Pokhran

The State Of The Republic

Raj — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 13:13:44 +0000

Today is republic day. We celebrate the republic coming into existence. Today is a celebration of sovereignty. Of our union’s continued ability to exist through all that ailed it in the last 52 years.

I am conflicted on whether it is the strength of the people, the resilience of the constitution that its creators thought of or whether it is the indifferent and absolute adamant tendency of the Indian to keep the status quo that has kept things going. From what I have seen it has been the latter. The notion that we continue to do what was done before we came into the position that we are in.

Over the years I have grown pessimistic about this republic. I wonder what it actually stands for and whether it is worth fighting for. If at this day and age after seeing all that has been happening around us if it is worth sacrificing something for the sake of the nation. It doesn’t seem like anyone would take a moment to notice or acknowledge all that you have done. It doesn’t seem like anyone would care in this country about all that you gave up for the nation.

A shocking indifference has grown thick in the minds of people here. The past decade has seen terrorism and corruption unlike anywhere else. The public of any other nation would have been up in arms in the streets protesting but not a lot of that happens here.

I don’t want to celebrate this republic. I just want to distance myself from it.

Suicides Should Be Made Legal In India (And Everywhere)

Raj — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 04:36:01 +0000

Have you ever thought about suicide? I am sure a LOT of young adults – people of my age have at one time or the other. I know I have. Lot of great people have.Do you understand what suicide is? It is the end. The end of that conscience, that entity that did it.

After John commits suicide, there is no such thing as John. After it is over what’s left is a human body. If at all. A being that once pumped blood. The ‘you’ in “you are responsible for this action” is gone. It has been annihilated. It’s not in heaven. It’s just poof! Gone! It doesn’t exist. What’s left is memories, feelings and pain in other people’s minds.Everyone who contemplates suicide knows that.

People who contemplate suicide are in extreme pain or have completely lost hope and the will to live. Whatever is in the person’s mind when they contemplated suicide the least of their problems is if they are going to prison if they try to kill themselves. No one “attempts suicide”. They intend to, I dare say, “succeed” in killing themselves.

Outlawing Suicides Does Nothing To Stop Them

For every single problem or practice that is a horror of our existence the politician’s solution is to pass a bill outlaw outlawing it. Wifes immolated on their husband’s graves? Illegal! How dare you? You will not escape the long arm of the law if you smoke in a public place in Chennai.

Does this logic carry over to committing suicide? No. Someone contemplating suicide isn’t going to go “Oh! wait! suicide is illegal! I shouldn’t do it.”. They’re thinking “If I die, I don’t have to deal with this or anything else I can face, much less incarceration or a fine.” There is no “ME” left behind to face the indignation or suffer imprisonment.

Suppose I am a farmer who has faced the misfortune of a failed crop and ended up defaulting on a loan. I am contemplating suicide. Being incarcerated is the least of my problems. I am leaving behind family, a wife and children who will be left to fend for themselves.

“If you try, make sure you die”

If you try to kill yourself, you will die. If you fail at that, you could go to prison. So what’s the intention of making a law that says suicide is illegal? To make sure that people try really hard and make sure they die if they do try to kill themselves? To make sure no one finds them in the act of committing suicide?

Is the intention to incentivize a horrifying success?

“If you fail, we’ll give you more reasons for trying again”

So basically the law tells the vulnerable and dejected that if you try to do it and you fail, we’ll shame you by sending you to jail in front of all your family and friends to add to your pain so don’t fail the next time you try. That’s the message this law is sending.
The consequences people face for committing suicide are appalling.I wish I could be at the side of every single human who tried and will try to kill themselves and help them overcome whatever it is that makes them want to end it all. It is so easy to pass laws. It is very difficult and overwhelming to show compassion and sympathy.

The Right To Die CANNOT be “granted”

The Supreme Court has set aside its earlier judgment in P. Rathinam/ Nagbhushan Patnaik v. Union of India, JT 1994 (3) SC 392, wherein the Court had struck down section 309 as unconstitutional. In a country where one-half of its population still live below the poverty line, the right to die by suicide cannot be granted to any person.

Wow. So basically the logic goes that we don’t want people killing themselves. So what do we do? Not make reforms to improve their lives. We make laws to make their lives miserable if you fail to die while trying.

I just don’t understand where they get off saying the right to die cannot be “granted”. Was there ever a law passed granting me the right to have coffee, to take a leak in the open, to check out that girl? There is no “right” to be granted here.

