My heartbeat：Echoes In My Head

Composing is all about making decisions, You have a hundred different ways to get there, but you have to choose one. With twelve notes of every possible octave on every instrument, all the chord combinations of every mode, and all the varieties of rhythm and tempo to choose from, there may be thousands of ways. But imagine if the composer's palette included every sound in the natural world: a slamming door, waves lapping, or feet padding across a floor?


It's been a year and I don't know how many months now
Sitting here looking at the photos of what used to be
Our memories, you used to be
The motivation of my life
I don't know how, it just doesn't make any sense to me
B'cause lately baby I have you appearing in my dreams
I thought I was over it
But I guess it's still deep inside of me
They say I'm a heartbreaker
But the fact is I'm actually heartbroken
I tell myself every day every night, one day I'll find the pieces to my broken heart


Forget about the memories
Forget about the times you said you love me
Maybe in time you'll disappear from my mind
I'm sick of tossing and turning at night
With these echoes in my head
With these echoes in my head
Forget about the times we shared
How much I cared
I gotta get around these echoes in my head


Its been a while since the last time that weve seen each other 
Got me thinking bout that time when we were together 
You used to make me laugh, with a silly act 
With your funny voice and that small koala nose of yours
I guess good things werent meant to last 
Because you were by my side 
But now its just all in the past 
All the things that stood between us 
Was more than just love and trust 
I guess youd agree were better off how we are now
But when you tell me all the terrible things 
That are happening in your life 
Something feels weird and its hurting me deep inside 
And it cuts me like a knife


You dont deserve all the things youre going through 
And the more you cry, the more Im dying deep down inside 
Its killing my heartbeat, heartbeat, heartbeat, heartbeat 
Its killing my heartbeat, heartbeat, heartbeat, heartbeat


Embrace your dreams. If you want to be a hero, you need to have dreams.
Victory favours you, but you must grab hold of your destiny and command it.
The measure of a man is what he does with power.
Who we are is but a stepping stone to what we can become...


Thebackground of the 《My heartbeats》from YLAMPRODUCTIONS：


01. AmbitionWritten for Joyce Hon's Fashion Show at Parsons, New York. A very powerful track full of ambition. Perfect for the first track of my debut album. 
02. Class of 2007Released in the year 2007. Written to my fellow Class of 2007 members. This song will remind us of the good days. 7Station, Barn2, Basketball. I still don't understand how I came up with sipping' apple juice, chillin in 7-11. somebody tell me loll 
03. Life, Love, and FaithAn instrumental and chorus written for my first collabo rapper Tonghill. He found me through myspace one day and asked whether it's cool to work together. OF COURSE! It's my honour to have you on my first album and I look forward in more collabos with you. As the title says, 3 verses, Life, Love, and Faith. 
04. Eric Rage (Skit)Tribute to my good friend Dai Dan. For those that remember the night of the recording, It will always stay in my memory. funny ass shit. 
05. FarawayA song dedicated to those who are currently going through a long distance relationship. He/She might not be able to be there right next to you, but love has no boundaries. Keep each other by the heart and STAY STRONG! 
06. Laughing Compilation (Skit)Tribute to my J friends. Miss ya'll and all the good times. For those who are down, depressed, stressed etc. listen to this track and remind yourself how good it is to laugh. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!! WOOHOOOO!!! LOL! 
07. Waking Up On A Good DayWell! this song is actually dedicated to MYSELF! hahahahha it used to be my alarm ringtone. Gotta remind myself of how beautiful this world is. if i spend most of my time in bed sleeping…i'd miss the chance in experiencing alotta awesome stuff. let's all wake up to a good day!!! 
08. Echoes In My HeadHave ya'll ever had the feeling when you think you've gotten over something, but it still haunts you every now and then? 
09. My HeartbeatOne of ma very first masterpieces since I moved to Australia. This song is about when shit happens in life, to yourself, friends, our loved ones, and sometimes you feel there's nothing you can do about it. This is to You-Know-Who-You-Are. GET OVER IT! LOL! 
10. Love AviationThis is dedicated to another You-Know-Who-You-Are. The song describes a situation when you've set a target or destination, you go for it and things just don't turn out the way you expected it to. Stuck in confusion and don't know where to go. If that's you, keep your head up because there's always a way out. I SALUTE YOU! *You-Know-Who-You-Are also tells me to write "to whore and whore lovers alike" 
11. Shine TonightDedicated to all those hardcore clubbers that pretty much live in front of the bar. Listen to the lyrics. Doesn't it sound like an awesome night?! hahahaha. 
12. I Can't Stop Thinkin of YouEchoes In My Head's sister song. My first ever song sung in mandarin. Was it actually a mistake? or was it just meant to be? 
13. Sang Yeon (Skit)Just got my new Blackberry Bold. Playing around with bbm and I receive this. LOL! Tribute to my korean brother. 
14. Only If I Ever Had The Chance (Demo)This song is dedicated to Gem Tang 邓紫棋. I love her. 'nuff said. 
15. To Gem (Demo)One the oldest songs from my vault of songs. She is talented, a music phenomenon, fun, cheerful, hilarious, cute, pretty, beautiful…i can go for the whole day. 
16. Slow Dancing Under The Moonlight X My Heartbeat (Acoutic Live) (feat. Kenny)Props to Kenny Eu for his awesome guitar skills. Only if my guitar skills were as good as you i'd be ruling the world rite now. i know…practise makes perfect. Slow Dancing Under The Moonlight is a song I wrote to perform at my school's Composer's Showcase night. One of the few love songs that i've written compared to all the stupid sad songs i've composed. My Heartbeat Acoustic was just TOO fast. but HEY! who cares we were drunk. *note that i sang "I guess you'd A-BEE we're better off how we are now" lol 
17. Set Them Free (Demo) (Bonus Track)A song I wrote for the Unicef Young Envoys Performance back in 2006. Another old song from the YLAMPRODUCTIONS archives. Proper produced version released in the next few months. Stay Tuned. 
18. Superstar Boy (Demo) (Bonus Track)Recorded this through my laptop mic back in 2007. Before I said to myself…you are the worst rapper alive. 
19. You Are An Angel (Demo) (Bonus Track)Another laptop production from 2007. Cool Edit Pro 2.0 / Adobe Audition 3, the very first music production softwares i ever used. Playing around with the panning functions. Music production is awesome. 

