I learned a few tips on plumbing. My intention is not to install a new plumbing for a kitchen or bathroom (I would hire a pro for that), but to learn a few advanced tips. The following is what I picked up from the book that’s full of pictures and is fairly easy to understand.

1. Use of de-burring tool to de-burr the cut plastic pipes.
2. Use of dielectric union (with screw-on transition fitting, nut, plastic washer, and sweated brass female end) to transition copper pipe to galvanized pipe.
3. Use shimming when a pipe run through the wood stud but allow for expansion.
4. Design-in an access panel for the shutoff of the tub faucets.
5. For gas line to the water heater, a drip leg should be added to collect condensation and dirt.
6. If a water filter is inserted into the supply, make sure to add a jumper wire with clamps to ground the pipe.
7. Use of pipe strap to strap drain pipes.
8. Use of metal cover over the stud where the pipe runs through to ensure nails cannot be drilled into the pipe.
9. Venting for the drain pipe is a tricky business. The code may require sloping of the vent lines.
10. Special reverse-U shape drain needed for installing a sink in a kitchen island.

For work, I needed to brush up on the network protocols. So I picked it up from the library.

This book is a simply introduction book on TCP/IP or more generally about internet network. It went through the 5 network layers (traditionally 7 layers) fair quickly. It condenses the application, presentation, and session layers into just session layer, just to make it simple for the “dummies.” The five layers are: 1) physical layers (the I/O driver/receiver that transmit raw data). 2) data link layer (packetize the data and handles the re-try, ECC and etc.), 3) internet layer (sends and received the right packets, and handles the routes) includes ARP (address resolution procole), RARP (reserve address resolution protocol, Mobile IP and IPsec (IP security protocol for VPN), 4) transport layer (TCP or UDP: make sure the packets have no errors and arrives and reassembled in the correct order), 5) session/application layer (establishes and coordinates a session/connection, convert file format, sets up the environment so that applications can communicate with one another. There are several application types: DNS, FTP, telnet, TFTP, SNMP, SMTP, POP3, IMAP4, LDAP, NTP (network time protocol), HTTP, and etc.)

It confirms a lot of what I have known or guessed, like IPv4 vs. IPv6, DHCP, configuring TCP/IP on linux and etc. Some of the examples were so old, for Windows 95/98. They should be taken out in the next edition. I spent a couple of hours browsing through the book. It’s probably worths that much time. In order to keep the book interesting, the author sprinkled many dry humor one-liners throughout the book. I didn’t find them funny though. But I did learn something new: my network layer understanding was refreshed, UDP is for Voip that does not guarantee packet sequence, how to set up a simple router on Windows (probably not very practical now that routers are so cheap.), significance of the IP addresses (i.e. class A, B, C, use of the netmask), NAT and CIDR,

While browsing through the home improvement section of the library, I picked up this book. As an electrical engineering, electrical wiring should not be a problem for me. But this book taught me a few things:

1. Various tools used to splice wires, cut and crimp cables, connecting garden lights and lamps.
2. How to drop a wire behind the drywall using a weight and then use a hook to connect the wire and then pick up the wire. This created the minimal amount of damage for your drywall.
3. Checking for correct grounding and connection of the “hot” wire using a simple plug that you can buy from Amazon.com.
4. The various kinds of wires/cables: Old fashioned fabric-sheathed cable, armored MC and BX (no ground), underground feed (UF), NM (Non-metalic) round profile and flat-profile.

I read Frank McCourt’s “Teacherman” before and utterly enjoyed his Irish humor – low key and yet extremely funny. Though born to such poverty, McCourt survived the Catholic, Irish childhood with a fascinating life story to tell. One thing that stands out for me is how he remembered all the small things since 3 years old. If the stories are accurate since his 3 years of age, then he must be truly talented to remember all the minute details. For sure, I don’t remember much from my 7 years of age and before. Or, perhaps, my childhood was not eventful or too comfortable worth remembering.

McCourts’ poverty forced them to live in an apartment where the community lavatory (bathroom) situated next to their kitchen. The family members suffer lots of illness as a result – losing his twin brothers. But the story about staying upstairs in “Italy” (due to its warmness) showed the family’s resourcefulness at a time of hopelessness.

The entire town of Limbrick, where they lived, has some interesting characters: the nuns that would not allow McCourt to talk with a girl during his hospital stay (red fever), the many people who came down with “consumption” (due to dampness and coal mining), the catholic establishment who shut the door on McCourt when he wanted to become an altar boy and requesting to go to secondary school.

Having been born to an irresponsible alcoholic father, he learned first hand that his father was not be trusted to bring home the salary to support his family. His father, a man from the North with “odd manner,” was good at telling all the Irish stories and instituting hatred against the British. The 800 years of mistreatment by the English, as often mentioned in the book, seems to give the Irish lots of excuses of being in poverty. Lots of blaming was going on there.

