我们的生活是由我们所经历的每一天组成的。享受我们正在经历的每一天，就是生活。不要总是说今天的努力、辛苦是为了以后更好的生活，在今天的努力辛苦的同时，为什么不学会享受今天呢？

        每一件在别人看来可能单调、无聊的事情，我们都可以去寻找一种属于自己的快乐。快乐，它是一种源自内心的感受，而不是外在的别人的评价。我们不一定能够改变外在的世界，但我们可以改变内心。

       这并不是一种阿Q式的自我构建一个虚幻的世界。我们面对现实，但我们也不是就完全被这个现实所包围。我们要有自己的想法，有自己的观念。比如，离开物质去谈快乐是不现实的，但也不要将物质的享受、财富的多少就等同于快乐。开了是源自内心，而非外在世界。

        我一向认为，我们每个人都应该要学会去看待 “真实的世界”和“眼中的世界”。什么是真实的世界？有绝对的真实吗？ 去寻找真实世界和眼中世界的平衡，我们才能更好地享受生活。

Part 2 Abilities

Different people have different kinds of abilities, while there may some abilities that we should have in common. I’d like to talk about it in four parts, knowledge, solve problem, personal management, and communicate with others.

Knowledge

The knowledge you know.

Whether what you know is valuable can be affected by two factors: the usefulness of the knowledge and how many people compete with you. You must have something which you can earn your life. If what you know is useless, then, it means little, if not nothing to you. There is a story[1] said that a man, Zhu Ping-man, spent lots of money and time in study how to butcher dragon, while when he succeed in learning it, he found nowhere he could use the skill. So, make sure what you learn can make some contribution to the society or is needed by others. Besides the knowledge you know, competition is the other factor that you should take into consideration. The less people compete with you, the easier you can gain benefit from it.

Francis Bacon said “Knowledge is power”, in fact, knowledge itself has no power, but people who own knowledge will have consciousness to use it. Generally speaking, the more you know about something, the easier you can do it well.

Learn new knowledge.

It’s a time of knowledge explosion. What we know does count for something, but what count more is the ability to learn new knowledge and use it. We often encounter the task that we know nothing about it but have to complete it within a short time.

Solve Problem

Life is the process of facing problems and solving them. Everyday, we face many problems. Some of them are easy, such as where to have lunch; some of them are hard to solve, how to be the president of U.S.

Whether a problem is easy or hard, the solution can be separated into four parts:

1. Define the problem (where you want to go or what you want, where you are). First, ask yourself where you want to go rather than where you are. Why? Without knowing where you want to go, you can’t step forward. The situation you’re in is so complex that it would be hard for you to understand where you are. Ask yourself where you want to go will enable you know what you should take into consideration, which will help you understanding where you are easier.
2. Guesstimate some possible solutions (what factors are needed for each solution). Well, a problem may be easy to define but hard, or impossible, to solve. Such as, how to live outside the solar system. Use MECE (Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive) principle to help you to break down the problem, you can use mind map to help.
3. Choose one solution and executive it. When you have some possible solutions, you have to choose one and executive it. You’re facing tradeoffs when you make decision. Design a criterion system and endow weight for each factor. If you find it’s too complex to do that, ask yourself, what I value most? What I can’t give up or scarify?
4. Adjust your action and change it if necessary. Now, you have chosen a solution and executive it. The conditions change and are different from previous ones when you make decisions. You need to adjust your action when you find situations have changed or if you find a better solution. Don’t be satisfied with what you have achieved, you can make progress if you keep thinking and acting.

Personal Management

Get control of you time and life.

The most deficit resource in our life is time. It’s such a big topic that I find it’s hard for me to talk about it. Maybe these books (How to get control of your time and your life, Getting things done, Ready for anything, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, etc.) that related to time management can help you.

What I think useful for me are:

1. One time do one thing. We are surrounded by so many things that we are often interrupted to do another thing while left what we are doing into abandoned. Maybe after a long time, we think of what we did, such as read a book. We picked up the book and read from the first page again. If you need to have a rest, just rest, don’t do anything, then, go on doing what you did.

2. Clarify what can be done in three minutes and comparative long time. If it can be done in a short time, do it at once; else, write it down and arrange time for it.

3. Identify what are important and what are not. Focus your time on those important things.

Control motion and pressure.

Happiness, sadness, and pressure are part of our life. Don’t deny them, learn how to deal with them.

Communicate with others

Communication means “a process by which information is exchanged between individuals through a common system of symbols, signs, or behavior” (Merriam-Webster). It’s not the process that you get information passively or throw out what you think. You need to get information from others and understand what they think and want.

