In the Distracted World, Cultivate These Superpowers #LeadersAreReaders January 2022

I was with a student-turned-friend when I asked my usual question, “What book are you reading now?” He said with a sound of disappointment, “I haven’t read any book consistently since last year.” I raised my eyebrows to signal him to say more. He continued, “I have been very busy with my works, and I’m addicted to social media and games too.” He needs encouragement. So I tried to spark his interest, “Do you know that there are two superpowers that are very valuable today?” (I use the word superpowers because we just came back from watching the Spiderman movie). Actually, I asked intending to answer my own question: “Focus and depth.” I told him since most people are easily distracted, if he wants to be different, he must learn to improve his focus and sharpen his attention. And since the major outcome of continuous distraction is shallow thinking, he needs to strive not to be a zombie but a person of depth, especially as a Christ-follower.

“There are various ways to exercise these superpowers,” I said as I concluded our lengthy discussion from the rise of TikTok to the Facebook Metaverse controversy to spiritual disciplines with now a friend-turned-student again, “and one of it is by cultivating the habit of reading widely and deeply.” Almost every time I asked my usual question to a student or a friend (last week was with my friend, George), it will lead me to this one passion: promoting literacy and fostering a love for reading, especially, the Scripture.

I see the urgent need to encourage our young people today - and you! - to redeem and use these superpowers (we called graces) in a distracted world for the glory of God. It's not just about our minds but also our souls. May this encourage you to think about all these things... Please consider this message ya #ServeToLead #Focus #APersonOfDepth #LetsMakeReadingCoolAgain

To read my book reviews of #LeadersAreReaders JANUARY 2022, CLICK THE TITLES below:

1) Education, Free & Compulsory (1999) by Murray N. Rothbard

2) The Lord from Heaven (1958, 1974) by Leon Morris

3) The Notebook: A Novel (1996) by Nicholas Sparks

4) Cracking Philosophy: You, This Book and 3,000 Years of Thought (2016) by Dr. Martin Cohen (this not a review but more to an encouragement to study philosophy)

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THINK BIG. START SMALL. GO DEEP.

Membaca #InjilMatius Secara Menyeluruh: Yesus Ialah Mesias

Apakah tujuan Injil Matius ditulis? Rujuk Bab 1 Ayat 1: "Inilah salasilah Yesus Kristus, anak Daud..." Tujuannya ialah untuk menyatakan Berita Baik tentang Yesus iaitu Anak Daud atau Mesias yang telah dinubuatkan kedatangan-Nya dalam Perjanjian Lama. Disini saya membaca keseluruhan Injil Matius secara LIVE. Jom buka Alkitab bersama-sama!

Untuk mendengar Podcast pengajian Alkitab ayat-demi-ayat (ekposisi) Injil Matius KLIK DI SINI http://bit.ly/LegasiSpotify 

#ServeToLead #PreachTheWord #InjilMatius

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THINK BIG. START SMALL. GO DEEP.

 

#1Book1Week Lists March 2020

Someone said (I bet he or she is a reader), "So little time, so many books." I'm familiar with this frustration. There are two main reasons if I go to the mall: the cinema & bookstores. Whenever I'm surrounded by books, I instantly feel happy like I'm home with family and at the same time sad because I will never know all of them when I'm gone. This month (March 2020) is a rough and tough month so far but it gives us the opportunity to spend time with family and - self. Here is my list of reading this month:

1) The Power of Positive Thinking (first published in 1952) by Norman Vincent Peale. This is a classic self-help book on why positive thinking is important with practical instructions on how to have an optimistic attitude. This is my second time reading it. My favorite quote is: "What the mind can conceive and believe, and the heart desire, you can achieve" [P.s: I aim to be an optimistic-realist rather than just positive thinker].

2) Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (2015) by Yuval Noah Harari. If you haven't read the first book, Sapiens (2011), read that one first, then read this. Here Harari looks to the future and explores how global power might shift, as the principal force of evolution – natural selection – is replaced by intelligent design and our quest to upgrade ourselves into gods (Homo-Deus = human-god). This book is both scary and hopeful. What makes it a good read is because it makes me think rather than only inform since I don't necessarily agree with his worldviews. Harari is a gifted thinker.

3) The 50th Law (2009) by Robert Greene & Curtis Jackson a.k.a. rapper 50 Cent. This is a very powerful book - partly 50's memoirs, partly Robert's Laws of Power - on success in life and inspired living by one simple principle: fear nothing or fearlessness. Someone said that this is 'The Art of War' for 'The Hip Hop Generation' but I said this is 'The Gangster Book' on personal development straight from the hood! I will read this book again, for sure.

