Reprogramming Directive

Many people spend their lives wishing they were good at something. They look at people who are good at that something and they envy them. And because of that, it is not socially acceptable for someone to dislike something they are good at, since they will inevitably cop a backlash of “How can you say that? You’re so good at it! I would love to be as good as you are.”

There’s an overwhelming expectation or assumption that if you’re good at something (i.e. you have aptitude for it), you must enjoy it (i.e. you have a passion for your aptitude). I think this is a fundamentally flawed assumption. We can be great at things we don’t like and we can love things we’re completely hopeless at.

I have great attention to detail, an ability to understand complicated issues or concepts quickly and analyse a set of facts. This makes me very, very good at being an external auditor. But I spend most of my free time buried in a fantasy novel, going to shows, playing the piano or reading design blogs. This means my job – where 90% of the time is about whether you’ve ticked a box in a checklist or not – is a horrible fit given my passion for the creative arts.

The logical conclusion is obvious. A lifetime of being good at something that you don’t like and not being allowed to express the fact that you don’t like it means you end up with a lot of issues, such as disliking your job but not being able to quit, thinking there is something fundamentally wrong with you for not liking something you’re good at and so you keep on trying even though you really don’t like it and internalising all your misery and end up depressed, burning out, having a nervous breakdown or all of the above.

Depression: Affects More People Than You Think

Since I officially moved out into my own apartment in August last year, I’ve been getting a lot of junk mail. Generally, it’s the usual run of IGA catalogues, real estate agents hounding me about either selling my place or renting it out, and pizza coupons and takeaway food menus. I also got pamphlets and handy fridge magnets from Beyond Blue, an Australian organisation dedicating to providing information about depression to the general population at large. At work, I also constantly see signs notifying everyone that there’s a free counselling service available to all partners and employees.

The most recent ABS study on mental health and wellbeing in 2007 found 1 in 5 Australians suffer from mental illness each year with depression being the second most common disorder. Running the numbers, that means over 650,000 Australians suffer from depression each year.

Up until recently, I pretty much shrugged off all the facts and figures and everything being shoved in our face about depression. It wasn’t until I started talking to my friends and colleagues and listening to my parents talk about their network that I really started paying attention:

• Most of my colleagues at senior accountant level and below are not happy at work. Accounting firms are in a high turnover industry but the recent spate of resignations at the level at which they are happening is ridiculous. Over the last 12 months there’s been more than 10 senior accountants and half of the experienced junior accountants have left in my division alone, with more contemplating their alternatives, like Matthew Caldicott who is a junior accountant in the Financial Services division and took a career break to go on MasterChef Australia 2010.
• My managers at work appear to be generally content with staying in their jobs, even if they are getting hammered by client deadlines.
• My partners at work love it. Probably because they get an average cash salary of $500k.
• Most of my ex-colleagues who have left are far, far happier than before and don’t regret a thing.
• Most of my colleagues who are still here have stayed because they like their colleagues.
• In every single farewell speech I have ever heard and departure email I have ever read, everyone always mentions the great people they worked with – no one has ever mentioned the great work.
• My happiest friends are not the ones with the flashiest cars, most expensive clothes or highest-paying jobs.
• My happiest friends are the ones who are in jobs where they have both aptitude and passion, or the ones who still have no idea what they want to do but are out there doing their best to find out.
• My unhappiest friends are those who haven’t worked out what they want and haven’t done anything about it.

A Google Trends search on depression, happiness and career shows some interesting results (out of curiosity, I threw in global financial crisis just for kicks).

Obsession: The Pursuit of Happiness

I don’t think anyone will find it surprising that people are obsessed with being happy. We grow up listening to fairy tales where everyone lives happily ever after. We’re brought up with the idealised Great Australian Dream of a house on a quarter-acre block, 2.5 kids and pets. We think having a stable 9-to-5 job, a house like the ones in Better Homes & Gardens magazines and more money than we know what to do with will make us happy.

A whole industry around the pursuit of happiness has developed with companies such as The Happiness Institute providing seminars, training and events based on the science of positive psychology. There’s over 1.3 million research papers on positive psychology and articles in management publications and at least 50 TED Talks on understanding what makes us happy.

What does surprise me is unhappy people can be so 矛盾 (máodùn). They’re unhappy with their lives but they refuse to acknowledge it or, worse, they acknowledge it but refuse to do anything to change their situation or, worst of all, they place their hopes in things which aren’t going to help at all, like lottery tickets or hoping their dream job will fall into their laps from out of the sky or thinking if they wish enough it will come true.