McCourt wanted to be the man of the family early in his young life that he took on the job of delivering coals but ended up with an eye infection that won’t go away. As soon as he reached 14, McCourt became a message boy delivering telegrams so that he can save money for the trip back to USA. He took odd jobs like writing debt threatening letters, doing some errand jobs for people. His strong desire to get out of Ireland really show throughout the book. It helped to have his employer (the loan shark) dropped dead so he can be a Robinhood to forgive all the debts from all the people in the ledgers and have some of the money for himself.

Some of the funny stories:
– how he tried to blink himself out of the eye infection,
– how his Mom tried to spit on his eyes to rid him of the infection,
– how the messenger boys tried to remove one magazine page that has a condom ad on it and how they tried to profit from re-selling the page for large sum of money.

Some of the sad stories:
– how he saw his young sister, Margaret, died that resulted in his father’s plunge into alcohol again, how his two young twin brothers died one after another,
– how he saw his Dad wasting all the salary on pints when he and the rest of family went starving over the weekend, how he showed his love (when not drunk) and hatred (when drunk) toward his father,
– how he felt regretful and struggled emotionally for sending his first love to eternal damnation (due to their sexual relationship),
– how he struggled through his eye infection throughout his adolescent life just to make money.
– how he saw his mother traded sex (excitement) for their stay in a house.
– how he got slammed on his face twice by the Catholic establishment.

The audio book allows McCourt to sing all the beautiful songs form his childhood – the singing really enhances the readers’ experience. And I must admit he’s a pretty good singer.

Yesterday was the St. Patrick’s Day, a day for the Irish to celebrate their uniqueness and great tradition. Through this book, Frank McCourt helped me understand what being an Irish person is all about and the baggage they carried. A mesmerizing book! I might check out the DVD movie version.

This is the first time I review a Chinese book. But this is a book about a company, Foxconn, that I have worked in the past and am curious how Terry Gou manged to grow from a garage shop in 1973 to a behemoth today and continue to grow in leaps and bounds. Some of my ex-colleagues at Sun have joined Foxconn and they still glowed in the progressive culture of the company. How did he do it? Is he just lucky or he’s got real substance? How does he plan to pass the leadership and continue to grow the company? I planned to find out from this book and I found some interesting themes about Foxconn.

The first chapter “Building the Global Competitive Platform: Challenged to be the world’s lowest cost producer.” Terry recognized early that to be globally competitive in costs you must be socially(human resource), country-wide (financial resource), and company-wide competitive. “Being profitable doesn’t mean you’re competitive.” The ASP (average selling prices) for the electronic industry is -30% annually, the only way for a company like Foxconn to survive is to outgrow that in revenue. This is a Darwinism – survival of the fittest – at its best. Terry even equates Foxconn to be the “cockroach” due to its survival in the evolution scenery. Terry also emphasize “credibility” over “transparency.” If the management is credible, transparency is secondary. With respect to global competition, Terry said, “In the overall scheme, it’s not about the supply chain, rather it’s about the global value chain. Every company must create its global value or faces extinction.” Foxconn’s business model consists of 5 letters: eCMMS (e: computerize, C: component, M: module, M: Move (logistics), S: Service). Started with components, modularize, then fast delivery (move) and full service. All of the processes are computerized (e).

Chapter 2 “Global manufacturing sites” In this chapter, the author went into how Terry Gou started a plastic injection company with his mother’s seed money of $100,000NT or US$3000 back in 1974. Due to the oil crisis, the material costs went up so much that it was hard to make any money. He then took over his partners’ share and renamed his company Honhai Industry. At that time, the Taiwan real estate went into high growth/speculative stage and lots of company owners moved the money into real estates. He resisted the idea and with forward looking vision, he invested the money on making better molds.

Chapter 3 “The power of Vertical Integration” This chapter describes how Foxconn started out with the PC chassis and continued to integrate all the way to M/B: from level 5 (PCBA) to level 11 (PC system). His secret of converting a negative-margin order to positive-margin is his obsession with “cost down,” thus his nick name of “Cost-down Terry.” They broke down the costs to product cost and management cost. The material cost can be further broken down to 1) material 2) process 3) testing 4) packaging and transportation 5) quality 6) storage and 7) fixed/machine cost.

