I watched Richard Peck to become toastmaster international president at this year’s international convention. Time goes fast. We met 9 years ago at a district 53 conference. I newly joined toastmaster then and attended the conference for the first time by the encouragement of my mentor. I remembered Rich, tall, slim man in suit, standing …
Author Archives: admin
Alternative
I got up at 7AM on a Sunday morning to watch Toastmaster International’s panel discussion about the partnership of Toastmaster and Rotary Club. Somehow, the link didn’t work. I tried several times and waiting, nothing happened…I was a bit annoyed of wasting time and sleep. Then I reminded myself that I ‘gained’ some time to …
Customer Interview
My boss asked me to work with the product and UX/ research teams in designing and preparing customer interviews of a customer portal. Learning a new system (totally different from the one I’m leading and the opposite end of user journey) and about customers are very exciting to me. However, for several team members, interviewing …
Let’s Try
The product manager proposed 2 changes for communication: (1) instead of him doing the stakeholder demo bi-weekly on Monday for the new features, he wants the developers to do so after each sprint on Thursday. The benefits: stakeholders and tech team get to know each other and tech team could practice presentation, coached by the …
Listen and Slow Down
2 weeks after writing ‘Stretch: Do Less’, the 2 things I started practicing are working and I’ll continue… Daily to-do list: start with 3 Meeting, speech: plan less Yet I realized that they’re mostly related to ‘do less/well’. Fort the other 2 goals: listen more and slow down… Count to 3 after others finish before …
Shocking News
I heard shocking news at a previous company: a ‘powerful’ long-timer was removed due to harassment charges and two people ‘suddenly’ passed away; there were young, one under 60 and the other in 20s. There is a Chinese proverb:人做事天在看;善有善報,惡有惡報,不是不報,時機未到 (God/ higher force watch our action; good for good, bad for bad, if it doesn’t happen …
Stretch: Do Less
Stretch: do less? For many people, stretch means doing more and trying new things yet if you’re a super curious, highly-energetic, type A person like me, stretch would be the opposite: to listen more, slow down, and do less/ well… I decided to start with below: Daily to-do list: start with 3 (vs. 5 often …
Learning
When Y suggested ‘Show, don’t tell’ for writing, I googled to learn more, see ‘Writing’ post for more details. I was fascinated to see the examples and impacts (to myself), meanwhile, worried how could I ‘match up’: others wrote so well, how much re-write I need, how long the editing would take (for sure beyond …
Writing
I asked Y, a friend to help review my blog, UncoverSpecial turning to a book. She gave me 3 suggestions/ ideas. (1) Distinguish situation and story: though my blog is not a novel yet each post shall has both elements: what’s the situation and why is it ‘special’ (story); (2) Show, don’t tell: show (engage) …
Love and Logic
Chinese pronounces eight as ‘Ba’, similar to Eight so Eight Eight (August 8) is Father’s Day. I called home to wish dad a Happy Father’s Day! Normally dad handed the phone to mom quickly, today we chatted. He spent most of time talking about a recent car repair and a fuel system cleaner. I know …