that day of the week

when I am supposed to just be lazy, and be lazy I was that day.

Nothing of notice happened on last few days, except on a personal level. Nothing I could share on a blog.

Did not exercise for quite a few days, hogged around a lot more than I should, and the fat has immediately started to show. Working out is the only feasible option it seems. I will also have to incorporate the eating raw at night habit, but my mom is impossible, so unless I take up all the preparatory part on me, its not going to get done.

I ahd a very difficult month end professionally. Most of my work over month end consists of updating the client portfolios manually. Manually because my office still has not quite understood the concept of using a software to automate such processes. So we take the data from various websites and type it in excel. It is criminally stupid, but I am too junior to fight it. All I could do till now is to automate some parts of information collection by using excel web queries. And to think I never worked on excel. Sheesh, some offices just need an engineer MBA combo I tell you. As the days will go by, I swear I will make enough changes to make the organization competitive at least at the local level. I mean, clients cant even see their own portfolio real time on the net. Every time the person handling the stuff has to pull down the information, confirm about all the transactions that have occurred from various sources and then pray to the god of portfolio updation that the portfolio is without any mistakes. How my company gets clients is a question to me. Maybe because the services and personalized attention that we provide is not matchable in the industry till now. So, luckily we are ahead of the curve.

Enough cribbing. Got to go to work and make some value add tomorrow.

Take care.

Lazy…

and not at all proud of it. Somehow I get this immense mental block against doing something, as if taking clothes to the laundry involves doing my engineering again or something similarly impossible. I have no clue how I came out of that engineering college in the first place. Maybe they bribed those examiners to get me out.

Another thing is that I tout some character traits as being my intrinsic part. This mindless repetition has ingrained those harmful traits in me. Like being lazy for one. I justify that one by saying librans are lazy, or that smart people find easier ways or that I am like that only and so on. Totally untrue. So I need to watch what I feel my mind. More and more closely if you may. Not that I don’t do this. Strictly no newspaper for gathering information. They put in too many depressing and negative pieces in there for my taste. Me, I am an optimist any given time of the day. I wish I could share you my “balls of steel” experience here. So be it.

So, back to the main line of thinking. I need to be more energetic. The only way to do it is to tell that to myself so many times that ultimately I know I AM energetic. Keep telling I am, energetic. I am full of energy and vitality. On and on. Continuously. That is one trait I have. Like a bulldog. Don’t think. Don’t get tired. Keep going at it, again and again. That was how I upped my scoring from 56% and a KT to 74% and university topper. In a year. Just two semesters. I used to skip my lunch and even having water the whole day. Just study.

I have moved on now. I have become complacent. Lethargic. LAZY. Too much food and too few challenges or shocks. Dad once said to me, I will not learn unless I will get a shock in life. I needed three. To change. I changed good but. I cant wait for shocks now. I may not come back to the leadership position I covet. I need to imagine those shocks. I need to feel deprived of my rightful place. Easy enough. I am off to write it out now.

Did not exercise in last few days. Bad enough. I will be back on it tomorrow onwards. Or now.

Addendum: Now it is.. Push ups 25+15. crunches 0.

Take care.

yaoo!

My first day as a worker in the office. My joining was on 7th april, but today was the day I actaully got to do something. The story goes like this:

There are five people in the office, the boss and four of us associates. The back office guy feels ill in the morning, decides to skip the office for the day. The marketing guy is in serious health trouble, is taken to the hospital by the roomie who is the third colleague.  So its me and the boss in the office for the day.

It was fun though, not really hectic but at times I got confused. No accidents though, and the day is saved. I also attended a couple of meetings, one with a client and another with a fund manager. Good day for me in the sense that things are now moving in the direction I want them to move.

Reached home late, at about 8.30PM. Had dinner today for a change. No exercise though. Sad.

Tomorrow, I am going for three meetings, will be fun. Need to hammer out what I want to accomplish in professional and personal space for next few months. till then

Take care.

