Get things done

"See a man who is diligent and skilled in what he does he will stand before kings and not ordinary men". 

The world is a great place with greater people for the good or bad. How do we compete in this world? How do we get better that these great people? How are we going to be good at something, when we can't even get the simplest task we have done within a day? All the great people around the world and the normal people all have at least one thing in common, we all have only 24 hours in our day to day life. So what makes the difference? what makes them the geniuses and millionaires? It's how they use the time they are given and how they manage to get the most done within that time and how they channel their will power within the days work appropriately.

With that thought in mind let me ask you this question..

Are you maintaining a list/ to-do list? 

Lists create cognitive loading. Sherlock Holmes ones said "mind is an attic, everything you put in will eventually pile up and you won't be able to put new things in"(I know Sherlock Holmes is not a real person and Arthur Conan Doyle was actually the man behind the mind). Warren Buffet said, "For every good thing you put in you have to take something out". I'm not saying don't have a list, have one but make sure you don't put everything into that list. I would recommend you apply the two minute rule and with your to-do list. Do not put down things that take no more than two minutes to get them done into your to do list. You can have a different list to maintain you shopping list or your chores. But as your main to-do list have only the most important things you have to get done within the day. Any time a task hits you like buying a book or buying milk or writing an email to someone that has to be done, that has to be taken off you place then and there. If you can't do it at that time allocate a time in you day may be 15 minutes or even an hour and get all that done and get it off your chest. Men of action ruled the world.

"Do not put it off for tomorrow, anything you can do now"

Your will power is finite, do not put it or use it on things that does not need your attention instead go for the tasks that actually need more will power. In other words you use your finite will power to do your chores as well as your assignments. It does not mean that you don't have enough will power to get through the whole day. You have to exercise your will power and train it to endure more and get more things done. Till you get to the stage where you have enough will power to get all the things done within the day make sure you use your finite will power to get the right tasks done first. This also could be put in simpler terms like; do not open your face book first thing in the morning, do not open your e-mail first thing in the morning and etc... Instead get your priorities straight and get things done.

Importance of Reading

On many of the other pages of advice on this site I have emphasized how important reading is as far as learning English is concerned. Reading is a fundamental to function in today's society. It's a scary yet true thought that there are many adults who cannot read well enough to understand the instruction on a medicine bottle or fill out applications without help. A person is limited in what he can accomplish without good reading and comprehensive skills. 

Reading is NOT retaining information of what ever we read. That is called studying. Reading is to train your mind just like you workout to train your body. Just like working out in a gym for a day is not gonna do you any good, reading only on the 1st of January every year is not going to get you anywhere. You have to be consistent and you have to make it a habit. I've heard people say reading is boring and it is useless. But in reality making reading into a habit is more important than working out, eating right or even sleeping right.

Why should we read? 

How much do you read? In this media obsessed time with tablets and iphones and laptops we spend alot of our time with social medias such as facebook, Instagram and Youtube watching and absorbing information in very different ways. Let's see what reading does to us :

It's definitely going to make you alot smarter. There's alot of ways you retain information; when you are watching television or movies is not the same as going through words in a book. Reading a book keeps your brain sharper by keeping you attention span while you read. You might think Reading slows you down while the fast pace medias like video tutorials make you learn things quick. But thats not how you brain works. 

Why is reading slow? why can't we read faster? have you ever thought about that? well, this is the reason; your brain can only understand information at that speed. In other words your reading speed is actually the speed you understand a context. Reading is slower than other fast pace medias now-a-days but with practice you can make it fast. You can start to understand long comprehensive contexts very quick.

A famous entrepreneur Jim Rohn once said that "You are the average of the five people you spend most of your time with". Mostly we have friends who like to go out partying and get wasted you are probably doing the same, but if you have friends who go to gym  on a daily basis and eat healthy then you are more likely to be healthier than an average Joe. Of course there are exceptions to this but the general consensus is that there's some truth to this idea. We learn from our surroundings. We are sophisticated species who copy each other. This is where our Accents, culture, slang even traditions come from. This is why most successful people always have had a mentor who inspired them to be successful. Mark Zuckerberg had Steve jobs, Bill Gates had Warren Buffett, these are some of the modern day examples. Why am I saying all these? We cannot surround our selves with people like Zuckerberg or Gates or Warren Buffett but we can definitely surround our selves with their thoughts and ideas through reading about them and their biographies. Learn from them and grow to be successful.

