Blink of an eye, and ive been at linkedin for 30 days. Definitely am growing into the job but not as fast as I would have wanted to. But all that isnt important here, its not really a diary anyway.

Guess one thing I could have taken away from this month of working at home. Two actually is.

1)To really not blame yourself over things that are out of control. 

Especially after getting into sales a-proper, I find myself feeling guilt over things that are out of my control. Leads that are not interested, leads that are crappy, leads that just do not have the budget. It ain't their fault for sure, but it actually definitely isn't mine.

However, that then brings me to the fine line between not blaming yourself and never blaming yourself which is a whole different story. A whole different end of the spectrum of that would be the classic psychology textbook case of positive intrinsic and negative extrinsic where a person attributes everything good to himself and everything bad to the environment. So scratch 1 away.

1)To be objective about what is and what is not out of control.

I think its about true honesty to one's self in this case. I believe there are some truly deluded people out there and people who are really so disturbingly conditioned to see different truths. However I think a large majority of us (or rather, people I know, regardless of education level), who just refuse to stop for a moment in their busy life, and reflect a little on the things they have done. In a day, a week, or a month (kind of the purpose of my little reflections). Once brought out of the situation in a reflective mode, I think these clarity come to us very easily, and its about facing these new found clarity and acting on them. I think this is probably all summarized easily by the overly used phrase "deep down inside".

Anyway, I believe in being honest and reflective of one's self, to decide what is and what is not out of control. Its pretty simple really, there are two things that are in control and two things only, how you choose to feel and how you choose to act. Everything else is out of control. And when things ARE in your control and you either overlook, or mess it up, I honestly dont have an answer as to how one should act on it, different boat different strokes. But at least from my view point, you CAN and you SHOULD blame yourself if its within your control, it works for me at least because i'm the type that easily gets comfortable with things.

To put things into perspective in my new job:
-Lousy leads = not my fault
-Leads with low budget = not my fault
- Shitty internet connection = not my fault
- Sleeping late and not having energy the next day = not my... kidding. Definitely my fault.
-Teammates doing really well and causing me to fall behind = not my fault
HOWEVER, on the flipside
-Not really trying a lead because I deemed it lousy = my fault
-Assuming a lead has no money because its a startup = my fault
-Slacking off cause the internet connection is shitty = my fault. Could use it to clear admin that I would need to do some other day. could use it for sales learning.. etc.
-Not finding out or trying to learn from teammates who are doing better = my fault

TLDR (though its too late cause you probably already read): Be honest to yourself. Blame yourself when necessary if its what's needed. DONT blame what isnt your fault, just accept it as what is.

2)I really want to be out of this house once covid is over

The more I stay under this roof, the more I realize that me wanting to move out isn't just a feeling of impulse, neither is it (all)a feeling of immature desires. Not that interested in writing this part out so I;m just going to use point form

-I want freedom, not just freedom to do silly stuff, but freedom to feel the shittiness of living alone, freedom to make living by myself mistakes, freedom to learn and grow without the presence of parents
-I think I will learn to improve my relationship with my parents. Instead of spending time with them because I HAVE to (every single meal during circuit breaker hello), I want to spend time with them because I WANT to, when I miss them, when I care for them while living on my own.
 -Partially pure childish defiance. I don't think its abnormal of them to oppose the last child moving out, but an iron-clad, kevlar-enforced childhood does bring that out of a person.

3)I am really really lucky considering the Covid Situation

This one is pretty self explanatory. I am lucky to have a new job in a great firm right before they stopped hiring cause of covid. I am lucky that none of my friends and families have been infected. I am lucky that the lockdown had no real significant financial difficulty forced upon my close family and friends. I am lucky that I live in a modestly big house where I dont feel like I am in prison. On a more macro scale, I am lucky that I am in Singapore, one of the safest place to be despite the rise in cases amongst foreign workers.

Speaking of being in a nice home, its during this period that I sympathize with maids alot more, to be cooped up in one place 24/7 AND working. argh.



