Best Things in Life

Best things in life are simple and free:

• Homeopathy medicines to cure the diseases.
• Lateral Thinking to keep your head clear and focused.
• Yoga to exercise your body.
• Watching sunset and eating home made food. (compared to dining in a 5 star restaurant)
• ... (i could list hundreds of things)

Unfortunately the corporations are hell bent to make us believe otherwise using the power of marketing.

So what is your choice?

Simple and free or complicated and expensive?

Procrastination and Comfort Zone

Procrastination (delaying things without any reason) and your comfort zone have direct relationship. It is easier to take any action which falls within your comfort zone.

For example:

• It seems easier to chat forever on IM but extremely difficult to write few lines on your new blog so you always postpone your blog post until you just forget about it.
  

• It seems easier to browse zillion websites aimlessly but difficult to read few blogs daily to enhance your knowledge.
  

• It seems easier (and tempting) to order a new and faster laptop for 800 because you love computers (though all you do is email and word processing) but you will think over and over before ordering HIP for 300 (in UK) to sell your house (which matters most to you right now).

You tend to procrastinate more when you have a narrow comfort zone. You will always complain that you are too busy but you are in fact playing within your comfort zone.

The trick to expand your comfort zone. To do so do at least one thing daily you are uncomfortable with.

Remember the most important decisions are always uncomfortable and are worth doing right now.

Simplicity and Design

It seems economy came down crumbling like a falling house of cards. Latest computers, powerful databases and top of the line analytical tools could not help predict and prevent this fall.

As part of my consulting business I am required to provide more and more tools and reports for analysis of business data. It is time we realize that our obsession with analysis is not going to help us much. As de Bono says "You can analyse the past but you have to design the future". We waste a lot of energy and resources on analysis. Let us divert some of it towards simplicity and design.

Seth Godin writes:

I've always been frightened by big-firm accounting. The sort of financial legerdemain in which skilled accountants work hard to make the numbers look the way the CEO wants, instead of making them clear. Cash accounting run on a simple bookkeeping system is the small way to do it... even if your company is huge. That's because sooner or later, management has to know what's actually happening as opposed to what they can pretend is happening.

Short URLs

Bit.ly is a url shortener. It gives you a short url for any long url. You can then spell this url on phone or send it through email without the line wrapping issues.

For example:
> http://saqibawan.blogspot.com/2008/10/short-urls.html
becomes:
> http://bit.ly/1MWO1G

Personal Emergencies

• Last date for tax return is tomorrow and we still need to collect all the information.
• We are planning to cancel subscription of a magazine,website or any other service we don't need anymore but we forget.
  
• We need to read that book which will help advance our career or business but can't find time.
  
• Kids need some stationery before going to school today.
• Bills were due yesterday.
  
• ....

Emergencies are part of daily life.

Our short term attention span and memory is limited. We always fear, and rightly so, that we will forget something important so we either try to do it right now or postpone it a bit (and then forget it.) This is one of the causes of emergencies in our life.

Emergencies can be reduced. The trick is to stop doing things off your head. Instead maintain a list of things to do using some tool like hiveminder.com and do things from there.

Caution: Do not put every small bit of work on your things to do. You will make your list unwieldy and soon get fed up. Sometimes it is better to forget things which don't matter much in short term and long term.

Rule 20-80

Rule 20-80 states:

1. 20% people have 80% wealth.
2. 20% of your customers generate 80% revenue.
3. 20% of your employees complete 80% of their assignments.
4. 20% of your reading is enough to provide 80% knowledge.
5. 20% of your effort generates 80% of your expected outcome.
6. 20% of a software fulfills 80% of your requirements.
7. and so on ...
   

The rest 80% usually gives you only 20% and can be ignored if you love free time and higher productivity. The trick is to identify the 20%.

Colors of Your Thinking

The one of the easiest ways to offend someone is saying something emotional and presenting it as "facts". de Bono's six thinking hats make it easy to show the color of your thinking or ask others to label their thoughts.

White hat is all about pure facts, figures and information.

Black hat finds faults and design errors pointing out why something will not work.

Red hat signifies the emotions, feelings, hunch and intuition.

Yellow hat thinking is about positive and constructive ideas.

Green hat is for new ideas and creativity.

Blue hat is for the control and direction of the thinking process.

For example my last comment on Dubai is a red hat thinking.

Dubai

Dubai was my destination last month for a consulting assignment. I have been to Dubai many times for the last 10 years. Dubai seems to be under-construction forever.

Dubai is a perfect city. Everything is perfect and in absolute order; Law and order, cleanliness, buildings, roads, airport, food, Internet, no tax.

And this bugs me. It seems so unnatural to be so perfect. I cannot help myself to develop some sort of association/affection with this city.

To me, Dubai seems like a play land for the super rich kids where everybody else is there to maintain that play land and trying to make enough money to go back to his home and retire.