A Day Without Distraction: Lessons Learned from 12 Hrs of Forced Focus

Here are the rules: All work must be done in blocks of at least 30 minutes. If I start editing a paper, for example, I have to spend at least 30 minutes editing. If I need to complete a small task, like handing in a form, I have to spend at least 30 minutes doing small tasks. Crucially, checking email and looking up information online count as small tasks. If I need to check my inbox or grab a quick stat from the web, I have to spend at least 30 minutes dedicated to similarly small diversions.

I followed these rules for one full work day. This post describes why I did it and what I learned.

Continuous Partial Attention

The motivation for my experiment should sound familiar. Over the past half-decade, researchers have been sounding the alarm on the dangers of multitasking. Gloria Mark, for example, a professor at the University of California at Irvine, found that the technology workers she studied would make it, on average, only 11 minutes into a project before being distracted. It then took 25 minutes to return to the task post-distraction.

For some jobs, where responsiveness is crucial, this work style might be necessary. But as an academic, I'm a to-do list creative -- to keep my job, I have to keep up with logistical tasks, but to advance, I need long bouts of focus on hard problems. For a to-do list creative, ignoring the small stuff isn't an option, but living in a state ofcontinuous partial attention (to steal a phrase from Linda Stone) won't cut it either.

The solution to this quandary is well-known by now: batching.

 

Check email only a small number of times per day! Work in big chunks without distraction!

Everyone has heard this suggestion. But almost no one follows it.

This is why I launched my experiment. I wanted to see what would happen if I forcedmyself to batch.

 

Ignoring the small stuff isn't an option, but living in a state of continuous partial attention won't cut it either.

 

 

A Day of Forced Batching

I have a doctors appointment scheduled for 10 a.m., so I decide to focus on a writing project from 8 to 10.

I feel the normal temptation to check my email while writing -- just in case -- but my rules forbid it. Even a glance at my inbox would trigger at least 30 minutes of similar small tasks.

When I arrive at my appointment at 10, I discover I had the wrong time. The appointment is not until 11.

My rules force me to think in blocks of 30 minutes or more, so I decide to spend from 10 to 10:30 contininuing work on my writing project at a nearby library. Then, from 10:30 to 11:00, I do my first small tasks block of the day. I have high hopes during this first small task block that I will efficiently knock off many items from my logistical backlog. Instead, I end up bogged down in my email inbox, trying to sort through who needs what and when.