Chapter 4 “The flexibly-changing culture”: Terry encourage changes. “Within reasons, organization must encounter changes. Though every change is a risk but once it’s done successfully, the organization and people will advance one more level.” How does Foxconn become a flexible organization? 1) High awareness within organization, 2) Set high goals, 3) Don’t glow over past successes, 4) Don’t cover up mistakes – learn from them. As the organization gets bigger, to prevent bureaucracy, they must practice “together, re-organize, integrate” – the 3 steps. “Once the authority is given to you, you must bear the responsibility. It’s not about ‘management’, it’s about ‘responsibility’.” Terry’s leadership philosophy, “I don’t know what is a successful leader but I know what leadership style would fail – not setting good example, pushing off responsibility, pleasing all the people, 9-to-5, not clear with reward and punishment.” “Manager can be trained but leadership can not.” He believes democracy is not an efficient method. One must be a judicious dictator to be a good leader. According to him, “For a company to grow fast, it must produce products and talents.” He believes in creating jobs from within the company. You can be your own boss. Even if you fail, Foxconn will back you up. He said, “A truly successful organization’s know-how lies not only in talents but also the resource movement within the organization: what people should be moved, what people should not.” Speaking of selecting talents, he pointed out that when a person has no way to retreat, he will give his best. Especially in electronics, one must carry the same attitude. In explaining the Foxconn culture, he summarizes in three words: heart, confidence and determination.

Chapter 5: “Efficient Global Sales Service”: To Globalize the factory, in addition to expedite the service to the customers, Foxconn must “simplify.” Simplification focuses on customers’ part numbers, flow process, management strategy, and framework. The ways to simplify are 1) Rationalize, 2) Standardize, 3) System-ize, 4) IT’ize. Foxconn provides the combination of logistics and e-hub to reduce the inventory costs. To globalize Foxconn, it chooses to develop products globally, manufacture globally, and develop global logistics. The strategies are: 1) Leverage the accumulated China experience, 2) Synchronize with the customers’ order, 3) E-commercialize the central nervous system (IT) to achieve optimal product, optimal quality, optimal timing, and optimal quantity, 4) Globalization means localization – develop local talents and respect local culture and thinking. Also, selecting the right customers is a must by evaluating 1) Would it become Foxconn’s competitor? 2) Does it have the potential – marketing position and sound strategy? 3) Its current market size and profitability. In order for Foxconn to be profitable, its customers need to be profitable. In terms of vertical integration, the downstream (customers) integration has a much larger space, in other words, competing with customers has a much larger space to grow. This is why most of Foxconn’s customers are afraid of Foxconn’s becoming its competitor, thus the love and hate relationship.

Chapter 6: “R&D Know-how Development”: Terry’s 5 steps in developing leadership for changes: 1) Openly betting his/her credibility on the success of changes. 2) Commit to resources needed for the changes. 3) Actively participate and emphasize the commitment to changes. 4) Must be passionate about changes. 5) Requires that the entire team to participate and hold them responsible for the changes. Foxconn’s 8 core competencies are: 1) CAD/CAM software and hardware for molds, 2) BTO (Build-to-order), supply chain, 3) Interconnect technologies, 4) SMT production, 5) Wireless and WLAN technology, 6) Heatsink materials, 7) Precision manufacturing, 8 ) Fiberoptic manufacturing. According to Terry, “R&D means product design, process design and breakthrough material.” To be competitive, Foxconn needs to be build deep roots into core technology, normalize the IP/patent system, and possess strong knowledge (management) into component manufacturing. Terry understands the importance of building a strong IP portfolio; Foxconn has 300+ “IP Engineers” in their legal department. “The road to the future will be much wider, if the IP’s are properly invested, ” said Terry.

Chapter 7: “Integration of the global organizations”: Terry outlines the methods to develop a flexible and powerful organization structure – 1) Attracting talents – create start-up environments for the best talents to create new companies, 2) Developing new IP-rich precision technologies, 3) Execution with precision, 4) Bring out the unique creativity of individuals. “People in the world are all similar; there are only people with brain and without brain, responsible or irresponsible.” Terry has the plan to pass on the Foxconn leadership around 2008 (now) and he is looking for the candidates.

In the 2003 interview as appendix of the book, Terry Gou was asked about what advises he would give to the young people professionally. He said, “no matter doing what work, one must be responsible, facing difficulties, setback and challenges, and walk your talk.” “To learn, one must face new challenges especially when you’re young because that’s how you can learn and grow.” “All my life, I love to take on new challenges. Without them, life would not be as exciting,” Terry Gou said.

Here are my observations:
Terry Gou likes to use simple words to outline his strategy. For example, he started out with 1st C (components) and then 3 C’s (Computer, Communication, and Consumer Electronics) as his target market for contract manufacturing because that’s where the growths are. Eventually, he’s been tauting 6 C’s (the original 3 C’s plus the 3 more C’s – contents, channel, and car). Also, he’s leadership and company philosophy in Chinese also use simple easy-to-remember words. Keeping it simple is probably the essence of his growth strategy and leadership skill.