You might not agree with me on this but books and reading can be entertaining. This is why you would see more people reading on their vacation or when ever they get some free time. But for it to be fun you have to make it a habit, a natural response than to force it into you. What I actually mean by 'not force it into you' is, don't start with heavy classics, start with something light- a few hundred pages , something fun. 

Its seems fairly obvious, when you get down to day-to-day approach to life it's key. There's alot of time in our life which we mostly occupy scrolling up and down in a website reading the trolling comments which could be put into reading something that could actually be of some use in a greater way. 

Why do I live when I didn’t ask to be born?

This is an interesting question. A question I have asked myself at during the various highs and lows of my life, maybe not in these exact words but through some variation of it. A Goth enthusiast may answer “to die” without batting an eye, whereas an artist might say we live to enjoy the beautiful madness that we call “life” and a wide eyed little girl might reply with “how else will Prince Charming find me?” Then there’s us, the Y generation/ the echo boomers/ the call-us-what-you-wish generation, ask us why we live and most often than not you’ll hear something like this, “I live because I have to finish my studies, get a job, support my parents, build a life... Oh! And also to party and do the things I love”. How confusing and contradictory does that sound? Very, I hope.

When you hear this answer on repeat you’ll realize that we are indeed a lost generation. Lost because we’re torn between two worlds; the world indoctrinated in our minds as children about being a model citizen, getting good marks, finding a steady income earning job and most of all, making our parents proud. Then there’s the world fed to us by mainstream media which prattles on about how we can be anything we want to be, “do what you love, love what you do” they tell us, but can we really? An old timer might argue saying there’s nothing new here, everyone who has ever lived must have gone through these motions, but isn’t it now worse than ever? With so many opportunities being presented to us and the world buzzing with ideas and innovations there is an immeasurable amount of pressure on us to “be special”. When you’re reading this you’ll be living the last day of your life on this planet so far (calm down, no one’s dying), so stop and take a minute to see where the world is at in this instance, there is so much of life around us, approximately 7.4 billion lives worth, but why are YOU alive? If your mind is thinking along the lines of the opening paragraph of this article, you are not alone and thank you for proving my point.

How does one live with all these increasing imposed expectations? Most importantly WHY does one live with it? I believe the fault lies at the very core of this divided existence, meaning we’ve been taught never to question why both these worlds cannot co-exist. Most of us never stop to think why we can’t have the best of both worlds, we throw ourselves at the books from Kindergarten to University OR we throw our books away and rebel. Then there are the special ones who, through some miracle, have discovered the key that unlocks the mysteries of life. They are a rare breed and I have been fortunate enough to meet a few of these people. They are the ones who’ve struck the perfect balance between both worlds and they appear to be surreally content with life. Ask them why they live and they’ll tell you “I live to enjoy life”, WHAAAT? Is that even possible, I wondered, so I did the only thing my curios mind could do; ask around. According to some the key is to believe and embody the laws of attraction. To want something so strongly that you holler at the universe at every living, breathing moment about how much you want it and TADA! It’s yours! *ding ding* JACKPOT! Everyone goes home happy. This gives me the impression that if you think about owning your own private beach, where you party and sip fancy pina coladas all day long, for long enough it will become yours. If nothing else has worked for you then feel free to give this method a try. The happy-go-lucky types looked at me in shock and told me “chill the f*#k out dude! We live because...what else to do?” What else to do indeed. Nobody told you and nobody explained, you’re just shoved out, kicking and screaming into this human life without any idea why any of it feels the way it feels or why this confusion feels like it’s a hair’s breath away from absolute terror or exquisite pleasure, and yet we chose to wake up every day and go about our daily lives because we want to know what the new day brings, because we hope for better days. No one hands you the all-encompassing “life manual” and tells you this is how and why you should live, so the best way to save yourself from the depression that most philosophical pondering cause is to take a deep breath, stop the overthinking and simply live. Someone once said “stare, pry, listen, and eavesdrop, die knowing something because you are not here for long", so get out there and do what you think needs to be done to get the best out of your existence or do nothing at all and be a couch potato, to each his own is what I say.

