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.

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.

and I wonder…

Nice song this.

Anyways did good exercise today. PU 20+10 AC 12. My target is for 100 PU and 25 AC. The target date is 15th August.

I am a subscriber of this tiny little library couple of minutes from my place. Its actually really a shack kinda, and it has books in 3 languages. Good enough novels collection, but non fiction suckz. Anyways, picked up Paolo Coelho’s “The Pilgrimage” yesterday. Small little book, as big as two hours. As I had read The Alchemist, Zahir, 11 minutes already, so I am quite familiar with his semi mystical style. Love it actually.        The book is about a pilgrimage he takes ( erm… road to santiago..) with his guide, to reclaim a sword. Let me not write the summary here. His books are to be experienced anyways, the summary will only confuse you.

So, I am in a happy mood today, reading a good book always makes me so. The work day was also good enough. Not much of a work. For anyone. Anyone with my speed at least. Few tasks in the office, and my main job profile is all about meeting people anyways. Front end, The. Pretty glam eh? meeting those richie rich people, is boring actually. I would love to meet those first gen successful entrepreneurs but, pretty sharp them owners.

Next task is to set mile stones for next three months. Personal front and professional front.

Take care.

sunshine…. sunshine…

its been many days since I felt this. A new low. Or better yet, another of them lows. Sometimes I feel that I am lonely. Utterly. The whole world is enjoying and I am left out of it. To say the truth, I don’t have any group so as to say. Million friends maybe, but no one to call at night for help. Of course, I have not tried it. The problem is that I cannot settle with a group, because I find many of their thoughts contrary to mine. Then the separation and distancing happens. Also, I don’t like to play games people routinely and happily play. I am pretty sensitive to all those subtle manipulations which rampantly happen under the guise of relationship, and not only I try to avoid it, I positively abhor it. My main point is that, somehow not everyone is aware of this happening. Especially the sufferers or victims. I feel for them.

Now this has to change.I need to learn how to maintain the network and develop a ever improving one. I need to start and learn to love myself, and to respect myself first. I presume that a lot of confidence will flow from it, and will seep into many things, relationships, and behavioral patterns currently needing change.

This also means that I need to hold myself to better standards and thereby commit to a better lifestyle, better discipline and better thinking process. Not only this, I need to train myself to be content with the current situation as well. The balance, as always , is the key.

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.

Yet another lazy sunday..

Who am I kidding…..I am snowballing back to the old life. I have started to stay up late again, so thats another goal breached. Luckily, I have some good changes persisting in my life, so not all is lost. Perhaps this would be a gr8 idea. Overload myself with more than I can handle, and in the end, hopefully I will be better off than I was initially, even if I renegade on other goals. This of course, is not to be done now,the hour calls for some drastic measure, the last lap sprint to the finish.

After putting in decent amount of regular time in gym, I can see the results, which are slow in coming. My weight has stabilized at a massive 70 kgs finally. The thing is that I gained weight from 65 till 72 with alarming rapidity, and it still is sticking around my desired body shape. Whatever the changes inside, are yet to show up visibly. I am not setting any weight targets though. I believe that by living a proper lifestyle, and working out regularly, my body will be able to assume whatever shape that is optimum for me. Of course, I will keep pushing the boundaries at every chance, and thats given for me.

This pushing boundaries need not only apply to the physical though. There are many such frontiers beaconing to me. I work by the philosophy of baby step. Slow, steady, focussed. I also overload myself, as I have the habit of sliding back.

Now, I think, is the time to break the plateau I am at. I will be done with the lectures within a week, and exam after that. I will finally get some time for myself. Thats when I will work out what I want to do, how I want to reach what I want, how I will be, and many such fundamental things.

Already an MBA, brilliant but useless….

That’s how I am feeling these days. Make no mistake, I am still very much observing those goals I set initially. The problem is, I am also wasting the crutial time that I am left with here @ MDI. So also, I am drifting back to those energyless stupors of old, which set me back on quite a many occasions.

There are really simpler solutions for this. The behaviour is the result of lack of clear goals, wrong they may turn out later. The old habits die hard they say, procrastination is the worst foe I still fight with. I have, as I well confess here, all the tools and many more at my mental disposal. Using them, however, is a different ball game for me these days. How I crave for some privacy where I can think properly for a length of time. Another is the fear of the unknown,which has been inherited by me from my father. That abstains me from creating the future that I have potential to fulfill. This keeps me well within the boundaries, and lets my talents and skills, and imagination atrophy.

Changes must be made, and none of them temporary. I am already enjoying the slight clearaty that I have got, I need to build on it. So its back to the drawingboard, to paint the next level of goals, to create a platform on which I can erect a proud monument for my achievements,and my brave failures.

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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.