The right to die cannot be granted.

Outlawing suicide is a STUPID Solution

Suicide isn’t like rape. Suicide isn’t burglary, public nuisance or pick pocketing. Every person involved is a victim here. The biggest victim is the “offender” themselves. It doesn’t make sense to aggravate the emotional pain of those who happen to survive a failed attempt. Last thing they need is the indignation and the pain of a indictment after whatever made them want to try to die.

The british who wrote the IPC have moved on to pass the Suicide Act. Sense seems to be increasingly prevailing throughout the world. Somehow the wind has skipped India.

Laws don’t prevent suicides, if that was the intention behind making the law. It only causes more needless pain and suffering.

What we need aren’t laws

What we need isn’t a way to punish or a deterrent. What we need is a way to heal. We need to address the common problems that incite people to try. Do something about farmer suicides in South India. I don’t know what. I am not a lawmaker. I don’t know what can be done. But someone out there has the means. All it takes is the intent and the will.

We Tend To Own The Stuff We Make

Raj — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 07:08:55 +0000

I am currently reading the book The Upside of Irrationality. I highly recommend reading it as it is full of examples of what motivates people. I was interested in reading this book mostly because I wished to understand what motivated me and why I do some of the things I do. It helped to better understand me.

In one particular chapter the author talks about ownership of work that we create. Through a series of experiments the author and his fellow researchers derived interesting results.

Greater Labor, Greater Love

The more effort we put into creating or acquiring something the more we tend to feel ownership and gain more satisfaction out of it. We get more satisfaction out of cooking and eating vegetables that we grew ourselves than vegetables that we bought at the grocery store. We value furniture that we assembled ourselves than furniture that we purchased at a store.

We tend to value the soft toy that we made ourselves more than the soft toy we purchased elsewhere.

Is the Effort Really Worth It?

In making something should we spend so much of your own time doing a sloppy job of it when you can get someone else better than you to do the same thing. Are you really that good at home improvement? Must you try to

Should you really try to build that cabinet on your own? Must you spend your own money and time to acquire tools and the material necessary and then make a few mistakes with the wood.

Greater Labor, Greater Love, Greater Failure?

Could it be that this fallacy of seeking out the convoluted and less effective path is a hurdle in our ability to achieve. Could it be in our way to get the most out of life? Is it possible that the shoe rack you made yourself breaks in a few months after which you end up spending money on a brand new shoe rack using money that you could have been spent on something else more valuable?

What would I do: I would rather be working. I’d rather be fragging on a TF2 server. I’d rather be working on a new pet project. In most cases I would much rather be doing something else. I value my time a lot.

Longterm Ownership Satisfaction

That shoe rack your late father made will serve constantly remind you of him fondly. That cabinet you made yourself reminds you of a young ambitious you who wouldn’t give up at the first obstacle.

You must ask yourself: Is it really worth it? It depends on what you’re making.

I don’t think I will ever make my own vegetables. It’s not worth it. There is no long term satisfaction. It’s just for that one moment after I wash my hands. I may not even make my own juice. It won’t be as good as a juice I can buy. I will however make my own furniture some day. I will make my own software – which I do already.

You Love What You Finish

The author points out that we tend to own and love the objects that we made if we made them ourselves and finish them. But if we are unable to finish them we tend to not have as much ownership towards the object or project as we do for projects we finish.

To Get Satisfaction, Finish It First, Perfect It Later

The WP Autoresponder project I worked on was an unending series of tasks until one day I realized that I was adding more and more features as I was finishing them. I was trapping myself in the project. I finally put the foot down and got myself to release it on the WordPress.org repository.

As a creator of art or software you tend to want to perfect something before you release it. It is very possible that you will lose that initial motivation toward that project if you keep at it for a long time. This may not always be possible.

If you are making something physical you may not always have the liberty to add features or extend it further later. In such cases one may get the most out of himself through starting with the end in mind. In whatever you are making there must be a clear ending of what you are making.

We Believe Others Love It Too

The author points out that we love what we make ourselves so much that it changes the way we perceive it. It changes us. It changes the way we look at it and evaluate it. We tend to ignore the flaws and errors.

Get A Second Opinion

I make crappy software. I know that. In some level I just know that the software I make has errors. May be the menu option label I used doesn’t mean what I think it means. May be the procedure to perform some operation is not as obvious to others as I thought it is. I tend to believe that it is.

