Safety & Security, Self-Mastery, UnconditionalRelationship, Worldly, Financial Freedom, Holistic Fitness
Joshua Tiong
Our Six Pillars for Purposeful Living

This has been frequently requested of me ever since my earlier post about ‘The Six Month Conversation’ resonated with so many people. This follow up is about the framework Alexis and I devised with hopes of guiding our life journey together independently and as a couple. I know this post is arriving several years late, after tons of requests, so thanks everybody for your patience!

Our Six Pillars for Purposeful Living

Career

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On the topic of direction.. as a young person

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On the topic of direction.. as a young person

This is a Shitty First Draft post that I never got around to completing. Coming back to it now cause I've been having mentoring calls every week for a while now. Same things KEEP coming up. So, here I am, writing a post about it so I can point to it.

1. Brain Dump about Expectations + Learning

Are you doing what you do to meet your personal expectations, or the expectations of your parents/society/tribe? It's your life, dude. Live it as you see fit.

It's great to be excited ("passionate") about a particular industry, but how much do you really know about it? I hear far too many people who were sold on the 'sexy' of a particular field of work, where the majority of their understanding came from marketing efforts by industry associations or people who've themselves been sold on an idea…

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Universal Checklist for Presentation Delivery Prep

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Universal Checklist for Presentation Delivery Prep

Ever since I went to university, I've been thinking about writing more in a public manner. Finally pulled the trigger in 2016 after years of deliberating. Here's a post I found that I'd written an entire draft for back in August of 2013.

I enjoyed reading this because it offered me an interesting look into how I've developed concepts and workflows since then. Sharing this in all of its original glory because it's rather funny and still pretty relevant!

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This post is an ongoing attempt to create a universal checklist for the preparation of presentations. Note that I am assuming that the presentation deck and demo product are already complete after considering objective, available time, time of day, audience, and so on. This checklist is a combination of actions and reminders with some definitions included after the checklist...

David S. Rose: Sayings From My Father

David S. Rose: Sayings From My Father

For as far back as I can remember, my father has served as my primary role model, showing by example the importance of impeccable integrity, hard work and dedication, creative business thinking and the need for maintaining a long-term perspective. Today, in his mid-80’s, he is as energetic and engaged in the entrepreneurial life as anyone I know, creating new business and social ventures, and mentoring yet another generation of entrepreneurs.

While my siblings and I have had the privilege of growing up under his direct tutelage, many other people have had the benefit of his distilled life experience, because one thing he is not shy about is sharing advice....

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Takeaways from Product Camp Vancouver 2018

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Takeaways from Product Camp Vancouver 2018

This weekend, I attended Product Camp Vancouver 2018 alongside hundreds of Vancouver's tech community. I walked away from the event feeling inspired and connected. What a great event and wonderful community!

I attended the event without a clear understanding of what is typically in or out of scope for the Product Management (PM) line of work. My perspective is mostly heavily informed by my firsthand experiences on the delivery and growth sides for high-tech and professional services companies. I learned a bunch that helped connect some missing dots of concepts in my mind - very thankful for this.

Below are some of my takeaways, whether new or old ideas, which I am mulling over. These points are mostly from talks by Chloe Morrow (of Vision Critical), Cory Ayres (of Pendo), and Steven Forth (of Ibbaka), as well as with fellow participants...

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Centres of Influence

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Centres of Influence

Digitizing a thought I had written in a journal back in 2010 around the idea of a Centre of Influence (COI). I had defined COIs as those people we have relationships with who possess a level of influence over our decision-making. The influence is exerted by virtue of their primary relationship dynamic with their network. These are people trusted & networked as an influencer, and their advice is often taken with little further thought.

It's apparent that my then knowledge of personal/professional relationship dynamics was much more limited than it is today, but interesting nonetheless...

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Burden of Leadership - The Other Side of Layoffs

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Burden of Leadership - The Other Side of Layoffs

This post is a follow-up to an earlier blog post, The Burden of Leadership. A lot of people have recently been laid off around BC, and being a friend to some people in this position, I've acted as a shoulder to lean on and an active listener for them to talk through their thinking. 

It's a crappy situation all around, and definitely a terrible experience for the period following in life for those who are laid off. That said, I've come across an article that offered another perspective that I'd like to point out. Please see below for an excerpt from an article by Karen Althen, titled What 1,700 laid-off Target employees can learn (from someone who was downsized by the company 6 years ago), originally posted on BizJournal…

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Hire good people, and leave them alone

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Hire good people, and leave them alone

Past Joshua made note of some book excerpts. Can't remember why... but I'm typing them out here in case I remember, then Future Joshua can write the blog post he intended to :) 

Edit: ohhh, these are from Drive, by Daniel Pink (link below)

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A startup engineer must be all things -- he (or she) is a full time software developer and part time product manager/customer support guru/internal systems maven. As a company grows, an engineer spends less time building the things he personally wants in the product. Our hope is that 20% time gives engineers back dedicated stack time -- of their own direction -- to spend on product innovation, features, plugins, fixes or additions that they think are the most important…

The Next Chapter: Convertus

The Next Chapter: Convertus

This is a follow up to my recent journey to determine the next chapter in my journey. Along the way, I've had the many ups and downs to make for an emotional roller coaster ride, haha

As an update, I had a wonderful opportunity to join Convertus to help build the business on this next leg of the company's growth. It has not even been a full month for me with Convertus yet, and we've already been hitting some very significant milestones!

This is truly an exciting change for me...

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Taking Action and Following Up

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Taking Action and Following Up

Having attended about dozen events as a guest speaker / professional delegate since 2017 started, I've noticed a pattern that feels like it should be talked about: people do not ask for what they want and do not follow up properly. 

I am reminded of this quote, which I first saw at 14 years old on a poster in my highschool hallway, and which I have tried to live by ever since: You miss 100% of the shots you don't take in life...

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Making tough choices

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Making tough choices

What's up?

In the beginning of February, I announced that I would begin a search to find the next chapter of my journey. The most important part to me is finding the right organizational values, direction, and fit. Secondary to that would be getting my bum in the right role, which I see as a matter of growing into from within. 

How you doin?

It has been 45 days since this search began...