Baat karne se hi baat banti hain :)

A great article at pluggd.in stating the importance of talking your way out. People often don't realize the importance of trying to talk their way out. Some examples from practical life:

I go for evening walks. One day i forgot my purse and wanted to eat an icecream, Badly. I thought lets ask the icecream vala for a credit. I went and said ki bhiya kal paise de dunga aaj laya nahin. He said, "Sir, aap toh roj aate ho. Kal de dena :)"

I had one stubborn client how refused to pick up my calls. I thought he was purposely ignoring me. But still I gave my self respect a back seat and went ahead to meet him although I had called him many times before. He welcomed me and I found he was really busy and wasn't picking up anyone's calls. But still he listened to me and I got my work done.

A not so related example is: Being in the service industry you have to talk to your clients. You have to give them support. I have realized the more personal you get with them, the more comfortable they are. For example, Whenever write a email to a particular person, I address him as Bhiya. and Ya if you call them just to know whats up and if they are having any problems, they feel a sense of security.

Google Buzz #fail

I have hated google buzz from its very existence. I nipped the bud on the very first day.

Why? Because I thought it was a cheap twitter clone and it was made probably because Google was not able to acquire Twitter or may be the people behind it. But anyways the interface really sucked. Google has to understand that the same interface will not work at all places. If one UI works good in Email and Feed readers it might not in a micro blogging platform.

Also following people's update on one more people means more waste(?) of time. I hate wasting time. I really do. Also it would mean that i wanted to micro blog something then I will have a choice between Twitter and Google Buzz, thus adding confusion to my life, stripping it of its minimalism.

Also I really hated the idea of Google trying to take over my life by automating the the people I follow and the people who follow me. And ya imagine following celebrity people based on their emails. This would never happen. And ya taking of emails, I dont want my my email client to be filled up by people's blatter. I want to keep my work(email) separate from social networking. Integrating both of them makes me more vulnerable to wasting time.

And ya what sparked this anger. I was reading a friend's buzz that he posted on twitter and wasted to point out a google buzz fail. See this buzz . The minimized text is readable. Expand it and you will not be able to read it. Ha Ha #fail #google #buzz.

And ya if you dont know how to deactivate buzz, here are the instructions. RIP Google Buzz.

The creativity of constraints

I follow minimalism as an important rule of my life. It helps me to focus all my attentions to necessary things and lets me do things in time.

This post highlights another benefit of minimalism - creativity. Its true , when you have less resources at your disposal, you tend to be creative with them. Some examples from my practical life:

Time - Yes time is important. Time is limited. Time once spent will never come back. I value my time the most. Thus I never get into discussions that dont concern me or my work. I avoid using facebook and twitter during work. I usually do sprints, of an hour each. During this hour I work with full focus. Between each sprint is the social networking time. I hate working in the night and try to finish my work before night.

Startup - Being a part of startup the resources at your disposal are really limited. It makes think of innovative ideas.

Startup working from home cum office - The biggest challenge

As this blog points out, the biggest problem working from home is self discipline. You tend to work on internet where theres a very thin line between your work and facebook/gmail.

It might happen that you are in front of your laptop 12 hours a day but still nothing gets done the whole day. This happens because there is no boundary between work and leisure and as a result your productivity sucks. The problem gets worse in a startup when you have no bosses to tell you what to do.

However the first link mentions a few ways to streamline your work schedule and get the most out of it. These are:

• Decide on the number of work hours per week or may be decide the max number of working hours in day.

• Decide the most important work

• Postpone the unimportant works

• Always have the big picture in mind.

• Have regular meetings and a healthy communication with teammates.

Important rules of my life

Everyone has some principles by which they stand. The principles which help them to recover from difficult situations and give them peace. For some people the mere teachings of a religion serve the purpose. But I don't believe in any religion because I think its a glorified wrapper around something very simple.

Anyways the following things always come to my mind whenever I am caught up in a situation:

Never ever trouble yourself.

For example you want to vent out your frustration on anybody but instead you are troubling yourself by not doing so and sulking. Do it and get over it.

Before "not" doing anything just think whether you are troubling yourself by not doing it. If yes, go ahead do it. You will much better.

Minimalism

The more things you have the more things you have to manage.

My working table is never to filled up with.

Keep the relevant things and throw away the unrequired stuff. Yes throw them away.

Apple has stunning desings and they are always so elegant and simple.

Doing one thing at a time.

Whenever I am sad, I stop being sad and be awesome instead!

This one is a recent one liner from someone's facebook status. But it works like charm. Whenever you are sad just think of this line and suddenly you will notice a positive vibe instead.

PS: will keep updating this list.

Archiving narcissism

Give me some sunshine

The latest song "Give me some sunshine" from the movie 3 idiots is too catchy. The moment you hear the song you can somewhere relate to the song. Although my life till now now has been totally on my terms, be it the choice of career or the choice of college or the choice of startup. I will never say that "ki bachpan bhi gaya, jawani bhi gayi... ab toh hume jeene do jeene do...".

but still yaar load kis ki life main nahin hota. Load chodo. I Still was thinking ki kyun main is gaane se itna relate kar paata hoon. And the sheer reason was ki hain gaana bahut sacchai se gaaya hain yaar. The music is sooo relaxing and the voice is so simple that you feel drowned in the song. And secondly aspirations kiske nahin hote. This song reminds you all those unachieved things in life.