In the act of creation we cannot help but fall in love with our creation. It is not something we can prevent. It is hardwired into us and you cannot overcome it by willing it. Getting a second opinion from an unbiased knowledgeable person is essential for being able to create high quality work as a creator.

What say you reader? Would you make your own soy sauce?

WP Responder v4.9.4 Released!

Raj — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 01:10:13 +0000

Many users of the WP Responder have reported some serious bugs in the plugin. I have to practice being careful with the source code. While adding a new feature to the plugin I accidentally end up introducing two bugs into the program. It is not possible for me to do a complete test of the plugin before releasing it.

That is why I am releasing a new version of the plugin- v4.9.4 that fixes almost all of these problems and adds a few new features:

Automatic Subscriber Transfer – Automatically deactivate a subscriber of Newsletter A when they subscribe to Newsletter B. Ideal for separating buyers from prospects.
Delete subscribers in mass
Delete subscription forms in mass
Subscription Form Widget – Put subscription forms in sidebar using widgets!

What Happened to WP Responder 4.9.3?

After I released v4.9.3 yesterday, a blogger had sent me an e-mail pointing out a bug that didn’t allow subscribers to unsubscribe from the mailing list. This is a critical problem. For most other bugs, I would leave it to the next version. But this is something that can get your server blacklisted. Thus, the early release.

Download

You can download the latest version of the plugin at the WP Responder Website.

WP Responder v4.9.1 Updates

Raj — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 08:54:40 +0000

I have been getting a lot of e-mails from users of WP Responder reporting that they are seeing bugs in the plug-in. Most of the time it is something they are doing wrong. But other times there is some problem with the plug-in that I did not foresee when developing the plug-in.

Some bugs that I have been hearing about:

Autoresponder Sends Multiple E-Mails: The autoresponder feature seems to send multiple follow-up e-mails to the same person.
New Broadcast Doesn’t Work – I am told that the new broadcast feature in WP Responder doesn’t seem to work.
No Menu Options – After installing WP Responder you are not able to see any menu options to start using the application. I suspect this is because you are using PHP4 instead of PHP5. WP Responder has been developed to work only on servers running PHP5.

You can rest assured knowing that I am testing and removing bugs from WP Responder as much as possible. Just like any other software, there will be bugs. Rest assured that I will be removing all of these errors in the coming version(s).

To be honest with you, if you are reading this article right now, you are a better person to test this software than I am. It doesn’t matter who you are. I don’t mean to say I am very poor tester. At my vocation, I am a software tester. The reason – Because I am the person who developed this application, it is not as easy for me to discover the bugs in it. As a developer my goal is to make a program work. Not to try and make it break which is what testing is all about. – to start with the assumption that there are errors in the application and then to try and remove them.

You would be doing me a big favor to me and yourselves if you can find and report as many bugs as you can. You can e-mail the bugs you find to this address:

flarecore@gmail.com

In other news

Your favorite plug-in developer received his order of a very expensive book on WordPress plug-in development and another on marketing:

That’s the DELL laptop that created WP Responder for you. Seriously! No other computer was used other than that laptop to create WP Responder. A lot less time will be spent hunting the WordPress Codex and spamming the WP-Hackers mailing list for solutions to problems. :-)

More WP Responder Release Updates

Raj — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 03:28:23 +0000

I spent the better part (actually all of it) of my weekend on finding and removing bugs from WP Responder. There have been more problems in the plugin that I previously thought. I just couldn’t get myself to release the plugin knowing that these bugs exist in the plugin.

Some other bugs I have recently found and removed:

In the new e-mail broadcast page, clicking on disable WYSIWYG editor and then click on enable again creates an additional text box below the WYSIWYG editor.
All kinds of email delivery such as broadcasts, blog posts, post series, autoresponder series are delayed by [offset of the timezone at which you - the user is located].
When the subscriber subscribes to your newsletter the Subscription Confirmed e-mail does not have the link to the manage subscription page (reported by a user).
When you schedule a broadcast and then try to reschedule it, it always says you are trying to schedule the broadcast in the past.
When you schedule a broadcast with HTML disabled and then edit the broadcast again, the HTML is shown to be enabled.
When you select the attach images option in the new broadcast page, the settings is not saved and is set to enabled always.

What’s New In WP Responder 4.9.1?

I know I said there will be no new features in the plugin but a little foresight demanded that I implement these two features.

Update Notifications

Some of the users of WP Responder have been downloading the plugin from the WP Responder website. Some of you have been downloading it from the WordPress plugin extend website. Currently it is not possible for me to issue updates on the plugin to all of you. So I have implemented a new feature to automatically check for a new update periodically with my server and then notify you by e-mail when an update is available.

