the purpose of group meeting

The purpose of doing group meeting is not only to inform your colleagues what you have done but also to solicit feedbacks from them.

Growth is a stretching experience

Growth is a stretching experience. You need to constantly challenge your limit!

Areas of knowledge

At least four areas of knowledge are essential to an independent life: health-related, financial, spiritual, and professional.

While keeping the focus on the professional development, you should spend some time on other areas as well.

I could be wrong

Humans are fallible. The idea that I could be wrong will keep you from being overly assertive, and make you always be willing to consider alternative opinions. It is a powerful weapon against the enemy of wisdom, your prejudice.

Mastering multitask requires adroit switching among different mindsets

In the first week of August when I immersed myself into research, I got my passport back from Consulate-General of Brazil in Toronto with my visa to Brazil ready. I didn't give a thought about the Argentina visa until about one week later when it was already too late to apply for it. Many reasons account for the miss of the opportunity, and I think the main reason is that I fail to switch my mindset.

The preparation for Visa application includes filling the forms, booking the ticket and mailing the application package. All of these can be done in half a day if everything is well planed. But I didn't do it because I couldn't switch my thinking to visa application and my feeling to the travel mood. I miss the chance.

Firmly and adroitly switching among different mindsets will allow you to cope with your life more efficiently. Successful switching will make you concentrate on the task on hand. When eating, I need a mind that fully enjoys its smell, its look and its taste. When doing research, I need a mind that is analytical, critical and logical. When dealing with people, I need a mind that is cheerful, emphatic, and willing to seek understanding. The multi-facets of life necessitates a multi-task mind.

Everyone can switch mindset; it is just a matter of time. But swiftly switching is not easy, especially when emotion is involved. Even though reason tells me that it is better to put off the current task and deal with another task, the impulse of finishing the current one makes me reluctant to switch. And that's where I need to practice.

And how to improve? The difficult thing is not to get new task into my mind. It is how to get the old out that is difficult. A buffer time (a minute or two) between two successive tasks to clear the old might help.

Image Credit: http://www.whiteelephantmortgage.com

What to bring when travelling

Here is a list of things I found either very handy or essential to my travel in Brazil, in addition to the list I have before:

• Visa Pin
• Ginger Candy
• Medicine (cold, stomach, Liuwei)
• VC
• Brazillian Portuguese Phrase Book
• Local airplane company information through Lonely Planet Travel Guide
• Sticky note sheets
• Locks
• passport
• Laptop: increasing number of hostels offer wireless access.
• umbrella
• slippers (hostel don't offer slippers)

Being technically independent in research

Being technically independent in research will allow you to act according to your own schedule.

And act fast. Everyone can solve problems, so it is just a matter of who is the first. Examples like Peidong Yang will never fail the motivate you. See what can be done at the same time, what should be done. Plan your research!

how to judge yourself

Whenever your head gets too hot, you need to cool down. Ask yourself: after what you have achieved, so what? Whenever you win awards, score the highest in a test, or accomplished any other personal goals, and then feel great about yourself, ask yourself: Have I made a contribution to knowledge? Have I made a contribution to others? Thinking in this way will keep you away from narcissism, and prevent the thinking on what you get.

The fundamental question "so what" relates to how you judge yourself. I don't have a clear answer now. But think in terms of "Why you do the things you do" is a good way to search your values within and will make sure for what reason I do it. Besides, being able to answering "so what" every now and then will clear out your vanity.

What motivates you

What motivates you?

Paper, fame, money, external expectation, or dreams, intuitions, love? Where is the motivation?

It seems that it should be something great. I don't know the answer now.

Increasing your responsibility

From the talk with uncle: becoming a supervisor requires you to share your knowledge willingly, to be sociable, to be able to motivate others, and consequently your responsibility will increase.

The things that I believe

Whenever someone is trying to ridicule people who believe in god by showing them the inconsistency of the existence of a god, it only proves how ignorant he is. We all have a set of deeply-entrenched beliefs that are unjustifiable. For those who have a religious belief, it is easier for them to know what they believe. But I don't believe in god, and I need to look deep into my heart to know what I believe. Here is a list of them.

I believe that the future is dynamic, that I must do my best to become what I truly want to be, and that I, as an independent man, have the control of my own life.

I believe that happiness is an internal state of mind, that optimism is much better than pessimism, and that a positive mindset is prerequisite for doing anything significant.

I believe that imagination is more important than knowledge and that the possibility of solving a problem should be the focus rather than problems themselves.

I believe in intuition. (Sometimes the best choice is made before I can understand why, and that is when I really need to follow my heart: "Because you didn't come here to make the choice, you've already made it. You're here to try to understand why you made it." -- Matrix, Reloaded.)

I believe that the purpose of competitions is to drive me to strengthen myself, and is not to beat others, and that a good opponent sometimes worths more than a teammate.

Critical Self-assessment 2 -- Love

A girl with the heart of an angel and with dreams; a girl of deep personal conviction to her beliefs and of unmatchable intuition.

...

Let it be. What you can change is yourself, not others. So, let it be.

Critial Self-assessment 2 -- Research

What do you want to know?

In summer, research becomes the sole component of school activities, and for the first time, I taste its intensity: endless possibilities, daunting amount of information to digest and, of course, random excitement. One confusion I had at the beginning stage is how can I possibly do any research if I haven't read all the articles in my field.

