Search Here ….

Tags

Academic integrity AI AI Detectors Artificial Intelligence Asia School of Business ChatGPT ChatGPT Malaysia ChatGPT Plus Education Entrepreneurs and Startups Malaysia Entrepreneurship Gardens Google GPTZero IGCSE Malaysia Malls Maps72 Microsoft Midjourney MIT MrMoney TV OpenAI Pavilion Plagiarism Plagiarism checkers Poe Quora Sam Altman Software development Technology Turnitin Udemy Writing
Uncategorized

Fighting Perfectionism

Victor Tan

If there were a flaw that I would observe about myself, I think it would be this. That I am someone who thinks a little too much about what other people think.

What this means sometimes is that I tend to not want to release things because I fear that they won’t be appreciated, people won’t like them, or anything else of that nature.

And granted, that doesn’t happen across everything. If it’s just an Instagram story, for example, I just enjoy releasing dumb, interesting things that reflect the different random things that happen during the course of the day.

But when it comes to more extended creative projects, I think that I am restrained in some ways by feeling that everything needs to be perfect.

Everything needs to somehow just match up with the best. And in some ways, that is kind of negative, because if you were to just try for things that aren’t always good, if you’re a new perfectionist, then what ends up happening is that, sure, you might end up creating a good product, but what will probably happen also is that you’ll just not release anything.

And believe me, that does happen quite a fair bit for me. I am the kind of person who tends to hem to haw, to just kind of let things go by because I think, “Oh, it’s not ready. Oh, I shouldn’t release this. Oh, more needs to be done.”

And that’s just my nature. I tend to be pretty careful with a lot of different things.

But at the same time, I’d like to try to get past that and I think that that can happen in at least two different ways.

One is that I reach a level of ability whereby the things that I do end up matching what I consider to be a nice standard. Maybe that’s a bit of a cop-out because that requires me to get to a certain level whereby pretty much anything I say or do just becomes acceptable as a creative product. It’s not really that sort of change of heart that I was kind of going at along the way earlier, but it’s one possibility, really.

I genuinely believe that people who can produce prodigiously, many of them are at that level partly because I think that that is the level that I would need to be at.

Maybe that’s a limiting belief.

Maybe in reality, the vast majority of the things that people make out there in this world are just not particularly good.

Maybe I’m just a little too self-concerned, conceited, caught up in my own thinking when actually there’s no enemy.

But who knows?

What’s for sure is that there is a sort of limiting belief that has been operating in my life, and I think it’s a good time to let it go – one of the reasons why I’m treating this website sort of as a group therapy session at the moment.

But in the future, I do genuinely hope that somehow or another, a little part of me is going to change. A little part of me is going to transform. A little part of me is just going to develop that skill, that pride, that recognition of something worthwhile to share. Maybe so worthwhile that it doesn’t matter even if I come out imperfect, even if it’s not ready, whatever – Because what matters most is the contribution and not perfection.

Who knows? Anyway, life has been interesting, and I’m kind of looking forward to what’s coming up here and there. So many different things to update, lots of ideas to share along, and a whole range of things I never thought that I would ever experience.

I’m very grateful for what the universe has brought, what it brings, and what it will continue to bring. Let’s just put it there.

Recommended Posts

Influencer

In Mensa events, one annoying character (generally ok person but annoying with an emphasis on the G) sometimes comes up to me and starts talking about my ‘influencer’ career and how I’m ‘influencing’ people in a presumptuous fashion, acting as if suddenly he is the be all and end all of ‘influence’. Well, he is not and he is lovably mediocre as far as I know so I’m not too concerned about that, but I think it’s certainly an interesting concept to explore. The concept of an ‘influencer’ is so interesting. In purely technical terms, an influencer influences, and the derivational morphology is inescapable; to be an influencer, you must surely influence. But the question naturally arises: What kind of influence do we mean here? After all, there are so many kinds, which the world almost invariably collapses into a few different and well defined stereotypes. The comedic genius who specializes in fun, short, but stupid skits? The dancing girl thirst trap using every single part of her body to try to get you to click the ‘follow’ button and oh by the way buy some lipstick with a 10% discount code and 15% commission? The travel blogger cum exercise guru here to teach you the vastness of Borobudur on a diet of tempeh and budu budu? There are so many kinds out there, all valid and all cool in their own way – the internet is a wonderful place with lots of incredible and talented people, after all, here to persuade you and to make their fortunes in ways inconceivable at the dawn of humanity and even now to members of an older generation who cannot deal with that idea in any way except to infantilize or look down upon it. To be fair, it is not entirely the older generation’s fault that they think that way, because many such […]

“Nice Guy”

Many people in this world consider themselves what we call ‘nice guys’. I do not. I may have tried to convey myself as a nice guy at an earlier point, to act as if I happen to be a nice guy, to think about ‘what other people think’ to the point of neurosis… But I would not really consider myself a nice guy. What this DOESN’T mean is that I go around attacking people needlessly or getting into fights I don’t need to get into, fight against my actual interests – rage against the machine like a two bit two hundred kilogram behemoth of a manchild on a warpath to destroy the known and seen universe. But what this DOES mean, is that I will express what I think without fear, without favor, without the sense that “OOPS SOMEONE’S OUT TO GET ME” because if I see a dude who needs to get scolded, I am going to scold that dude, think about how to more efficiently scold the dude, and even think about how I’m going to use people to further my own goals. If that sounds bad, it probably is – but that’s just another aspect of me – I have certain goals in this universe that can only be attained through changing the ways that people think, believe, and ideate in this world on small and large scales… Which means I cannot ever avoid conflict. …But that’s just as well though? Conflict is how stories move forward. Conflict is how main characters turn from unknown troglodytes in the gonadic expression of a whelp into world changers, the hero in the demon king story. If a nice guy ceases to be a nice guy the moment he goes out there and starts fighting with people, then it is clear: I am most certainly not one of those ‘nice guys’. […]