Tutorial Series

Apart from the update notifications I have also implemented a tutorial series feature. The plugin will automatically send you a series of articles by e-mail showing you how to use it and get the most out of it after you activate it. Optional of course.

When Will I Release This Plugin?

Some time this week. There is still a lot of testing to be done. I anticipate the testing and debugging to be finished this week completely.

I want this plugin myself!

Here’s the strange thing. I am dying to get started using this plugin. This plugin is beginning to get awesome even for me. There is so much I can do with it. I am sure you are looking forward to it too.

Look forward to it! Stay tuned!

Release Of WP Responder 4.9 And The Next Version

Raj — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 04:38:48 +0000

I released WP Responder v4.9 last week. And it has been one swell week ever since. Since I released the version 4.9 of WP Responder last weekend I have found many more bugs. Please read on.

Plugin Directory Name Mayhem

I was very optimistic and very happy with the WP Responder release I made last week. Little did I realize the number of bugs that were in the release as a result of the unforeseen directory name. You see, I wanted to make sure that those who wanted the plugin will be able to find it without any difficulty so I choose a really long name that is very descriptive of the plugin’s features.

Last year when I started making this plugin I implemented many features counting on the plugin being stored in:

 /wp-content/plugins/wpresponder/

When submitting the plugin to the WordPress directory I used the really long name. They replaced the spaces with hyphens and made that the directory name when creating the SVN check in account. That is not the only problem in this plugin. The WordPress MU installations may not use the above mentioned path for the plugin directory.

Drag And Drop Of Widgets Interface Fail

The drag and drop widgets interface are found to not work when WP Responder 4.9 is enabled. This is because jQuery UI seems to get loaded into the page when it is not required causing a clash. I have removed this bug in the upcoming version.

The solution for the time being:

1. Deactivate WP Responder.
2. Use the plugins interface to modify the widget layout
3. Reactivate WP Responder

Other Known Bugs Are:

Preview email button doesn’t work – The preview email button in the New Broadcast page will not work as a result of the plugin name mismatch
Customization of recipients doesn’t not work – Again because of the plugin directory name mismatch.
Images in the WP Responder dashboard will not load – ditto.
Deletion of a mailout will not work – Once you create a email mailout you will not be able to delete it. Same reason as above.
Import/Export Subscribers – Import and Export of subscribers will not work.
Some Short Codes On The New Post Page Don’t Work – The [!delivery_date!], [!post_url!] , [!post_date!] short codes do not work.
Activation Errors: You will see a message mentioning that the plugin generated 2096 characters of unexpected output.
Unsubscription doesn’t work – The unubscription and subscription management URL in email broadcasts and the other outgoing email will not work as it points to a URL that doesn’t exist. Readers will not be able to unsubscribe.
Subscription Confirmed e-mail doesn’t have a unsubscription link – When newsletter subscribers verify their email address, the email that is sent immediately on confirming th email will not have the required subscription management option.

All of these bugs will be fixed in the upcoming version.

WP Responder Works Only On PHP 5+

I received a few emails from users who have seen some basic syntax errors when activating WP Responder. These are because the plugin uses some features of PHP 5. Particularly the SwiftMailer library which is used by WP Responder to send all e-mail works only in PHP5.

WP Responder doesn’t support PHP 4.

Please get your web hosting company to upgrade your server. PHP4 is no longer actively developed. There are even many security bugs that are well known but will not be patched. The core PHP project members have stopped working on PHP 4.

What Have I Learnt From All This?

To use subversion. A plugin developer gets this for free in the WordPress repository.
Do not hard code the path to the plugin.

What is coming up?

WP Responder 4.9.1 will be released in this weekend
A new website will be available at WPResponder.com

I am working on it

You can rest assured that I am identifying the problems in the plugin and am removing them. Instead of making a hasty release with a whole new set of bugs to remove, I am working on making the next one a stable release. For now I am working on removing the bugs in the existing features before moving on to implement new ones. So the next version will not have any new feature. Nevertheless I am sure you are eager to start using the WP Responder plugin even with its current feature set.

Stay tuned!

WP Responder 4.8 Release And Related Updates

Raj — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 22:42:07 +0000

I released version 4.8 of WP Responder . Since then I have received may emails from users of the plug-in regarding problems in the plug-in. It has been one hell of a week for me. I have seen more than a 1000 downloads for the plug-in in less than 5 days.

