Time to remember?

Those horrible moments at IIT?

• Advanced Compilers course - The worst that could happen in my life.
• MTP - The most pathetic that could happen to my Prof.
• Bunking classes and sleeping - The most worthless phase of my life.
• Boasting in newsgroups - The most ostentatious phase of my life.

Just today, I found a quote from my Prof:

Life is all about achieving right balance - work, fun, duty towards others. Hope all of you achieve the balance that works best for you.

The three things to sincerely follow

• Always seek out truth by yourself. (Ryu Kunn also says this). Let not others' opinions/behaviors/actions flay your emotions.
  
• Have fun in everything you do. If it is not fun, then don't do it. Pursue happiness by looking for fun in the things you do.
• Constructing a world view is not a one time task. As one's knowledge and experiences grow, world view changes. So, to keep improving one's world view is to keep improving one's knowledge and experiences.
  

Review #1

So, I remember that I have set some goals for me to achieve and am working towards them. I kind of realize that among the C,P,O,R,D phases of getting something done, I have been seriously missing on the R (review) phase. I just don't seem to be reviewing the goals that I have set for me. Because of this, I keep forgetting them. When I look at them after a long time, it would already have lost the importance, rigor in it and thus gets lost from the conscious mind. This has happened a lot of times, in fact all the time.

The chapters from David are really simple yet eye opening. I am done with the third chapter and moving into further ones. I will finish that book, buy whatever containers that need to be bought and implement the system.

After all, it is in my hands to live the way I want to.

The List

The time is ripe for me to zero in on a list of things to do and be disciplined enough to achieve them. And I am confident that I am starting with really low level things that will act like pillars upon which I build other things.

• Clean up stuff and get a working GTG system up and running - do whatever it takes and buy whatever it needs. Just do it that's all - it's worth it. This is going to take some time.
• Read GTG and take necessary actions.
  
• Imbibe some timeless principles that works for success and keep practicing them.
• As of now, shortlist from The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari.
• Also Beyond positive thinking book.
  
• Set some really long term goals that are convincing to me and make a solid plan to reach them.
• Think about what you want to become. Begin with the end in mind.
  
• Develop and master emotional competence.
• Read and understand the Working With Emotional Intelligence book.
  
• Set and develop some discipline.
• Decide what to do about it.
• Master time management.
• Decide what to do about it.
  
• Develop a dialog of positive thinking.
• Read The Power of Positive Thinking book. Buy it. Atleast read the soft copy for a while and after you like it, buy it.
  
• Develop a self-dialog to cut that.
• Decide what to do about it.
• Buy a good book on investments and economics and read them. This is very much necessary.
• Research and buy good books.
  
• Develop inclination towards some technical subjects in the field.
• Decide what to do about it.

Because, ideas do not flow all at a time, I should be prepared to fill these things at a later time also.

The day is coming, but still no progress

I have been planning to work hard during these lonely days and finish off some of the things that have been bogging me for long. But I still don't have a plan before me. I am going to do one now.

One logistic thing to do will be to get rid of all the distracting things surrounding me and keep only the things that I want to focus on.

Lets start with the end in mind. What are my goals? Say in this profession of computer science, what is it that you want to become? What are your area of interests? What interests you? Programming, Architecture, Linux, Security, Algorithms and Data Structures, Databases, Storage systems. But then, having too many things at a time has been confusing me for long. So, what are the things that I want to achieve during this one and a half months?

I , Myself

This post is about me. My noble me. My superior me.

This is just a stub

Positive Thinking, an Attitude

Yes, it is an attitude. It is a way of looking at things. It basically means seeing good in all the things that come across in my life.

This is a stub

Make yourself comfortable

This really matters. If I make myself comfortable, then I can concentrate on the work at hand with no distractions. Will continue on this. This is just a stub.

What If Today is Your Last Day?

