Tag: blog

Choose Optimism Over Despair

As we begin this year, let’s decide to choose optimism over despair as that is how we will move forward – be it in our work or private lives.

If you, your team or family is facing uncertainty, it is totally understandable if that uncertainty is producing fear, feeling of helplessness and anxiety. It might be easy to despair and join the negative chorus and blame other for everything that is going wrong around us but that hardly is a solution!

Being optimistic in such times can help reduce the negative effects of stress and can assist with the recovery from stress.

Some practical things that you could try are:

– Choose positive language over the negative one

– Avoid criticism 

– Celebrate wins (no matter small they are) 

– Practice self-compassion

– Help others (be it a team member or your community)

– Don’t ignore your feelings but talk them over 

About freedom

From Nytimes.com article

Many things should be matters of individual choice. The government has no business dictating your cultural tastes, your faith or what you decide to do with other consenting adults.

But refusing to wear a face covering during a pandemic, or insisting on mingling indoors with large groups, isn’t like following the church of your choice. It’s more like dumping raw sewage into a reservoir that supplies other people’s drinking water.

Your short term freedom should not come at the cost of someone’s life.

What Won’t Make You More Productive

Working crazy hours and ‘hustling’ does not necessarily make you more productive. It certainly makes you busy (or look busy)but not productive. As a network engineer, I used to spend days on fiddling with the software settings, playing with the firewall software but that was not necessarily productive. I was learning stuff in the process but that was certainly not the best return on the time spent.

Reading tens and hundreds of articles on productivity or entrepreneurship will not produce the results you want. For that, you will actually have to do work that matters and that will make a difference. You will need to produce.

I believe that everyone has their own definition of what they call as ‘being productive’. Whatever your definition – ensure that you are producing things that matter to you and that is taking you towards your goals or objectives in life.

I recently came across Mark Manson’s article on “How to Be More Productive by Working Less“. It is a great short article that I would recommend people to read. It might just add an insight or two about productivity. It might assist you in managing your time better or assist you in managing your team environment better.

Here’s my summary:

  • Productivity is a deeply personal thing
  • Apart from some physical factory work and some office tasks, hardly any work is linear in function. It means that more time spent doing work does not necessarily mean that more is accomplished
  • Overworking can produce diminishing returns or negative returns
  • Identify leverage and deleverage points. What activity from your list can you pursue providing the best value for your time and efforts?
  • Take strategic time-offs. This will help to recharge your brain without loosing focus.

What does Father’s Day mean to me?

Father’s day mean that I miss my Dad the same as I do everyday but with a more intense regret that I wished I had told him more often how much I loved him and what he meant to me. He was and is my hero.

Father’s day mean that I am immensely proud of my children and thank God from the bottom of my heart for this privilege.

Father’s day is also an opportunity for me to stop and think of what kind of father I want to be to my children.

Father’s day is an opportunity to stop and show gratitude to billions of parents out there and say THANK YOU!

And ofcourse being pampered and loved by my children is priceless.

3-D printed food

But Contractor, a mechanical engineer with a background in 3D printing, envisions a much more mundane—and ultimately more important—use for the technology. He sees a day when every kitchen has a 3D printer, and the earth’s 12 billion people feed themselves customized, nutritionally-appropriate meals synthesized one layer at a time, from cartridges of powder and oils they buy at the corner grocery store. Contractor’s vision would mean the end of food waste, because the powder his system will use is shelf-stable for up to 30 years, so that each cartridge, whether it contains sugars, complex carbohydrates, protein or some other basic building block, would be fully exhausted before being returned to the store.

via The audacious plan to end hunger with 3-D printed food – Quartz.

Natural will be natural. But having the ability to cook anything perfectly the way I want, in the cleanest possible way excites me and with just the calories I want to inject into myself is even better. Technology and possibilities excite me!

Needing Validations

[blackbirdpie id=”309027933350154240″]

Yes, validations are necessary and important but more so when one is producing, creating, innovating stuff. Don’t spend all the time just getting validations (and likes) on the things that don’t matter.

 

Back to Basics- Moved to WordPress

I decided to move my blog to WordPress from Posterous. While more people are moving to services such as Posterous and Tumblr, I decided to go back to basics and be more in control. I have imported as many post as possible from my Posterous site (which was imported from a b2evolution blog before).

For now the look and feel will keep changing for a while till I figure things out. You might also find that old posts might have been broken links or formatting is just not right.