How to Improve Decision Making Skill

My friend asked me whether I have any advice on how to improve decision-making skill. And I started asking myself these:

How good am I in making decisions? Had I been making good decisions in the past? 

One word stared straight at me. FAILURES.

Failures = Bad Decisions. There have been many big failures in my life. It took me a long while to recuperate - mentally and emotionally.

But I had a better equation now. Failures = Decision to Learn = Courage to make mistakes. Yes, I have chosen at many times to learn the hard lessons from the bumpy roads in my life.

I had made decision in my past to learn the lessons from life. But now, I have made a decision to win and to love. So my friend's question came just right on time as I also need to improve my decision making skills.

Here are a few decision making strategies that I feel can help.

1. OOC/EMR Decision Making Process from Anthony Robbins

I never quite get down to try this decision making process. But in terms of making big and important decisions, I think it is good to go through this process.

2. From the book "Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell. 

I am not advocating to make decision in a blink - the power of thinking without thinking, the first two seconds decision making or the gut feeling. But this gives us a very good perspective. Sometimes, we already have made a decision in a blink. But we somehow tell ourselves we need more data. Perhaps, it is really good to trust our gut feelings. Perhaps not - it really depends on our level of mastery and the circumstances.

What really stands out for me in "Blink" is a study done on married couples, where they videotaped their conversations. From there, they used the different criteria to predict whether the couple would divorce in years to come. There are certainly a lot of things that can make or break a marriage, but the result was astonishing. It just came down to one criteria - whether the couples have contempt for each other.

My point is there are massive data and thousands of criteria for us to make decision, but usually the key important criteria is just a handful. And that's what we need to focus on. The rest is just noises and are not really important.

I used to break off with a guy because we just seem not able to get together well. Then, I asked both of us to envision how our old age will look like. I envision an old man and old woman lovingly holding hands walking together. He envision an old man alone, sitting on a chair, being at peace. That tells a lot about his value system and my value system in terms of partnership in life. Neither is right or wrong, but to be together, our values system has to align with each other.

3. Is it Love or is it Fear?

From A Course In Miracles and Return to Love (Mariane Williamson), I learn that a lot of things we do and decision we make, either we are driven by love or driven by fear.

Why do we not do the work we love?
Why do we stop from taking that action which will bring good change to our life?
Why do we stop going to the gym, eating healthy food and getting enough sleep?

All I am saying is use LOVE to make the decision instead of fear, and as Paulo Coelho put it, once we make the decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.

Love itself is a decision. We make decision to love ourselves and others, to be happy, to heal and be healed, to change.

Fear is the darkness. Love is the light. We do not get to the light through endless investigation of the darkness. The only way to the light is through entering the light. (From A Return To Love)

Albert Einstein famously proclaimed "No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it". It means that if we are to make a decision of a problem solving at the same state when we created the problem in the first place, we will never be making a good decision. When we create the problem, we are in the darkness or in the fear. Thus, we need to go to light and the love to make the decision on how to solve it.

So, let's our decision-making to be driven by love, instead of fear.

Sense of urgency - a critical asset in career and life

On the fateful day of 25 January 1990, Avianca Flight 52 crashed into Long Island, New York after ran out of fuel, killing 73 of the 158 people on board. The plane was put on hold from landing by Air Traffic Control several times on its way to New York due to bad weather. After on hold for more than one and a half hour, the crew asked for "priority" landing, which at their critical level of fuel shortage, they should have declared an emergency. The delays, a failed landing attempt at the about 10 minutes from the crash, and communication failure between the crew and air traffic controllers; all these caused the disaster where we all have so much to learn from.

The Avianca Flight 52 is a story of catastrophic result due to poor sense of urgency. There are several things we would find ourselves asking:

Why the crew failed to use the word "fuel emergency" to declare the extreme seriousness of their situation instead of asking for "priority landing"?

Shouldn't the sound of fear and urgency in the pilot and co-pilot's voices have been enough to show to the air controllers they are facing an emergency despite the culture and language barriers, had it been there?

Shouldn't the crew be more forceful and insist on being given immediate landing when they were redirected elsewhere, such as using some forceful words like "NOW" and "We can NO LONGER WAIT"?

A true sense of urgency is an exceptionally important asset for one to become successful in career and life. A true sense of urgency is not about being impatient on everything; it is not about rushing around energetically, running from meeting to meeting and screaming at people to execute. No; that is a false sense of urgency.

True urgency, according to John Kotter, a famous author, focuses on critical issues, which is needed now, not eventually, not when it fits easily into a schedule. True urgency is driven by a deep determination to win, not anxiety about losing. Now means making real progress every single day, not leaving ourselves with a heart-attack-producing task of running one thousand miles in the last week of the race.

