Sloppy sunday

I think it’s in the name. “SUNDAY’. I feel lazy just by hearing that word. Sleep late, wake up later, don’t do anything worthwhile basically just waste these precious free hours which I get out of the week’s busy schedule and work. Then evening comes, and I feel guilty about all the waste. Never missed this routine for many sundays now.

Simple solution is to have targets for the day. Just do this and do that, rest is free for you to waste! This will work for me definitely. As long as this and that does not involve investing too much time. Sunday is all about having time for me, time to hang out with the friends I grew up with, friends i critisize, friends I will not be able to ever live without ( okay, thats way too much) but still, I have had and continue having massive fun with them.

I watched “Forest Gump” just yesterday. I am shocked. Shocked that I had this movie with me all this time, and I just didn’t see it. Made a great impact on me. It told me :

• Listen to your momma, but interpret in your own way.
• Find and keep great friends, specially friends who are thinking different.
• Siting will not solve any problem, you have to run for it.
• Fall in love, stay in love.
• Try new things. Buy a boat if your friend comes up with a great business plan!
• Think simple.Stay simple.
• A great pair of shoes is one of the best gift.
• To get back the one you love, you have to let him/her go first.
• Respect choices made by other people.
• ” If god wanted to make everyone equal, everyone would have got braces”. Feel sorry for others who lack those gifts you have. So go and help them.
• Say yes, especially for giving a speech, to a large audience. you might find the one you are looking for.
• Feel proud of you kid. Specially if he is not like you.
• Whenever you make your own decision, people will follow you.
• Do what you like. Make a run for it.
• Whenever you are tired of whatever you are doing, get back home for rest.
• Stupid is as stupid does.

I am sure there are many learnings I have not realized yet, but these are enough to last me for several lifetimes, or several marathons….

BTW, that first paragraph was basically to say that I did not exercise today. Just had dinner as well, so no more opportunity. Tomorrow is another day they say….

Take care.

Two questions

The two most critical questions to be asked to oneself are:

1. What do you want in life?
2. What are you ready to give, in order to get it?

Rest is just detail.

They say, life will give you anything you ask for, but not everything. We are limited by the most rarest commodity on the face of this planet. Time. It is highly perishable, non tradable, often undervalued, purely imaginary entity. Everyone is allocated good measures for it, but everyone asks different value in exchange for his/her time. Mostly, they receive nothing different. In this case then, how to get the maximum value of your time?

Have you heard about the magical power of compounding. You invest as much as you can, as early as you can. Then you wait. The money multiplies itself. Funny observations about this include following:

• If you reduce the initial amount by a little, the final amount varies exponentially
• If you change the investment period by little, the final amount varies drastically.
• If you change the rate of compounding a little, the final amount is changed vastly.

Now, let us compare the amount with time,and the rate with learning. We understand what to do.

The goal is the final amount that we want. We can calculate backwards, to understand how much time is needed to be invested in order to achieve the goal. And how much learning or refining is needed too.

That’s not all. We also need to take inflation into account. Thats when we cannot focus our complete attention. the concentration is diffused. Hence, although we are giving one hour, effectively only 40 minutes are counted.

Also to remember is the performance of the investment. If we see the graph of the amount against time, we see that almost all the benefits are reaped towards the end. Which means that, we should focus on a long term achievement, and need not pay much attention to the intermediate failures. Those are just fluctuations, great tools to refine our technique.

And then, finally, we win!!

Take care.

More goals…

The next goal I have chosen is very ambitious:

I want to write a book!

I had this in my mind for long, but now that I have changed my pattern of living, i find that I can really allocate a chunk of time to writing and thinking about some topic which then can be converted in a book of sorts. so tomorrow morning onwards I will start brainstorming ideas and create structure for a book.

Bonus Post 5

I chose a few things which I wanted to implement a week before, and what a week it has been :O

So, I am reviewing the progress , just to make myself more happy

• In diet
  • NO adding sugar √
  • NO coffee √
  • NO non veg √
  • NO junk food √
  • NO carbonated drinks √
  • NO booze √
  • MORE fruits √
  • MORE raw veggies Χ
• In life
  • EVERYDAY exercise √
  • EVERYDAY waking up early √
  • EVERYDAY meditation Χ
  • EVERYDAY journal √
  • EVERYDAY reading a book √

No adding sugar was easy since I add sugar in only two circumstances, once when I am having milk during breakfast and secondly when I am having coffee at the fresh ‘n’ honest kiosk. Since I have not had milk nor had I bought coffee I could easily manage it. Though in first couple of days I had to specify not to add sugar to the attendant of the kiosk when I was having a ginger tea there.

No coffee was also 100% success, I was really drifting into the caffeine addiction since coffee had stopped making difference to me anymore. I did not feel any withdrawal symptoms though, or maybe I did not classify what I was feeling into any such symptom. I drink ( used to drink) coffee by adding it in the morning milk and at kiosk. The breakfast coffee was easy to forgo, but the habit of hitting kiosk before and/or after lectures was really ingrained in me. So, it was really difficult to stay away from the coffee especially when I was seeing others carrying the cup. Sometimes when a friend was sitting next to me with a cuppa coffee, the impulse to have a quick sip, at least to smell the aroma was strong, but I was conscious the whole time and strictly avoided the onset of lapse. The slop can be really slippery and I had been down that path many times now. NO more though.

Junk food was also difficult , because I get hungry (again: used to ) during the evenings. I do realize that it must be psychological hunger, but I had to have the steaming food like samosa there. Now,  am hardly hungry even after eating almot 60-80% of the original amount of food. In the end (or till tonight) I am free!

No problems with carbonated drinks, once before I had successfully avoided them for years, and so it was not so difficult compared to others.

