No Rice Dinner Suggestions

 It has been a few years since we adopted a no rice dinner strategy. Dropping rice in the menu does not mean that you have to starve or compromise healthy eating. There are many options to choose from and still enjoy a healthy and tasty meal.

My better half prepares ahead the food menu for the week. Light breakfast, regular lunch and no-rice for dinner. The advantage of preparing a menu is that there is a deliberate effort to balance the food components (eg. fish, pork/beef, chicken, variety of vegetables and fruits) and the cooking method (we usually opt for stewed, steamed or air-fried). Fortunately, there are no picky-eaters in our family. Everybody eats whatever is served on the table. The food quantity is also regulated to discourage over-eating esp. during dinner.

When buying food items during grocery day, the menu serves as the reference for the grocery list. This prevents buying stuff that we don't need. We do stock up on items that are often used (like feta cheese, olives, vegetables for salads, dressings, etc).

This is an example of our week-long dinner menu . Alvin and I usually cap off dinner with a hot calamansi-ginger/turmeric tea, or other herbal tea.

Bon Appetit!

Paying It Forward: Learnings from the Last Twenty-Five Years

 January 2022 marks my twenty fifth year anniversary in the corporate world. I was regularized by January 1^st after six months of probationary period at the R&D department of Procter & Gamble Philippines. Over the years, my career took me to many different avenues beyond my comfort zone, gave me technical and leadership skills for life, and an expatriate assignment opportunity at the Singapore regional headquarters.  I am currently only in my second company, where I moved at the peak of pandemic period more than a year ago.

When I was just starting out in my career, twenty-five years sounded like an eternity! Looking back I can tell you that the years went by very fast and now, in-the-blink-of-an-eye it has been twenty five wonderful years.

During my stint at the P&G Cabuyao Plant, our HR leader would organize lunch sessions with the leadership team called “Meet and Greet with New Hires.” In my department, I also lead the introductory on-boarding to welcome our new hires. I often get the question, “What keeps you motivated?” “What advise can you share to us new hires?”

To celebrate my silver anniversary with the corporate world, I want to share key lessons from the last twenty-five years. While work is not the end all and be all of our life, and does not define our entire humanity – the fact is we spend 33-40% (or more) of our day at work; one would might as well strive to make it a meaningful endeavor for the rest of your working lifetime.

• Cultivate the right attitude towards work - your work ethics will stay with you for the rest of your life. This is always the first and most important advise I give. I have closely observed new hires from their joining year and seen how they grew with the company over the years. In most cases, those who started out as proactive learners, self-motivated/driven and highly accountable retained excellent work ethics over the years and their careers grew faster ahead of peers. Many of them became the next generation leaders. Whereas those who are eternally complaining about anything under the sun, turning in low quality of work, dodging opportunities for bigger responsibilities and focusing what they think they did not get -  remained stuck in a rut. Unfortunately, their downwards spiral attitude negatively impacts the rest of their teams as well.  Choose to learn from people who are positive influencers. 

• Find your WHY. Find your personal purpose in life.  Life at work is not always going to be a sunny day. There will be highs and lows, we need to manage energy and work the way through crisis and difficult seasons. Having a sense of purpose gave me an anchor to hold on to and keep me motivated during trying times. In one of the training sessions I gave last year, I shared my life purpose to my team. This life purpose gave me a sense of fulfillment and satisfaction.

• Similarly, find a source of motivation. Let me tell you this: skills can be taught and learned. One can always seek to know what you don’t know. Some values cannot be taught, this has to come from within the individual -  grit, drive for success, others call it motivation. Sources of motivation can mean different things for people of different walks of life, experiences and perhaps across different generations. Find out what success means for you and your drivers of motivation. When I was just starting out in my career, my goal was to be promoted to manager level and get promoted faster than average. This goal required commitment to consistently over-deliver vs my workplan, be visible to leaders, contribute to both business and building the organization capability and move to bigger roles even if they are beyond my comfort zone. My motivation was borne out of the conviction of embracing the mentality of passion to excel, and that the rewards and recognition will follow (it did). Over the years, my motivations have evolved to more noble and selfless reasons such as wanting to give back and pay it forward through my mentees and the organizations I serve.

• Learning is a continuous journey. Stay humble and hungry. Use your learnings to improve your craft. Learning and development is a life-long journey. If you have already mastered a skill, find another. Share and teach your skills to others. Read a good book or an article from LinkedIn learning. Participate actively in focused improvement / lean six sigma projects. Much of what I learned when I was just starting out in the very dynamic world of manufacturing operations management, I am still able to use and reapply those skills until today. It would not be possible had I decided to simply forget those skills the moment my assignment in manufacturing was over. Skills are like tools up your sleeves. You never know if somewhere along your journey, you will encounter a crisis, a problem to be solved that will warrant you to tap from the well of knowledge you have mastered over the years.

• Bring the passion to excel in what you do. In one of the lunch and learn sessions I attended as a new manager in the plant, the speaker said something that resonated with me. He said, "Whatever you do, be the best." Whether you will spend most of your career under the corporate umbrella, or seek to venture out your own start-up business someday, the passion to excel coupled with grit sets apart the winners vs those who simply give up at once when adversities sets in. Embrace the attitude of winning (which can mean, being better today than yesterday, making small baby steps to progress). Find solutions. Do your task well. Strive to be the best via continuous learning. Hold yourself and your heroes to a high standard. If like me you are destined to a corporate path, strive for a balanced contribution (build the business and build capability), lead something, participate actively in continuous improvement projects, drive a system improvement that benefits your team’s productivity, teach and share your expertise. There is a whole universe out there of what can be done with gusto if you set your mind to it!

• Seek out good mentors. Mentors are great sources of wisdom and guidance when learning the ropes. I would not have become the leader which I humbly hoped, people deserved, if not for the coaches, mentors, career sponsors over the years who believed in me and held my hand along the  journey. Long after most of us parted ways from P&G, they continue to be my trusted friends and confidante, my source of wisdom and advise when it mattered most. I have different mentors for different aspects of life and career (like financial management, managing the boss, managing life and career changes, even hard core technical topics that are not part of my core competencies).

There you have it! I hope this will be useful to you as it has served me well for the last twenty-five fulfilling years of my career!