So let me put my cynicism to rest with these parting words; I live because I was born (even though I had no choice in the matter) but I do more than merely exist because curiosity and hope get the better of me and let’s face it, the dreamer in each of us wants to, oh so badly, see what happens next.

Invest your money on buying time

'Time is money', there's no argument about it. Why we say time is more precious than money is because, for once lost, time can never be recovered. This does not apply to money. With that in mind, ask yourself 'how much do i worth an hour?’ Before you do something always think is it worth doing? If the answer was yes then go to the next question is 'is it worth my time doing the thing?'/'am I the only person who can achieve this task or is there anyone who can do it better and quicker for me?' I know it won’t hurt for you to do it yourself, but think of it like this, you could be in a beach enjoying your moment while the work is done or could be spending that time with a loved one’s or you could be banging your head with the task you just thought you are the only one who can do it. One thing I have learnt this year is simple, 'you have to spend to earn'. Like I said earlier 'Time is money', but spending the money wisely, you get to buy time with money, so you can spend that time on the important things in your life or in the tasks that has higher priorities. 

I'm not talking about time in general; try applying this in your daily work. For instance, if you are planning on a start-up next year, don't go to do all things in the process all by yourself. I know people who are techies who jump into start-ups and they build their own websites, they build their own apps, they do their marketing and they support their customers 24/7. I used to look at them and think 'jeez, how can they do all that in 24 hours' well I still think  like that sometimes. I'm not here to judge them; I actually envy their dedication and devotion to their start-up. But, I asked my-self this 'is that what I want in my life?' and it didn’t even take a fraction of a second for me to answer that question. Ask yourselves, are you going to work on a start-up 24/7 with a big pay day someday with the hope of someone  buying your million dollar idea or are you going to spend some quality time with your loved ones?. Are you going to lose all you youth and years just for a good retirement? This does not only apply for start-ups, it also applies for people who work on 9-5 jobs some from 9-9 or more in my country. 

Choose wisely, what you want in life and spend your money on the right thing so it buys you some time to spend on the things with higher priority or things that matter the most.

I hope and with this helped you in some way, please share your thoughts and ideas in the comment section.

Why I maintain a personal journal

I get into a bus or train and while I’m traveling I sit near the window and I do the thing I love the most. I think. My daily traveling is about an hour or a little more than that depending on the traffic and during that time all I do is think, think and think. When I was younger I did the same and I would just get down from the bus and walk home, but now I realize that some other ideas or thoughts are worth recollecting later. So I note them down in my note book. My note book has all kinds of stuff, it’s not the most cool, organized notebook you’d come across but it has everything I’d need to get through the day. I don’t just use it to remind me what’s to come or expect I also note down what I have achieved throughout a day. For most people who do not have a journal or notebook they write their journey in life they are missing out. Each day would pass by and there’s nothing to remind you of that day or that special moment. If you’re saying your Facebook status or an Instagram picture got that part of your life covered we both know that is not true. Let me prove myself right, I’m sure most people who are reading this will have a boss or a teacher whom you hate the most. Now let’s try posting a status about them (I am pretty sure the next few months are not going to be the same for you). Here are some of the reasons that from the rest when I ask myself ‘why do I write journals’?

Journal as a tracker

I write whatever comes to my mind whenever it comes to my mind. This way I am sorting through my mental clutter and by being a little descriptive while I’m writing I have written something down that could be useful later in my life or I’m simply removing something from my mind that is of no value.

Improves Insight and understanding 

Once you start writing everything down then you get more time to prioritize your tasks and look further into whatever you have written down. Let’s look at a sample journal entry to get a better understanding.

Journal sample

There you go, you simple blabbering with your journal has become your to-do list, your reminder and a friend. Now if you want you can go ahead and prioritize your work further or you can simple start working on one task at a time.

It tracks my development

Let’s say you complete your entire tasks from the above journal entry, this simply means you have jumped a hurdle successfully; you have come out like a champ after facing your fear and obstacle. Journals help you see and track how far you have come, how much you have changed and also where you took a misstep. This way it facilitates personal growth.

I hope I could encourage you to start a personal journal and show you some benefits in writing journals. Please do share your experience in the comments to inspire others.