Thinking about the meaning of life, God, religion, right and wrong, the universe, and everything, many questions to come to mind. But at a personal, fundamental level, it all boils down to three questions:

1. Why am I here?
2. Where do I need to go?
3. And how do I get there?

Most people focus on the first question: “why am I here?” They want their lives to have a purpose, or they believe they lives do have a purpose and they sincerely wish to find out what it is. Some have already come to terms with the first question, and at a very general level, they believe we are here to do something, or to achieve some objective – be it enlightenment, helping humanity, glorifying a supreme being, or just enjoying it while it lasts. For those, the focus is then on the second question: “where do I need to go?” In other words, while they have some believes or understanding about the general reason of why they are here, they want to know more specifically what it is that they need to achieve. Enlightenment – at what level? Helping humanity – to what extent? Glorifying a supreme being – to what degree? Enjoying it while it lasts – how much?

But I personally believe that if there was just one question the mattered, one question to which the answer would lead to all the other answers, the question would be the third one: “how do I get there?” In the process of getting there, I hope to understand why I am here. And once I get there, I hope to see where it is I was going. It’s the journey that makes up the difficult part, and is the secret to answering all the questions that we may have.

Welcome to Our 21st Century!

Our Communication-Wireless
Our Phones-Cordless
Our Cooking-Fireless
Our Food-Fatless
Our Sweets-Sugarless
Our Labor-Effortless
Our Relations-Fruitless
Our Attitude-Careless
Our Feelings-Heartless
Our Politics-Shameless
Our Education-Worthless
Our Mistakes-Countless
Our Arguments-Baseless
Our Boss-Brainless
Our Jobs-Thankless
Our Needs-Endless
Our Situation-Hopeless
Our Salaries-Less&less

I don’t know who the original author is .. I saw this posted on Facebook — wisdom from Social Media.

CNN Money has an excellent articles where they interview 22 people from political leaders, company executives, investors, entrepreneurs, and even a chef, asking them to share the best advice they ever got. Below is a summary of their answers:

• “Keep it Simple” – Tiger Woods
• “Show, don’t tell” – Jim Sinegal
• “Do what you love” – Mort Zuckerman
• “Empower a subordinate” – Lloyd Blankfein
• “Push beyond your comfort zone” – Mohamed El-Erian
• “Ignore conventional wisdom” – David Axelrod
• “Trust your instincts” – Tory Burch
• “Read everything” – Jim Rogers
• “Be effective, not popular” – Scott Boras
• “Use failure to motivate yourself” – Mika Brzezinski
• “Focus on performance, not power” – Colin Powell
• “Take advice from smart people” – Shai Agassi
• “Make an impression” – Sukhinder Singh Cassidy
• “Hire a coach” – Eric Schmidt
• “Set realistic goals” – Meredith Whitney
• “Listen” – Lauren Zalaznick
• “Don’t talk shop” – Julian Robertson
• “Treat it like it’s yours” – Thomas Keller
• “Underpromise and overdeliver” – Robin Li
• “Don’t pursue titles and dollars” – Miles White
• “Self-doubt is normal” – Aaron Patzer
• “Be nice to people” – Niklas Savander

My favourite three from the list are “take advice from smart people”, “Keep it Simple”, and “Show, don’t tell.” Each of these three advices I have come to experience as being true wisdom and highly effective in a diversity of situations.

To read more about these advice, the context, and where they came from, see the original article: Best advice I ever got.

Drinking my medium roast coffee with sugar and cream and eating my uber expensive organic (or not?) blueberry muffin at Just Us Cafe on Barrinton Street. Editing my paper for a big conference, minding my own business, not bothering anyone.

- Tony?

I think I just heard someone calling my name. Maybe I imagined it.

- Are you Tony?

- Yes .. ?

- Hi. I’m Craig. Nice to meet you.

- Nice to meet you too.

The man goes to put some sugar and cream in his coffee. I’m puzzled. Sure I’m bad with names. Sure I’m bad with faces. Sure I met him somewhere, he remembed me, I didn’t remember him. But, what was that “nice to meet you” business all about?

He takes a seat at my table. Silence. Maybe I should say something..

- How is it going?

- Not too bad. How are you?

- Good.

- Have you been in business for long?

- Yep. About 2 years.

- How is Greg?

- Who is Greg?

- You are Tony, right?

- Yes.

- Tony from the insurance?

- What insurance?