With an attitude of true urgency, you try to accomplish something important each day, never leaving yourself with a heart-attack-producing task of running one thousand miles in the last week of the race. Critically important means challenges that are central to success or survival, winning or losing. A sense of urgency is not an attitude that I must have the project team meeting today, but that the meeting must accomplish something important today.

I still have a lot to learn on having a real sense of urgency, because I have always been a procrastinator on a lot of things. But slowly, I am improving; starting by doing the right thing and planning ahead. (Actually, to be honest, it is largely driven by working with a bunch of people with super sense of urgency. Haha....Ahem....).

In my previous blog post, I also mentioned that the lack of urgency caused an innocent girl to die of abuse because no one responded to the situations before it got critical. In Avianca Flight 52, it caused the death of 73 people. Although, not all things are matters of life and death, but I am sure we have a lot of things to learn from the past disasters caused by simple lack of urgency.

A week ago, I was absent from a special occasion; a wedding dinner of a wonderful couple, whom I personally get to know both of them really well. Earlier in the week, I made plan to work with my co-worker (also my partner) on the same weekend as the wedding dinner. My co-worker was working with me on part-time basis so the only available full days for us to work together is only during weekends and holidays. I had casually suggested to her that we need to work on certain outstanding issues, which seems quite important but not so urgent. She said she was busy but she might be free on coming weekend. I thought to myself then "I have a wedding dinner to attend on the same weekend" , but I did not say anything about that to her. Few days later, she confirmed she can meet on the weekend.

I know it will be marvelous for us we work together full day on the weekend because we can really make good progress with one whole day without interruptions. Unfortunately, this also means I could not go to the wedding dinner. So, I made a choice; to work on something that are important to me but relatively not so urgent; not because I have to but because I want to make good better progress in my work and maybe have the rest of following week free to do other things.! In fact, on that day, we worked from 1 p.m. until 6 a.m. the next day, on something that was totally not urgent! But we really did achieve something important because we have completed what we set up to do, and we are satisfied to know that we might be able to use our new-found knowledge anytime in the future.

So, if anyone of my friends ask me now or in the future why I do not show up at certain occasions, my general answer will be:
There are always a lot of choices we can make in our life. It is up to individuals to evaluate the priority and urgency of any of their choices. Since I want to be a business owner, having a sense of urgency in my work is very critical now.

I believe a sense of urgency is more than making the right choices, it has to be synchronized with our thoughts, feelings and actions; our attitude altogether. It should not only be used in work, but also in our everyday life. It is not rushing through things like I used to do last time; it is doing important things NOW instead of LATER.

I’m a home-based consultant

After reading Milena Thomas post “I’m Staying Home From Now On. Will you Still Respect Me Tomorrow?”, I am tempted to write about my own stay-at-home experience.

I have “stayed at home” for almost 4 months now since I left my last company. I feel I really deserve this break since I have been working non-stop for almost 9 years except for some small vacations each year, which are usually shorter than 5 days. I am grateful to Jeffrey for making this experience possible for me.

You might imagine me lazing around. I hate to break your imagination but I have to tell you I am not. It is just like Dogbert’s saying: “I’m not unemployed, I’m a consultant.” So you see, I am training myself to be a consultant!

Why? First of all, being a consultant requires one to be organized and have great time management skills. It requires me to plan my day and do the things I need to do for the day. Here, I am practicing these skills to perfection each day. Practice does make perfect and after four months, I think I have graduated. So, I will be moving on to the next level. ( I will talk about this in later post)

Of course, I have gone through problems and overcome them.

Sometimes, I feel good because I have all the times in the world to do things and that is usually in the morning. At night, I feel that “time really flies” and I usually do not finish what I set to do for the day. Sometimes, I do not even wake up until afternoon due to my “late” nights (I really mean wee hours in the morning). I really like staying up late.

Sometimes I can be very relaxed. Other times, I can be quite agitated because I am afraid I will turn into a lazy bum and enjoy being that.

Staying-at-home is not hard and it is not easy either. In fact, I find it to be harder than working because it requires much more discipline and “keeping to the flow”. I can be washing the bathroom, cooking, blogging, reading books, doing laundry, reading online news, going to gym - all in one day and keeping the flow going. It is most probably not in one day because I have all “the motivation” to take things very slowly.

I know I should focus on fewer activities than that, but I am adamant that even though I am not working, that does not mean I cannot learn new things, keep up-to-date to what is happening, and improving my knowledge.

In Chinese saying, there are "big woman" and “small woman”. “Big woman” is someone capable, strong, and independent. She is the type that can either put guys off because she is too smart and powerful or she can get a lot of respect for being assertive and successful in the place prevalently dominated by male. And "small woman" is someone who whines and feeds the ego of guys, with guys taking care of her and being pampered. “Small woman” also stay at the “castle”, taking care of it and the family while the man fight the outside world. The man, who "bring home the bacon" also expected to be cared tenderly by the “small woman”. That is where the “small woman” cooks the bacon, feed the man and show tender-loving care.

