Lazy Kids --- Relax but Be Fresh

For lazy parents with lazy kids

In boxing, the boxer with 10,00-hour practice beats your lazy son. In MMA (mixed martial arts), the fighter with 10,00-hour practice has no such guarantee. In battle mode, even Nai Khanomtom can be captured alive by the very weak Burmese soldiers. (In kick boxing, 1 on 1, Nai Khanomtom easily beat 10 Burmese boxers in a row).

So, creativity also counts.

Only in silly exams, work-hard folks beat work-less folks.

In good exams and in real life or real battles, trickiness/ creativity pays ... very handsomely.

(1) 1.5 x 1.6 - 1.78 678 = ....

(2) How many golf courses in China? Guesstimate.

Small Knowledge and Sophisticated Goals(a phrase from Peter Small's writings)

Your English is lame, your level is something like, "My father is U Hla, He's about 40 years old. He is kind and helpful. He works hard for our family."

And you know a few silly individual sentences like, "This is the House that Jack built," etc.

Some of your school mates have even better English.

You refuse to spend less time on FUN and more time on studying English.

You insist on scoring well on English essays.

Impossible kid?

Software be a lot cheaper, a lot , a lot faster and a lot, a lot ,a lot better. Impossible guy?

This is what happened with English essay.

1. It takes no brain to use "and," "or," "but," "so," "therefore,"? 
2. No brains to use "if," "when," "until," "as long as," "because," "since," etc? 
3. No brains to reformat "This is the House that Jack built" into "Father is the man who provides leadership for us." 
4. No brains to extend "Mather is the woman who provides management for us."

After reading my distinction between "leadership" and "management," now the teacher gets into a dilemma

First, if I did read something originally in English, I deserve 10% more marks AUTOMATICALLY. Second, if, most likely, I got the idea in Myanmar, but translate the idea into English, I deserve 10% more marks AUTOMATICALLY, too.

S/he has no ideas all this come from "This is the House that Jack built."

Now about better, faster, cheaper software! I am too lazy and too fun-loving to think up "original" ideas. But they say a lot of companies have done just that repeatedly. Why not us?

I refuse to learn. I insist on winning. I promise wins. Join me if you can!

"How to Study " by Ron Fry : Book Review

How to Study by Ron Fry, 2005, 6th edition is a wonderful book for study techniques. The section titled "How to Read Technical Text" is particularly excellent.

Reading Purposes

1. You may be reading to grasp a certain message.
2. You may want to answer a specific question.
3. You may be reading to evaluate what you are reading.
4. You may be trying to find important details.
5. You are only interested in applying what you are reading to your task at hand.

Technical Text Reading

Concentrate on:

1. Definitions, terms, vocabulary. They are the foundations.
2. Examples. They help you consolidate your understanding.
3. Visuals. They save you a lot of work. A picture is often worth more than a thousand words.
4. Relationships e.g. classifications, contrasts, cause and effects, etc.

Tie up often. Pause and  stop to check and to solidify your understanding.

Review and solidify often, especially with definitions, examples, formulas.

"How to Win at College"

"How to Win at College," by Cal Newport, 2005, is full of useful and practical tips for students. Here I share tips on Time Management, When to Quit and Memory.

Time management

1. Block out obligations.
2. Assign hour-long blocks to specific projects.
3. Set aside at least one block for slack and emergencies.
4. When knocked off your schedule, re-organize your blocks.
5. Time blocking is more effective than daily todo lists.

When to quit

Define "Productive" as efficiently accomplishable and in a reasonable amount of time.

If you're sure you won't be able to solve it without outside/extra information/help,

or if you can't specify a time frame within which you will be able to solve it,

or if you've put in a long time but you are still unable to finish it off,

then, you should give up.

Memory

1. Quiz and Recall : Make yourself recall specific information.
2. While reviewing or reading, jot down your recall questions.
3. Then, quiz.
4. Then, articulate with emotions, using multi-senses etc.

This Quiz and Recall technique has the same effect as TDD (Test-Driven Development) or TFD (Test-First Development) in software development. You are very clear about your objectives and you are also very clear about whether you've made it or not.

"How to Be a High School Superstar" : Play Some Politics

"How to Be a High School Superstar," by Cal Newport, 2010, is a wonderful book.