What’s New In This Version

Below is a brief layout of the new features in this version:

HTML Email Templates
External SMTP Server Facility For All Outgoing Email
Customize Email Sent Out For Blog Posts

Missing Confirmation Link Download Problems

Many users have emailed me saying that when they filled out their name and email address in the subscription form on the plug-in website they received an email that did not have a email address verification URL. This happened almost entirely in Gmail email addresses. Gmail seems to strip out URLs that are very long. If the server where you installed WP Responder has a long domain name then many of your subscribers will not be able confirm their subscriptions.

This is a huge problem obviously. Rest assured I have fixed in and will be releasing a new version of WP Responder. Very soon. How soon? Read on..

Why So Many Bugs?

I don’t have a good answer to this question :) I started creating this plug-in in mid 2009 to learn how to create wordpress plug-ins. I wasn’t aware of a lot of of the wordpress API features and wasn’t as experienced in programming as I am today. I created this because I needed it for my own website. I was not old enough to get credit cards to pay for an Aweber subscription. It looked as if none of the other plug-in developers understood email marketing as well as I did. (pats sell on the back)

However, sometimes it ALARMS ME to read the code I wrote an year ago! Yes there are many bugs in this plug-in and I AM testing this plug-in in the time that I have available (which is obviously not a lot!) . I need to eat food and keep a roof over my head, go out on dates with my girl (as soon as I get one), and generally..have a life. Which is why I need your help to make this plug-in problem free. You can help by reporting as many bugs as you can as you find them through the bug reporting form within the plug-in ( WordPress Admin –> [Newsletters] –> Dashboard ).

Next Version

The next version of WP Responder will be released……tomorrow!

Version 4.9 will be released tomorrow. This is because I’m seeing a huge number of downloads for this plug-in. There are some really big flaws in the plug-in at the moment that will keep you from reaching all of your subscribers. I really really want to make this plug-in work for my users. I want you all to experience the most success you can with this plug-in. May all of your build insanely huge audiences and then make millions for yourselves and your family. With WP Responder you can finally do it without spending a single penny on an email marketing service.

Download Now!

You can download the latest version of WP Responder email newsletter and follow up autoresponder plug-in at its new website.

The Thesis Theme Sales Pitch Is Misleading

Raj — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 05:14:13 +0000

The video that is shown in the home page of the thesis theme is a sales pitch for the theme. In that video the co-creator of the Thesis theme – author of Copyblogger says how other wordpress themes sacrifice clean code in the name of good looks. He says we need valid code in order to rank well in the search engines.

I am a regular reader of Copyblogger. I was a member of his TeachingSells membership website. I have a great deal fo respect for him. But that statement by him disappointed me. Why? Because its wrong and outright misleading.

Brian has a lot of authority and respect among bloggers. It seemed like such a blatant misuse of his authority. Its almost as if he is reading the script some web designer gave him.

What is Validation?

The world wide web consortium (W3C) is the organization that sets the standards for the web. They created the HTML standard and the XHTML standard. The HTML standard is evoling.

HTML is a very forgiving language. Unlike languages like PHP, C++, you don’t have to write the code exactly as per the HTML specification in order to get the page to work in web browsers. Therefore people who wrote websites took a lot of liberties with the way the code was written.

Then there were the browser wars. Internet explorer and Netscape Navigator defined some unique syntax for code that works only in their respective browsers. Web designers used the tags supported by one or the other browser in their websites. A browser that doesn’t understand the code meant for the other browser would just ignore the code.

The W3C attempts to bring some order to the chaos by setting the standard for HTML that all browsers should support and support it in the exact same way. The idea is to get web designers to write XHTML code and then get the browsers to interpret and display the code in the exact same way. After 10 years they still don’t do that.

The W3C has created an application called the W3C validator that you can use to validate your website’s page against the XHTML Strict standard. The standard that we would ideally follow in creating web pages. When XHTML Strict standard is adopted all over the web it makes the job of web designers easier.

Validation Doesn’t Matter

Most people will say ‘very little’. I feel its more appropriate to say no just to fight the hype. It doesn’t matter at all. The former is a politically correct answer. The answer you give to avoid arguments the comment section on how it matters.

Validation doesn’t matter in the real world. Contrary to the arguments of many web desginers valid code doesn’t guarantee that your website will display consistenly across all browsers. XHTML valid code is not easier to crawl by search engines because your code validates.

