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 …
Category Archives: Inspiration
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) …
Be Fair
Have you had these experiences…You went along with friends’ choice though you didn’t feel like so and later regretted? or you kept your mouth shout in the meeting though you disagreed? People want to be liked yet ‘over-bending’ ourselves make us feel anxious, fake, or weak…What shall we do? I observe well-respected colleagues…they know what …
It’s Working
At the end of April, my boss shared with me a colleague’s comments that my email is too long and difficult to understand due to a blend of styles/ info. I decided to work on it… I read articles and class notes about email writing tips and asked my roommate who is a strong email …