Foxconn is a quintessential Walmart in the contract manufacturing industry. The drive to drop costs down the food chain is almost obsessive. The ability to plan the logistics such that all the costs at the bare bone is the one of the key core competencies of the company.

Terry Gou is not only a great businessman but also a great leader. Foxconn is the way it is today by accident. His vision, strategy, execution, and ability to develop leaders are what Foxconn is formidable world-class competitor. Whether his legacy can be carried on could be his next and biggest challenge. Like he said, “The Honhai Industry without Terry Gou is the real Honhai.”

The question I ask myself is whether I’m willing to work for a company like Foxconn. The answer is probably yes if the next leadership is willing to take Foxconn to the next level of higher value add. Then Foxconn can truly become an industrial empire.

Some of the notable good quotes from Terry Gou are:
– “With difficulties comes opportunities. With challenges comes innovations”
– “A developing economy faces new thinkings, new technologies, and new ecosystems”
– “Successful people find ways, defeated people find excuses.”
– “An investor shouldn’t ask which is the next hottest industry; he should ask who will be the next winner”
– “High Tech, Low Tech, Make Money is Tech!”
– “Work hard, work hard and work harder! Don’t be materialistic! Don’t be vain! Enjoy your work and embrace challenges!”
– “Being a turtle, you must not wake up the hare.”
– “Learn from work, work after learning. Work is more important then talk. Practice is more effective than learning.”
– “Quality means that the customers are willing to pay a premium for it and gladly.”
– “Execution = Speed + Accuracy + Precision or E = SAP.”
– “To be successful, one must have a strong will, focus and patience.”
– “Many people don’t have a good impression of me, perhaps I spoke only the truths. ”
– “A company can face difficulties for the two major reasons: staying far away from its customers, and its employees.”

I first got the book from San Jose Library, browsed through it and found it less than interesting. Then I listened to the audio book through Audible and was captivated by the contents. Interesting takeaways:

1. Most people who couldn’t go on higher up in corporate ladder or grow are mostly due to their behavior, not their technical expertise. This is what prevents them from getting there.

2. The art of apologizing

3. Advertise their effort to change their behavior.

4. Follow up. Listen without prejudice – just say “Thank you.”

5. Feedforward – eliciting advices from peopl eon what they can do better in the future.

The twenty habits:
1. Winning to much: The need to win at all costs in all situations – what it matters, when it doesn’t, and when it’s total beside the point.

2. Adding too much value: The overwhelming desire to ad our two cents to every discussion.

3. Passing judgment: The need to rate others and impose our standards on them.

4. Making destructive comments: The needless sarcasms and cutting remarks that we think make us sound sharp and witty.

5. Starting with “No,” “But,” or “However”: The overuse of these negative qualifiers what secretly say to everyone, “I’m right. You’re wrong.”

6. Telling the world how smart we are: The need to show people we’re smarter than they think we are.

7. Speaking when angrey: Using emotional volatility as a management tool.

8. Negativity, or “Let me explain why that won’t work”: The need to share the negative thoughts even when we weren’t asked.

9. Withholding information: The refusal to share information in order to maintain an advantage over others.

10. Failing to give proper recognition: The inability to praise and reward.

11. Claiming credit that we don’t deserve: The most annoying way to overestimate our contribution to any success.

12. Making excuses: The need to reposition our annoying behavior as a permanent fixture so people excuse us for it.

13. Clinging to the past: The need to deflect blame away from ourselves and onto events and people from our past; a subset of blaming everyone else.

14. Playing favorites: failing to see that we are treating someone unfairly.

15. Refusing the express regret: The inability to take responsibility for our actions, admit we’re wrong, or recognize how our actions affect others.

16. Not listening: The most passive-aggressive form of disrespect for colleagues.

17. Failing to express gratitude: The most basic form of bad manners.

18. Punishing the messenger: The misguided need to attack the innocent who are usually only trying to help us.

19. Passing the buck: The need to blame everyone by ourselves.

20. An excessive need to be “me”: Exalting our faults as virtues simply because they’re who we are.

The 21st habit that was singled out is “Goal Obsession” – hog the spotlight and ended up losing talented people in the team. The classical example was the “Good Samaritan” research that showed even the priests-to-be may practice what they preach when they’re obsessed with the goal (to teach a sermon about the “good Samaritan”). One should ask himself/herself frequently, ” what am I doing?” and “why am I doing this?”

Most of the bad habits center around these two interpersonal flaws: appropriately sharing and withholding of information and emotion.

When getting feedbacks from coworkers, get the 4 commitments from them: 1) Let go of the past, 2) Tell the truth, 3) Be supportive and helpful – not cynical or negative, 4) Pick something to improve yourself – to focus on “improving” and not judging – create a parity and bond.