After my appointment, I head home, go for a run, and make myself lunch.

It's now 1:30 and I'm in a tight spot. My goal for the afternoon is to continue work on an important research problem. To do so, I need to retrieve the latest draft of our write-up from my email. But this will require a small task block of at least 30 minutes, so I have to be careful about how and when I do this.

Even more tricky, I need to meet with my collaborator to help work through some kinks in the research problem. On a normal day, I might send him an email saying, "when can you meet?", and then just keep my inbox open until he responds. My rules, however, forbid this strategy (that is, unless I want to dedicate my entire afternoon to checking my inbox and similar small tasks).

I come up with the following solution:

I convert my commute from my apartment back to campus into a small task block. That is, I will retrieve the write-up draft and check my email right before I leave my apartment. I will think through my emails and how to respond while traveling. Then when I arrive at my office, I'll send off those replies and shut down the small task block.

 

I feel the normal temptation to check my email while writing - just in case - but my rules forbid it.

 

 

To handle my meeting dilemma, I send my collaborator an email that reads: "During the following times this afternoon I'll be working on this  project, if you happen to be free anytime in here, stop by my office,  otherwise tell me some times when we might meet tomorrow and I will get back to you at the end of the day to fix one."  I've now freed myself from needing to keep my inbox open during the afternoon.

From 2 to 5:30 I'm working on my research problem. The rules remove any possibility of distraction -- no matter how brief -- and this seems to improve my focus. "There's a real sense of momentum here," I write in my notes.

At 5:30, I decide to do one final small task block to shut down my day. I treat this like a challenge: how much can I squeeze into one 30-minute block? The time constraint provides a certain urgency to my actions usually lacking at 5:30 in the evening. I end up finishing my work emails for the day, answering some blog reader emails, paying the rent, approving a design concept, sending a message to a pair of old friends, planning the next day, and recording the notes from this experiment.

In the end, the momentum carries me past 6:00 and I end up finishing closer to 6:30. This is later than I normally like to work, but the day ends with a satisfying feeling of accomplishment.

Conclusions

I'll start with the negative aspects of this experiment:

Batching, as it turns out, is hard.

It requires that you plan ahead to make sure you have the material and information needed for focused blocks. It also requires careful communication. Answering emails, for example, is complicated when you need those emails to include all of the information needed for the next actions to be taken. (It's much easier to use email for informal back and forth dialogue.)  Because of this, tackling my inbox during the experiment was surprisingly draining.

In other words, batching requires more work than not batching. This is why, I now understand, most people are quick to abandon their good-natured attempts to enforce more focus in their day: once it becomes non-obvious how to continue, they toss the goal.

But then there are the positives:

Having a clear rule that forbids any distraction during focused work was freeing. I still felt drawn toward diversion, but knowing that acquiescence was not even a possibility reduced its urgency.

On the flip side, the percentage of time spent in a flow state was as large as I've experienced in recent memory. I ended up spending 2.5 hours focused on my writing project and 3.5 hours focused on my research paper. That's six hours, in one day, of focused work with zero interruptions; not even one quick glance at email.

 

Having a clear rule that forbids anydistraction during focused work was freeing.

 

 

At the same time, the careful pre-planning required to satisfy my batching rules increased the efficiency of my small task completion. Even though I dedicated 6 hours in one 10 hour work day to uninterrupted focus, another 1.5 hours to exercise and eating, and another 1 hour to a doctors appointment, I still managed to accomplish an impressive collection of logistical tasks both urgent and non-urgent.

My bottom line:

To do batching right requires the type of strict rules I deployed in my experiment. These rules, as I discovered, will absolutely make your day more difficult. There's no avoiding the reality that there will be times when you have to take convoluted action to solve a problem that could so easily be handled with just a quick bounce over to your inbox.

This is a pain in the ass.

At the same time, however, if you survive the annonyance, there's also no avoiding the reality that your work will be of a much higher quality.

Ultimately, this is the batching trade-off: inconvenience in your daily workflow in exchange for an increased quality of your work.

From my experience writing about productivity, most people will abandon a tactic as soon as it makes their life more difficult. My experience with batching, however, leads me to question whether we need to rethink where we place our emphasis.

 

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What's Your Take?

Have you experimented with forced focus? How did it go?