Today

I woke up at 10 to 7. got ready to catch the 7.57 Churchgate fast. Reached Churchgate station and walked the way to the office that takes about 20-25 minutes. Had huge breakfast with Poha and Shira. The dude stands outside the building in which I work and his massive storage gets over by the time its 10. Then its office time. I skipped the normal tea at 10.30 but had one at around 12. Lunch is nice and the tiffin is provided by this company. Freaking good food, and the meny is hardly repeated. We have opted for an option where we get 8 rotis with vegetable and curry. Thats a collosal amount of yummy food we all enjoy to hog down.

The food part for the day ends here. In the afternoon another round or two of tea ( at 3.30 and at 5, if I am going to wait after that). And I left the place at about 5.30.  A slow walk across the sea shore again and I reach just in time to catch the Borivli fast at 6 pm ( I dont remember exactly, I just saw the “Bo ” and that the train has not come yet, and ran to get a good place to jump in) ( got window seat too , you losers!!). I reach home at around 7.30 and luckily I see couple of my friends going to the neighbourhood chaiwala. So quick cutting, and we are off to play table tennis on the table bought recently. 2-3 games and the crowd increases. I am finally at home at 8.30 pm.

Few push ups and ab crunches and its time to have fruit juice. Today its chikoo milk shake and I am done for the day. time to blog and touch base with my google reader. will sleep by 12-12.30.

So, all in all, I get free time from 8 till I sleep…. pretty boring but good enough than many of my friends.

Take care.

Day 0

Yawn…..so I woke up at 5.30 and all today morning. Worked out lightly and went around getting ready for the office. Slept at 10.30ish so had 7 hrs of sleep. Not enough though. I think I seriously need to intensify my workout and cut some food intake or at least change the quality or type of food intake.

The whole day was a blur. More so because I am not getting any work to do, and appearing busy the whole day is impossible. I have already started to cut down on my tea consumption, which is one good thing.

I am feeling so sleepy, can be seen from the random thought fluctuations splattered all across this post. Uh, well….its just the first day.

I joined a library!!! so a book a week scheme is back on. Took a book called “turning point” by Capra.

Tomo morning, I must study some, along with working out.

Seeing the time I need to get ready, I will shift the time of waking up to 5 and then 4.30. I think this will give me sufficient and continuous time slot for myself. The practical details of how to achieve this would be worked out in coming days.

Overall, a tired but definite start.

I need to come up with a mantra for this transformation too. Al that, later. Now time to hit the bed.

D day -1

So after sliding back to the lazy, fat laden life I have again decided to implement a few goals. I am off the booze now which is a good thing. Another good thing is that I have a basic set routine which can be used as an anchor to link other habits which I need to implement.
First habit is to wake up early. This will release the much needed pre work time for me.
Other activities I need to incorporate are yoga+pranayam, running+exercise, meditation and studying. Ideally I would love to do all these in the morning session. As the time unlocked is clearly not enough for all the activities, I need to schedule some in the evening.
Studying can be done before sleeping, so can be reiki.
The real trade off I need to make is between exercise and yoga. I will not be able to do them both in the same slot.
Apart from that, I need to focus on my eating habits. I have already started eating more raw, and more fruits. Creating a habit out of it should not be too difficult since I love to eat such stuff anyways.
The main habit I need to create is to pay attention to how much I am eating. I get cravings while having food, a problem I used to have during engineering too. Some conditioning is needed there.
I have done all these things and so nothing is new for me. The main challenge again is to wake up and smell the coffee, right when I want it.

Other goals which I implemented for a brief while are given in  this post. Those are also to be followed again.

A lazy sunday…

A lazy day was today. Nothing constructive done except I went for workout in the evening. Had light lunch and slightly heavy dinner. I am feeling so tired because of staying awake last night. I will sleep a bit early, at around 10:15 PM. Nothing much of importance to mention today. Did not plan or do anything though. Just wellagiri around for the whole day.

Failure.. stepping stone to more failure??