The questions to ask for feedback are: Does the subject 1) communicate a vision, 2) Treat people with respect, 3) solicit contrary opinions, 4) Encourage other people’s ideas, and 5) listen to other people in meetings?

The 4 quadrants, based on x-axis of known or unknown to self and y-axis of known or unknown to others, are 1) Blind spots, 2) Public knowledge, 3) Private knowledge, and 4) Unknowables.

You can obtain the feedback yourself by 1) Make a list of people’s remarks about you, 2) Turn the sound off – observe the how other physically dealing with you, 3) Complete the sentence exercise, 4) Listen to your own self-aggrandizing remarks, 5) Look homeward (check with your family members).

About techniques of “apologizing”: say “I’m sorry, I’ll do better in the future” – get in and get out quickly. Do not justify why and explain.

The next step following apologizing is to advertise that you’re improving – be your own PR person. The classical corporate troubleshooting process 1) assessing, 2) isolating the problem, 3) formulating the solution, 4) getting approval from the top, 5) getting buy-in or agreements from coworkers, 6) getting acceptance from subordinates, 7) implement the solution. Do not skip #4~#5 that most people forget.

Practice listening and say “thank you” often and then “follow up” (“how am I doing?”). The last step is to practice “feed forward.” Tell people that you’re improving one area and ask for 2 advices and then say “thank you.”

The rules about “changing”: 1) May not be able to change, 2) Pick the right thing to change, 3) Don’t delude yourself what you really need to change, 4) Don’t hide yourself from the truth you need to hear, 5) There is no ideal behavior, 6) If you measure it, you can achieve it, 7) Monetize the result, create a solution, 8 ) The best time to change is NOW.

I like the last chapter about imagining yourself being of 95 years old and asking yourself what advises you would give. Most advises you get from people are: 1) Be happy now, don’t wait until you’re old. 2) Treat your friends and family members well; they are the ones surrounding you at your dying bed – not your colleagues. 3) Follow your dreams – best to die trying than to regret not trying. Most people stay at a certain workplace because 1) They enjoy what they’re doing, 2) they enjoy the people they work with, 3) they’re following their dreams. Tips for people managers.

This is a good book. It’s amazing how subtle the changes need to be to get to the next level; we often think being technical/knowhow savvy is the critical step, when it’s probably the least of the problem. Marshal Goldsmith as his own “What Got You Here” website.

I picked up this book per the recommendation of the “4-hour work week” book. At first, I thought to myself, how does dance choreographing have to do with business or engineering. As it turns out, to be creative in dancing is probably much harder since it’s so visible and yet subtle at the same time. This book taught me a lot of creative ideas. I like the creative exercises, especially “Do the verbs,” “Pick a fight,” “Play twenty questions,” and several others. The book is organized with several concepts followed by several exercises for each concept. The concept of “spine” is particular interesting. Overall, it’s a pretty good book – good to see the creative process from a virtuoso. I particular like the fact that Tharp spent a lot of time studying the famous ones’ (Beethoven, Mozart, and etc.) creative habit as well.

Here are the outlines of the book:

Develop your start-up rituals of preparations that impels your forward every day, faced down your fears and put your distractions in proper places: This arm us with confidence and self-reliance. You may want to subtracting distractions from your life, as Tharp subtract movies, multi-tasking, numbers (clocks, meters, scales, bank statements, etc.) and background music.

Exercise 1. Where’s your “pencil”? Where is the one tool that feeds your creativity and is essential that without “it you feel naked and unprepared? This could be your voice recorder, pen and notebook, postit notes such that when an idea comes to you, you’re able to jot it down fast.”

Exercise 2. Build up your tolerance for solitude. Sit alone for x number of minutes (start at 10 minutes and keep increasing) in a room and let your thoughts go wherever they will. Then start paying attention your thoughts to see if a word or goal materializes – “quietness without loneliness.

Exercise 3. Face your fears. Identify and breakdown the ones that are holding you back. Don’t run away from them or ignore them; write them down and save the page. Don’t let it stop you in your tracks.

Exercise 4. Give me one week without. Take a week off without clutter and distractions such as mirrors, clocks, newspapers, speaking, telephone, computer, coffee, car and etc.

Your Creative DNA, the creative code hard-wired into our imaginations. For Tharp, it’s “focal length” – involvement vs. detachment – dive in, step back, dive in. step back… Bios (distinguishes between one’s life and another) vs. Zoe (the aggregate, life in general without characterization). If you understand the stands of your creative DNA, you begin to see how they mutate into common threads in your work. You begin to see the “story” that you’re trying to tell; why you do the things you do (both positive and self-destructive), and how you see the world and function in it. The 33-questionnaire help to decipher your creative DNA. I like Tharp’s answer on her idea of mastery – having the experience to know what you want to do, the vision to see how to do it, the courage to work with you’re given, and the skill to execute that first impulse – all so you can take bigger chances.