This is one of the questions asked by all those self-improvement book authors. They don't help one in answering the question, but what they do is say Live your life as if it is the last day. Live it to the fullest. I sometimes wonder whether this question makes sense at all. Because when I think about answering this question, I start feeling sad..I am sad that this is my last day. I won't get a feel of living it to the fullest. I just get depressed. Even if I try to think what must I do, I don't get any answer. Stephen Covey has said Begin with the end in your mind. Kind of makes sense here. A couple of quotes flow in my mind to make this feel more important: Also, Design is getting here to there. Also, People with goals succeed because they know where they are going, it is as simple as that.

This is a topic, that I have been struggling with myself for so long. But I am not gonna leave it. I am gonna hold this and fight till I achieve success.

The Australian Cricket Team

There is something unique about their team that I don't see in any other team. First off, whenever they play cricket, it always seems that the other people are playing bad. Or my perception has to change. They always play good. Their body language, their commitment to cricket, their vibrancy, their care to not underestimate any team etc. all fascinate me without end.

Whenever they are batting they always make sure that they get as many runs as possible from every over. When they are bowling they always make sure to bowl as many dot balls as possible. That is a kind of micro-focus. Probably they have proved that it is necessary to achieve excellence. They never postpone things during match. Their principle seems to be that coming from vedas: The current ball is the only real ball.There is no previous ball and there is no next ball. Play the current ball fully as if it is the last ball. Wow!! I have heard this somewhere! In the book The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari.

Anyway, Australians are undisputedly the champions of the world (in Cricket, of course). We, Indians are really second rate people.

Yes, Emotional Intelligence

Emotions have a very strong overriding effect on other mental activities. Out of the outcomes from an impulse - actions, thoughts, emotions - it is emotions that majorly pre-occupies the human mind, because it requires the least of energy to be applied. Emotions are our second nature. We can readily have them. Actions require physical energy to be applied and thoughts require mental energy to be applied. Emotions require almost nothing. :-) So, they easily to take over our minds.

I am not sure whether emotions and consciousness can co-exist with each other. May be they can. But I suspect that it is emotions that make us lose our consciousness. Thoughts and actions do not affect our consciousness, instead they try to keep/focus our consciousness further. Why do we lose consciousness when we feel? I have no answer.

So, I see emotional intelligence is a very very important part of our lives. We have to have it to achieve anything concrete.

Having fun

I recently saw this on Raganwald:

I’m just going to keep trying to find interesting problems to work on, and if one of them happens to change the world, then great. And if not, at least I’ll have had fun trying to solve some hard problems.

Fun trying to solve hard problems. That is the key sentence that shows the attitude of the person who makes the above statement. Often, I find that it is the attitude towards something that matters the most. How do we have the right attitude? To get an answer to this question, we should ask some more questions: how does we develop good/bad, right/wrong attitude towards something? It is the reponse for the impulse (or the input) that ultimately determines the attitude. It is a mix of things, actually. I mean the output from the brain for the imput(impulse) is a mix of things. Emotion, thought, action etc. each of which generates their own impulses and comes further outputs. We can leave that matter. How do we get the reaction or response to some impulse? It depends. The impulse can be new in which case, it depends on the current situation. If the impulse falls into one of the patterns, then associative memory comes into action. This applies for both conscious and sub-conscious mental activities.

The point that I am trying to drive home is that, if I can control the response to some impulse, then I can control the attitude that eventually comes out. Controlling responses to impulses require consciousness, discipline and courage especially if an impulse and its associated, unsolicited response is so automatic.

So, the question How to have the right attitude? kind of reduces to How to control the response to an impulse?. That is where Emotional Intelligence comes into picture. It is roughly defined as the ability to aptly reason with one's emotions and understand them and control them. Intelligence is the key word. It requires consciousness. Anything that lowers one's consciousness is probably not worth it.

So, having fun entails having the right attitude (I haven't defined it yet :-) ) which entails controlling ourselves.

Writing Something Concrete

Writing something concrete requires a continuous chunk of time filled with silence. It should bring home the point that I am trying to make. It should be about one and only one thing.

What are my interests?

I think I have the following interests:

• Science
• Philosophy
• India
• Economics
• Energy

I will update the lists and populate the sublists as time passes.