like Bain, or Law school. But don't start a business. They will most likely fail. Not because they aren't smart but because they are too smart.

Entrepreneurs want results immediately, while managers are happy to wait, confident that if they execute perfectly over time the results will eventually follow. An entrepreneur’s short attention span allows him, or maybe even forces him, to think laterally. Managers, on the other hand, can stay focused on one topic for a long period of fashion. Lateral thinking is necessary for start-up where the entrepreneur is constantly being pulled off course when plans don’t go as planned, while linear thought is required in more mature companies where getting several hundred or several thousand people to stick to a plan is absolutely necessary to get anything done.

A good decision made quickly is far better than a great decision made slowly for new/small business. A-students simply can’t allow their perfectionist minds to settle for good; they need great. But startups move too fast for greatness.

The most important thing to realize when you are a B-student entrepreneur is that you need A-student managers. In the end, the job of entrepreneurs is to attract, organize, and motivate A-student managers. Together, they create a great company.

10 Signs of Aging

1. Loud music is equated with noise.
2. The amount of friends you hang out with on the regular basis is less than 10.
3. A glass of wine at home is more desirable than shots at the bar on Fri night.
4. Crying over sad news or movies is not news.
5. Staying up one night makes you either zombie or sleeping beauty for the rest of the week.
6. You are easily sold to anything yells "organic" or "100% natural."
7. When planing schedule or travel, first thing comes to your mind is "what should I do with my workout?"
8. You constantly explain to people that you are not picky.
9. The list of things you are afraid of grows exponentially.
10. Your tolerance of BS decreases exponentially.

The Truth is Within You

I am alwasy curious about my very unique personality and social behaviors. Why am I the way I am?

Is it because of the birth sign?
Is it molded by family values?
Is it influenced by educations or life experiences?

Family values are absolutely controdicting with my personalites and my life experiences have been pretty much ordinary. Birth Sign? I will get to that later.

How about...my personality was programed in my brain way before I was born.

It's all coming from this part of the brain called "frontal lobe" (the blue part in the picture above.) The frontal lobes are considered our emotional control center and home to our personality. The frontal lobes are involved in motor function, problem solving, spontaneity, memory, language, initiation, judgement, impulse control, and social and sexual behavior.

Studies showed that the defect to certain parts of the frontal lobe would make people calm but it also interferences the ability to plan (for the future.) In other words, people like that are generally more optimisitic, happy, spontaneous,and living in the present. However, they are more impulsive and likely live in a world without later.

Then, you probably would ask, "how about star sign? they oftentimes sound convincing explaining personalities." Here is my take on this. Just like conifer survives in frigid winter and watermelon only shows up in grocery store in summer, all things on earth evolves, exists and functions following by natural science. Therefore, people who are born during certain time in a year or even area on earth could share some similar biological commonality.

But I have to say it though, whoever deciphered the code and connected the dots between birth time/date and personalities, he or she or that group of people are geniuses.

My Bucket List

1. Be a bartender
2. Own a business
3. Swim with a dolphin
4. Skydive (check)
5. Go skinny-dipping at midnight in the South of France
6. Be an extra in a film
7. Run a race (check)
8. Buy a round-the-world air ticket and a rucksack, and run away for 3+ months
9. Have 10 signature dishes
10. Remember 10 people's name in a cocktail party
11. Run a marathon
12. Buy my all-time favorite writer a drink
13. Perform argintine tango perfectly
14. Fall deeply in love - helplessly and unconditionally
15. Be someone's mentor (Check)
16. Make my parents proud (Check)
17. Go up in a hot-air balloon
18. Give a public speech in front of 200+ audience
19. Go on safari in Africa
20. Look into my child's eyes, see myself, and smile
21. Create a list of one-thing-I-must-do-in-that-country for 50 countries and experience them all
22. Horseback ride along a beach (Check)
23. Be able to answer the question : What's happiness?
24. Write a book and get it published
25. Invent one thing which does not exist
26. Be fluent in a 3rd language
27. Take a photo that touches my heart
28. Create an artwork that everybody thinks I bought it
29. Be able to wear faux lashes perfectly in 5 minutes
30. Become a 4.5 tennis player

The Bet

It all started from the "Spreadsheet of Love."

My friend was telling me that he once created a spreadsheet to help him analyze a dating dilemma. He evaluated various scenarios of his next moves vs. outcomes by weighting his emotional in-flow and out-flow. It sounds CRAZY but also HILARIOUS.

So he started explaining the whole situation, methodology and intention, and then the subject got deviated into the early 20 something women's dating pov. We had a little disagreement there.

The key takeaway from our debate yesterday is that:

Jack: Girls in their early 20s don't know what they are really looking for in a man. They will never admit that they are actually hungery for tall, rich and pretty boys, and always give bs about their desire for personality traits in men (i.e. humor, sensitivity, passionate about what they do etc..)

Eva: Girls in their early 20s don't know what they are really looking for in a man. Some might admit that they only go out with good looking guys, and some might say desirable personality traits are more important. But the truth is that they have no clue what they want, and chances are, they end up dating the guy chasing them persistently, or the guys who make them feel better about themselves.

So go down to the betting thing....

Since my sister now is the only girl I know who is in her early 20s (sadness...), we asked my sister, "whats the top 3 things that you are looking for in a guy?" I bet $10 that she would list (at least) 1 physical traists (i.e. tall, big shoulders etc.) in her top 3 things.

And I won.

Mission of the year

1. Be humble
2. More doing than talking
3. Be fearless
4. Think before action/speak

Sarcasm

You probably think sarcastic jokes are sharp, witty, and very observant. The brilliant twist of a fact or situation is not only humorous but also amusing.

Sarcasm can be funny when it has nothing to do with the audience or has everything to do with the speaker.

Not only are people misusing sarcasm, they are abusing it.

People expressed hostile, critical comments in an ironic way such as saying "don't work too hard" to a lazy worker. The use of irony introduces an element of humour which may make the criticism seem more polite and less aggressive, and most of the times sarcasm was used to disguise insult and open blaming of other people to get the upper hand in an argument.

Sarcasm in nature is to :
1. make fun of a group of people
2. criticize an individual
3. express the resentment in a situation

When you are making fun of a group of people (can be a race, a department in your company or blonde etc.), you are forming a hierarchy in the society and disguise your disrespect with sarcasm. As to being sarcastic about an individual or a situation (your boss, client, professor etc.), you are passive-aggressively communicating anger, disagreement, or doubt while not owning up to it.

When people joke sarcastically, 50% (or more) of what they said are truely what they felt. They just want to get away with it by adding "oh, I was just joking."

The only exception for truely humorous sarcasm is making fun of the speakers themselves which shows self-confidence and consideration by being funny without deameaning anyone else.