Exercise 5. You can observe a lot by watching. Two exercises: pick a scene (e.g. between a couple) and write down everything they do and then do the same except writing down what you find interesting. The differences between the two descriptions speaks volume about how you see the world. You will be revealed.

Exercise 6. Pick a new name. What would you choose? What would you want it to say about you? Done wisely and well, a change a name can be self-fulfilling prophecy.

Harness your memory. Metaphor is the lifeblood of all art. It’s our vocabulary for connecting what we’re experiencing now with what have experienced before. It’s how we interpret it – for ourselves and others. Muscle memory – more for acquiring skill than for developing inspiration. Virtual memory – ability to project yourself into feeling and emotions from your past, and let them manifest themselves physically. Sensual memory – the sudden appearance of a smell or taste or sound or color instantly floods the imagination with images from the past. Institutional memory – like going through old file folders would open up a torrent of memories and associations, where you can find a useful idea. Ancient memory – old arts that brings up the spirit of the ancestors. Just go over the old CD, movies, books, magazines – the “shadowing” process.

Exercise 7: Name that muse. Associate a series of objects with something you are familiar and with similar meaning,e.g. Urania sounds like Uranus, hence associated with astronomy. I often use this method to remember a list of answers to an essay question for my school exam.

Exercise 8: Trust your muscle memory. Learn to train your muscle memory, your ability to retain and repeat motion.

Exercise 9: Mining your memory in a photograph. Take a family picture, any picture, and study it. What do you see in it that is indisputably similar to your life today, to the person you’ve become? What is vaguely similar? What bears no resemblance or suggests nothing memorable? The goal is to connect with something old so it becomes new. Look and imagine.

Before you can think out of the box, you have to start with a box. Create a box that you can transfer files. Fill it up with every item that went into the making of a creative project. This box documents the active research on every project. Keep a folder or drawer that contains the “pre-ideas” – those intriguing little tickles at the corners of your brain that tell you when something is interesting to you without your knowing quite knowing why. E.g. Beethoven kept notebooks for rough ideas, notebooks for improvements on those ideas, and notebooks for finished ideas. In the box, you may have the index cards that outline the goals, all the research materials, notebooks, tchotchkes,

Exercise 10: “Begin!” Take a deep breath, stamp your feet, and shout “Begin!”

Scratching (like scratching a lottery ticket). It’s what you do when you can’t wait for the thunderbolt to hit you. As Freud said, “When inspiration does not come to me, I go halfway to meet it.” When you’re in scratching mode, the tiniest microcell of an idea will get you going. Ideas can be acted upon 1) be generated, 2) retained, 3) inspected, 4) transformed to suit your higher purposes. Ways to search for ideas 1) Reading. The more you read, the more mentally fit you feel. 2) Everyday conversation. If you listen, you will hear ideas. 3) Enjoying other people’s handiwork. 4) In the footsteps of your mentors and heroes, using their paradigms as a starting point for ideas. Be careful not be become an imitator. 5) Amid nature. Observe how the birds waddle. 6) Don’t stop with one idea. Link A to B to C and maybe come up with H. A few rules to make scratching more manageable: 1) Be in shape. 2) scratch in the best places. For a sculptor, select the best stone to work with. 3) Never scratch the same place twice. If you scratch the same way all the time, you’ll end up the same place with the same old ideas. 4) Maintain the white hot pitch. Throw a tantrum at yourself. Anger is a cheap adrenaline rush. Scratching is where the creativity begins. It’s the moment where you ideas first take flight and begin to defy gravity. If you try to rein in, you’ll never know how high you can go.

Exercise 11: Chaos and Coins: gathering chaos into a satisfying order is a daunting challenge. Toss a handful of coins. Fiddle with the coins, moving them around into strange or familiar geometries.

Exercise 12: Reading archaeologically. “What you will be in five years depends on two things: the people you meet and the books you read.” Read backward in time. Start with where the author ended and finish where he started, solving the mystery of how the write got that way. “Reading fat” – reading related texts surrounding the book – like Oxford English Dictionary.

Exercise 13: A dozen eggs. Sit on the floor, bring the knees to the chest, curl the head down to the knees and try to make yourself as small as you can. And then you have no choice by to expand and grow. When you stimulate your body, you brain comes alive in ways you can’t simulate in a sedentary position.

Exercise 14: Give yourself a little challenge. Give yourself a handicap to overcome will force you to think in a new and slightly different way.

Exercise 15: Take a field trip. imbuing the walk with a steeply determination to come back with something in mind. Places like museums, local gallery, walk in the woods, hospital ER room, bus terminal, library archives, police station, construction site, mall, blues club, dairy farm, open field.