The Medium Isn’t The Message, People Are.

We are living in an attention economy. As economist Herbert Simon wrote in 1971: “In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients.” The problem is, many of us haven’t yet decided what our attention is worth.

Can just anyone lay claim to your valuable attention? In theory, you would probably say NO. At the same time, if I asked if you’re drowning in messages – emails, twitter DMs, Facebook messages, etc, etc – you would probably say YES.

Somewhere there is a disconnect. Even as we throw up our hands in disgust and declare that it’s all too much, another week brings along a new tool or service that we feel compelled to try. We’re anxious about not having enough attention, yet we continue to eagerly embrace new ways to squander it.

 

Can just anyone lay claim to your valuable attention?

 

 

So how can we find a way to manage this massive communications influx, given that the attention problem is only going to get worse – not better – as new channels come online?

It can actually be quite simple if we can train ourselves ignore the channels, focusing instead on the people we communicate with.

Try dividing the people you communicate with into spheres, like this:

Sphere 1: Core people.
Your essential or core sphere of people are those that you must communicate with. It will always be a very short list. They could be: spouses, children, doctors, or your boss. In other words, they’re life and death people. They will not be clients, no matter how important the client is. Clients come and go, but the core people will not. You should always block time to communicate with them and respond to them – even if it is only to let them know that you are very busy and can only talk briefly or in a short time from now.

Sphere 2: Important people.
The next sphere outside your core is your list of important people. They can be clients, family, close friends, suppliers – anyone you have important dependencies on. After you take care of your core people, you talk to them. Sometime these are the people easiest to overlook, often at their and your own expense.

Sphere 3: People who make life interesting.
Outside the above spheres are contacts that you are independent of, but provide value and meaning to your life. It is good to communicate with them, but not at the expense of core or important people. They could be colleagues who you are working with directly on your current projects, or people in your neighborhood, or teachers in the school that your kids go to. Even the people you buy coffee from every day or the bus driver you see on the way home will fit into this group. You will find people tend to move in and out of this sphere: the teacher who doesn’t teach your child this year will teach them next year, and the colleague you see from time to time may end up joining you on your next project.

Sphere 4: “Nice to have” but not necessary people.
Finally, there is the sphere of people you will communicate with who provide a little value. With social media, there are more and more people who fall into this category. It can be enjoyable spending time exchanging views and information with people in this sphere. They can almost feel like friends. However, if you find you are spending any more time communicating with them than the folks in first three spheres, you need to change things – at least until you feel that you have a grip on the volume of communication you have to deal with.

 

***

Sit down with a piece of paper and draw concentric circles with these four spheres, with “core people” at the center and “nice to haves” in the outer ring. Then, start populating them with the people in your life. You’ll also want to tag each person with the estimated amount of time you spend communicating with them. If you find you are spending more time with the people in the outer spheres and less with the people in the inner spheres, you’ll know you need to re-prioritize how you communicate.

Finally, draw a small circle in the very center. This is the amount of time you spend with yourself – be it thinking, relaxing, learning, or what have you. If you find you spend little, if any time, time there, you might want to consider re-prioritizing there, too.

 

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How Do You Do It?

 

How do you prioritize your responses?

 

Have you experimented with prioritizing around your relationships?

N-Dimensional Thinking: How To Get More Out Of Your Daily To-Dos

In our jobs and in our lives, we often find ourselves facing the same list of things to do: attend the daily meeting, produce the monthly report, update the website, finish the annual reviews. Such repetition can rapidly get stale, leaving us unmotivated, uninspired, and unproductive. Sometimes we are lucky and we can delegate or drop such tasks, but, more often than not, we have to plough through. What can we do about this?

One way to re-energize repetitious tasks is by employing what I call N-dimensional thinking. Look at your current to-do list. It’s like a straight line, filled with tasks. In other words, it's one-dimensional. But what if you transformed each task into something richer? Something that provides value, or something that helps you grow and learn?

Let me show you what I mean. You can start by associating each task with something else – in essence, creating another dimension. The first dimension I recommend you add to your to-do list is Value. Analyze your tasks and associate a value with each of them; it could be a value that they provide to you, your clients, your boss, or other people who are important to you.

Rather than prioritizing your tasks without much thought or based on some other arbitrary criteria – like when someone decided to email you and ask for something, for example – focus on the putting the tasks that provide the most value at the top of your list.

