On Goal-Setting

It is the new year. It’s the time of the year when we set our “new year’s resolutions” if only to keep it going for a week or two then forget about it until next year.

For me, I haven’t set up new year’s resolutions in the past, because I find the whole idea kind of silly. If there is something I want to accomplish, I should work toward it whether it’s the new year or not. What you are is an accumulation of what you have done day in and day out. The best students study daily, not just before the test. The best engineers learn daily, not just before a job interview or when their task at work requires them to. The best artists and athletes practice daily, not just for a big concert or a game.

But if you are setting goals whether it’s the new year’s or not, here’s a helpful mindset to actually get you somewhere:

Set up a goal that is about the present, and gets to the core of what it is that you want.

Here are some examples of ineffective goals:

“I will pay off my debt.”
“I will lose 20 lbs.”
“I will get a better-paying job.”

These goals all have one thing in common, which is that they are results-oriented and not specific to guide your daily actions, starting with today.

Yes, the idea of being debt free is wonderful and I totally agree, if you or anyone you know have any outstanding debts, then absolutely, they should pay it off. It’s not so much the end result here that’s problematic, but it’s the way the goal is set.

The hidden notion under such an outcome-oriented goal is that you are unhappy with your current life, and you will be only when you reach the end. It is kind of depressing living life while constantly thinking that something is missing or not right. Such an attitude can actually pull you further away from your goal.

A goal should be much more process-oriented, and something that you can achieve every single day. What is it that you really want? If you want to pay off your debt, my guess is that what you really want is along the lines of financial literacy, responsibility, and freedom or maybe you just want to feel good about yourself. If that’s so, how about a goal like “I will increase the loan payments. Instead of paying the minimum required, I will allocate 10% of every paycheck.”

We’ve shifted the goal into something you can accomplish frequently (everytime you get a paycheck) instead of an all-encompassing thing at the very end (pay off my debt). You can even automate the process with your bank, and not even think about it, freeing your mind to focus on perhaps another goal. You’ll feel great that you’ve made the change because it focuses on the “now”, not the future and you are accomplishing it every day. Once you are feeling good about your present situation, let your optimism be the fuel to get you even closer to your goal to take the next step, whatever it may be. When it comes to personal finance, there are so many great resources from people like Dave Ramsey and Ramit Sethi. So always be educating yourself, and act on the informaton you obtain. Your life will be so much more fun when you start to enjoy the journey, not just the final outcome.

So that was just one example, but you can apply to the same principle to any goal. With that, I wish you a happy new year. Let your 2018 be filled with fun challenges.

On money

I grew up in the church, and one of the bible verses that I distinctly remember resonating with me so much at the time I heard it as a kid in Sunday school was this one from 1 Timothy 6:10: “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.”

For some reason, I used to have this deep-rooted emotional dislike of money. I am not sure where I got that from, and since then, my view has changed enough to a point where I no longer take it as far as to claim that it is the root of all evil, but I still do think that it is not particularly healthy for anyone to be attached to their money or material things.

But on the other hand, I also worry that many people (including the younger me) have such an extremely negative view of it, because I routinely notice that many of my friends lean pretty far to the left on the political spectrum, and claim bold, unfounded statements, like “Homelessness is up. It’s because of those greedy capitalists!” forgetting the fact that a switch to more capitalistic policies has lifted many people in China and India out of poverty, and free-market principles (assuming no corruption) dictate that a business cannot be successful unless they offer to the public what they deem to be valuable. There are some exceptions here, like the corrupt finance industry and the politicians that serve them, but I’ll write about that another day. Today I just want us to think about money and if it is really evil.

First of all, consider the fact that money is a very useful form of abstraction. Without it, trading goods and services in this complex global economy would be a complete mess and an impossibility. So there’s a societal value to the existence of money that we all benefit from.

In our personal lives, money, if used properly, is a very powerful thing that could transform us. For example, money can be used to give us more time. That’s because having extra money means that we have to work that much less. Given how short our lives are and how little time many of us spend with the people that we love, there’s nothing more valuable than time.