Change is difficult, I know that. I know how difficult it is to fight against your upbringing, what it feels like to contemplate leaving the certainty of a well-paying, stable job and the sense of being overwhelmed by a seemingly unreachable goal. After all, I’m probably crazy in thinking I could go from being an external auditor to writing Broadway musicals.

Repression: The Disconnect Between Aptitude and Passion

By virtue of competition and the laws of supply and demand, most of us end up in jobs where we have some degree of aptitude, but not a great deal of passion. Some of us are not so lucky and end up working dead end jobs where we don’t have any aptitude or passion just to make ends meet. Others decide they’ve had enough – only to fail horribly and/or gain internet/popular culture infamy when it becomes evident they have no aptitude for it. A small group are able to find their dream jobs, but even then, they need to work hard to stay there and some come to realise dreams are not what they seem.

Progression: Keep Trying New Things

千里之行始於足下。
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
—老子 Lǎozǐ, Tao Te Ching

One of the hardest things to do is to look at yourself critically and acknowledge truths you don’t like.

I don’t like the fact I’ve spent 720 hours in high school, 3 years at university and another 500 hours and $10,000 towards a career I have a lot of aptitude for but zero passion.

I don’t like being torn between wanting to pursue my dreams and the constant internal voiceover telling me music is not an acceptable career path and I should stick to something I’m good at, that’s stable and pays well.

I don’t like the idea of looking back at my life when I grow too old to dream and find that I’ve made no difference at all on the world.

The next hardest thing is doing something about it.

It’s been two years since I came back from New York. Since then, I’ve watched a few shows, started a web design business with a friend, picked up two clients at work in the music/performing arts industry, attended a Talent Development Project workshop, met Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty and negotiated a flexible work arrangement to allow me some time to figure out what I want to do and I started a piano blog which I’m still not too good at updating.

It’s been exactly one month since I started my flexible work arrangement. In the last month, I closed down my old blog and started this one to keep me accountable to myself so I don’t end up doing nothing at all, watched more shows and went to the UNSW Post Graduate Expo to figure out what my options are. I’ve talked to more people about what I want to do and how to get there and feel like I’m making really slow progress, but progress nonetheless.

My EBA exam is happening in the next month so I don’t expect to get a whole lot done, other than going to more shows and keeping this blog updated. Loathe as I am and as much as I’ll harp on about it, I need to focus and get this done because at this point, the incremental benefits of completing my CA far outweigh the costs.

One step at a time. Get the CA done, then get back on track with figuring how to get to Broadway.

This is a repost of an old blog entry I made during my stay in New York City as an exchange student to New York University at the beginning of 2008. That single semester was the most incredible four months and has changed my life more than I could possibly imagine.

Rent is a through-composed musical by Jonathan Larson. Based on Puccini’s La Bohème opera, it took Larson seven years to write and he tragically died the night before the off-Broadway premiere. Set in the early 1990s, Rent deals with a number of controversial issues of that decade, such as homosexuality and HIV/AIDS. It is the eighth longest running Broadway show and closed shortly after my stay in New York.

I grew up listening to the soundtrack of Rent on repeat. I knew all the songs by heart – and consequentially the story – before I ever saw the stage production. Rent is arguably my favourite musical of all time (Wicked and Phantom can give it a good run for its money) because I can identify with it so strongly and it strikes so many personal chords. I am so glad that Sony decided to preserve it forever in the Rent: Filmed Live on Broadway DVD and I strongly recommend you to watch it.

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Originally posted on Fri, 27 March 2009 at 08:44 while listening to “Without You” by the Original Broadway Cast, OST ‘Rent’ and feeling Reminiscent.

Now the rush of busy season is over and I’ve handed in my FIN109 EP, I’m finding more and more that I get home incredibly tired (thanks to a day of doing something I don’t enjoy), totally unable to study for FIN and instead thinking about how awesome my life was this time last year, because I was in New York.

So I figured, what the hell, it’s not like I’m doing anything else. I’m going to indulge and reminisce about how awesome New York was by writing up some waaaay overdue blog entries.

Jan 20, 2008: Times Square, 42nd Street and Rent

The words that come to mind when I think about Times Square will always have to be the immortal lyrics of “Broadway Baby” from Follies, all hopes and dreams, bright dazzling lights and marquees and music and life.