4) Fakebook: A True Story. Based on Actual Lies (2013) by Dave Cicirelli. What can I say? I really enjoy this book so much that I texted Dave through Messenger to let him know that (he texted me back). His curiosity leads him to do a social experiment where he announced on FB that he was quitting his job (lie) and heading west (lie) for an adventure. But the truth is, he wasn't going anywhere (true) and most people believed him! (true). The big question in this book is: Who is the real 'you' and what is the story you tell others?

5) The Bible: The Book of Numbers & The Book of Deuteronomy. This is part of my discipline to read the entire Bible chronologically in 1 year. You must know the past to live in the present. Soli Deo Gloria.

What book(s) have you read this month? Share with me in the comment section #ServeToLead #LeadersAreReaders #GrowingLeader #LetsMakeReadingCoolAgain #1Book1Week

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THINK BIG. START SMALL. GO DEEP.

Six (6) Books on the Effect of Technology & Social Media

Technology has overwhelmed our daily lives to the point of constant distraction. Many of us can no longer focus on a single task or face-to-face conversation without wanting to reach out — or retreat — to the virtual world every few minutes. At the peak of my addiction to social media, keeping my discipline to write an article a day for my blog was very difficult. But with the helped of these books (and more) I've come to understand why and how to overcome my constant dependency on technology Now my problem is I have too many ideas and materials to write!

If you want to explore why, how and what makes technology and social media so addictive and to better take control of your life rather than be controlled by these tools, I recommend reading these books:

The Church of Facebook: How the Hyperconnected Are Redefining Community (2009) by Jesse Rice

The Digital Diet: The 4-step Plan to Break Your Tech Addiction and Regain Balance in Your Life

Book (2011) by Daniel Sieberg > borrowed from the library

IDisorder: Understanding Our Obsession with Technology and Overcoming Its Hold on Us

Book (2012) by Larry D. Rosen > borrowed from the library

Dot Complicated: Untangling Our Wired Lives (2013) by Randi Zuckerberg

Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age (2015) by Sherry Turkle

Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World (2019) by Cal Newport > listened to the audiobook

#ServeToLead #LeadersAreReaders #GrowingLeader #1Book1Week

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THINK BIG. START SMALL. GO DEEP.

Short-Term Famous OR Long-Term Impact?

A good friend (and few others) asked me, "I love your content, but why not many people follow you?" I explained to him about half a dozen of my theories. One is because I try not to follow trends but focus on values. Another is because although I know some good tricks, I refuse to chase after followers rather than qualities. And another one is because I think in long-term impact rather than short-term famous and some other plausible reasons. Regardless…

How you use your social media is up to you. Your right, your choice. But sometimes its good to examine ourselves by asking these questions: How do I use my social media? What impact do I want to contribute to the world? How can I leave a positive legacy behind? Legacy a.k.a. Legasi (BM)... that's a good word, right? #ServeToLead #GrowingLeader

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THINK BIG. START SMALL. GO DEEP.

5 Books on Social Media and Technology

Why you should learn more about technology, especially social media? Because the way we interact, communicate, think, grow and move forward in today's world is through social media. If you don't learn fast and deep enough (as opposed to shallow media today), you'll be left behind. How fast you should learn? That depends on you, as long as you're faster than you were 3 years ago. But to avoid shallowness and go for deep(er) thinking, one of the most effective ways, is to read books - actual, physical books. Here are 5 books on how to think deeply about technology, especially social media:

#1 The Church of Facebook

#2 Reclaiming Conversation

#3 How to Tame Technology

#4 Dot Complicated

#5 Unfriending My Ex

To get a copy (or more) of any of these books, just go to:

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THINK BIG. START SMALL. GO DEEP.

Angelus' Quote: Unfriend Your Ex After Break Up

It has been said to "Always follow your heart" and it can be true sometimes. But when it comes to matters of the heart (I'm talking about emotion) listening to your head (logic) can save you a lot of pain. Listen to me - both as heart-breaker and as the heart that has been broken - please UNFRIEND your ex. It might don't make sense now; You might think that it's harmless; Perhaps you want to act kind or maybe you just don't have the gut to do it... Take a deep breath, let go of whatever confusing emotions you have right now, go to your ex's profile - UNFRIEND!