Booze is easy to avoid, if u can avoid being at wrong place at wrong time. Now, I am really sure I can say no if someone hands me a glass, I am done with it forever.

Since fruits are available during lunch, it was just a matter of grabbing some more and storing them at room. similarly, since raw  vegetables are not to be found anywhere so I am just avoiding paneer and aloo as much as I can. I am also avoiding eating bread during breakfast.

100 Things that make me happy

1. Reading

2. Listening to racy songs with good beats.

3. Playing

4. Listening to rain falling, especially in the night

5. Eating anything which mom has cooked in hurry! ( she somehow changes the standard taste and I love that!)

6. Eating anything which granny has made ( she is one for experimenting and she wants me to finish off the whole thing, even if the recipes says “serves four” )

7. Watching good movies ( I like all kinds of movies, depends on my mood that time)

8. Watching cartoons ( I LOVED cartoon network during ‘96-’97 then it went from bad to worse IMHO)

9.Writing poems ( I seem to have lost this art though, gotta start it once again I guess)

10. Hanging out with my budds having cutting chai

11. Staying up late night with friends chatting about nothing and everything

12. Watching people, especially when they are very happy

13. Helping out people

14. Playing computer games, I think I pick up most games very rapidly at least initially

15. surfing to read up new things ( I was into gmail, orkut, etc much before people even started wondering about them)

16. Arranging my things ( Once in a blue moon I get this mental shock where I suddenly become neatness freak for some time)

17. Writing in different fonts ( big story, but I really like to experiment this)

18. Listening to people ( I have become so expert that I can listen for hours, and still remember what was being said)

19. Being alone ( I revere that! I really like to have a personal space, though I had never got it till now)

20. Learning new skills ( I like to always learn how things work)

21. exercising

22. Challenging myself ( In all fields in life, I also believe I have achieved many things due to this)

23. Solving puzzles ( even in my dreams I create puzzles for myself to solve)

24. Playing with my sister

25. taking photographs ( I want to develop this further )

26. Think ( I love to do this!!)

27. be lazy ( I am a libran for gods sake!)

28.My new hairstyle

29. Puns ( I love to play with words, I am good with verbal, and I love to read also! )

30. To wake up early ( the morning has its own charm I think)

31. Sitting in sun doing nothing ( I still remember one such lazy afternoon in Bangalore)

32. Hog ( I can eat way too much sometimes, and I love to do that, if I could ofcourse..)

33. To go on a drive with friends

34. To buy T shirts! ( I love to wear t shirts! and I am very choosy about them)

35. Repair things that are broken

36.Discuss ideas with people

37. Walk ( alone sometimes, sometimes with friends, and I lovvvveeee to walk with my father)

38. Go for trekking

39. Collecting and keeping relics from childhood

40. Listen to good professors, especially when they themselves are completely immersed in the topic of their interest

41. Love to eat sweets

42. to be with my grandparents ( i can cry even now just by thinking about those days.)

43. To sleep on the couch ( its gone now… sob sob…)

44. To sit on a beach, and ponder about nothing

45. Laughing

46.Smell of soil when rain just starts to fall

47. Taking warm bath

48. Understanding something which I was struggling to understand

49. Solving objective type tests

50. Writing essays ( I used to write awesome essays for my age when I was in school, now I am trying to reclaim that skill)

to be continued….

Bonus Post 4

I completed the book by Viktor Frankl last night, although I think I would have to read it a couple of times again before I would really understand what he is trying to convey.

Now the book I am reading is Cialdini’s ‘Influence’ . It’s a book in psychology about how people or events influence on your decisions. In fact, now that I am through with some part of it, that I realise what Sanjay bakshi was talking about.

Bonus Post 3

A little about the books I have read recently. I comepleted The selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins, and now will finish today the book Man’s search for meaning by Viktor Frankl.

Bonus Post 2

Things that I can do in leisure time:

• Read book
• think of things to do in leisure time
• work on goals
• read articles
• research on things i want to do
• write about something
• etc.

another interesting read :

Think about what would happen if you elevated one of your goals or projects to the level of “mission” or “purpose” and became deeply committed to it for 30-120 days, ruthlessly triaging out of your life everything that wasn’t connected with that purpose. Some type-A behavior patterns would naturally emerge, such as being driven, hard-working, and busy. But the negative side of type-A (aka “hurry sickness”) need not be present. That type of behavior is in fact induced by a lack of clear focus, trying to label too many things as urgent AND important instead of taking the time to discover the core of what’s most important and meaningful to you.

Understand that it’s the compelling goal — the vision — that creates the drive, not the other way around. People don’t normally drive super-fast when they can’t see where they’re going. Speeding in heavy fog is foolish.

When you can see for miles ahead across wide-open terrain, and there are no obstacles in your way (because you’ve triaged them out of existence), then why not jam the accelerator and enjoy the ride?

Focus focus focus.

Pick one clear goal and go at it with monomaniacal intensity. Then rest, relax, and repeat. It doesn’t matter if you don’t pick the perfect goal to begin with. Picking anything is better than nothing. You’re guaranteed to achieve nothing if you stand still.

Earn a degree. Write a novel. Launch a business. Get a girlfriend. Buy a house. Lose 20 pounds. What one thing would you dare to make your #1 focus for the next 90 days? What nonessentials are you willing to cut from your life in order to ensure that you achieve that goal?

Bonus Post 1

Now I had been mulling this thing for long…. what should I do when the people gone on exchange return and bring wine with them…. I was really looking forward to that experience and even now I am in doldrums about whether I should make an exception to it, or follow my goal of NO booze too rigorously.

Another thing I want to do is write (or type.. whatever ) . Making a concious goal out of it would help me, I think. so another goal is EVERYDAY writing.

adding a quote i liked.. : Perseverance is the hard work you do after you get tired of doing the hard work you already did.