sacha chua :: living an awesome life

Kim Liu wanted to know which books I’d recommend for people who are starting out in the business world. Here are a few books that continue to help me think:

	Love is the Killer App: If you look beyond the occasionally cutesy language, this book has great tips on working with knowledge, network, and compassion. My favourite tips: Read a ton of books, actively think about how to connect other people with ideas, other people, and resources, and exercise your network.
	The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You’ll Ever Need. Also unconventional, but interesting. Key points: There is no plan. Think strengths, not weaknesses. It’s not about you. Persistence trumps talent. Make excellent mistakes. Leave an imprint.
	Work Like You’re Showing Off: The Joy, Jazz, and Kick of Being Better Tomorrow than You Were Today. Because it’s fun, and you can do amazing things.
	First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently. Even if you’re at the bottom of your organizational chart, think like a manager and look for ways to adapt your environment so that you can do your best. Manage yourself by building on your strengths, motivating yourself, developing yourself and people around you, and so on.
	Work Life Balancing: How to Be Wildly Successful in Both… Really!, because it’s important to know it’s possible, and to structure your life so that you grow happily.
	Your money or your life, because financial savvy will help you make the rest of your life better and less stressful.

You might also find Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? interesting.

There are lots of other networking, presentation, technology adoption, storytelling, business, entrepreneurship, and productivity books (among others!) that I often recommend to people.

Hmm. I expected to be able to recommend more (or fewer but clearer ones!), but there haven’t been that many things that jump out at me as books that anyone starting out in a career must read. Even the list above isn’t a must-read list.

What do I think other new hires really, really need to know?

• How to learn
• How to share
• How to practice relentless improvement
• How to find their passion and move into the sweet spot
• How to ask for help and find mentors
• How to create and negotiate opportunities
• How to help other people do amazing things
• How to sort out life so that it supports what you want to do instead of stressing you out

What would you recommend people read or learn?

It was Friday, and I was preparing for a tea party. I didn’t have some of the ingredients I needed to make apple pie. The forecast for the weekend was rain, rain, rain. W- was in crunch mode and would probably be too busy to take the car to the supermarket, I needed more than I could comfortably fit on my bicycle, and I had far too many things scheduled for Friday to walk to the supermarket and back.

So I decided to give GroceryGateway.com a spin, encouraged by the positive tweets I’d seen. It probably took me fifteen minutes to review all the categories I was interested in and select the items. I ordered lots of groceries and set my delivery window to 7:00 – 8:30 AM the next day. I paid for my groceries online as well, although there’s an option to pay by debit card on delivery.

The deliveryman arrived with my two boxes of groceries at 7:30 AM. We completed the transaction and verification in less than five minutes.

Produce is a great way to test quality. The bagged Macintosh apples were slightly bruised, but otherwise in good shape. The Pink Lady apples were in perfect shape. The lemons were bright and shiny, but he asparagus spears were a little dry, with small indentations from a too-tight elastic.

To my relief, the eggs arrived intact.

The rest of the groceries were the same as the ones I regularly buy from the neighborhood No Frills. I was delighted to find steel-cut oats in stock online, as I rarely see them in stores.

The groceries were priced higher than the ones we buy at No Frills. GroceryGateway is run by Longo’s, which positions itself more as a premium supermarket. For example, the GroceryGateway 3 lbs bag of Macintosh apples cost $2.99, but I can get 4 lbs for only $2.49 at No Frills. My groceries cost about $110, which is probably about 10% more than I would have paid at No Frills. Add to that a $9.95 delivery charge (softened by a $5 credit for the first order), and the price of convenience turned out to be around $15, and probably $10 + 15% for future orders. We usually save even more on our groceries by shopping the sales, so the gap would be even bigger.

In terms of time and convenience, it was a good experiment. It took me about 20 minutes for the entire thing, compared to maybe two person-hours if W- and I went shopping, or 1 person-hour if I went on my bicycle. I’d save a bit more time if I bought more groceries in the batch.

I probably won’t use GroceryGateway regularly. I like shopping for groceries with W-, figuring out what to do with what’s on sale. No Frills occasionally doesn’t stock things we like (such as steel-cut oats!), but we’re pretty good with working with what’s available. It’s good to know that a service like GroceryGateway exists, though, just in case we get really busy someday.

Good to experiment!

Links:

• GroceryGateway
• No Frills

Plans from last week:

Work

• [X] Help with re-run for Remote Presentations that Rock
• [X] Branding / social marketing chat with IBM AU/NZ social media marketing folks
• [X] Prepare collaboration presentation for UK workshop
• [X] Finalize UK workshop travel arrangements
• [X] Prepare for trip
• Also: Sat in on two CIO meetings. It’s so awesome – other people think my work is useful and inspiring! =)
• Gave presentation on microblogging using Lotus Connections Profiles. Encouraged information management team to use it as a virtual watercooler.
• Facilitated discussion during presentation of industry business value assessment study
• Participated in a great blog discussion around virtual leadership
• Helped Rawn Shah edit his virtual leadership article for Forbes
• Got David Ing, David Singer, Ted Tritchew, and Robert Terpstra’s advice on my career plans
• Learned that Bernie Michalik found my to-do notation useful
• Mapped what I want to learn
• Had an awesome meeting with the Toronto Public Library – excited!

