Irwan’s

I was just about to write on how I abhor traveling in the US and rather to invest that amount of money, but I guess this topic significantly cover what we are going to discuss in that post.

I read that the ability to delay gratification is a form of intelligence. Many old words suggest this wisdom. Remember the pantun of “Bersusah-susah dahulu”? If we take time to see what is happening around us, we would notice that a lot of things that we are doing are some kind of delaying gratification.

For example, some people refuse to eat today to get a better/healthy body tomorrow. They call it dieting. In more subtle example, why we are pursuing our study right now? For some, it’s to get a much better paying job in the future. Instead of having satisfaction right now (by doing what we like), we are using that time to get a better education in hope of being able to have more satisfaction in the future by having more money/time from better jobs.

And the most important to us Muslims, to submit to God, by doing what He told us to do, and leave what He forbade is the greatest delayed gratification of all and most rewarding too.
The real question here is not why but how much; and which gratification you do want to delay and which you don’t.
It’s relatively easy to answer if you asked financially because you are dealing with measurable risk and profit. But in other aspect of life where emotions, memories, youth, friendships,pride take place, the answer will determine who you are and how you lead your life.

If you would like to help me answer these questions (which have no right or wrong ):

1) Would you spend USD3000 to travel to Europe , or you would you invest that much of money and travel around the world 20 years later?

2) Would you like to drive Honda Civic starting at your age of 25, or would you like to ride a kancil until you get a Carrera at your age of 45?

Well, those are just my make-up examples. But do comment, I just want to know what others are thinking.

Good and Bad things always happen to everyone. Sometimes the good is more than the bad, and sometimes it’s vice versa. How each person reacts to both situations determine that person’s characteristic. And I have my own way too. I just wanna talk about small portion of it in this post.

Last week I got the grades for my first semester of my sophomore year. I got B for my calculus. At least in academic field (and maybe in financial too), I have this extraordinary intrapersonal intelligent than I can choose whether to feel depress or not about the grade. It’s not hard for me to take this as a small matter and continue my life as if I got A for it or as if I have already owned the world, if i want to. Or I can be depressed and shut the world around me. The choice is really mine.
If I can easily choose, why not be as happy as bird? Problem solved.

That’s the core problem in this post. I can take the easy way and be happy of what had happened. But then I realized, if it’s the road I take, being complacent of who I am and what I can do, it won’t bring me anywhere except where I’m standing right now. Failure is the best teacher, some people say. To me, emotional pain is the best teacher. That’s how brain work, to avoid pain and to gain pleasure. It’s my best motivator through my post-UPSR life until the SPM. But I’m not gonna talk about it in this post.

So should I feel depress and try to make another emotional pain that could motivate me through these years? I like an effective motivator like this but I just don’t like to be depress and ruin my 4-weeks holiday. What do you guys think? Let me know

Taken from Robert Kiyosaki’s book, a lot of people can come out with a better hamburger(product) than McDonald’s but can he sell millions like McD. I doubt it.

Having a product without a system can be fairly compared with having to-do list but not doing it. Like having a dream but not striving towards it.

Right now, my small business can be described as a system because instead of selling product, I’m offering service, which is a system itself. However, almost all of the work is done by myself. According to Kiyosaki’s book, I’m still in left quadrant which comprises of employee or self-employed (I should have made a post to explain this in greater detail). To be in right quadrant, I must get out of the system by delegating the work to others. This might results of lower income for myself, but I will have more time focusing on other stuff, like how to expand my system.

I’m now on my mission to ‘hire’ some of my friends who might be interested in this. Actually working with people that are close with you is not really a good thing. I remember a proverb at my own site that read something like this: dinner with family, business with strangers. This is a very true advice as when you have family/friends as your workers, you will be having other conflicts beside business matters. It’s not actually bad thing to have them around but just be prepare for problems that it might create. This journal might describe the problem a bit more.

Summary of my journey today:

• Own your system, don’t be inside it so you can focus to expand it
• Family/friends might have more issues than business-related