Today I woke up at a comfortable 9.30 . the whole day was wasted in watching the match. In the afternoon I saw a movie and went on the ground to watch the cricket match between Juniors and alumni. A lot of time wasting during the whole time, and I ended up in a dinner party with only junk food. After stuffing myself, I came back to the room and stayed up till 3-4 for no reason, watching a couple more movies in process.

Is there a pattern I am detecting here?? I have done similar things in the past. I did change my lifestyle a few times, got new habits, got rid of old ones. The consistent result was I drifted back to the old habits after sometime. The drift was so slow that I didn’t even feel I am sliding back. This time, because I am chronicling the progress, I am atleast noticing that drift. This is an improvement over last attempts, but not much of encouraging one. I mean, something has to be done right?

I woke up late, at around 9.30AM, and wasted the whole day. I also had paneer and other junk food by truckloads. I can feel the aftereffects even days after I do this. the drowsiness keeps me aware of what I am eating. I am also curious about why I chose to sleep late. Maybe it was a trade off between craving for the party, and the need to abstain from more temptations. Whatever maybe the reason, the compromise still set me back by a long way. Sleeping late for one night means, the disruption of the schedule for the next few days. Irregular sleep timings and skipping on exercising and so on. Even I start craving fatty, oily foods after I get a sleep deficit to carry around.

I am planning to think about this today evening, and come up with solutions for many problems i have noted down in previous posts also. I am sure I have all the tools I need with me, it’s just the application of concious thought to the problem is what is needed. In fact, I have this nagging suspision that I am abstaining from thinking much about the change because of some unconcious reason. That also must be brought to the light.

Overall, a bad day, in terms of goal implementation. It will have to be analyzed and learnt from. Improvement is the only way forward.

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Cricket… funny game..

Today, and this must be sounding repetitive  already, I woke up at 6, switched off the alarm, called and woke up my gf and slept again. Woke at 7.30AM and actually went to gym for a not too intense workout. Had a smallish breakfast and went for the lecture of SAJV. Enjoyed the antics under the name of presentation from Abhinav, Adit and crew. Had Negotiation submission today. So, hurriedly modified the reflection paper written by a friend and submitted it. Watched two movies back to back. And now its time to sleep.

The going raw thing is growing inside me, held back only by the equal amount of junk food I am suddenly craving for and eating. Maybe I am paying a bit too much attention to the fact that I am eating more raw, and hence the mind is craving for oil and junk. I am still not feeling totally alert and I need to enter into a deeper sleep to achieve that.

Today, I acted on the advice given to me by my negotiation professor. The long story is as follows:  He used to teach me organizational design subject in the first year. I loved the elective and I think he did notice me. Although my attitude of staying away from teachers apart from the interaction is lecture did not allow me to bond with him as much as I would have liked to build. Now, during the last lecture, he was talking about power and politics and he mentioned that “some people might have got less marks than they would have because they never interacted or showed extra interest”. I figured it was directed towards me because of his hints during the discussion. Today, immediately after the lecture, I went to him to discuss what was explained in the class, and I must say I detected a faint flicker in his eyes. I must have got the hint he gave me. So now I will build on that, and I need to do so too, because I want to learn so much from him. The fact that he is the coordinator of placement cell in the college does help a bit too

Today I went to gym and as I had mentioned in previous posts, felt the glucose level dropping while exercising. So I stopped it immediately, and came back to the room to have a banana or two. Next time onwards, I will have glucose before I go to the gym. Atleast todays physical mastery was on target.

Mental mastery was on target too,  I did understand a bit about how one should approach a placement process. That was very illuminating for me. But it was not a very strenuous day as far as this part is concerned. Nor was I totally awake in a way. There is always this drowsiness overshadowing everything I do.

Emotionally also I was very stable and positive almost the whole day. So that is good enough. I need to create finer points of evaluation so I can grow in this area too.

Spiritual growth is happening since I became conscious of the fact that my spiritual focus is getting lost in the day to day muddle of living my life and doing what matters to me mostly in short term. This lope sided living must be balanced and I think I am off to a good solid start here.

