In years to come, when I come back to read these posts, I believe it will revive lots of fond memories of how we build this organization up.

Right now, our CTO is working ferociously at our website. So-called CTO, poor guy got to “chop wood, carry water” by doing up the website from scratch. And boy, he is really swinging from groans of frustrations to hysterics of laughter. Well, the CEO decided not to pay thousands to engage a specialist. (Yeah, now you know why the CTO finds no time to blog here. He holds a full-time job, by the way.)

“Chop wood, carry water” is a term I borrowed from a coaching organization I am affiliated with. What it means is that to do something big, one must learn and internalize the basics. The process is long and arduous. It can be pretty demeaning if one sees the self as being too good to work on the basics. Nonetheless, every master was once an amateur. Each basic skill that is mastered well contributes to strong fundamentals to build an empire.

A start-up is tough because it is all about “chop wood, carry water”. Maybe, some years later, when the CTO looks back into this posting, he would appreciate what he’s going through at this moment.

Our CTO posted this notes on Choices in his Facebook. It caught my eye and I read further here: http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/25/dear-irrational-reader-close-the-door/

And then I went to play the game here: http://www.predictablyirrational.com/?page_id=117

You know how having choices make you feel empowered? One would feel better if he is offered a choice rather than being forced to settle for one. That’s the usual unconscious case anyway. Why would people prefer to shop in the supermarket to the mama shop downstairs? Again, because one would feel spoilt for choice in the supermarket and perceive it as “better” than the mama shop. If you are still not convinced, girls can testify to why some guys just don’t seem to want to commit. So long these guys still have choices available, settling down for one is too much of a sacrifice. Or so they think.

To be able to choose is a form of power. Do we human beings use this power to our advantage or do we, in our typical foolishness, abuse it and become irrational?

In other words, do we necessarily make better decisions because we have more choices? The experiments ran in both laboratory and field conditions concluded that the answer is NO. We fare worse when we desperately try to keep our options open. The failure to commit has such dire consequences.

I tested the game myself. And my results:

Number of times you switched doors: 22; Your score: 1284

Number of times you switched doors: 6; Your score: 2221

My score was more than 70% higher when I switched doors less 70% of the time. Based on a very crude calculation but nevertheless pretty revealing, the number of times I switch door is almost perfectly inversely correlated with my score.

That’s a pretty scary piece of news to me. Wasn’t we informed that choices are good for us?

I want to qualify this statement now. Choices are good for us in the decision process, provided we have a set of criteria.  In the game, my criteria was that as long as the door gave me points higher than 60, I would stick to it. Once it dropped lower than 50 points, I would exercise my option to choose by switching doors.

I went through many crisis in life because I had no internal grasp of criteria. Yes, I had many options but I spent more time on keeping options open than using my criteria to assess the quality of the options.  I ended up with a whole lot of “back-up” career paths, none of which excites me and my wallet very much.

In the training market, consumers are spoilt for choices. Thing is, what is the quality of the decision?

Back then working in the corporate world, I was tasked with the most dreaded assignment - do up the training plan.

It should have been very simple. I mean, ideally, it is just about shopping for things that the company needs. Unfortunately, this shopping trip is likened to a “walk till you drop” kind of window shopping.

Firstly, budget - no budget but still want to do up a training plan. Bah!

Secondly, managers could not afford to let their staff take time off for training.

Thirdly, boss kept asking to justify. Then why do training plan?

Fourthly, I had no idea how to do a training needs analysis. I asked to attend an external course on that but got turned down.

2 and 1/2 years later, my interest still persisted. So this time, I self-sponsored, only to realize TNA is actually Training Needs Assessment. TNA is to verify that there is NO need for training. And if a need is indeed revealed, then press forward with training with no doubts casted.

Imagine all the bosses understand what TNA is about. We could have saved them so much monies and enhance their efficiency.

Yippee, our blog is beginning to take on our corporate identity. Meanwhile, the CEO and CTO had a huge boo-boo that took hours for the waters to calm. The perils of starting this organization should indeed justifiably be over-compensated for.

I am reading “The Logic of Life” by Evan Davis currently and came upon the topic of divorce, in relation to rationality. Some might be slightly disturbed by some of the ideas but on behalf of the women out there, let me treat you to an excerpt.

“… Meanwhile, the more capable women become of looking after children by themselves, the less men need to bother. It’s a textbook case of free-riding: with highly educated women in excess supply, men have realized that they can get sex, and even successful offspring, without ever moving too far from the armchair and the TV. Statistics seem to bear this out…”

“Delaying motherhood means big income gains for educated women, because of the economies of scale in education and work that reward those who spend a long time in college and then work long hours early in their careers. For every year by which a woman delays having her first child, her lifetime earnings rise by 10%…”

Now I love this especially:

“…The logic of comparative advantage highlighted something that most men - except economists - have found it hard to get their heads around: there is no reason to believe that men were breadwinners because they were any good at it. They might simply have been breadwinners because getting them to help around the house would have been even worse.”

Men out there, don’t take it so hard. There might be some cultural bias but it would be really interesting to examine local statistics!

The entrepreneurship spirit has been challenged with both the CEO and CTO tied down by full-time jobs, part-time studies and extra-curriculum activites.

The CEO is getting frustrated by the speed of development. The CTO is feeling stretched. Meanwhile, costs are climbing. And TLE is not even open for business yet.

Limitations are popping everywhere. They have no idea how to price their services. They don’t seem to be able to set up the website as fast as they like, with minimal cost. This blog was only born yesterday without the corporate skin.

When things seem to come to a standstill, impatience got the better of the CEO. This morning, after a full breakfast thanks to her sister, she found refreshed energy to pump things into this blog to inform the world the arrival of The Learning Emporium, albeit the missing corporate skin.

Limitations? Blah. They are just going to work around it.

The Learning Emporium was a dream first formed when I was a kid wishing for a superstore better than Popular.

In the growing up process, I forgot this dream and lost myself.

Then, when I started to work, the idea came back and this time, I wanted a superstore that holds every course and program in this world.

Again, I forgot this dream and lost myself.

It was only in late 2007 that this dream surfaced again. For something that has been in latent existence for 26 years, I know, I can’t ignore it anymore.

For I have the resources now, I have run out of excuses in the realm of consciousness. For in the depths of my guts and heart, I can see how this dream will bring wishes come true for the masses out there, in the self-empowering and sustainable way.

Honestly, this dream is so huge for my current capacity that it scares me. “Stretched like a spaghetti” was what my boyfriend described me. I know. I would love to turn into ramen to stretch even longer. There’s so much to be done.