So where was our first stop in Times Square? Why, the M&M store of course! Apparently you can get custom M&Ms made with your name on them or whatever message you want. We walk in and we’re greeted with walls of brightly colored coordinated chocolate…

…and some very distinctive characters.

After we’d bought our front row mezzanine seats for only $54 a piece, Kat and I went to brave the hordes of crazy women mobbing the Victoria’s Secret store at Herald Square while Dewi and Amanda went in search of the best cheesecake, chocolate and pastry shops in New York City.

Australians think the Boxing Day Myers and David Jones sales are savage. They’ve got nothing on the Semi Annual Sale at Victoria’s Secret. The store was so packed there was hardly room to move, with clothing thrown over every available surface as women scrambled around in a frenzy to snatch every last bargain. The lines to go to the change rooms wound all around the second floor of the store and had a minimum wait time of 30 minutes. It was so crowded in there that Kat and I lost track of each other, which resulted in a very frantic couple of hours when Dewi, Amanda and I thought some horrible mishap might have befallen her and were unable reach her since her phone had died.

Anyway, after we grabbed some dinner, we headed out to the Nederlander Theatre at W 41st and 7th Ave. By this time it was freezing cold:

The stage design was stunning. There was this totally stark, utilitarian, industrial looking set, which was convincingly able to convey upstairs, downstairs, apartment, cafe, street, hospital, carpark and more, all in turn. Apart from moving around a few chairs and tables, there was very little moving around of major stage elements.

When the lights dimmed and the show started, I sat right on the edge of my seat and I didn’t move a muscle – didn’t breathe – until intermission. I don’t really have the words to describe how amazing it was. I grew up listening to the soundtrack of Rent, before I ever knew what the musical itself was about and I knew every song of the musical by heart. It was the first musical that I watched while I was in New York and it is a musical that is so intensely New York. It absolutely blew me away.

Laughs

Rent is one of those musicals that do the impossible and combine very serious themes and achingly sad moments and yet have parts which are just bursting with fun and energy and humour. I absolutely loved the voicemails, the “Tango Maureen”, that moment when Mark walks into “Life Support”, and the whole role of Angel. But the key moment that stood out for me was the juxtaposition of Roger’s soul searching (Adam Pascal) in “One Song Glory” which was abruptly interrupted by Mimi asking him to “Light My Candle” (Tamyra Gray). I have to say that Tamyra has been the most convincing Mimi who really took a very difficult role and made it her own.

Showstoppers

Big moments which stood out were “Rent”, the close of Act I with “La Vie Boheme” at the end of Act I, “Seasons of Love”, “Take Me or Leave Me” and “What You Own”. It probably seems very biased but again, Tamyra”s “Out Tonight” totally blew me away with how powerful and dynamic it was.

Tearjerkers

I’m the first to admit I’m a sucker for sappy moments in music/stories; books, movies, TV shows, concerts, Broadway musicals, it makes no difference. “I’ll Cover You (Reprise)”, “Goodbye Love”, the second half of “Finale” when Mimi is dying, “Your Eyes”, I cried in all of those songs. But it was “Without You” that struck the deepest chord.

I had incredibly high expectations for Rent and it surpassed all of them. It completely blew me out of the water. I. Love. Rent. No day but today.

If you’re a fairly easy-going person, chances are you’ve used the phrase “Oh, I might as well” before. Once or twice usually isn’t a problem. It becomes a problem when once or twice turns into every so often which inevitably becomes every time. “I might as well” is probably one of the reasons why I’m still in audit.

We say “I might as well” for a lot of reasons, but mainly because:

• We think it won’t take a lot of additional time or effort, OR
• We lack direction and don’t really know what we should/want to do
• We can’t bear the thought of throwing in the towel after spending X amount of time and Y amount of money already on something (because that would be like failing)

Most people who have studied economics would be aware of the terms “sunk costs” and “incremental costs”.

“Sunk costs” are those costs which have already been incurred and no matter what you do, you can’t change that and get your money back. In accounting and finance, when we learn about what information to include in a decision-making models, we exclude “sunk costs” since no matter what is decided, those costs cannot be recovered and therefore shouldn’t affect the decision one way or another. It’s easy to condemn bad decision making when it’s presented in textbook format but it’s very hard to acknowledge it when it comes to sunk costs in your own life. In other words, you’ve already invested time and resources into your situation, so you “might as well” go through with it to the fullest extent.