Well, tomorrow alumni meet is happening with cricket match scheduled between my team and alumni team. This should be interesting. I am really looking forward to playing in that match with my newly found muscles and stamina. Hope I will last long enough on the crease to showcase it to the audience.

Talking of cricket, I had really stopped watching the game for years. Sachin was in a bad patch and somehow I was bored of the game. That interest is back now, and is eating into my schedule, replacing other things. I am watching the test match almost the whole time and I think I should must curtail the thing.Bad things can happe, including wastage of time. not that I am a highly effective person anyways, somehow I cant find the energy to do all those things I have always wanted to do. I think the time is ripe to address such major issues plaguing my life.

I am ready to take on myself.

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The monologue.. and other things

Today was, like yesterday, marked with mental fogginess. I need to rethink the lifestyle, because something is either going wrong, or this is mini detox I am experiencing. I will let these things continue till weekend, and will review the situation then.

In the morning, I woke up at 6AM, just as I had planned. Went to brush the teeth et al. Trouble hit me then and there, somehow I felt so drowsy and tired and just drained of energy; that I immediately hit the pillow and tried to wake myself up twice more unsuccessfully. No avail. Finally I dragged myself to the bathroom at 8AM. Went to see the cricket match happening between India and Australia at WACA. Had a largish breakfast and went for the lecture.

Today also, I was not completely alert in the lecture, and fatigue was overriding me throughout. The topic of todays lecture was the international monetary systems, and since I am quite interested in understanding how the whole system works, I could keep myself from sleeping. It was back to the match, which I saw till the day end at around 3.

I had a theater class at 4PM where I had to deliver a monologue. I had no clue what that it, and so I almost gave that class a slip. The lucky part is that I just went there to check how many people are attending the class, and I realized that almost all are planning to attend. This can of course be attributed to the veiled threats of flunking given by the professor in the last lecture.

So, the stage was set, and I was trapped inside with no idea of what I was going to say in front of those savage batch mates who can kill someone real fast and smoothly. Then I saw the video camera right in the middle of the central isle of the classroom, its yellow sodium light mocking me in unflickering gaze. I was on the verge of running away then and there, but then I realised now that I am almost becoming MBA, I should be able to bluff my way out of this one also.

The presentations (monologues ) started and I was getting happy after many of my batch mates faltered while delivering the lines they had tried to by heart within a short time. That, IMHO, is a stupidest and sureshot way to screw yourself in front of audience. Why someone has to by heart those words when you have many of your own, is really beyond me. So, I recalled one of the short stories written by myself, and cooly converted it into a first person, instead of the actual third.

The professor asked the author of the fiction and I panicked again. I had no choice but, so I started to create emotions I would be inserting in the scene. The words were not important because its my strength that I can improvise and speak really well impromptu. So, basically I chose to introduce those emotions and created confidence in myself, while others were stuttering. Suddenly the scene reveresed right in front of my eyes. Some of the people who had prepared and also taken part in plays during school years started to perform really well. I was afraid to perform just after them because generally the recency effect can take your case. Funnily enough the chit with my name on it, was not picked almost till the end, there by increasing the overall adrenalin in the system.

When my turn finally came, surprisingly I didn’t even have butterflies in the stomach, which is customary for me. I went there and delivered a much better performance by even my standard, although I curtailed it much more than planned previously. I managed a laudable “A” in this performance. The performance is there on the recording forever now, and I must make it a point to take it and remember how I tackled the situation.

I did not go to gym and that is because I was feeling tired throughout morning. I think by tomorrow I should be all right and should go to gym for the customary workout, though not so much intense.

One more thing worth mentioning is that I had a “RAW lunch” today. It consisted of fruits ( papaya) and onions, cucumber, radish and tomato. This was a good step because the alternative was “Chana masala” which is bad for my system. The unwanted side effect was that I felt craving to have fried food and ate junk food by tons. The figuring out to implement system is critical.

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