I am surprised to find that this book discusses politics unwittingly. These superstars know how to play politics at a premature age!

Step 1: Cut back

Have a stop-work point e.g. In my Graduate school, I stopped all forms of study at 4:00 p.m sharp.
Reduce your study time so that you get more time for other steps below, for instance.

Step 2: Explore

1. Experience interesting stuffs: people, places, events, especially. communities that are well-known but little-understood and that still have open roles.
2. Deconstruct a success path.
3. Pursue something hard to mentally simulate, but not that hard to execute. By the way "Parkinson Rule," Book 3, said this a lot better.
4. Have patience if you can't have faith. Don't think, just believe you'll have it.

Step 3: Focus

Review and reduce your goal list to just 1 or 2 "deep interests."
Litmus test: Does that excite you on a weekend morning?

Step 4: Execute

1. In your chosen community, pay your dues first, get political buy-in first.
2. Get good: Give up your assumptions, learn from the successful. Immerse.
3. Do what the Community Elders recommend/suggest/offer. Or just add a tiny bit of the new in something already existing.
4. Sequence your objectives in terms of achievability. "Underdog Advantage" said this better in many ways.

  

Role of Good Habits in Learning English, Maths and Software Business

Can I learn software business the way my son has learned his English and the way I did my Maths?

Why not?

The Way My Son Learned English

In his first year in Singapore, he was very lonely. I was at home in his sight all the time but busy and absorbed in my programming tasks. No friends, no siblings, not even another Myanmar near us.

We relieved his loneliness with books.

One book is about 10 pages, 1 page is about 1 picture and 1 or 2 words. The story makes sense even without words. Like Bee Smart, "Bee Happy" etc. After a few weeks, he got to Nate the Great, Cam Jensen etc.

There were no grammar, no vocab, no phonetics teaching. No idiom, no teaching, no discussion, no Q and A, either.

Maybe he showed us what he liked, he retold some stories to us.

After 1 or 2 years, he got to "The Red Badge of Courage," "The Burmese Harp," Roald Dahl etc.

After 1 or 2 years, he got to Sun Tzu at Gettysburg,  Judo Strategy, "Psycho-Cybernetics," Paul Krugman, David Brooks, The Ethics of Belief,  "Calculus Demystified," "Python for Beginners," "jQuery Animation Techniques," and a few other technical books.

He can read whatever he needs to read.

Now we don't bother what he's reading, except that I quote the first English quote I learned by heart, "At the touch of love, everyone becomes a poet -- Plato," and tell him he'll like Shakespeare's sonnets and Keats's odes. He's going to be a poet very soon like every teen boy! (I wish him luck.)

The Way I Did Maths

I read Maths like we usually read newspapers.

1. If I understand something, fine. If I don't, forget it.
2. If a chapter looks very complicated, forget it.
3. If an explanation, or an example looks very complicated, forget it.
4. If an exercise looks tough, read the key.
5. If the key looks tough, forget it.

It's a lot like shopping every day with a small amount of cash. If I can buy, buy. If it's out of my range, forget it. When the price comes down, buy.

Silly?Childish? Irresponsible?

1. Tell that to Aristotle, who extols the virtues of daily actions and good habits.
2. Tell that to Warren Buffet.
3. Tell that to InGenius 's author. What I was doing was what she calls "Expedition." I was touring and shopping the Maths land.

In most life-changing exams in my days, my Math score averaged around 99 . No homework, no tuition, no extra class, a lot of football, a lot of hormone-driven touring, a lot of fooling around, and so on.

This shopping expedition method may not work for every situation ... Horses for courses ...

But if you are over-working, working less may be the cure. If you lack routine and daily exposure, structure may be the answer.

And good habits are foundations of every good maths, good English, good software, good business.

How to Be Lucky in Your Study

A few weeks back, I seemed to be in a winning streak; all my programming projects got done without any major glitch. I was not that lucky with programming before, and thus I happened to become more self-aware: I kept asking, "What's happening? What was I thinking? What belief underlay this action of mine?" etc.