Why? In today's world, social networking is like living in a virtual world, and there are times when your virtual world and real world intersect. When it comes to relationships, all too often the virtual and real world are at odds. If you want to really let go, then please include let them go from your virtual world too. If you still keep your ex in your friend lists, it will make the hurt deeper, longer, harder to let go, make you feel insecure and negative (imagine you see your ex with someone new, then you'll think to yourself, "What's wrong with me?" "Am I not good enough?" "Is he/she happier without me?" and all sort of imaginary questions).

Don't be overconfident by saying, "No problem, we just gonna be normal friends" or "The past is the past, it won't affect me anymore." Unless you do not really love your ex before, these foolish talks are self-deceiving talks! You're not a robot, you're an emotional being. The reasonable thing to do is to UNFRIEND your ex. Plus, what if in the future you (thought you) already move on and found someone new, what if he or she finds out that you still connected with (or secretly 'stalking') your ex? I tell you, he or she will be mad and break up with you! Then, you neither have one or the other. So, don't be overconfident. Emotionally, this might be hard for you to do, I understand. But in a long-term, logically, this is the wisest thing to do. Listen to me: UNFRIEND your ex, Now!

THINK BIG. START SMALL. GO DEEP.

Our Wired Lives on Facebook Series: #3 The Difference Between Public, Private and Personal

Currently I’m reading Randi Zuckerberg’s book Dot Complicated: Untangled Our Wired Lives (2013). After Randi layouts some amazing benefits of the Internet, she then proceed to write about the ‘grey zone’:

“Before the Internet came along, we could categorize our information in three simple ways: public, private, or personal.

            Public information is exactly what it sounds like. This is everything you’re totally cool with people knowing or having access to, or winding up on the front page of a newspaper.

            Private information includes the things that you would only tell your lawyer, therapist, doctor, spouse, diary, or absolutely no one at all.

            But then there’s personal information – the category in between, full of complicated nuance. This includes things you might tell your friends but you probably won’t share with strangers.

            I post family photos on Facebook all the time for my friends to see. I see photos of my friend’s kids, weddings, and families. None of these photos are private per se. It wouldn’t ruin anyone’s life if these cute, harmless photos wound up in the press. But these images are certainly personal, which means my friends trust me to behave appropriately when I see them.

            It’s generally pretty easy to identity information as either public or private. But when it comes to personal information – that middle ground between something that’s okay to share slightly outside your immediate circle but not with absolutely everyone – you enter a bit of a grey zone.

            Before the Internet arrived, the grey zone was there, but it was much smaller. You could be fairly certain that if you showed your vacation bikini pics to your friends, it didn’t mean your aunt and your aunt’s friends and some random guy you once went to high school with were also going to see, distribute, and comment on them. Your friends would understand the nuance and context of what they were seeing and know not to share personal material with the outside world. Sitting around the coffee table looking at your photo albums, you controlled the distribution of your information.

            But online you don’t have the luxury. Online you have private and you have public, and the entire concept of personal information has vanished.

            This causes problems…

            When personal information goes public, it’s really hard to know what to do about it…

            This whole situation needs to be fixed. It can’t be that we’re going to have to adjust to a world where we cannot share anything but our utmost public and sterile information. Sharing the personal stuff with others is an essential aspect of what it means to be human. If our online lives are to be fully integrated, then as we go forward we need to find a way to bring back personal information online. We must be able to post some pool pics without the whole world finding out, even if one of our friends is feeling little overenthusiastic with the share button that day…

            Repost unto others as you would have them repost unto you.”

[Long excerpt from Dot Complicated: Untangling Our Wired Lives by Randi Zuckerberg (Harper-Collins Publishers, 2013), page 78-80. Buy this book!]

Let technology supposed to help us, not lord it over us.

Let technology fill our lives with meaning, rather than fear.

Let technology empowered us, rather than overwhelmed us.

Let technology become tools of opportunity to glorify God in everything,

rather than promote insecurity.

THINK BIG. START SMALL. GO DEEP.

Our Wired Lives on Facebook Series: #2 Buried Your Head in Your Phone or Be the Voice to the Voiceless

Currently I’m reading Randi Zuckerberg’s book Dot Complicated: Untangled Our Wired Lives (2013), she wrote about the digital world we’re living now:

“What’s the upside? We’re more connected.

And the downside? We’re more connected.

            Technology has altered every aspect of our lives, from our relationships to our families to our careers to our love ones. It’s changed how we celebrate birthdays, how we announce major life news, how we define friendships, and how we demand costumer service.