Money can also be used for investing in yourself to help fulfill your goals. You can use it to buy books to learn about a topic, or to pay the tuition of a college class that will teach you the skills you need to get to the next level in an area you are passionate about.

Here’s another example of money at work: this month, with the generous contributions from many of my coworkers, a fundraiser I sponsored raised $9919 for the Harmony Project, a non-profit organization that provides music education for inner-city youth in Los Angeles.

Money may not solve all problems, but if it helps an organization like Harmony Project reach a few more kids and allow them access to quality music education (which is not just about music, I wrote more here), and changes the life of even one kid for the better, that is huge in my eyes, because these acts are paid forward long after the initial money is gone. That one kid will go on to touch the lives of some other kids, then those kids will affect many more kids, and the chain continues indefinitely.

So while we shouldn’t be so attached to money, maybe we shouldn’t hate it either. If anything, we should embrace it for all the wonderful possibilities that come from it, and educate the youth about a healthy attitude toward it.

By the way, the offer I made to my coworkers for the fundraiser is also good for anyone reading this blog. If you donate to the Harmony Project and let me know that you did, I will personally match your contribution, which will then be matched by my employer, until the total raised amount reaches $15,000.

Michelle

Today was a special day.

I saw my former student, Michelle, for the first time in over 10 years. She has become quite the accomplished dancer in the world of Tribal Fusion Dance, and her show in Tokyo coincidentally happened to be within walking distance from where I am temporarily staying, so of course I wasn’t going to miss this opportunity to see her perform live for the first time.

Because her routines seemed so well thought-out and her flow of energy so purposeful, I was surprised when she told me afterward that she had improvised the whole thing. However, I do know from my experience playing music that “improvisation” is often a misunderstood word. It does not mean “do whatever”. There’s so much preparation that happens behind the scenes because an artist must develop a vast amount of knowledge, skill, and intuition before their improvisations are any good, and contrary to the popular notion of complete freedom, it is actually the restrictions under which the artist must perform that give so much meaning and beauty to the improvisation.

We also got to catch up on life a bit, and her plan is to “quit dancing once she gets really good, because then it will be too boring.” That may sound counter-intuitive, but I was not surprised one bit, because that is a common outlook I’ve heard from many artists I admire. To them, art is a journey, not a destination. And even though they are already “really good” by worldly standards, they know that there is much more to be done to get to the next level.

Thanks Michelle for the inspiration! (By the way she was my math student. I don’t teach dance, in case anyone was wondering, but I am still a proud teacher!)

Morning Calm

“Morning Calm” is the title of my new piano piece.

About six months ago, I moved closer to my day job in order to give myself more time to work on my music. My new apartment is just a walking distance from the office, and one of the best consequences of this change is that I no longer use an alarm clock to wake up. It is such a blessing that my life is not dependent on the hours of traffic or bus schedule.

Every morning, I feel relaxed, and my mind is more focused on the music I create.

On sexism

It has been a few days since the infamous Google doc, or the “Anti-Diversity Manifesto” as so many media sources have called it, has been passed around. I’m not going to respond specifically to it because many have done that already, and it is so easy to view this as an “us-versus-them” issue because of the outspoken nature of those who hold extreme views on the topic, even though the reality is much more nuanced. I wish the media didn’t simplify the issue and boil it down to a sound bite with a misleading title like “Anti-Diversity Manifesto”, because, despite the author’s being labeled as “sexist”, his main motivation for writing the document doesn’t seem to be to speak against diversity itself, but to question Google’s specific diversity initiatives. If you carefully read it, he had some good points to make.

However, beyond the doc, I do want to point out a few things about sexism in the workplace and in society in general, because the gravity of the issue at hand is actually about so much more than this one single doc.

