Brian Keng

  • Rejection

    There are some things in life that your wish you’d just known earlier.  Like the importance of reading, or the concept of dynamic programming or this useful tidbit of wisdom:

    “Don’t be put off if they say no. Rejection is almost always less personal than the rejectee imagines. Just move on to the next. (This applies to dating too.)”
    – Paul Graham

    Whether professionally, socially or romantically, rejection is very rarely a personal thing.  It may be that the rejector was just having a bad day, or that she may have a hundred of other applicants.  We all like to think that we’re the centre of the universe but I assure you it’s not the case.  This is great news though because as soon as we understand this, we can move on.  We can move on to take more risks, move on to make more mistakes and move on to learn so many more new wonderful things.  So next time someone says “no”, say “thank you” and move on.

    Don’t be put off if they say no. Rejection is almost always less personal than the rejectee imagines. Just move on to the next. (This applies to dating too.)

  • Perfection

    “Perfection is the enemy of progress.”

    Like most technical people, I find it a struggle to understand/comprehend some business-type concepts.  They’re so wishy-washy in nature.  Give me some 1’s and 0’s any day (or at least some well defined set like the Real numbers).  And perfection is one of these concepts.  A truism in business is that perfection and progress are mutually exclusive (I doubt they phrase it like that though).  If we sat around trying to figure out every eventuality for a business to be successful, we’d be here until the end of time.  Developers know this well when they ship a release.  Not every file gets commented, not every case gets tested, and definitely not every bug gets fixed.  We live in a world of imperfection and the closer we strive for perfection the less we get out of it.  The really successful people know when to stop perfecting things and move on.  And now it’s my turn.

  • A Players

    “A players hire A players; B players hire C players; and C players hire D players.  It doesn’t take too long to get to Z.”

    – Steve Jobs (taken from the Kawasaki’s Art of the Start)

    Behind every great person there are other great people.  In fact, some of the most successful people are great because they know how to surround themselves with great people.

    The people you associate with have a strange effect.  You inadvertently get brought to their level.  So if you’re with A players, you (consciously or not) raise your level of play to an A level.  Unfortunately, it works doubly the other way, if you’re with B players, you’re going to be brought down to a B level (or worse).  Whatever level you’re playing at, you can do better.  You can always do better.  And the first way to start is to find some A players.

  • Goals

    Back in grade 5, I had an assignment where I had write goals for the coming school year.  Being an inquisitive kid, I clearly remember questioning the usefulness of writing down my goals (I was a skeptical kid… or maybe just lazy).  My thinking was that if I wrote down a concrete goal, doesn’t that just limit my potential by just working hard enough to achieve that goal?  Being a bit older and hopefully a bit wiser, I think I’ve come to understand the utility of making goals.

    One of the problem with this argument is that goals do not limit what you can achieve.  In fact they do the opposite, they help you achieve things that are too distant to be tangible.  Concrete goals can give you a tangible outcome that you can both achieve and celebrate.  This is incredibly important as humans generally have problems with long term thinking so intermittent achievements, and more importantly celebrations, can give you way points to help you along the way.  For me, I’ve found this incredibly useful (and necessary).  I continue to use this strategy to achieve my longer term ambitions (e.g. PhD).

    So with the year almost finished, let’s remember to celebrate the goals that we’ve made, the goals that we’ve achieved and the goals that are going to lead us into the new year.  Happy new year!

  • Jobs

    I recently came back from FMCAD in November and I was fortunate to meet a lot of great people there.  One thing I love to ask for is advice, especially from successful people.  Here’s a tidbit from my experience there:

    When working at a job as an employee, people may tell you that you’re doing a good job.  They may even say you’re exceptional but if you’re just doing your job, how exceptional are you really?  How does this compare to someone who is consistently going beyond their job requirements?  Consistently surpassing expectations?  Consistently outperforming?  That’s truly exceptional.

    To accomplish this you need to be proactive and assertive.  The only problem is that no one will tell you this.  They’ll keep telling you about the great job you’re doing.  And that’s what you’ll end up doing, a great job.  The same job.  Until you decide you want to do more.  So the question is, what kind of job do you want to be doing?

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