            With smartphones, and the cameras built into them, friends and family can share all the most important moments in their lives with one another as they happen. In June 2011, a Pew Research Center survey of over two thousand American adults found that Facebook users have stronger ties with their closest friends, find it easier to get support and advice from people, and are more likely to stay in touch with ‘dormant ties,’ old friends from high school or college, or people who live far away.

            Grandparents can see the face of a newborn grandchild from thousands of miles away through the lens of a webcam and via video calling. In fact, research published in 2012 by Dr. Shelia Cotton at the University of Alabama, Birmingham, showed that seniors who used the Internet were about 30 percent less likely to be depressed than seniors who didn’t.

            Colleagues can have virtual face-to-face meetings with people working in offices anywhere in the world – there’s no such thing as a remote office anyway.

            Friends can capture every moment of a dinner party through photos and make those photos beautiful with professional-looking edits, filters, and borders.

            That same ease of communication might also mean that you get an informal Facebook message on your birthday, instead of a phone call; that you might get an e-mail from the person sitting right next to you at work, instead of an actual conversation; or that everybody at your dinner party might be so busy taking photos and them look nice, that they’re no longer paying attention to anybody else. We can miss important moments if our heads are constantly buried in those phones…

            The Internet allows, and encourages, information to travel faster and farther than even before. That means positive information travels quickly…. It also means negative information travels just as quickly… I once overheard a major Hollywood film executive say, ‘Social media has ruined our ability to release bad movies. And we need to be able to release bad movies to stay in business.’ It used to be the case that a really bad movie could still have a great opening weekend, because it would take word of mouth a few days to spread. But in the age of Facebook and Twitter, a movie can be dead in the box office just hours after it opens.

            But just because we have a megaphone doesn’t mean we need to shout from it all the time. If we’re constantly crying ‘Wolf!’ nobody will take us seriously. As a society, we need to accept the gift we’ve been given and realize that it comes with a set of responsibilities. When used thoughtfully and mindfully, we can expand access to knowledge and information, demolish old barriers to understanding, and give a global voice to those who were once voiceless.”

[Long excerpt from Dot Complicated: Untangling Our Wired Lives by Randi Zuckerberg (Harper-Collins Publishers, 2013), page 65-66, 68-69. Buy this book!]

Let technology supposed to help us, not lord it over us.

Let technology fill our lives with meaning, rather than fear.

Let technology empowered us, rather than overwhelmed us.

Let technology become tools of opportunity to glorify God in everything,

rather than promote insecurity.

THINK BIG. START SMALL. GO DEEP.

Our Wired Lives on Facebook Series: #1 The Whole World is Getting Connected.

Currently I’m reading Randi Zuckerberg’s book Dot Complicated: Untangled Our Wired Lives (Harper-Collins Publishers, 2013), she wrote:

“’Zuck’s Law,’ so-named for my dear brother, says that the amount of information we share in the world doubles every two years. In the time it takes you to read a single page of this book, another hundred hours of cat videos, hilarious skateboarding dogs, and many other, er, valuable pieces of content will have been uploaded to the web. Over a million tweets will have been shared. Some of them will actually be read. And over sixteen million pieces of content will have been posted on Facebook. That’s a lot of photos of people’s lunches.

        

    Of course, there are limits to this trend. At some point, people simply can’t handle any more information – there are only so many hilarious cat videos and cute baby pictures we can look at. But you get the idea. The scale of what’s being shared is almost beyond our comprehension. Here’s an incredible thought: according to a Digital Universe report published in December 2012 by the analyst firm IDC, there are more pieces of digital content in the world today than there are grains of sand on every beach on Earth. Wow….

            Today, we expect to be online all the time, and we expect to be reachable everywhere. We usually are.  A Morgan Stanley Internet Trends report shows that over 90 percent of people keep their mobile phones within three feet of them, twenty-four hours a day. A May 2012 Harris poll in the United States found that 53 percent of people regularly check their phones in the middle of the night after they’ve already gone to bed, and a surprising and slightly disturbing number of people check their phones while on toilet…

            This online-all-the-time mentality pervades every area of one lives. Two 2012 surveys, one from Yahoo! And the other from Gazelle, revealed the following eye-opening data:

§  25 percent of women would give up sex for a year to keep their tablets.

§  15 percent of all survey respondents would give up their cars to keep their tablets.

§  Nearly 15 percent of all survey respondents said they’d rather give up sex entirely than go for even a weekend without their iPhones.