Accidents will happen. A plan is like the scaffolding around a building. When you’re putting up the exterior shell, the scaffolding is vital. But once the shell is in place and you start work on the interior, the scaffolding disappears. Planning cannot take over as you toil away on the interior guts of a piece. Transforming your ideas rarely goes according to plan – the paradox of creativity. Habitually creative people are “prepared to be lucky.” In creative endeavors luck is a skill. Some of the problems that can derail you well-laid plans: 1) other people. Relying too much on others, even in the inevitably collaborative process makes you crazy. 2) Perfectionism at the start. Limits are a secret blessing, and bounty can be a curse. It’s better to be ready to go than to wait until you are perfectly ready. “No deprivation, no inspiration. No then, no now.” 3) The wrong structure. You have to choose the form that’s not only appropriate to you but right for your particular area. 4) A sense of obligation. Not an acceptable reason to stick with something that isn’t working. 5) The wrong materials.

Exercise 16: Pick a fight. Art is competitive with yourself, with the past, with the future. Creativity is an act of defiance. You’re asking 3 questions that mock conventional wisdom: 1) Why do I have to obey the rules? 2) Why can’t I be different? 3) Why can’t I do it my way? You need to channel your innate defiance productively to generate anger, emotion, combustion, and heat. So, pick a fight – with the system, the rules, your rituals, even your everyday routines. Sometimes, to force change, you have to attack the work with outrage and violence. You won’t always win, but the exercise is liberating.

Exercise 17: Our Perfect World: 1) quiet, 2) no one present who does not belong – no observers. 3) all the time in the world. No worry that you will be thrown out or that you will go into overtime. 4) No goal other than to try things. 5) no fear of failure; nothing will fail. 6) No obligations other than to do your best, 7) We entertain each other; I challenge them, and they challenge me. 8 ) Each day completes itself. The next day is new.

Exercise 18: How to be lucky. Be generous. To be a great choreographer (or teacher), you have to invest everything you have in your dancers. It takes courage to be generous like that. They involve their friends in their work, and they tend to make others feel lucky to be around them.

Exercise 19: Work with the best. You need to rub up against other people.

Spine. Begins with your first strong idea. The idea is a toehold that gets you started. The spine is the underlying theme, a motive for coming into existence. What am I trying to say? That is the moment when you will embrace, with gratitude, the notion of a spine. You can discover the spine in many ways: 1) with an aid of a friend, 2) induce it with a ritual, “explain it to me as if I’m ten years old. 3) recall your original intentions and clarifying your goals. 4) from music.

Exercise 20: Make a picture that’s worth ten thousand words. Create a gesture or movement that would need many words to convey its meaning. If you can do this, you have the skill to develop congruities and affinities. You can find spine. When words fail, spine does not.

Exercise 21: Spinal tap. Pick a favorite work of art and try to determine what spine, if any, the artist built into it – to seek out the hidden architecture of a piece. The spine is the one of the first places to look if you want to understand how a work of art gathers substance and integrity. If you can find the spine in work that already speaks to you, you can build better spines for work of your own.

Exercise 22: What’s you MQ (Metaphor Quotient)? The process by which we transform the meaning of one thing into something different is an essential part of human intelligence. Everything you create is a representation of something else; in this sense, everything you create is enriched by the metaphor.

Skill. Mastered the underlying skills of their creative domain, and build the creativity on the solid foundation of those skills. Skill is how you close the gap between what you can see in your mind’s eye and what you can produce; the more skill you have, the more sophisticated and accomplished your ideas can be. Craft is where our best efforts begin. Learn to do it yourself. It’s the only way to broaden your skills. Personality is a skill too. Perfect practice makes perfect. Art is a vast democracy of habit. The great ones never take fundamentals for granted. Concentrate on the imperfections. Inexperience erases fear; you do not know what is and what is not possible and therefor everything is possible. Hemingway’s quote, “… to acquire the courage to do what children did when they knew nothing.” Analyze your own skill set. See where you’re strong and where you need dramatic improvement, and tackle those lagging skills first. “Without passion, all the skill in the world won’t lift you above craft. Without skill, all the passion in the world will leave you eager bout floundering. Combining the two is the essence of the creative life.”

Exercise 23: Take inventory of your skills. Before you can appreciate your skills and where you might need improvement, you need to take inventory.

Exercise 24: Play Twenty Questions. Thoroughness, like discipline, is one of the most valuable skills. The patience to accumulate detail keeps you grounded and sharp. Before you approach a topic, write down twenty things you want to know about it. The more you know, the better you can imagine.

Exercise 25: Package your time. Harding’s quote, “The most important thing is not what the author or artist had in mind to begin with but at what point he decided to stop.” Think of all things you want to accomplish in the next few months. Make the circles big or little depending on the importance of the task. Use this method to for prioritizing your time.

