A Subtle Article on Personal Productivity

The article begins with the author’s current status: “There I sat with my thirteen-year-old daughter on a dirt floor eating rice and beans with some of the poorest people on the planet.” It then takes us several years back describing how much the author wanted his kids to develop sensitivity toward others by travelling and seeing the rest of the world. Back then, he realized he could only materialize his dream by sticking to two habits: weekly introspection and proactive scheduling. I found this article interesting because, unlike conventional productivity articles, it gently conveys the significance of discovering the inner motivation before resolving to develop new habits.

Best Piece of Career Advice

While career is an individualistic journey, it is largely shaped by the advice received from others. The best advice I have ever received is the “ladder-pyramid” analogy. Most professionals perceive career as a ladder that needs to be climbed up and ignore the ease with which one could fall off a ladder. Instead, career should be regarded as a pyramid that is built on a much stronger foundation. For a long-lasting career, one should strive to develop a diverse skill-set and understand the multidimensionality of the occupation. I would like to credit this piece of advice to Carol Bartz, the former CEO of Yahoo!

Summary 2012

2012 has been quite an eventful year.

Started my first post-PhD job

Lost the very same job due to funding reasons (aaah!)

Got listed at the Miss Minimalist’s Blog

Started a new job at a national research lab

Started living all by myself (as a result of the two body problem) – for the first time in my life

Cultivated running habit and ran my first 5K race (in 35 minutes!) 

Learned and Started knitting and finished two projects: lap blanket 1, and lap blanket 2

Actively started using Julie Morgenstern’s Balanced Life Planner

De-cluttered a lot

My wish list for 2013:

Make yoga and running as everyday habits

Publish A LOT of research papers

Take writing, management, teaching courses

Keep knitting

Make some hand-made products

Become super organized

Become more minimalistic

from Downsizing to Tuning in

I still have something you gave me...
For it can neither be tossed, nor be given away

It remains with me no matter where I stay
It makes the ordinary-me feel beautiful from inside

It helps the pauper-me face the material world with pride
It creates the make-believe of 
this platonic connection with you

It keeps me alive with the thought 
that once-upon-a-time I deserved you.
I still have something you gave me...
The best part is that it keeps my soul fiercely pure

So I decide to keep it until I am no more

On Giving Treasurable Gifts

The fragrance always remains on the hand that gives the rose. ~ Mahatma Gandhi
Anything that has real and lasting value is always a gift from within. ~ Franz Kafka

Gift giving is a social norm. On Christmas alone, an average American receives 10-15 gifts every year. Being a minimalist, coming up with gift ideas is even harder. To me, gifting is like making more deposits into the clutter account of the recipient.  Besides considering recipients’ interests, I often think about the treasurability of the gift by asking questions like:  Would they like to keep it forever? Would they forget about it once it is out of sight? Or would they start thinking of re-gifting it? In other words, I am very careful of what I give to others, and I keep accumulating ideas for giving some truly treasurable gifts. Here are my most preferred (mostly tried and tested) ideas:

Hand-crafted Items: If you are a creative person, write poetry or a hand-written note, sketch or paint something. If you are good at crafts, make an item they can use, or a greeting card with cutouts, pictures, or photo prints. If you are a techie, create a video (of yourself and/or friends), or a Flash movie. If you like to be in the kitchen, cook something of recipient’s choice. Or even better, imitate recipient’s talents and interests, like attempting to write a poem for a poet, or be even more creative by intermixing your interests with their talents. 

Off-the-shelf Items: Gift a magazine subscription, or an e-book for Kindle or NOOK users. Create a photo calendar for them, or simply buy a gift card. It is the lazy way out but works all the time.

Intangible Items: Give the gift of time; volunteer, offer help in moving, baby-sitting, cleaning, pick-up and drop service, etc. Dedicate your important works to people.

The Motivated Mind

I just finished reading the book – the Motivated Mind by J. M. Gracia. This book describes the six pillars that create a motivated mind: (1) understand. (2) desire, (3) belief, (4) plan, (5) action, and (6) maintain. I was mostly drawn toward desire, plan, and action.

The best thing this book has done to me is to bring some clarity and order to my desires and dreams. The author helps in discovering one’s desires through exploration and answering some key questions. Broadly, the reader is asked to prepare 6 lists of (short and long term) desires: Things I want to possess (OWN), Things I want to experience (DOING), and Things I want to be (BEING). My owning list had very few items, precisely, 3. Thanks to the minimalism religion I follow. The other lists had several items: 13 (short term doing) 18 (long term doing), 6 (short term being), 19 (long term being). This acted like a quick and mini soul searching experience. Another aspect of the book that I liked was the description about the key elements of a good strategy. A good strategy is segmented, specific scheduled, measurable, tracked, and recorded.  I intend to test these elements with the discovered desires.