“Incremental costs” are those additional costs which you will incur in order to do XYZ. You can avoid incremental costs by deciding not to go through with XYZ as they are future costs which you haven’t committed to yet. If you’ve committed yourself to those costs and you can’t do anything about it, they become sunk costs.

Mistake #1: Failing To Consider Incremental Costs When Deciding What To Do

When I was selecting my subjects in high school, I had no idea what I wanted to do. I hedged my bets and took mainstream subjects which were supposed to give me a higher UAI score. Lo and behold, before I even realised it, 8 out of the 10 minimum units were taken up by 2 subjects, 1 of them maths. I don’t even like maths!

According to the Board of Studies NSW, each unit of study requires 60 hours of classroom study per year. I ended up wasting a lot of time.

That’s 18 hours of class that could have been spent on more relevant subjects that would have helped considerably and that I enjoy:

• Drama – I could have learned about dramatic structures and techniques
• Design & Technology – I could have learned about set design
• Textiles – I could have learned how to design and make costumes

Or 18 hours that I could have spent on extracurricular activities like:

• Joining a local musical society
• Staying involved in choral activities in high school and producing the third instalment of “A Night On Broadway”
• Trying to write a high school musical like so many great Broadway composers (side note: apparently it would help tremendously if I were also male and named “Stephen”; maybe I should change my name to “Stephanie”)

None of these were sunk costs when I was selecting subjects. They were all incremental costs that I should have thought about when I was making my decisions.

Mistake #2: Considering Sunk Costs When You Shouldn’t

I am still stuck in the “I Might As Well” trap today. You would think after coming to the realisation that I didn’t want to be in accounting I would have stopped right then and there and figured out what I could do with my life. Instead, I thought “I have a steady job so I might as well go back to work while I figure out what I want to do.” I then thought “I might as well start my CA while I’m here.”

2 years comprising of 500 hours of study and about $10,000 later (5 modules at approximately $1,200 tuition fees plus $600 in study support), I’m now in the middle of studying for my final EBA exam and my care factor is non-existent.

After every module, I would kick myself. What was I doing, continually racking up these study costs? But I couldn’t stop, not only because that would be admitting failure but because it seemed like such a waste of my undergraduate degree and my entire internship. It also seemed like a tremendous waste of the modules I had completed to date, especially after I had completed the FIN and TAX modules, since they were perceived as the “hardest” and by then I was halfway through my technical modules.

What could I have done with 500 hours and $10,000?

• Finally learned how to read and write fluently in Chinese
• Paid off a significant chunk of my mortgage
• Saved 5% towards a 2 year graduate musical theatre writing degree at the Tisch School of the Arts, NYU and completed a significant portion of the 20 minute portfolio requirements
• Gone on an awesome holiday in Europe
• See 100 shows with awesome seats

I continually kept thinking about the costs of my degree, my internship and the modules I had done to date. These costs would only be relevant if I am going to continue to pursue a degree in business. But the moment I decided I’m going to pursue my dreams of music, these costs became irrelevant; they were sunk costs. I would have been much better off disregarding the CA altogether.

The Root Cause: Forgetting The Opportunity Costs

We all know we should weigh the pros and cons of each decision, but most of us are pretty terrible at it since humans are naturally both loss adverse and risk adverse, “a bird in the hand is better than two in the bush” and all. Thus we always tend to choose the safe option of what we know, rather than chasing the uncertain dream. But we forget that in doing so we tend to overvalue what we have.

“I Might As Well” Is Not Good Enough

It’s really easy to just go through the motions every day, forget why we’re doing things and just go along with the flow because you “might as well”. But a day becomes a week which becomes a month and before you know it years have gone by and all you’ve done is live life by going through the motions.

I look back at my life for the past two years and I can count up the total number of meaningful things I’ve done that really mattered to me on a “this is my reason for living” level on my two hands. Assuming each meaningful thing takes an average of 1 day, that’s at least 355 days out of the year on which I am not doing a single, meaningful thing.

That’s a pretty miserable way to live life. It’s not life at all, it’s a waste of a life. I think Jonathan Larson summed it up best in these lines:

One Song Glory

From the pretty boy front Man
Who wasted opportunity

Every time I hear Adam Pascal sing those words I get a chill.

Some people might be lucky enough or focused enough or self aware enough to be doing meaningful things every single day of their lives.

