I’ll be back.

London,Paris,Tokyo,LA,Milano,Zurich,Seoul,Beijing,Hongkong,Abu Dhabi,Christchurch,Moscow,Houston,Taipei,Amsterdam,Sydney and many others I swear I’ll be there in 3 years time!

Being Happy in your early 20s

How to define being happy in your early 20s?

1. Earning $10,000 in a month at the age of 22.
2. Your monthly salary is the highest amongst my peers.
3. Do shopping without worrying about money.
4. Getting into the best university in the city.
5. Dating the school’s prettiest girl/guy.
6. Have the perfect body.
7. Have the best beef steak in town for dinner.
8. Scuba diving at Great Barrier Reef.
9. Go to sleep without setting an alarm clock.
10. Having the perfect GPA for my university.

I believe that sums up the life of us when we are in our early 20s. Our teenage days were over, and we thought we could have studied harder. We wish we could have enough points to apply for the degree course that seemed promising to be able to provide us with the job that everyone else wanted.

Money, status, materials, all seemed to be what we want in our early 20s. I hated myself for thinking this way, because there must be more than life to being materialistic. We know how good it feels to be driving around town and not taking the public bus. We know how good it feels to not worry about having not enough to spend at the end of the month. We know how good it feels when you can choose to watch Avengers in IMAX over Digital and how good we will feel if we could buy the cardigan we saw earlier without regretting it now.

Do only money, status and materials make me happy? I started reading Happy For No Reason by Marci Shimoff because I realised I am feeling unhappy almost every other day. I get jealous of people when I compare. Why am I not wearing the $10,000 Rolex Submariner but only a $18 Casio digital watch? Why do I not have a girlfriend while many other do? Why am I not as smart as the others?

I’m glad I could have this pause in my life to think through it. And if you have been feeling the same way as I do, I suggest you do take a pause too. Think through your life and ask yourself this:If there is one thing that you could change in life, what would it be? I couldn’t answer it because deep down in my heart, I know I loved my life and I shouldn’t change anything of my past for my current life experience.

And being happy doesn’t mean getting everything your wish list. Because once you strike off items in your wish list, you add more onto it. And to be happy again, you’ll have to work for it again and it might just get tiring and unhappy. Being happy means being happy deep inside.

And you may ask, how do we be happy deep inside? I honestly have no idea yet, because I’ve been studying my entire life, and each happy moments while studying are brought by materials, sight, feelings, love, touch and of course, good grades. As I embark on my adult working life soon, I know it is not going to be easy working for the next 30-40 years and I don’t choose the right job. And the right job means something I can do for the next 30-40 years. Something that I am passionate in. Or maybe the job aligns you with your faith towards your religion. Do what you do best, and everything else will fall perfectly in place.

Are you feeling happy now? Regardless of your age. Do you ever remembering being happy when youre in your early 20s? While I’m only 22, I am trying my very best to be happy because when I hit 50, I want to tell myself I lived a life and I was happy in it. Because when we are 50, we may not be able to do things we did in our 20s, and we only have this life to make it worthwhile. So live life to the fullest with what you have and what you can.

Options

Considering between two options.

Either:
Be forward-looking
Complete my college degree at NTU’s Computer Science
Strive hard towards a good grade
Sponsorship with police force
Join the police force (my childhood aspiration)
if not, to work at advertising firm, it management, mobile development, web services.
NTU(CS) average income $3.4K a month

Or
Follow what my heart tells me to
Pursue a stressful yet satisfying career serving people in the skies ensuring their safety and comfort are met to the best of our abilities
“Do it now” mindset
“we only live once” mindset
SIA published basic + allowance amounting to $3.5K a month.

I think it’s quite logical that it’s the first and not the latter choice.

But I always ask myself this:
if not now, then when?

Being helpful.

A visit from my aunts to my place to see my grandma allowed me to express how I find satisfaction helping people. And maybe that, is my calling.

Formula for Success - Quotes of my life #10

If you think working hard alone is enough to get you to success, think again. Anyone can work hard. There must be that extra something paired with hard work; the perfect formula is doing both things you don’t enjoy together with the ones you enjoy. If we chose to only do things that we are comfortable with, we will never go further than those who are willing to do anything.

- Brandon Lee

Quotes of my life #9

If there is one thing that you could change in life, what would it be? 

