How to deal with your own feeling?

Almost everybody have multiple identity in a society, you can be a spouse to someone, a parent, a citizen, a manager, at the same time, where each identity associates with a set of interest, a parent wish to have lovely children, spouse wish to have a loving relation and so on, you get it. 

Ultimately, we are creatures of feeling, every single action is associated with feelings, I believe the goal of living is to seek the most wonderful feeling, sometimes quoted as "Happiness".

We however have limited control over our feelings, most of the time, people's feeling are manipulated by the external factors. For example, you feel bad when you're being scold by your boss, you feel great when you won in a competition. 

But this behavior is not desired because we do not want to be controlled (in a sense this is pretty much the case).

I believe everyone have their own remedy, here I am going to share mine.

1. Focus on self-improvement, this is something that you have control of, realizing you are getting better in something bring you self-confidence and self-fulfillment and at the same time easily achievable.

2. Acknowledge the excellence in others, and try to learn from them. A lots of time, we get frustration when someone else outperform us, be it peers or juniors, this is very common and it is not something we can have full control of, so instead of letting your ego to get into your way, acknowledge them and treat them as your mentor, learn from them will makes you feel better in two ways, first you improve yourself from other's experience, secondly you feel better when you know you are humble enough to learn from literally anyone. *This is another kind of ego, but a less harmful one*

3. Help the others. By helping others, you instantly get a positive feedback of your action, you will have a sense of accomplishment because you realize you are powerful enough to send out positive effect to the environment, you are a part of other's success, this brings you happiness. 

So I hope everyone have found their way to control your own feeling so that you stay in happiness more ~ 

What I've learned from Research Project?

This blog post is here because I wish to document my experience in doing a research project without any prior experience, I wish it might help anyone facing similar situation.

Research being a very different task compared to software development, it focus on findings compared to software product, you cannot claimed you did a research even if you created a piece of software no one ever did, you can only do so after you documented your method of doing in a repeatable way as proof and as a communication medium between researchers. It is more towards answering a question that providing a solution. Proof is essential.

So, I happened to enter my final year of bachelor studies, where Final Year Project is a mandatory part. I, unfortunately chosen a research topic for my FYP, and here's two lessons I've learned through the mistakes I've made.

1. Think about "WHY" and justify it before you start!
If you did not think hard on "WHY", you'll probably end up with findings that's either known or useless. By answering WHY, you need to think about

• is there a need for this research?
• is there anything similar with my intention?
• does other research similar enough to invalidate mine? 
• how does my research make a difference with others and does it matters?

 With a strong answer to WHY, you are focusing on a very specific case where there is no clear answer yet and would make an impact if found.

2. Do not attempt to research a field without knowing its latest status
If you're not aware of the state of the art in the field, you would probably be solving a problem that already been solved or answering a question that have been answered. This only makes sense when you find the previous findings suspicious, which can only be justified provided you've read about it. You only decide what question to answer after you know what questions have been answered. 

Both advice should be enforced at the very beginning of your research, before any investment of research time.