“Sexism”, just like many other words that end in -ism, is ingrained in the way a society functions which propel behaviors from the members of the society that cause a certain effect, in this case, the degradation of the members of the female gender, made possible largely by what are considered the societal and cultural norms, and our indifference toward those norms. So the problem isn’t simply the one openly sexist person who believes that men are better than women, but rather, what all of us tolerate every single day, or at times don’t even realize or label as sexism because of our ignorance and the subtlety of the issues that we encounter. So much of sexism goes unnoticed because we have built a society in which it is perfectly ordinary for one gender to be treated differently than the other, so unless we are actively seeking to identify and bust the existence of sexism, we will continue to live in a sexist society. Most of the time, we don’t even stop to think about it, or realize that something is wrong, which is exactly why this is a problem.

It starts early in our lives as culture and society subliminally enforce stereotypical norms on everyone from a very early age. As young kids, boys are given puzzles and Legos that improve their spacial and reasoning abilities, while girls are given dolls to play with. Boys are encouraged to develop skills that lead to a career (You like to cook? You should become a chef) while girls are encouraged to develop skills for making a home. (You like to cook? You’ll make a great wife and mother.) That might not be as big of an issue if homemakers got the respect that they deserve for the hard work that they do, but as long as society continues to elevate work above home-making, and money-making above relationship-making, this is a major issue. In school, boys are more likely to be given feedback from their teachers that directly address their performance, while girls are more likely to be commented on about their smiles and clothes. And even if we actively tried to stay away, nobody is immune from the dose of pop culture that is always screaming at us; all those TV shows and movies that portray men as heroic protagonists and women as objects to be won by those heroes. And throughout all of these experiences, little by little, we start to pick up on the social cues, and what it means for each one of us to be a valuable member of this society. While boys are taught to be brave and take risks (which naturally lead to many life opportunities), girls are taught to play it safe, be gentle, and look and act cute.

The sexism of course doesn’t stop in adolescence, they continue through adulthood. I routinely notice that when a group of people are having a conversation, a male member of the group will often interrupt a female member who is speaking, and nobody will raise this as an issue. This happens so often that we don’t even notice it as it happens right in front of our eyes. (One time, I encountered exactly this situation in a meeting to discuss how we can promote diversity. Irony much?) Not only do we often fail to recognize the inherent sexism here, men even benefit from such a scene, because so many people view it as a sign of strength when a man expresses his views and dominate the conversation. But our reactions are surely different if the opposite were to happen, that is, if a women were to interrupt a man. Or heck, she doesn’t even have to interrupt anyone, she may just hold a strong opinion about something and express it, at which point she quickly gets labeled as “bossy” or “bitchy”. (related read: Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg) Ok, maybe people are not that explicit nowadays with their choice of words, but you get the point.

Here’s another example that you may have encountered: a female coworker of yours does something that is outside of her job description, such as volunteering to organize a team lunch together, or cleaning up after a social event in the office. If you pay some attention as to how the situation plays out, you will notice that she got little to no recognition for this work, because subconsciously, we take it for granted that it is the normal role of women to be these supporting figures behind the scenes, all the while men are encouraged to take on the more flashy, “respectable” roles that stand out more, and often are more about elevating himself rather than the team (by the way, it is horrible that such actions are tolerated and even rewarded, because it hurts the company more than it helps if we wish to engineer a great product, but we can save that discussion for another day), and through these selfish actions, he somehow earns status and respect, and with that come the raises and promotions. And even if your male colleague were to volunteer himself to do some of the “supportive” tasks instead, he is still recognized for that because it is out of the norm for men to take on such a task and be so “selfless”, so his actions are immediately noticed and appreciated.

So about the “doc”, while we may feel good about ourselves because we think that we are fighting sexism by expressing our outrage toward one man who decided to share his views with the company, please, don’t let us think that that is the way to change. It is great to have these conversations as a starting point, but more importantly, let our actions speak loudly for what we stand for. Let us fight deliberately the sexism of this world. To start, we must be aware of the ways in which societal norms can put down one gender. Once we recognize the issue, we can actively challenge them.

Why I Make Music

The musician in me wants to embrace this romantic notion of music-writing. Something like “I got inspired today, so I wrote this beautiful song.”