I used to focus my energy so much in being a big woman, until I totally feel out of the planet when doing housework, cooking and so on. I even have problem keeping my desk tidy. Jeffrey gave me a sound advice – if you want to be a great big woman, you need to be a damn good small woman first. I am true-blue about this. If I hold a prominent position in a company and managing a large team of people, what pride do I have if I cannot even take care of my children, my husband and our home? Yes, I can hire maid, but I cannot be fully dependant on her.

So, I aspire to be both - small and big woman.

I think I am getting near it. I am much better at cooking and keeping the house in order now. And I am still reading and learning new skills every day.

3 principles in doing everything in life

My mentor told me these 3 principles on our first day of training. At that time, I just noted them down and never really give it a serious thought and practice.

Over the time, I saw him repeated this teaching to other people who were lucky enough to have chance to learn things from him. And I witnessed all the successful results when the rules are followed through each execution. On the other hand, I saw how things failed miserably when these rules were not being followed, especially when one missed out a step.

I can say this is the secret to success. Simple rules yet so powerful. It is the difference between people who always deliver on promise no matter what are the circumstances and people who always fail together with a set of reasons for their failures.

Here are the principles. These can be applied to everything you want to do in life, except maybe love.

1. Do homework/preparation

Before we start working on anything, we need to do our homework or make enough preparation. No generals or soldiers are going to go to the war unprepared. This is the same philosophy.

For sales people, preparation may mean studying the list of potential customers, competitors , understanding the markets, etc. It may also include qualification of the customers and coming out with the sales strategies.

For people who are going to travel to the foreign countries or states, it may mean studying the weather, what kind of clothes to prepare, places for visiting or shopping, things to buy and the expected prices, how much money to change to the foreign currency, etc. Also, we probably need to ask friends who had been to the same place on what to take note, especially things to beware of.

I learn this from my own few bad experiences in my recent trip to Beijing. I wish I was more prepared. But I am glad I realized my mistakes and are working for a big change now.

Thus, I think this step is most important but also most omitted by people, usually due to lot of common excuses and habits like procrastination, laziness, wrong priorities , not enough time or too rush. For e.g. , how many times you have gone to poor demo or presentations and wonder why the presenters are not well prepared? Or how many times you read through reports or proposals or resumes submitted to you and find there are still a lot of mistakes which should not be made?

It is important to spend enough times and efforts in doing the homework and ensuring a certain quality of the homework.

2. Be Focus

After we have done the homework, now it is time to start on the real work itself. We must be very focus to execute from start to end.

We must always finish what we started. We cannot quit no matter what. It is important that we do not quit at this stage as psychologically if we do, we may just continue to quit for the next and following tasks. And finally it becomes our habit to quit whenever things go wrong. And things always go wrong. That's why it is necessary for us to make it right.

Of course, not all the things are worth continuing. Sometimes we have to quit also if we know it is not possible for us to make it to the end or deliver the results we want. If we want to quit, the best time to quit is actually before or at the homework stage.

For sales people, focus may mean perseverance in making appointments with customers, doing presentations and following up until they close the deals.

3. Have Backup Plan

Never have one and only plan. Have plan A and plan B. Plan B is the backup. If plan A fail, execute plan B. We may also want to have plan C and plan D depending on the complexity and difficulty of the tasks.

This is also a very important steps but most people never work on this because they do no want the hassle to think of another plan to backup. They put their full bets on their main plan to go right and counting on their lucks, which are very silly.

Since sales is all about making numbers, it is important to plan it by playing around with the numbers. If the sales target is set to be 1 million for that year, make sure we are planning sales pipelines which is much more than that. If our target is to get 10 customers a week, make sure we make appointments with 30 to 50 customers. If product A may not be able to meet the target sales, have product B to start selling as the backup plan.

Let us all follow these 3 principles to ensure we are always winning in everything we do.

He who fails to plan, plans to fail.

Taking a step back to move forward

This beautiful castle seems like a dream to me

First find a dream, then find a plan to achieve the dream. And then, just go all out to execute the plan and persist. One day, the reward will come...........

Two weeks ago, I decided to quit my job to make a swift turn in my career. Yesterday, I was at the junction, deciding which path I wanted to take next. The pressure was overwhelming. After all, this is going to be a great turning point for my career track of 8 years. These days will have impact on my whole career life and even my life, so to speak.

So, I finally decided. Despite being so blurry today until I was dozing off several times during work due to only 3-hours sleep last night, the decision was not hard to make. In fact, I know the answer has been there all the while in my heart. And one great Director from a great company said in my recent interview, I need to "follow my heart". And that's important.

