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Focus & Hardwork

A Tip for Working Hard

There’s never enough advice on the Internet for motivation. We all need inspiration sometimes. I have a special tip for doing hard work that isn’t talked about as much as some of the obvious tips, so I though it fun to share it today.

My special tip for working hard is quite simple. To motivate myself, I imagine two alternative scenarios. One scenario is what my future will look like if I work hard, and the other is what my future will look like if I slack off. I usually try to project my imagination at least 5 years into the future. I see the hard working version of myself and smile, then I see the slacking off version of myself and frown.

I’m known for being indecisive, but this tip really works for people with my personality type, because once I see a better option is available I’ll overturn anything in my way to achieve it. I couldn’t possibly live with myself knowing I chose the worse option for myself. Seeing what my life might be like in 5 years if I slack off is terrifying! I usually see me overweight on the couch, divorced with kids that hate me.

On the other hand, I see my life in 5 years after working hard and it’s all the inspiration I need to get up and work hard today. I see myself smiling around the dinner table with a healthy family. All the house chores are done and despite my hard work I get to enjoy a weekend with my wife.

Try this tip and see how it works for you!

Categories
Architecture Focus & Hardwork

Hiring the right window cleaners: It’s so hard to choose!

Herein lies my tale of my indecisiveness, something I’m glad to get off my chest. So enjoy!

For huge buildings with many giant windows it can be expensive to clean all those windows every year. High wise window cleaners for skyscrapers typically draw up contracts with the building owners or managers, and one of the reason why their fees must be so expensive is because they have to pay a lot for insurance considering the dangers of cleaning high rise windows. I could talk about this for ages, considering I always kept ease of window cleaning in mind when designing buildings with lots of windows during my career as an architect. But today I want to talk about something much less extraordinary in the world of window cleaning – I’m talking about washing the windows on your residential homes and my indecisiveness to choose the right company, to illustrate why I find it hard to make easy choices in life. Lastly, I want to share my solution to treat my indecisiveness.

Many of my friends prefer to clean their own windows, not to save money or to do a better job (because their whole family knows they couldn’t possibly do a better job than the professionals) but rather they clean their own windows because they find the work relaxing and it gives them a sense of accomplishment when completed. But I’m different. I always spend hours online finding who I think might be the best window cleaning company near me. I always tend to choose a different company each year, just for variety like how you never want to get the same cologne every single year, unless you’re that guy. Then again, if I found a company I really like for a certain location, then I might stick to using them indefinitely like I would for a cologne if I found one that was absolutely perfect for me.

For my summer cottage on Vancouver Island I typically choose this window cleaning Victoria company. I like how fun they are and they provide fair costs considering the highness of their quality. But for my other properties throughout North America I haven’t been so lucky to find my favorite window cleaners yet. In Ontario I might have found a company I can call again, but not with the same certainty as the services I found in Victoria that satisfy me so much. Hiring window cleaners, in other words, is hard for people with my personality type. I tend to do this with everything of importance. I can never watch the same movie twice, for example, and must always spend more time choosing a new movie to watch, usually more time choosing than the length of the actual movie! It means I rarely ever go to the same restaurant twice either, and when I do I never order the same thing as before. It’s so hard to choose! I’m always suffering from what you can call indecisiveness.

And so here, in everything I just told you, lies my solution to my inability to make easy choices. To practice making faster choices, and to be less picky, to spend less time choosing and to erase my fear of maybe choosing the wrong thing, I made this plan: for all of my properties in North America, I’m going to choose my next window cleaning company by pure randomness. Instead of taking what usually costs me several hours of browsing websites, I’m going to just pick the first window cleaning company that draws my attention. After doing this many times, and seeing the window cleaners come out to my properties to do the work, my hope is that I will have trained myself a little to get comfortable with easy decisions.

Of course, some things in life should never be easy decisions, like whether to take out a loan or get married, but with something as simple as hiring window cleaners I think my habit of taking too long to choose doesn’t serve me. So I ask you to wish me luck on my adventure to get better at making easy choices, and my well wishes go out to any of you reading this who also suffers from indecisiveness.

Categories
Focus & Hardwork

How classical music helps me work

I’m an old man now, listening to classical music like Bach and Mozart on a daily basis, but the habit didn’t just spring from the ether. Since I was 16-years-old, I’ve been listening to classical music to help me work.

Perhaps you’d be shocked to learn my parents hated classical and I picked up the habit all on my own. It all started while reading in the library at my high school one day. I usually found it hard to focus, as other students chatted loudly around me. But one day the school band was doing practice in the gymnasium next door, and I could hear them playing Mozart through the wall. At first I found the music even more annoying than the chatty students. Then, after reading in my booth for a half an hour I was shocked to realized I had blazed through my reading material an hour ahead of schedule. I thought, how could this be?

The next day was as usual, chatty students and no band practice. I compared it to the last day and began to miss the classical music. Back then even a Walkman that played cassette tapes were a new thing, so I used my dishwashing job to save up for one, which took about three weeks, then another week to buy a cassette tape of Mozart. Ever since then, even though AA batteries were expensive, my life had changed as I played Mozart in my headphones every day. To this day I blame Mozart for my straight A’s in school!

I carried the habit on to university where I majored in engineering and got an architectural degree. Now, whether I’m pressure washing my car or driving my wife to the store, I always have classical music playing. It helps me focus in a way that nothing else can. That’s the story of how classical music helps me work, and I hope it inspires you to give it a try.