But the educator in me wants to teach the world about the misconception of such a notion, what it means to actually pursue music, and why, although the actual process may not be as cool as the above romanticized version, is actually the coolest thing ever.

It is great that there are so many ways to enjoy music. I am a creator, and I am much more interested in creating rather than consuming. I’m not as interested in consuming music, or rather, consuming much of anything, hence the reason I don’t own a TV or a smartphone, and I don’t surf the internet unless specific circumstances require me to. Some people even find it shocking that I don’t have internet at home, but to me, living distraction-free is a great way to maximize the time to create music and thereby increase my level of happiness. However I do appreciate that the world also has consumers, like the people who like to enjoy music by listening to them. Many of my songs were written with a specific audience in mind.

But one thing is very clear to me. The world needs more creators. Fulfillment in one’s life pretty closely matches the ratio of how much one creates as opposed to how much they consume. The happiest people I know and have worked with closely are all creators. So although I don’t advocate that we stop being consumers completely from this moment on, I do encourage everyone to create more. It doesn’t have to be a piece of music, and it doesn’t even need an audience. But do create something. Maybe a wonderfully tasty meal, a lecture on a topic you care deeply about, or the first draft of the first chapter of that novel you’ve always fantasized about writing. You will notice that all of these things don’t just happen simply because you got inspired. It takes a lot of time to build up the necessary knowledge and to refine your skills to get to a point where you can create something beautiful.

To make good music first requires acknowledging your shortcomings. Only then can you define what work it will take to overcome them. It helps if you can find pleasure in knowing that there are things you cannot do yet but you do have the potential to accomplish with effort. Either way, in the end it simply comes down to actually putting forth that required effort. That’s all, there are no secrets to it. This process is not “fun” in the traditional sense that people use that word. “Struggle” might be more befitting. But I argue that the struggle is where the fun is. The constant struggle shapes you in ways you would never have imagined. There is nothing more fulfilling than going to bed each evening knowing that you made progress today, and you will again tomorrow. This daily progress is so small that nobody except you noticed. But the little steps add up over time, and in what seems like a blink of an eye (to others, not you), you will reach a point where people say things like, “How the heck do you do what you do?” “You’re so talented!”, and “Your work is so beautiful! What inspired you?”

It is a tragedy that “talent” is so commonly regarded as the factor that limits what a person can accomplish in life. “Talent” is a false concept, there is no such thing. So although it may be tempting to say that a person is “talented”, please, be careful when you use that word, especially around children who are still forming ideas about how the world works.

All of the above is not to discount inspiration, I do get inspired to write music from time to time. But most of the time when I write, it is intentional. And even in times when I get lucky and catch a whiff of inspiration, what I am able to do as a result of that inspiration is still limited by the skills I have built up slowly over time by being intentional about my growth.

I didn’t choose to pursue music because I wanted to become great. Actually, I admit, I do yearn to write a great song and I think all musicians do, but that’s just a possible outcome of my trying, and I don’t have full control over that, so it is not the most productive goal to work toward if I am to be at peace with my current self, because most of the music I write I don’t even like. They are pretty bad. And if I don’t ever achieve a point where people consider my music to be “great”, I will be perfectly okay with that. That’s not really the point of music anyway. Music was invented as a way for people to have fun. I am a musician because the very act of creating is fun and fulfilling. I simply feel blessed just for having the opportunity for even the remote chance that I might create something beautiful, and even if I end up creating a bad piece of music, well, I would still have had a whole lot of fun doing it, so what more can I ask for?

Evening Drive

For me, driving is a time of reflection. I love the solitude that it provides. I don’t even listen to music in my car as I find it distracting. I just listen to the white noise coming from the car’s engine and the road, and I simply reflect.

I have recently finished writing a collection of piano pieces which portray the different scenes and aspects of my everyday life. This piece is one of them, and is a portrayal of my car ride as it takes me through the various neighborhoods and highways in one Los Angeles evening.

The other pieces in the collection will be available in digital stores soon!