[1] 《庄子 杂篇 列御寇三十二》，“朱泙漫学屠龙于支离益，单千金之家，三年技成而无所用其巧。”

Today, a friend of mine asked me to talk something about his strengths and weaknesses. In fact, though we are good friends, it’s hard for me to talk about this topic. That’s one of my weaknesses.

So, instead of telling him how I think of him, I’d like to talk about “what counts for”, which means, what is important for us in our life. Before I talk about detailed aspects, I’d like to distinguish what a person needs to have into two parts: character, ability. Though character and ability required for a person vary according to what s/he does, there is something in common that we should have.

Character is “the complex of mental and ethical traits marking and often individualizing a person, group, or nation” (Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary). There are some characters that count for, and I’d like to talk a few of them, which I value much.

l Down to earth and diligent. Nothing is easy. If you want to master something, it would be more complex that you thought, take time to study the subtle interact in it. I remember a piece of article which talked about 20/80 rule. You can know about 80 percents knowledge by spending 20 percents time, but what really count are those 20 percents that you have to spend lots of time on them. Because, those 80 percents are easy to understand, you can know, while other also can know. What distinguish you and others is, you spend more time in mastering those additional 20 percents knowledge which they don’t know.

l Active and keen to new things. The more we know, the more we know we don’t know. New things emerge day after day. What you know does matter something, but what matter more is what you don’t know. When we came to the world, we know nothing. But at that time, we were curious. We learnt how to show that we were thirsty, something we wanted. Gradually, we grow up and lose the curiosity. Once we lose curiosity, we lose the chance of growing. Some people might be interested how I know something they hadn’t heard of, the answer is very simple, curiosity. I didn’t know much, but whenever I came cross something new, I will take time to seek more about it if I think it’s interesting, visit the website it’s from, search it with Google or Wikipedia (will you search what is wikipedia if you don’t know what it is?). Also, I don’t care about that I may fail or waste some time. We learn from the mistake we made. If we fear of making mistake, we can’t make progress. In Chinese culture, making mistake is not acceptable, and parents often warn their children not do something, which is partly responsible for children lose curiosity for the world.

l Open-mind and Magnanimous. Open-mind has some overlap with keen to new things, but what I want to talk about is, taking time to think of other aspects. You might think you know something, and then you deny taking time to think the opposite aspect. The exist of different opinions values much, and we can learn lot from other aspects. John Stuart Mill talked something about the value of debate on his famous book, On Liberty, which can be downloaded at Gutenberg.org (Shamed on that it can’t be visit in Mainland China, while you can download ebooks in Guterberg.org by emule). Magnanimous means "showing or suggesting nobility of feeling and generosity of mind" (Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary). Why magnanimous is important? Without it, it would be hard, if not impossible, for a person to work with intelligent and people who might be less smart than him/her. S/he will be jealous of people who is more intelligent than him/her and look down upon less smart one. In this case, S/he can get alone well with other colleagues.

l Frank. Frank is the most powerful method for effective communication. Though sometimes too frank may hurt the relationship, you need to learn something about the art of communication. But frank is so important that Jack Welch talked about it with a full chapter in his book, Winning, just after the first chapter, mission and values.

l Cooperative. In modern world, we are no longer the Robinson lived on the desolate island. We work with other to finish a task. Don’t regard yourself as a versatile person, even if you’re, your time is limited, and in some aspects, they can do much better than you.

l Modest. Modest is a kind of virtue. Be arrogant will not only encumber you from having good relation with others, but obstruct you from getting progress as well. What should be take care is, what is true modest, it’s not the facial etiquette, but the deep respect on others that matters.

l Considerate. Whatever you do, take time to think of, what is the effect? Especially think of the effect on those important persons in your life. If you don’t take affection on others into consideration, how can you make good relationship with other members and create great things? You will need help from others.

I will talk about abilities in the next piece, please be patient.

Well, today, a friend of mine asked me whether he should do something or not.

I answered, "well, try it, you can learn from mistakes you made." Don’t worry that you may make mistake if you do something.

We should accept the idea that making mistakes is part of our lives. Allowing us making mistake and have courage to try new things. If we’re worry about making mistake, then we will do nothing and be stagnated.

Just do it, and learn from mistakes you made.

Few, if not none, will admit that s/he is a lazy guy. But I do find that some are lazy, as least I think so.