When new tasks come in, you should quickly review your list and gauge what value they provide. If it’s high, perhaps they jump the queue and get done sooner than other tasks on your list. If they provide little value, then they can probably go at the bottom of the list. (Or maybe they shouldn’t be on the list at all.)

 

What if you transformed each task into something richer? Something that provides value, or helps you grow and learn?

 

For example, you might start your day by scanning your inbox to see if there are any new tasks that you need to add to your list. As you assess which tasks should take priority, you might say: The tasks that have to do with current billable work have the most value to me and therefore get the highest priority, followed by those that will result in future billable work.

You will still capture the less valuable tasks that need to get done, but they will go at the bottom of your list, because billable tasks get tackled first. Throughout the day, you may revisit your inbox to see what else came in, again focused on those tasks related to billable work, while those relating to other areas like marketing or networking get lower priority.

By consistently doing this, you will not only be breaking out of your routine (which is good), you will also be maximizing the benefit you provide to yourself and others just by adding this one additional dimension (which is really good).

 

Once you get the hang of that, you can analyze the tasks that you are doing on a regular basis and see how you can transform them with additional dimensions. For example, let’s say you have to draft up a contract for a client project, a rather humdrum task. Applying N-dimensional thinking, you decide to transform this task by increasing its overall efficiency (one new dimension), improving the contract template design (a second dimension), and learning a new application that will add value to your general skill set and resumé (a third dimension).

 

You can analyze the tasks that you are doing on a regular basis and see how you can transform them with additional dimensions.

 

So how does this play out? Instead of using MS Word to draft up the contract like usual, you decide to learn the basics of InDesign, so that you can have more control over the layout. You create a better-looking contract template using InDesign, and also learn how to embed your signature as an image in the document. Now, instead of faxing the document, you can just output it to PDF and email to the client for signature, thus eliminating an annoying and time-consuming step.

In each of these transformations, you have learned new skills, created a document that reflects your branding more powerfully, and reduced the time this same task will take in the future.

As you can see, applying N-dimensional thinking helps you: (1) Focus on completing the most valuable tasks, and (2) learn new skills while executing them. And both of these things lead to a greater sense of satisfaction and accomplishment at the end of your day.

 

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Now It’s Your Turn

What to-do list items are you cycling through regularly?

 

How can you add dimensions to transform it into something more meaningful for you and for others?

Tomorrow's Halloween

Tomorrow's Halloween？It Doesn't Even Feel Like It！


There's one day a year we're allowed to be scared,
Every other day we hide it away
That one day we're allowed to be scared,
Is just another reason to face our fears...

And I've done it...I believe...

All this time I was scared, and even though it came early...I mean Halloween is tomorrow...(ha ha ha - sad joke), it's a super suprise.
Is being alone a huge deal? A lot of people hate it right?
Some people say they like time alone, but I wonder, if they didn't have a choice, would they still like it? Is it just wanting something you don't perhaps have?

I use to be really scared of walking alone. But I promised myself, I would stick to my tasks and stand alone, get the job done and just basically, please myself and not give a damn about the world around me. How it backfire, ha ha, another sad joke. I didn't want to be on my own, I just accepted it. Just at that cross-road, everything changed. Yes, it was me that made the initial change, but everything has fallen into place, how I prayed it for ages, and I'm super happy I accepted all those little dissappointments. Because, now, again, everything has changed....Just the way I like it. 

You see, I get super bored, and I really hate things to be orderly. I hate things to be perfectly, nicely organised. I mean, yes I plan my week, but I scribble it...you know what I mean?

There is a time and place to be fussy, neat and tidy ect. There is even more time to be yourself...If you think about it, it's most of the time really. Nobody likes fake people. Oh ecept fake people, they think they are learning new things....losers...

Someone once told me...."Smart people have terrible handwriting. They come up with ideas faster then they can write..." - what a quote :-)
I still love it...


Well, I'm going to read back on this and see if it makes any sense. But as always, I will not go back and edit it. I'll probably make comments on any mistakes in my next blog. Hopefully though, I will have something better to blog about.

Oh yeh, before I forget, I'm going to a halloween party tomorrow. Yaahooo... Can you believe it, it's the first halloween party I have been to in my life. I am 21 years old! - Now you're convinced I haven't lived enough, "I agree" ;-)


Happy Halloween All!