Story of Instagram

One day, I will do something as good as Instagram.
———————-

18 months & 3 simple, not-so-simple steps to $1 billion…, Today, Instagram sold to Facebook for $1 billion. A week ago, when TIME asked Instagram founder, Kevin Systrom, if he would sell the company, he said “It’s not really on the top of our minds right now.” , Kevin is 27 years old and started Instagram 18 months ago with Mike Krieger, in October 2010. The company has grown with just 4 staff, and today has just 9 in the team. With the $1 billion deal that was announced today, was Kevin just plain lucky, or was there some simple steps that he (and others who have had the same luck) have in common?, Here’s three steps he followed. They may not guarantee you exactly the same success - but they will increase your own good fortune:, 1. THING BIG FROM DAY ONE - THEN LEARN FROM OTHERS:, It was while Kevin was studying at Stanford 7 years ago that he had the idea of a photo-sharing site, from his passion for photography. That was before iPhones, and before Facebook. Step one is to cultivate your idea by learning from others. He met Mark Zuckerberg in 2004 and talked about his idea. Mark then offered him a job at Facebook, which had just launched (in hindsight, a cheaper option that the $1 billion he’s just paid to work with Kevin). Kevin turned him down but they stayed in touch. He went to intern at Odeo with Evan Williams, who sold Blogger and Jack Dorsey, who launched Twitter. This is where Kevin got to understand the power of social sharing. Kevin later said “Comparing Instagram to photography is like comparing Twitter to Microsoft Word”., He then went on to work at Google. All in all, it was a full six years after having the idea of a photo sharing site that he worked with others leading the field: Getting paid for his own education before he launched his own start-up. As Kevin says, “I was given the opportunity to be in the middle of a ton of innovation, and meet some of the smartest people doing the coolest stuff in the world. When I finally did it [myself], it just felt so right.”

Who could you (and should you) be working with today to lay your own foundation?

2. KEEP 100% FOCUSED ON WHAT PROBLEM YOU’RE SOLVING - AND FAIL FIRST:

When Kevin launched Instagram in October 2010, he explained in his first blog what problems Instagram intended to solve. He listed the top three problems users were having:

“My mobile photos look lame.”
“It’s a pain to share to all my friends.”
“Photos take forever to upload.”

How would he know these were the problems? Just by talking to people? No, by getting it wrong the first time. In early 2010 he launched his first attempt “Burbn” as a location-based photo app, using Foursquare. It was a one-man-band, but after a year of hard work it had failed to catch on. It was, however, a failure that allowed him to learn from his users what would work, and to attract interest from like-minded people, including his future co-founder of Instagram, Mike Krieger.

By focusing on these three problems, Instagram launched in October 2010. Kevin relates the first moments of launch: “It was 12:15am, October 6th and we had been working on the app non-stop, day and night for 8 weeks. With a bit of hesitation, I clicked the button that launched “Instagram” live to the Apple app store. We figured we’d have at least 6 hours before anyone discovered the app so we could grab some shut-eye. No problem, we figured. Within a few minutes, they started pouring in… The night of sleep we were hoping for turned into a few meager hours before we rushed into the office to add capacity to the service. Now, only a couple months later, we’re happy to announce that our community consists of more than a million registered users.”

What problem are you solving, and what are you learning by failing, that is setting you up for your own overnight success?

3. CUT OUT ALL THE NOISE:

Kevin explains the difference between Instagram and Burbn: “We actually got an entire version of Burbn done as an iPhone app, but it felt cluttered, and overrun with features. It was really difficult to decide to start from scratch, but we went out on a limb, and basically cut everything in the Burbn app except for its photo, comment, and like capabilities. What remained was Instagram.”

Kevin cut out all the noise. He then launched Instagram just on the Apple App Store (It just came to Android last week) and focused on sharing on Twitter and Facebook (Three platforms that didn’t even exist when he first had the idea). That’s it: Photo, comment, like. No other platforms. No other noise.

Simpler means sharper means easier to cut through the noise. Instagram went from one million users by Dec 2010 to 30 million users today. In 2011, Apple named Instagram the “App of the Year”. Why would Facebook buy it now for $1 billion? Because Mark already knows it will add more value than that to Facebook when it has its upcoming $100 billion IPO.

If you are already thinking big, connecting smart and focused at the problems you are solving - How could you solve them in the fewest number of steps?

A BILLION DOLLAR STORY

It obviously takes more than three simple, not-so-simple steps to get the pieces lined up and timed right for the kind of 18 month run that Kevin has had. But these three show up again and again in today’s stories of hyper-growth, and the ones I will continue to share here on Facebook and at my Fast Forward events.

As an end to this chapter of the Instagram story, here’s how Kevin relates the beginning of his photo-sharing idea. It is at the heart of his journey, as your story should be at the heart of yours:

“When I studied abroad my teacher set what I do now in motion by saying, “Give me that camera of yours.” He took my camera away and gave me a little, plastic camera. I was studying in Florence at the time and he told me that I wasn’t allowed to use my camera for the rest of the class. I had to use this plastic camera with a terrible lens. He said I was too focused on sharpness and “I feel like you’re more artsy than that.””

“He said, “I want you to use this Holga,” this plastic camera with a plastic lens that had this cult following in the ’80s and ’90. I was blown away by what it could do to photos. My photography teacher was totally right. I was too focused on being meticulous with these really beautiful, complex architectural shots. It helps to see the world through a different lens and that’s what we wanted to do with Instagram. We wanted to give everyone the same feeling of discovering the world around you through a different lens.”

It’s ironic that as Instagram hits a $1 billion value, mimicking the feel of these disposable cameras, the biggest producer of them, Kodak, has filed for bankruptcy.

Each wave that crashes is followed by another. The only question is who is already positioning themselves to surf it. Are you up for the ride?

Will it be possible?

We met last night. I thought we could be possible but your heart is somewhere else now.