Exercise 26: Take away a skill, a vital one. Would you be able to create? How would you overcome the loss? How would you compensate? What skill would come to the fore to rescue the work? It’s the value of thinking hypothetically; it unleashes new talents and it forces you to face reality. E.g. Jack Welch’s valuable thinking; Take away new customers. What have you got left? Pick one of your skills from your inventory. Now remove it. What’s left?

Ruts and groves. There will be time when your creativity fails you. You are in a rut. It’s not a creative block. A rut is a false start or you’re spinning your wheels. You know you’re in a rut when you annoy other people, bore your collaborators and supporters, fail to challenge yourself, and get the feeling that you’re standing still. A rut can be the consequences of 1) a bad idea, 2) bad timing, 3) bad luck, 4) sticking to the tried and tested methods that don’t take into account how you or the world has changed. Dealing with ruts: 1) You have see the rut. You have to make a habit of reviewing your efforts along the way, seeing where you’ve been and where you are to make sure you’re still heading in the right direction, if any. 2) admit you’re in a rut. The more disciplined you are, the less you’ll be willing to cut your losses and stop the sanity. 3) Getting out of the rut. To get out of the rut. 1) You need a new idea. Give yourself an aggressive quota for ideas, like give coming up with 60 uses for a stool within 2 minutes. 2) Challenging your assumptions. Switching things around like 1) identify the concept that isn’t working. 2) write down your assumptions about it, 3) challenge the assumptions, 4) act the challenge.

When you are in a groove, you’re not spinning your wheels; you’re moving forward in a straight and narrow path without pauses or hitches. You’re unwavering, undeviating, and unparalleled in your purpose. There are groves where everything flows for days, weeks, months, and you knock out a finished work in record time. Finding your grooves: 1) a breakthrough in your craft, 2) in congenial material, 3) in a perfect partner, in a favorite character, 4) comfortable subject matter.

Exercise 27: Do a verb. Pick a verb and act it out physically, e.g. “squirm,” “dart,” “twirl,” or “chafe.” The big ten are: push, spin, run, jump, twist, roll, skip, turn, walk, and fall.

Exercise 28: Build a bridge to the next day – to increase the chances of successive successes. Hemingway’s trick – call it a day at a point when he knew what came next (to extend the mini-groove.) Try to stop while you have a few drops left in the tank, and use that fuel to build a bridge to the next day. Give yourself a creative quota. Write the leftover idea on a notebook and put it away. Start the next day by looking at your note.

Exercise 29: Know when to stop tinkering. Knowing when to stop is almost as critical as knowing how to start. For Twyla, she attaches the name to the work as the last thing she does.

Exercise 30: Brew ruts into grooves. A bad habit – i.e. one that doesn’t produce good results – is a rut. Exorcise the rut. Exercise the groove.

An “A” in failure. Every creative person has to learn to deal with failure, because failure, like death and taxes, is inescapable. A therapeutic power to failure. It cleanse. It helps you put aside who you aren’t and reminds you who you are. Failure humbles. Private failures (first drafts that get tossed in the wastebasket) are great. The more you fail in private, the less you’ll fail in public. Creative act is editing. You’re editing out all the lame ideas that won’t resonate with the public. It’s setting the bar a little higher for yourself and your audience. Jerome Robbins’ quote, “you do the best work after your biggest disasters.” It’s a tug of war. You have to forget the failure to get it behind you, but at the same time you have to remember and understand the reasons for it. Failures may be failure of 1) skill – develop the skill you need, 2) concept – get out while the getting’s good, 3) judgment – remember at all times that you’re the one who’ll be judged by the final product, 4) nerve – looking foolish is good for you. It nourishes the spirit, 5) through repetition – it forces us to cling to our past successes. 6) from denial – changing that work and how we work.

Exercise 31: Give yourself a second chance. By acknowledging failure, you take he first step to conquering it.

Exercise 32: Build your own validation squad. As we mature, we need to build criticism into the working process, as we do with failure. Look for people who are 1) have talents who you admire, 2) your friends (have your best interest in heart), 3) don’t feel they are competing with you, 4) have hammered your work in the past.

The long run.There is no long run without devotion, commitment, and persistence. Being in “the bubble” is elimination of every distraction, sacrificed almost everything that gave pleasure. When creativity has become your habit; when you’ve learned to manage time, resources, expectations, and the demand of others; when you understand the value and place of validation, continuity, and purity of purpose – then you’re on the way to an artist’s ultimate goal: the achievement of mastery. Mastery is an elusive concept. You never know when you achieve it absolutely – and it may not help you feel you’ve attained it. When it all comes together, a creative life has the nourishing power we normally associate with food, love and faith.