Turns out he was meeting another Tony at the same time at the same place. Needless to say, he never met Tony before. Apparently, I just looked like someone who might be called Tony.

The second heavy snowfall of the week on Friday night, November 21, 2008, as well as the following Saturday resulted in 25 to 35cm of snow on the ground. Some areas were hit harder than others. Add to that the drifting snow effect that resulted from strong winds blowing countless tiny snow flakes from one side of the street to the other, and you end up with differences in snow hight in excess of 10cm between houses on one side of a street an another.

Guess on which side of the street was my house?

Yep, some areas of my drive way had an estimated 50cm of snow. The first photo shows the pile of snow in front of my windows after shoveling the snow only from the entrance of the house. The second photo, taken right after the first, show the view from door. This photo shows on the right side the pile up of snow that I had between the two cars.

Luckily, clearing the drive way ended up a collaborative effort of 5 people over 2 days. My good neighbour John had a snow blower and cleared the front part of the drive way for us. My wife and I cleared the rest while our little boy was cheering us up. But that wasn’t the end of it. The street snow removal didn’t happen until about 3am that night and on Sunday morning we walk up to a wall of snow blocking our drive way. My good neighbour Peter from across the street decided to “borrow some snow,” as he phrased it, moving it from my drive way to his side of the street where there was more space to dump the snow.

Many thanks to John and Peter for all their help since we moved to Timberlea, and especially for this past weekend.

During my first real off-campus consulting job, my client asked me a simple questions, “are you enjoying working on this project?” My answer was less simple:

I wouldn’t do for money what I wouldn’t do for free.

Ever before and ever since, this principle has been my guiding principle in all that I do for money. I wouldn’t take on a project if it wasn’t interesting enough that I wouldn’t mind doing it for free. I follow this principle in my consulting work, in my employment, and in my volunteering work. But only in the latest that I actually do it for free.

This principle is about loving what you do and enjoying it beyond the material reward. It is about contributing to the project and wanting it to succeed because it is interesting and valuable, not because there is a pay cheque waiting for you. And it is about selecting projects that provide you with additional benefits and rejecting projects of limited personal and professional value.

This principle does not imply in any way that one should work on the project for free. There are enough interesting projects in the world that are also worth money. Money is an important element in our everyday life and at least some of the projects one works on must have a material payout. In that sense, this principle encourages you to seek financial return for your contributions while freeing you from limiting your contributions to the exact amount of the payment. For example, you accept a project that involves developing a software component for a client. Say you have a contract with the client to pay you $2,000 for the project based on your estimate of 20 hours of work. After working on the program for 15 hours, you realize that you will not be able to complete the project to your liking during the remaining 20 hours. At this point, you have a choice to make: contribute extra hours and complete the project even though you will not be paid for the additional hours, or do less (though still within the contract specification) so you only use up the remaining 5 hours. If you followed the principle “Don’t Do For Money What You Wouldn’t Do For Free”, then this project would bring more value to you than the monetary amount. Consequently, you would choose to put extra hours, perfect the deliverable for the client, gain the added satisfaction, and build a reputation for exceeding the requirements.

As the example above illustrates, selecting tasks that are interesting, challenging, and provide a learning experience enables you to succeed in your work. You are more likely to succeed in this case because you have more freedom within the time and budgetary constraints imposed by the client. You are more likely to succeed because your gain from project – new experience, new skill, expanded portfolio, foot-in-the-door with client, new connections, etc … – makes this project a win-win situation whether you get paid for all of your effort or not.

Darkness of the day

and brightness of the night

Fairy tales of truth

of the horseless knight

Sleeping before noon

waking by midnight

Dreaming of the life

sleeping in the light

Silence lost in screams

of this peaceful fight

– Tony Abou-Assaleh, May 22, 2008, Halifax, NS.

People often ask me, what does the hand in my avatar mean? Here are 3 interpretations, feel free to send me others:

1. A picture of an alien
2. My hand before the operation
3. It represent the suffering of human kind and our inevitable salvation; or, more elaborately,
4. The 3 turned down finger show how most of the world is dying and the 2 fingers on each side show how separate we are in the wold and they point away form each other showing how we are all on the wrong path/direction. The hand having 6 fingers is about how the world is full of freaks and how pollution and our lives are causing birth defects and DNA problems.

Thanks to Stephen for suggesting some of the interpretations during a philosophical conversation.

The first incarnation of this articled appeared at 451s.com