人科

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.