When I was still working in the Philippines, I worked with several brilliant Japanese engineers (NEC Corporation). We were producing printed circuit boards at that time, and the Japanese engineers were teaching us the efficient production of the product.

At that time, I don’t have any idea what these management principles were or learned any engineering principles as applied to production. I was glad that I learned these principles from the people who popularized Japanese quality. Their teachings, in one way or another, impacted my life.

I learned the Paretto Principle or the 80–20 rule, a rule that I still…

The technical term for failure is “it sucks”, but it is a very important part of the equation, here’s ways to bounce back

In this blog post, I want to tell you how not to give up when things don’t go your way. It’s easy enough for a failure or two in one area of life to make us feel like failures overall, but we can recover from that and use the experience as motivation.

So let me tell you about my story with an example of what it looks like to be resilient in the face of temporary setbacks.

…

I heard of a co-worker who would start his day by putting an empty jar on his left desk and another jar to his right, full of colorful marbles, around 120 marbles.

He would then start calling prospective customers. Every time he finishes one call, he would then transfer a marble to the jar on his right.

In the morning, the jar to his right is empty. But by the end of the day, the jar on the left is empty (or almost empty).

I heard people using paper pins to track their progress but it doesn’t matter how you…

They said that what you want is on the other side of fear, here’s how to remove fear out of the equation (or at least neutralize it).

If you’re a marketer and have ever experienced that feeling of fear when it comes to what you want in life (and specially to marketing or your life), then this article is for you.

Here are preliminary questions that may help you combat fears with the help of other people who mastered the crippling effects of fear.

The first step is understanding the root cause of your fear.

Is it inexperience in a…

These are real life situations that zap your brain

When my kid was younger, like 8 years old, every time I put the fries in his lap for him to eat, I would simultaneously pickup two fries and pop out in my mouth.

That’s without thinking.

That’s how powerful habit is, it’s automatic.

For the past months, I tried to re-wire my brain to not automatically do a bad habit. If my brain is a printed circuit board, you know those green thing inside an electronic box, I would imagine rewiring would be zapping a circuit to cut the flow of signal

I failed some and succeeded at some…

In a small farm community, crops were dying because the summer turned into an inferno. The farmland turned from green to brown, and leaves dried and crumbled.

When the wind blows, the place turned into a dust bowl. Patio’s are covered with dust and so are the trucks that once hauled produce.

So the local pastor asked his congregation to pray for rain. The week after, the church was full of people ready to pray. In front of church was a little girl with an open umbrella next to her.

“What’s this for?”

“We are praying for rain, so I…

I’ve spent 2.5 hours per day on Facebook last week, and this is how I will claim those time back.

I swiped my phone and then read a post from my friend yapping about not getting vaccine.

Her point is that that the government is feeding us a bunch of lies.

Then I commented, that I am a scientist, I worked with vaccines before (and these are the United States Department of Defense projects that I should not be discussing), and told them to F#@k off.

I waited for more comments and then answered back.

End the end, I told…

When I was handed a pink slip in my previous job, I hated the feeling of being ‘let go’.

I have a family to feed and a toddler in tow. In the first few weeks, I scrambled to look for jobs. I got a Ph.D. but it wasn’t easy. So I took a job as an adjunct professor at a nearby community college.

But the wages of an adjunct professor in a community college is not enough to pay for my toddler’s toys, even if I disconnected Netflix, Amazon prime and other magazine subscription. It was a simple math. I…