Another Day

There is no future
There is no past
I live this moment as my last
There’s only us
There’s only this
Forget regret
Or life is yours to miss
No other road
No other way
No day but today

The rest of us are generally too afraid or too complacent. We lose sight of the big picture and get stuck worrying about these sunk costs. Or we get caught up and forget to consider incremental costs. And so we end up with a really big bill in opportunity costs.

I don’t want to keep putting off living life to “another day”. There’s “no day but today“.

This is a repost of an old blog entry I made after my friend and I went to see Andre Rieu during his tour of Australia in the spring/summer of 2008. While he may not be to everyone’s tastes, I admire him for his showmanship and his ability to make a living doing what he loves. I mean, who else gets to tour the world playing a priceless violin with a life-sized replica of a Viennese castle?

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Originally posted on Sat, 29 November 2008 at 05:12 while listening to “Bolero” by Ravel, performed by Andre Rieu and the Johann Strauss Orchestra and feeling envious.

I love Andre Rieu. Benny and I went to see him in concert last night at ANZ Stadium and it was awesome. Sadly, I found out very late that cameras, photos and videos were actually permitted and all I had on hand was my crappy phone. There were literally hordes of people descending on ANZ Stadium to see Andre in concert.

The first thing you notice as you walk into the stadium is the giant life size replica of the Schonbrunn Palace. My crappy phone just doesn’t do it justice. This is only a tiny part of the set:

You also notice the massive FOUNTAIN:

This fountain was unbelievable. A fountain. I kid you not, he had a fountain travel around with him. Not just one, but TWO (there was one on either side of the stage)! These twin fountains were synchronised with the music, kind of like a mini travel-sized pair of Bellagio fountains.

And then there was the massive stage.

Yup, that’s a replica of a Viennese ballroom, complete with golden chandeliers AND uniformed footmen/doormen (whom you can’t see in this photo), behind the wrought iron railings and street lamp. Not to mention a pair of ice rinks either side of the stage:

I really can’t do this justice, so here are two photos from the official Andre Rieu website showing the most incredible set I have ever seen (not the Sydney concert):

This is where Benny and I were sitting, in section B2, row X, seats 4 and 5. These tickets retailed for $269 each from Ticketek, but we scored them for a sweet $200 a-piece from eBay.

I’ll be honest, I’d been really worried when first we had some communication issues and taking a bit longer to collect our tickets than I expected, and that I was really, really hoping that the tickets wouldn’t be ruled invalid. Even so, these Category 2 tickets only landed us seats this close far away and angled away from the stage. There were a LOT of people there:

Given the distance of our seats made all the performers appear about the size of Tom Thumb to us, most of the time we spent watching the show on one of four massive screens mounted in the wall of the castle:

The Johann Strauss Orchestra and Choir was dressed to the nines in finery no less extravagant and impressive than that of the entire set:

This is seriously like no other classical concert I’ve ever been to. It had champion figure skaters:

…a golden carriage drawn by six white horses…

…dancers from the Vienna State Opera Ballet and 80 Vienna Debutantes…

…great showmanship throughout the entire concert. Andre and all his performers make wisecracks and jokes the whole night, pulling some well-practiced gags. This is a memorable moment where Béla Mavrák, one of the Platinum Tenors, comes onstage singing away happily, bearing an enormous pot of what is presumably goulash for – according to Andre and the orchestra – the umpteenth meal in a month.

Andre, I have a surprise for you…..I made goulash for you and entire orchestra!

I, of course, couldn’t resist getting closer to the stage during the intermission to check out the piano. Too far away to tell who the maker was, but my fingers were definitely itching to play it.

The evening was marred only by the fact that it had been pouring in the late afternoon and consequently all the seats and plastic floorboards protecting the grass of the stadium were wet; and that the stadium is under a direct flight path. Nothing quite like sitting enraptured by divine sounding music only to be rudely shaken out of it by the roar of a 747 flying overhead.

All in all, a fantastic show, with some truly great performances of classics like Ravel’s Bolero, mixed with contemporary pop ballads like “My Heart Will Go On”, musicals (“Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again” from Phantom) the Australian national anthem and a bunch of classic Australian songs: “Waltzing Matilda”, “Botany Bay” and a medley including themes from “Bananas in Pajamas”, “Home Among the Gum Trees” and “Neighbours”.

I love Andre Rieu. It’s a good thing he doesn’t tour here all that often, otherwise I’m pretty sure I’d go broke. As it is, I’m strictly forbidding myself any more theatre events until next year.

And once again, as always, back to studying for CA. *sigh*