Here are some excerpts worth reflection.  

“I do believe that he had a desire to leave his job. The only problem was, he didn’t want it enough.”

“Its really a crazy situation when you think about it. People put so much time and energy into choosing what clothes they want to wear, car they buy, restaurants they eat at, and even which candy bar they want most. They will spend hours, days, and even months giving thought to what color they want to paint their bedroom walls or whom to invite to their wedding, but when it comes to planning out a happy and successful future, the thinking stops. People are too busy being unhappy to think what they want.”

“There is always a reason behind not doing something, …, you learned that negative motivation stems from the fear of giving up the pleasure of inaction and incurring the pain of action. These fears are pushed under the carpets of stories and excuse. No one wants to admit they’are afraid, but everyone wants to give you a good story.”

“If you want different, you have to do different.”

“The real power is not what happens to you but how you respond to the situation.”

“Creating a strategy will do many things, but one thing it will not do is to replace authentic desire.”

“Studies have shown that you will forget approximately 80% of what you learn within one or two days. It is imperative to record every element of your strategy.”

“The man who graduates today and stops learning tomorrow is uneducated the day after.” Newton D. Baker

“Every person worth admiring follows a philosophy of constant learning.”

Although this book was somewhat overwhelming, overall, I enjoyed reading it and learning from it. I recommend it to anyone looking for some less chaos in thoughts and an upsurge in motivation. 

Going Retro with Red

This is a post I wrote about six years ago. I find it silly and yet good enough to laugh at myself. Back then I called it "Color Me Red."

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~ With high regards to the one who taught me how to connect the dots from the war  to the flower in Chacha Nehru's pocket  to the Hindu Bridal Dress ~

Besides thinking about the most defining moment of my life, I was browsing videoduniya.com for some random and durlabh Hindi movies I always love talking about. I then came across "Red." Oh come on, I am not that big a bollywood fan to even think about watching or learning more about this movie. What struck me was the importance of this color in my life - so thought of blogging about it. Since blogging is so much IN today that even AmitJi (the LAAL badshaah), Bhuwan (wearing RED while playing a girl in dole dole dil), and Raj (waving good bye while wearning a RED and white t-shirt in DDLJ) find the time to do it, I thought why can't I ...I can't be busier than them.

So, the story begins with the role of this color in my life. This is definitely not my favorite color. I always went for calm and environmental colors like blue and green which lie on the other extreme end of the VIBGY...........OR spectrum. I am anyway not an intense person, at least in public - how could my choice be as intense as red? As a child, I remember wearing red only for dance performances. I never owned any other red asset as best as I can remember except for a red pencil box. Besides that, to me red was always a color of high intensity, high presence, high visibility, and very strong emotions. During high school, my English teacher (Padma Ms) taught us the importance of using colored pens. If you are in a normal mood, you would use blue; to disclose a sad news use black; to congratulate someone use pink; to break a good news use violet;.and to threaten someone or to write a revengeful letter full of rage, use RED. Oh my God, since then RED became more of a stay away color for me. Then there were those highly academic days, when I hated to see a red mark on my notebook highlighting the careless mistakes.

Nevertheless, being a true Gemini, life gave me enough reasons to remain confused. As I grew further in my teenage years, they told me there was a Rose day. Again, the same sort of color classification, yellow stands for friendship, white stands for peace, and red stands for love and romance....! So, I remain there confused--how far should I stay from this color? Was Lakshman Rekha colored too, if yes was it by any chance red? I started playing with the idea of someone giving me a red rose or, on a darker note, writing me a letter in red. I decided never to take either of them seriously as the status this color remained complicated at least to me. Meanwhile, there were times when I went for a blood-test and they took a large volume of red-colored liquid out of my body leaving me even more anemic. I must confess that after watching Hum Aapke Hain Kaun, I did buy that Mausam ka Jaadu's red dress but could wear it even once as everyone unanimously told me - this dress looks good only on Madhuri. I remember my mother telling me don't ever wear a red bindi, not even after getting married - go for a maroon one instead- red doesn't look good on wheatish complexion. Ok, I buy that! And there were articles in the Times of India regarding the Kargil war and the color red as its consequence. There was a time when a punjaban with warm si feelings looked at my wardrobe and said - come on your life is so colorless, how can you not have a red top??? Here in USA, when I went to a hair saloon, they suggested me to go for a hair color - some shade of red....I said - are you seriously kidding me? So, this is the relationship I share with red.

On one hand, the hottest spice we eat is red in color and then the color of "tika" we put during pujas is red too. There surely, is a meaning to this color. So, let me "stop" and step back. The irony is that I can continue with this post only when my g-chat icon turns from red to green. Till then keep redding!