A Small Speech on Articulation

Today, I want to talk about articulation. It’s a word that’s used a lot in the English language in many different contexts, all of which are dear to me. In music, it’s used to describe the way someone plays an instrument. On the cello, it is how the bow glides, pressure is applied, and weight is distributed in accordance with the needs of the music. In a pure linguistic and sound sense, it is how air interacts with the tongue, mouth, and vocal cords to produce sound. In the parlance of the English language, it is how one communicates one’s ideas, structures them, and brings them out from the depths of thought into the seen world, where they will influence others. I think articulation is a deeply incredible skill. Throughout history, the greatest articulators have never been able to articulate. The greatest articulators have been the most successful political leaders, the most influential statesmen, the finest executives of their era—merely by playing on the power of phrases that their minds constructed, in turn pulling out the feelings of entire generations, summoning them to the causes of the speakers in every instance. And it is no wonder that speech and language are rich and wonderful, yet they are only minute and poor representations of our deep inner thoughts. Used in the wrong way and in an unfocused manner, words will only inspire vagueness, boredom, and the mere hints of attention before the listener falls asleep. Summoned rightly, though, and they, in turn, will inspire from the still depths the uproarious fountain of joy, sadness, hatred, and love in every which direction. As the heart is activated and the mind primed for more, you say that these are forces that seem outside the scope of an English class. They are not things to be concerned with or trifled with. How can mere words, […]

Winds of Change

To almost anyone who knows anything about me, it might seem strange that I’m taking such an interest in politics recently – I transitioned so suddenly from Pathways To Excellence to suddenly talking about so many different controversial topics and ideas that somehow your feed is now filled with a range of YouTube videos that hopefully are a little bit legible. I get it – you feel like I’ve changed as a person. You know what? I probably have – but maybe not in the way that you might have expected. I think I was always interested in politics, for one thing, and that somehow meeting the smartest people of my generation and of the next generation was the way that I managed to allay my discomfort with Malaysia – a systematically broken, thoroughly divided society when you look at it beyond the enclaves and the confines of everyday reality; it was somehow easier to fill up the hole in my heart whenever I thought about this place and how I had my lot connected to it with the feeling that somehow, even if the place were to be a dumpster fire, at least we had all of these talented people. But soon, this bandaid, had to be taken off, as all bandaids eventually have to be – and so it was, as I faced reality, with a single and enduring rip. At some point, I realized that talent on an individual level is not the solution to this country’s problems, and moreover that it is not necessary for me to solve them – but only to play to my internal conscience. It was I think at that point I saw Malaysia for what it really was, and what I would create from then on out.

What I Would Do Differently From The Madani Government (In Managing Speech Online)

As some of you may know, I have recently been making a range of videos about topics that I think are important for Malaysia to discuss, namely the 3 R’s. Recently, the user ​⁠@coldsunflares asked me on my YouTube channel and my video about the penunggang agama Rayyan Wong who recently accused PMX and our Agong of eating in a non-halal restaurant about what I would do differently from the Madani Government when it comes to regulating what some may call extremism or penunggang agama.  It was quite a thoughtful comment, and I reproduce it here.  “You mentioned the government’s inability to deal with these kinds of issues, which for the most part, is true. However, how would you propose they deal with it? Because any time the government decides to take these so-called “decisive action”, they are labelled as “draconian, stifling freedom of speech” among other things. On one hand, the government is hard pressed to take these measure because of their history of championing reforms, equality and civil liberty, but on the other are those “from the other side” who hides behind the guise of freedom of speech (without decorum) to spread malicious statements, as is evident from multiple recent incidents, i.e. China flag issue, mandatory Halal cert, etc. We are bursting at the seams with people who point out the problem, but not so much people who can come up with a feasible solution to these issues.” The comment I wrote was too long for the margins of the comment window, and after I had written it I realized – it was too long even for the YouTube post window, so here it is in full blog entry glory.  Response begins:  I think even now, the Madani government is having huge problems with actually portraying itself as a compassionate government – but I feel that this is because […]

My Wrong Assumptions About Destiny and Getting Old

As Reinhold Neibuhr once famously said… I reflect on this quote a lot more than I should, and every single year it means something slightly different. I rather like my interpretation this year and the thoughts that have come out from it, and so I share them here. When I was a child, I had a whole list of ideas of what people must be like as they grew older. Older people were richer because the universe made them so – they were married because their partners were brought into their lives; they were fatter because a divine ordinance made their bodies expand; things happened automatically because they were simply ‘meant to be’. I now see that a lot of this was wrong-headed, and came about because of intellectual laziness that I no longer consider valid. As time passed, I saw that things were not so simple. People became rich because they worked for it either hard or smart – they got married because they had relationships with people, romantic and then sexual, that they decided to make into family ties; they were fatter because they were often sedentary as part of a modern condition; things could happen because of chance, but in all likelihood people could steer the ship far more effectively than they could give themselves credit for but even then lose themselves in the comforting soma of a ‘fate’ narrative. Well, comfort is a beautiful thing. In some instances, it’s even necessary. After all, there are lots of things in this world where what you believe and what I believe are opposed, but circumstances are uncertain and neither of us might be right – in this situation, how should we think and navigate the world? It would be easy for one person to conclude that well, because fate is a thing, it doesn’t matter what we do – […]