The reading is endless. I despair when seeing the number of articles popping up in the search engine. Luckily, one senior member in my group helps me to solve the problem. He simply asked me "what do you want to know?". Even though the field is huge, any project is small, and the knowledge required to kick the project going is small.

This question is an extended version of the more general question: what do you want. I still remember on the first day I met my mentor, he said to me that I will make my life easier if I know what I want. It seemed easy, but in practice, it is not. Now I know why.

All the posts related to the ELWS were deleted.

I apologize for my ignorance of the copyright issue. Sorry again, Dr. Peter Grav.

Thanks for this important lesson.

Maths is a set of logic operations

Maths is a set of logic operations that physicists apply to concepts (abstracted from facts) in order to find out the relationship among them so that they can predict.

Critical Self-assessment 2 -- Health

As usual, the first thing to assess is health. Just recently, I realized that health is a dynamic state. Not getting myself sick doesn't mean what I am doing is good health habit. This simple idea strikes me because it shows how wrong I was. I thought I was in perfect health but I had been actually "preparing" to be sick for a long time. Now since I know what is good habit and what is bad habit, I try hard to live up to good habits. But I do forget, and it happens all the times. I need remind myself every now and then what the good habits are. Here is a list of things I should do, with the one I've forgotten highlighted:

1. Eat vegetables and fruits, organic preferred.
   
2. Drink good water, 3 cups at least.
   
3. Exercise daily/weekly: stretching, walking, running, and weight lifting
   
4. Rest frequently.
5. Relax, especially when getting too excited, force myself to relax through breathing technique.
6. Eat not until I feel stuffed, but eat only till "7 cheng bao".
   

Another thing that comes into my mind about health is the idea of energy level. I felt terrible last week after I concentrated my energy on reading for a few days. My mind just refuses to work. My actual working hour in a day is not long, not even 8 hours. I want to extend the limit, and to do so, I need to constantly monitor my body's condition by developing self-awareness.

Lastly, again, be patient. "Good things don't happen in one day." as my professor teaches me. Eat good food, drink good water, relax well. "You are on your way to go."

Failure is how I learn

In whatever I do, I don't like to fail; I tried very hard to achieve my goal. But failures inevitably come to me. The only way for me to get out of the pessimistic feeling coming with failure is to find the reasons why I fail and then look for a way to prevent similar mistakes. Up to now, I have come through all sorts of failures small and big, small as a loss in a soccer game, big as the loss of a golden medal in National Chemistry Olympiad. All of them have both internal and external causes. But the only constructive way of thinking is to look for the internal cause.

Failures not only come in my professional life, but also in my personal life. And the latter is usually caused by a lack of communication, not only mind-to-mind communication, but also heart-to-heart communication. And the only constructive way out is to improve the quality and level of communication so as to facilitate mutual understanding and hence to prevent future misunderstanding or conflict.

self-observation, a source of knowledge

The focus of science is on nature, on things outside ourselves, and scientists almost always gather information from external sources. As a student majored in science, I used to believe the external word is the only source of information. But gradually I realize another rich source of knowledge; it lies inside myself. Feelings, emotions, personal values, moral principles, and even interests can only obtained through searching within myself. It is the observation of me that gives me all the these knowledge. "Know thyself"!

Summarize to one idea

Summarize a presentation to one idea: one take-home message per presentation. Both listeners and speakers will benefit from this strategy. A listener summarizes two entrepreneurship lectures into two sentences: "Networking to death" and "Your IP-strategy is your business plan", which helps the listener grasp the main idea of the two presentations. On the other hand, the speaker will deliver the information more efficiently and effectively when his/her materials are organized around one center idea.

Summarizing to one idea is also useful in reading a book. Taking notes while reading seems to be a good practice but requires too much time in copying. On contrary, summarizing each paragraph, each section, each chapter, and each book will reduce the amount of words taken down and, at the same time, facilitate the understanding of main ideas in these composition units and form a wholistic view of how one idea relates to another.

Four Factors that Influence Career Choices

Interests, personality, skills, and work values are the four factors that govern one's career choice according to the career counsellor in the career center at UofT. She also suggests that the question I need to ask myself when choosing a career is that WILL MY JOB FULFILL THE REQUIREMENTS DERIVED FROM MY VALUES, MY PERSONALITIES, MY INTERESTS, AND MY SKILLS?

For me, values and personalities have a stronger influence than the rest two. I need a period of time to figure out exactly what my values and personalities are. Luckily, I gained an insightful comments of my personalities by completing the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) test. Here is a list of requirements of a satisfying job based on my personality.

1. The opportunity to be a leader while interacting with a variety of people, on a variety of projects throughout the day.
   
2. A competitive and challenging environment where advancements are available and promotions given on the basis of demonstrated merit and competence.
   
3. Work that lets me solve complex problems in creative yet logical ways, working with other people I respect.
   
4. The opportunity to do long range planning and develop strategies that will perfect or improve the efficiency of systems.
5. An environment where I am respected for my contributions of ideas and actions, and where I am evaluated and compensated in a fair and consistent manner.
6. Projects that let me constantly increase my knowledge and competence and develop original solutions to new problems.