Relationships

• [X] Explore more recipes
• [  ] Sort out photography
• [X] Host tea party
• [X] Tidy up some more
• Also: Inventoried and organized the freezer
• Met wonderful people
• Helped people work on their businesses
• Supported W-‘s crunch time

Life

• [X] Go for follow-up appointment with dental surgeon
• [X] Recover from wisdom teeth extraction
• Also: Back on normal food, yay!
• Booked massage for next weekend
• Adjusted my envelope system (divided investment fund into emergency, sabbatical, and opportunity fund)
• Ordered a small lean-to greenhouse and other things for an even more awesome life
• Experimented with ordering from GroceryGateway (convenient, okay produce, not happy with the asparagus, will probably go with No Frills most of the time)
• Biked to work, yay!
• Planted parsley and peppers
• Switched over to daylight savings time

Plans for next week

Work

• [  ] Facilitate workshop in Reading
• [  ] Find role models in sales and distribution – for interest interviews
• [  ] Have second career chat with my manager
• [  ] Write personal business commitments and individual development plan =)
• [  ] Share how to blog/share more effectively
• [  ] Meet up with awesome folks in London
• [  ] Prepare presentation for PresentationCamp in Toronto

Relationships

• [  ] Send care package
• [  ] Connect Jeff Muzzerall and Greg Gulyas
• [  ] Keep in touch while in the UK

Life

• [  ] Have proper British food
• [  ] Plant peppers and peas
• [  ] Blog even more
• [  ] Explore podcasting or videocasting or writing briefer notes as a way to get more out there

Real World Strategy wrote of me:

Here is somebody in their mid twenties who has already spent a decade immersed in a world of collaboration and web based networking. As William Gibson said, “The future is already here – it is just unevenly distributed”.

This is interesting, because I’m both leading and following, learning from what’s new and what’s old.

The new: I represent a whole bunch of new ideas we’re still trying to figure out. Many of the things I do helps people imagine the future. Researchers who explore how power users work using our new collaborative tools often interview me (which is great, because I get to find out what they’re working on!). People figuring out virtual leadership look at how I and other people can influence without authority.  My value is not only in the ideas and effort I contribute, but in the questions I ask and the assumptions I help explore.

The old: All that is so small, though, compared to the awesomeness of being in a company where people have been thinking about and working on collaboration for decades. The infrastructure we can build on, the critical mass of talent we have, the way we challenge ourselves to figure out how we can work better and the world can work better—I love that. 

What I identify with the most is this ad:

… except I smile more.

People are teaching me so much. I work on sharing as much of it as possible, and on figuring out how IBM and the world can make the most of the person they are helping me become. I don’t know enough of the organization to make that overall choice yet, but there must be something amazing we can do with the gifts people have given me.

It’ll be a great adventure!

Wednesday turns out to be the perfect day for catching up and practicing relentless improvement. It breaks up the work week into manageable chunks. You have the experience from the first two days, and you have the energy to improve the next two days. I think I’ll make Wednesdays my catch-up-and-kaizen day.

Last Wednesday, I decided to invest time in figuring out how I can get closer to saving time and money through cooking once a month. We’ve comfortably settled into a routine of cooking once a week, which saves us a lot of time and lets us focus during weekdays. What would it take to cook for two weeks, freeing up a weekend? What would it take to prepare for longer?

I emptied our chest freezer and the freezer drawers of our fridge. Then I inventoried the contents, discovering useful things along the way. (It turns out we have three packages of frozen okra, and three and a half packages of frozen shrimp.) I measured the internal dimensions of the different spaces and drew diagrams.

After I put the frozen items back, I reorganized them on paper, and then moved things around to match our new organizational scheme. Packed lunches and large containers go into the chest freezer to take advantage of its regular shape. Breakfasts, desserts (lots of frozen home-made tarts!), bones for stock, and small packages of ingredients go into the freezer drawers because that freezer is easier to search.

I picked up 16 Rubbermaid Take-away containers (in addition to the eight we already had). Standardizing on one storage system is important because it means not having to look for the correct lid. We still have a lot of different storage systems, but I plan to simplify that soon. I also picked up Ziploc zipper freezer bags, which I can use to freeze large portions of soups, sauces, and other things.

I estimate that I can fill the chest freezer to capacity with up to 52 of the Take-away containers, which can be used for individual lunch portions. If I want to further conserve space, I can also freeze larger portions (without rice, for example), cook fresh rice as needed, and assemble the lunches or dinners during the week.

I’m also planning to make cheesecake tarts, lemon tarts, and other varieties, so that I can throw them into our new frozen-desserts drawer and we can enjoy them any time. I may also pick up a bunch of different kinds of apples and make this Saturday an apple-tart-tasting party, as many people have not likely thought about the differences between the apple varieties. It’s hard to compare when you eat them on separate occasions, but I can give people the opportunity to sample many different kinds of apples. <laugh>

Next steps:

• Clear freezer by using up the bulk ingredients
• Collect bulk cooking recipes
• Make meal plan and shopping list
• Experiment with online grocery delivery
• Try cooking for two weeks

I think about relentless improvement, even for the little things in life. Figuring out the little things in life frees me up to work on the big things.