It is entirely possible to create a page that does validate against the W3C validator and yet be completely confusing and inaccessible to the search engines.

Validation Is Snakeoil

Those who sell valid HTML code are selling snake oil. Valid HTML is a something elitist web designers to charge clients extra. They misuse their status as a expert on web development and mislead their clients and take their money.

They go as far as to attach valid code on a website to having good reputation on the Internet. That your website invalidates against the W3C validator is insignificant. The only people who will know whether the website validates or not are other web designers. Its your choice whethter to shell out extra money to get valid code on your website aimed at Telecom companies to keep a good reputation with web designers.

Validation Benefits

Valid code has no real world benefit other than to impress web designers. Your website visitors won’t notice a difference between a web page that is XHTML valid and one that isn’t but displays the exact same code. Validation is just a bunch of artificial standards we use to judge the code of a website.

What about chris brogan and the other authoritative bloggers?

You see, Brian Clark has many allies. Very popular authoritative bloggers they all are. All of whom have some vested interest in helping Brian clark out with the promotion of Thesis. Oh wait they are all affiliates! Find posts that mention Thesis on their websites and you will find the links of the text Thesis theme are all affiliate links.

Is The Thesis Theme No Good?

No. Not at all. The idea of providing an user interface to customize the font, layout, and so many other aspects of a design is new. I highly appreciate Chris for that.

Brian however makes sweeping statements about the quality of the code in other wordpress themes.You know why he does that? Because it’s a sales pitch!

You can’t expect him to say:

“Most wordpress themes are a suck.However there are some designers who write clean code and provide free wordpress themes with clean code. And our theme may or may not be better than the other themes. That is why we want to shell out $47.”

Why Do People Buy The Thesis Theme?

You can get all the benefits that comes from buying the Thesis theme AND your own unique look from other web designers too. But it is the lie that people tell themselves that their website is now being powered by a supercharged Ferrari engine that gets them to buy and recommended the theme.

The benefit of of switching to Thesis is marginal in terms of onsite optimization. Crystal clear on-site SEO optimization is not going to race you to the top of search results like the way it is shown in the video. It puts you in a JUST GOOD ENOUGH situation. It means there is nothing wrong with your website that prevents the site from being read by the robots.

That will almost never happen with free WordPress Themes. Actually it will NEVER happen. If a theme made it into the WordPress theme repository then the theme has passed the WordPress moderator’s quality guidelines. They don’t let just about any awfully coded theme into the repository.

Search engines are very good at reading and understanding bad HTML code. They have been doing this for the past 10 years. They did it in the dark ages of web design back in the early days of this decade when code was much worse than it is now.

They had better be good it otherwise most of the web (which will not validate against the W3C parser) will be inaccessible via the search engines! And for sure Google isn’t going to shove your code through a W3C parser to determine where to rank you. Their search engine will LOSE if they make everyone on the web validate against the W3C validator.

Should You Buy The Thesis Theme?

Yes if you see value in being able to customize the look and feel of the website using the Administration panel. No if you want the theme to help you rank better in the search engines. It can’t.

The Best Productivity Tool In The World

Raj — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 18:29:22 +0000

What is the best productivity tool in the world?

The to do list. The to do list combined with discipline to single task.

You don’t really need a smartphone with a really complicated scheduling and alarms system that can wake up you from your deep sleep even if you were dreaming about being Batman in The Dark Knight (In my dreams I am Joker). A simple scribling pad and a

Destroy Procrastination: Break Down Large Tasks

Goals are sometimes scary – especially big ones. The thought of accompishing them makes my leg go still and my whole body stiffen up. But once you break them down to smaller chunks, they become far more manageable. The fear that the big goal induces in your mind often makes you procrastinate on the task. Because of the scale of the task, you estimate that you need a lot of time to finish the task and it needs to be done at one go. For example you may try to write a book on say.. lenses for your photography blog.

Get More Mindspace: Empty Your Mind

You and I…We share a common problem – at any given time, we have 10-20 things running in our head. Ooh.. I have to to put money away in savings account, have to get detergent, must pay web hosting bill, and so on. These sort of thinking just keeps us from reaching our full potential. It ruins the decisions we make in our lives, removes clarity and confidence in your decisions and actions. You can’t sleep well. Generally you are just that much more miserable.

Set time aside -about 10 minutes everyday to meditate. Make it a point to think about nothng. Your subconscious mind will automatically send you the thoughts that have been running in your head. Write each and every task that your mind reminds you to do. Then go out and do it.