Well and on another note, I did complete my book for april yay. that makes 5 books in 4 months so far. but the bad part is that since i started my job at linkedin, I havent found that much time to read so thats a worrying forecast for May's completion rate.

In April, it was Mark Manson's Everything is fucked.

Not sure if I interpreted it wrongly but the first half of the book is really the type of shit a self-serving depressed person would read and lap up to justify themselves being depressed and to be like "oh yes someone thinks that way too".

But the second half of the book go on to flip it around and made the book amazing in its own right. Very different from his first book which is pretty damn awesome, but definitely a good book in its own right. So im going to type out the learnings for this book quickly, cause i realized i have spent a good twenty minutes plus on this post already.

- The humanity formula: Always treat humanity as an end and not a mean. Supposedly this is the one formula that can end all wars, all religious disagreements etc and can serve to explain all conflicts. I havent really tried to prove it wrong in my head but I do agree that almost all that I can think of could be solved with this. Religions are written based on this law but then twisted when this law is no longer the founding stone of the religion.

- Maturity of human being. The maturity of human being is always wrongly classified by achievements, IQ, EQ, AQ, or other stuff, but I learned and I somewhat agree now is about the three stages of maturity. Feeling.
-Child
A phase where people act solely based on feeling and nothing else. To just do whatever brings them pleasure, be it mentally or physically.
-Adolescent
A phase where people knows what brings them pleasure but act within the boundaries of principles which are supposedly considered good (whether they are societal norms or not). Feeling + Thinking.
-Adult
A phase where the principles of good have truly integrated with the principles of pleasure. where pleasure IS derived from doing the stuff that are considered good. I call this Feenking.

It sounds so simple but yet I dont think I would have categorized it so logically and yet so accurately if I were to do the thinking on my own. And what makes his idea of maturity all the more compelling is that it helps me explain why some people can be smart in certain ways yet act in a certain way and I actually feel alot of people i Know fall into the categories pretty well.

- Not to hope for better, but not to despair either. This one could be abit controversial on first look but I really like the eventual explanation of it. Hoping for better is to put down what IS and to deem it "worse". Hoping for better is the pursuit of happiness, a self defeating process because happiness is a constantly changing notion. AND on top of it, its the depressing classic assumption that drives you to be guilty/sad/angry when you don't TRY to be better, or when you fail to be better.

So the plan is to Not hope for better, and not despair either, but to BE better based on the above mentioned feenking. To achieve a level of maturity that makes you want to be better because it is good, not because you dont like what is or you are unsatisfied with what is.

- Pain is the currency of value. Definitely not saying that we should seek pain, because pain for the sake of pain, is just pure stupidity. Even if you are a sadomasochist where pain brings you pleasure, then.... that makes you a child (see above). Ok I digressed, pain doesnt give value. But value is measured by pain.

Something obtained without any sort of pain loses its subjective value. Sure, a million dollars will still be a million dollars, but if someone just threw it in my face, it will bring me pleasure for a while, but It would lose its meaning found from the journey of obtaining it. Probably how i remembered some statistics that dont know how many percent of lottery winners end up bankrupt, or poor again.

Last but not least. The pursuit of having no pain in life is the wrong way to go about it, cause its the same as the pursuit of happiness. Different people have different pains, the pursuit of no pain is just a never ending journey of self defeating. Especially when you are bound to fail at times and you feel the guilt/anger/sadness of not achieving something unachievable. Instead of seeking no pain, seek the pain that comes with meaning. Choosing our pains give the pain meaning, and when pain has meaning to it, the pain makes us antifragile. It makes us stronger with more of it with the main difference being that there is meaning to it.



Whoa thats alot to absorb I know. I still find myself staring at these chunks, written on my whiteboard and trying to absorb it bit by bit. I agree with a large portion of it, but I cant say I totally agree with everything until I really internalize it all. Great read nonetheless