There are few things that this new job is actually a few steps backward for me. Well, thanks to my current boss (even though I seldom appreciate that) , I was given a lot of opportunities in my current company. Sometimes, more than I could handle. But this new job offers me more chance in other area like pre-sales and learning on how to start my own business - which is my ultimate goal.

A great person told me this. I should not be working for other people. I should be my own boss one day. So, do not just look at short-term gain. Do not work for the money. Let the money work for me. After all, another great Director from another great company told me this - I am not being offered just a job, but a career.

Well, for the past couples of weeks, I have met 3 very successful people who definitely know what to say at the right time. It is like the phrases are their trademark or something. And I have to admit, I was enticed entirely, like an ant to the pool of sweet.

However, I got a fair taste of bitterness also. I was said to be a bit wishy-washy for not being bold enough to take the new challenge and trying to play safe by having backup plans. Totally right! Also, I was also given enlightenment not to appear to be so ambitious as sometimes that will work against me. Again, true also.

Well, at the top of the chart of my discouraging list, my current boss make a bet that I would come crawling back to the company to beg for a job after 3 months. Of course, the begging and the crawling part maybe a bit overstating. But the rest is true.

And so, that is me on the verge of some nervous breakdown because everyone try to impart some influences on me. And my futile attempt to please everyone ended up with more burden on my shoulder. Maybe I need to heed the advice from a great mentor - think of myself and my family first. When I am great, I can do a lot more for other people.


Well, so now I am taking a step back to move forward. And I definitely have my eyes set on the future. There will be no backup plans for I will not go back to where I used to be. And definitely, I will get myself busy with my new job even though there are speculation that pre-sales job will be very free. Well, these are roughly going to be my new responsibilities:

1. To manage end to end development of R & D department for testing and improvements of solution.

2. To assist in presales activities for solution for both local and international clients.

3. To manage all project planning and implementation progress to ensure timely and smooth delivery to the clients.

4. responsible for the technical development and designing of solutions.

5. to manage the technical team for Research & Development, implementation and solution delivery for existing and new solutions.

6. To plan and manage visitations to client for a better understanding of the client's requirement for solutions.

7. Willing to learn and accept new skills and knowledge for the improvements of work requirement and imparting of skill-sets to subordinates.

Well , if these responsibilities are considered not time-demanding, I would have already been a very successful and efficient person. But I still had a long way to go.

And there are a lot of reading to catch up and a lot of things to learn and teach to others.

Getting Things Done

Four months after I have finished the book "Getting Things Done", I think I have to admit that I had failed miserably.

Four months ago, I was totally inspired to start organizing things in my life and make a BIG change in my life. Due to my lack of discipline and distraction in life (due to some incidents), I have just improved barely.

However, my dream is not totally crushed. I understand the whole process better now. And, it seems I know what the best I can do and how to maintain my task lists. I just need to be discipline and maintain the momentum of reviewing the tasks often.

I will start all over again. This time, with more determination to make it works!!!!


My original email to the team when I was trying to promote the book, claiming it is the best book in enhancing the productivity.

From: Susan Lim
Sent: 12 February 2007 00:45
To: All Team Members
Subject: Getting Things Done... are we?

In "Getting Things Done" book, the author said there are 5 steps in every natural planning for virtually every tasks we need to accomplish, be it where to go for dinner, or what you want to eat . (page 58)

The 5 steps are:

1. Defining purpose and principles
2. Outcome visioning
3. Brainstorming
4. Organizing
5. Identifying next actions

Here are the questions asked for the 5 steps:

1. Have you clarified the primary purpose of the project and communicated it to everyone who ought to know it? And have you agreed on the standards and behaviors you’ll need to adhere to make it successful?

2. Have you envisioned the success and considered all the innovative things that might result if you achieved it?

3. Have you gotten all the possible ideas out on the table – everything you need to take into consideration that might affect the outcome?

4. Have you identified the mission-critical components, key milestones, and deliverables?
5. Have you defined all the aspects of the project that could be moved on right now, what the next actions is for each part, and who’s responsible for what?

After reading the questions, the author asked to stop , think about the recent project, and write down the answers of the questions on a paper. I did the practice and I have to admit that I have not done as much as I think I had on planning for the recent projects, and ALL the past projects. More often than not, we jumped right in to steps 4 and 5 without clear understanding and communication of the objectives, and no clear visioning.
Without clear understanding of the purpose , the visioning and thinking of all the possible ideas (Step 1 to 3), we usually completed a project and then found out there are many things more to do to achieve the objectives. I definitely need to improve on this (planning), and I WILL. And I hope we all do.

And the visioning as described in the book are the followings:

i. View the project from beyond the completion date
ii. Envision “WILD SUCCESS” ! (Suspend “Yeah, but …”)

iii. Capture features, aspects, qualities you imagine in place