As far as I concerned, many things we can (learn to ) do them by ourselves. Teachers can be in many forms. Internet is always the best teacher, and free, that we can turn for help at any time.

I like to use Google and Wikipedia. Of course, many people use Google, but few have taken time to learn how to use those advanced skills of how to use it. you want to know? Why not click "Advanced search" at the right of the searching box? Take some time reading how to use them. If there are still something you are not familiar with and want to know more, why not use help and google itself to help you?

Don’t stay at your previous status. If you do something that consumes you lots of time and you find it’s tedious and you want to find a better way to do it or solve a problem, why not search it by internet?  The more you search, the more quicker you can (and sometime you can’t) answers for your questions, and you will become more sensitive to how to use the right key words and which information you should read and sometimes work as a website crawler to seek information you want from the internet.

Wiki(www.wikipedia.org), don’t miss it. If something you have no concept, search it in wiki. Most of the time, I found what I searched in it.

Everything you want to learn takes your time, and the time you spent on studying will pay back. You will save lots of time and rewards from your study. Some people sometimes asked me how I know so many things, skills, methods. the answer it, if I don’t know, I will search it. Besides, new things always intricate me, when I encounter new things, I will take time to read more and test when it interests me or not.

Taking I have subscribed so many blogs by google reader( you don’t know what is google reader? why not search it?) for instance. These blogs I subscribed are from kinds of ways, by my friends, by google, by douban, by the articles I read.

You should be diligent, sensitive, aggressive and positive, and, take actions. Of course you will make mistake, take it easy, everyone makes mistake, only if s/he do nothing.  If you just stay there and do nothing, nothing will change.

      我已然忘记我最早是什么时候知道豆瓣(www.douban.com)的了，当然，肯定是在2005年3月之后，但却在我注册ID之前。

      后来慢慢去得多了，就开始喜欢上了豆瓣。在豆瓣上，发现了很多的好书。如果没有豆瓣，很多的书我都没法知道，也不会找来读。在这一点上，我得感谢豆瓣。我在豆瓣上建着豆列，把书加入到想读的清单中，虽然很多我到现在还没有去读。因为我读书的速度远远赶不上我把书加入到我的待读清单的速度。

      最开始，不时从首页的那些评论中发现一些自己也感兴趣的书，然后追根溯源，找到更多的书。而我的阅读视野也因此而扩大，阅读了一些我如果不是因为首页的推荐而可能从来不会去读的书。在每本书的下面有着“喜欢‘×××’的人也喜欢”，和右侧的“以下豆列推荐”、“谁读这本书？”。因而发现了更多的我喜欢的书。

       现在豆瓣的首页没了，每天打开，看到的总是友邻又干了什么。我对友邻做了什么，只有一点了解的兴趣，我可不想一打开豆瓣就是“我的友邻广播”。但没有办法，杨勃要弄成这样，我又没有多大选择的余地。像我这种怀旧的人，想看过去的首页推荐也看不到了。改版的那四个广场，偏偏我就找不到一个我想去的。

      我只希望，豆瓣，能不能给我这种恋旧的人一个选择的权利？我可以继续用过去的那个豆瓣？首页的推荐还是保留着？你可以改变，可以创新，但是，你为什么就要强迫着我们这些恋旧的人把过去的全部放弃，来接受这个新的豆瓣，连保留过去的权利也没有？你可知道，在这个新的豆瓣中，我找不到我要去的广场。我知道你是想为大家好，但那只是你想，而事实上，你那样做，我认为是更糟糕了。

      豆瓣在改变，而我又太恋旧。豆瓣有错吗？豆瓣不过是杨勃的豆瓣，我不过是一个不起眼的用户，我的观点又能有什么用呢？用豆瓣这么久了，我还是喜欢用豆瓣收藏我想看到书，从那里去找书。但我真的不喜欢现在的豆瓣，我恋旧。豆瓣变了，但它不是我的豆瓣，它没有必要对我忠诚。它可以对我说，“你不喜欢现在的我？那你走吧。”我能说什么呢？是的，它没有必要对我忠诚，也无所谓背叛。这一切不过是我的一厢情愿罢了。豆瓣从来都没有把我当回事，虽然我曾经那么地喜欢豆瓣。

      我现在还是每天上豆瓣，但我每次上豆瓣都很不爽。我不知道，哪天，我会不会离开豆瓣，离开这个我曾经这么喜欢的豆瓣？如果有那一天，那我是不是在背叛我自己呢？背叛我曾经喜欢的豆瓣呢？还是，是因为豆瓣背叛了我我才背叛呢？