The following is a list of my thoughts that I managed to gather in those luck breaks:

1. "It doesn't matter." Here I'm dismissing a failure on my part, instead of feeling guilty or shameful or desperate. Then, I found that it really did not matter because I could find a work-around or I found I could solve it later or I found I didn't have to solve it at all.
2. "There's time, I'll learn it tomorrow."
3. "There must be a better book or approach, I'll find it soon."
4. "I'll do it my way, I'll invent, conjure up, cook up some funny solution that however works!"
5.  "There's nothing in the books or on Internet for this problem. It's for me to fill this gap in human knowledge. Since I'm first, whatever I do is automatically better than Zero/Nil/Zilch etc."
6. "I cannot solve this. But no one has solved it either. So no one has advantage over me."
7. "This is a wrong problem to solve. Anyone who tries to solve this will get bogged down, tied down, and suffer."
8. "I have no clue. I'll bluff my best and move on."
9. "I have no clue. I even don't know how to bluff. I will switch my brains and do blind, purely random variations."
10. "I'll give up and move onto what works. Will import what works."

One size doesn't fit all, of course. Such thoughts may not even work for me in a different context.

Yet the results, I noticed, were so good that I must remember to give them a try any time I encounter a hard nut to crack.

e-learning in Singapore : OpenlySolved and NotesAcademy

I'm recommending the two websites from Singapore. I like them for their spirit of generosity and public service.

OpenlySolved

The following is the direct quote from the OpenlySolved website.

OpenlySolved is a digital library of living documents (living documents are documents that are continuouslybeing edited and refined) containing fully-worked solutions to problems found in commonly used mathematics textbooks in Singapore  ...

Conventional textbooks typically provide only the final answers to the problems. While these answers are useful for the better students, who can use them for verifying that their own answer is correct, they are not helpful for the weaker students who may not even know how to begin solving some of the questions. These students need help learning mathematics on their own, and what is useful is the detailed solution process, not merely the final answer. This is what the solutions in OpenlySolved provide - the detailed steps involved in solving each problem - not merely the final answer - all at no cost. Register (for free) to access the solutions and to discuss the topics.

OpenlySolved is also a community of people that use textbooks. It is hoped that the members of this community will get together in the forum to discuss the solutions, highlight any errors in the textbook, and help one another learn. Although some initial solutions have been provided, it is hoped that the community will solve the remaining questions, and make the solutions available to all the other members ...

Lee Chu Keong, Founder,OpenlySolved

P.S. Who am I? I am a lecturer at the Nanyang Technological University. I am grateful for what I make through teaching, speaking and training. It is enough.
 

NotesAcademy

The following is the direct quote from the NotesAcademy website.

"NotesAcademy is an online platform for students to share their studying material, techniques and tricks with one another. Everything on the website is available to anyone completely free of charge"

"Our mission is to facilitate sharing, collaboration and cooperation amongst students, in order to allow students around the world to excel and realise their full potential."
 

The following nine subjects are available currently: 

• English
• Mathematics
• Chemistry
• Physics
• Biology
• Social Studies
• History
• Geography
• Literature

I like both of them. I wish both huge success immediately.

Cheat Sheets | Write Your Own

I find it fun writing cheat-sheets. They have stood me in good stead throughout my school days from high school to uni. When I became a teacher and later a tuition teacher, my cheat sheets were popular with the students. My cheat sheets got me good jobs at interviews too.

I have shown my crib-writing skills in many posts in this blog. e.g. study skills summaries.

If you believe cheat sheets are good for only school boys and job-seekers, think again. Here, I give just a few hints:

1. "Nothing is more practical than a good theory"
2. Economists, policy makers, scientists, researchers, Systems
   Architects, anyone who has to do with abstraction, need them. Actually the term "mental model" is another word for "cheat sheet".
3. IBM, Cisco, Honeywell, P&G CEOs, Japanese Prime Ministers, Marine Corps officers, Mc Kinsey partners, managers, anyone who needs to lead a decentralized organization, need them. Quite often, the cheat sheets are even further distilled into "mantras," and slogans.
4. Most importantly, the cheat sheets show you the gaps in your thinking.
5. They also help you find connections, linking this to that.

If you don't write your own cheat sheets, you just rob yourself of a good opportunity to train your mind. Write your very own sheets. Don't rely on others' sheets.