A 2012 TeleNav survey asked people which of life’s “little pleasures” they would rather do without for a week, instead of parting with their phones:

§  70 percent would give up alcohol.

§  21 percent would give up their shoes.

§  28 percent of Apple product users would go without seeing their significant others; 23 percent of Android users agreed.

A recent study from McCann Truth Central claimed that 49 percent of married moms would give up their engagement rings before they would part with their mobile phones. And a 2012 study from Harris Interactive revealed that 40 percent of people would rather go to jail for the evening than give up their social media accounts.

So, this is the world we live in now. Technology is almost everywhere and has come to dominate our lives. So much so, in fact, that we’ve starting to see people yearning to be less connected and trying to implement rules, structure, and discipline in both their own and their families’ lives, to ensure that all this connectivity does not come at the expense of relationships, skill development, and manners.

      It’s going to become increasingly important to find that balance, because in the next decade we’re going to see something even more extraordinary. Everyone and everything will be connected. There will be no division anymore between online and offline.”

[Long excerpt from Dot Complicated: Untangling Our Wired Lives by Randi Zuckerberg (Harper-Collins Publishers, 2013), page 60-63. Buy this book!]

Let technology supposed to help us, not lord it over us.

Let technology fill our lives with meaning, rather than fear.

Let technology empowered us, rather than overwhelmed us.

Let technology become tools of opportunity to glorify God in everything,

rather than promote insecurity.

THINK BIG. START SMALL. GO DEEP.

In Always Online Culture, You Christians Must Offline Sometime

THINK BIG. START SMALL. GO DEEP. 

Be a Reading Person or a Boring Person

A research says that ‘reading engages the mind. Reading materials, by exercising our memory and imagination, can contribute to happiness in ways similar to active positive thinking. Regular readers are about 8 percent more likely to express daily satisfaction’ (Scope, 1999). Even if we don’t read any research at all, we know that those who read books benefit from what they learn and entertainment or inspirations they receive. In addition to that, they get to exercise their brain, and when we do that, we feel satisfied that we are spending our time wisely.

Questions: Which would you choose to be, a person with an ever-decreasing attention span, or a person with an ever-increasing attention span? A person with access to the second- and third- work that would have been considered rubbish two decades ago, or a person with access to the work of the greatest minds we have ever known? A person with access to limited same basic story with the same basic characters, or a person with access to hundreds of choices that span nearly an infinite imagination? A person who likely won’t be able to remember a story in ten minutes later, or a person who might carry the Story for the rest of his or her life?

Last question: Which would you rather be, a person who usually spends his or her free time in front of the television, the internet and smartphone, or a person who usually spends his or her free time reading?

Reading is important for me because as Stephen King says

“If you don't have time to read,

you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.”

THINK BIG. START SMALL. GO DEEP.

Practice Authentic Facebooking

I quote this from Jesse Rice’s The Church on Facebook,

“Because Facebook is an environment that typically rewards the most clever or the most willing to risk self-revelation, we can sometimes exaggerate or downplay certain things about ourselves to get a response. Likewise, we can be tempted to ‘overshare’ ourselves with others in order to get and/or keep their attention. Obviously, most of this is good fun. We can certainly take ourselves too seriously, even in such a playful environment, and that would not help any of us.

But many of our relationships are starving for a lack of authentic interaction. One quick way we can practice ‘authentic Facebooking’: Take a look at your profile – the picture you’ve posted, the information you’ve shared. Does the content reflect your God-given nature? Is it ‘true’ to who you really are? If you’re funny, be funny. If you’re artistic, be artistic. If you’re neither, just be you. This can be applied to your interaction with others, too, whether in a wall-post, a message, or a status update. Are you being ‘you’ in the way you interact with your Facebook friends?”

[Jesse Rice, The Church of Facebook (Colorado Spring: David C. Cook, 2009) pg. 213-214]

The Question is:

Are you being ‘you’ in the way you interact with your Facebook friends?

THINK BIG. START SMALL. GO DEEP.

Free Book!

To read more, request for a copy of this book The Church of Facebook: How the Hyperconnected Are Redefining Community by Jesse Rice (limit to 5 requesters) by simply do these 2 things:

1. First, comment below “Rich, give me one copy (Your name). I hope that through this book I can… [Not less than 10 words]”
2. Then, send message to my inbox Facebook account your real name, phone no. and your postal address. [For book distribution purposes only] Thank you.