Happy new year

Happy new year. May God brings more prosperity and happiness to you in 2010.

The new year milestone forces us to reflect back on our past achievements and mistakes. If you are still not getting there despite all out efforts for a good number of years, its a sign that your current way of doing things or thinking is not helping you. Instead of digging the same hole deeper and deeper to find gold, you may need to dig a new hole at a different place.

Albert Einstein rightly said "The problems of today will not be solved by the same thinking that produced the problems in the first place."

You are always told to think "out of box", be creative, become problem solver, have a different perspective etc. But how? I would suggest to start with one of the de Bono's books. "Teach yourself how to think" is a good start. 

Here are few related links from my blog:

• Edward deBono
• Thinking tools
• Plus, Minus, Interesting
• Six Thinking Hats

Posted via email from Saqib Awan

Writing succinctly

From Letter XVI of Pascal's Provincial Letters:

The present letter is a very long one, simply because I had no leisure to make it shorter.

Great words. Writing a concise, clear and simple piece does require a number of readings, revisions and corrections.

Posted via email from Saqib Awan

What matters now by Seth Godin

Seth Godin has released a new free ebook titled "What matters now" which is full of provocative thoughts. Each of its 80 pages is a complete chapter written by a respected author or a blogger. Its format makes it convinient to read pages in any order. Here are some excerpts:

Fear

Have you ever wondered who’s behind that little voice in your head that tells you, “you’re in this by yourself, one person doesn’t make a difference, so why even try?”

Dignity

Dignity is more important than wealth. It’s going to be a long, long time before we can make everyone on earth wealthy, but we can help people find dignity this year (right now if we choose to).

Ease

We are the strivingest people who have ever lived. We are ambitious, time-starved, competitive, distracted. We move at full velocity, yet constantly fear we are not doing enough. Though we live longer than any humans before us, our lives feel shorter, restless, breathless...

Dear ones, EASE UP. Pump the brakes. Take a step back. Seriously. Take two steps back. Turn off all your electronics and surrender over all your aspirations and do absolutely nothing for a spell. I know, I know – we all need to save the world. But trust me: The world will still need saving tomorrow. In the meantime, you’re going to have a stroke soon (or cause a stroke in somebody else) if you don’t calm the hell down.

Neoteny

Neoteny is the retention of childlike attributes in adulthood. Human beings are younger longer than any other creature on earth, taking almost twenty years until we become adults. While we retain many our childlike attributes into adulthood most of us stop playing when we become adults and focus on work.

Adventure

I’ve been thinking about how big our world is and how small-minded we’ve become; how quick we are to judge and how slow to understand. Technology places the resources of the world at our fingertips, yet we have trouble seeing past the ends of our noses.

Dumb

But what makes dumb, smart? The ability to look at the world through a different lens from everyone else. To ignore rules. To disregard the ‘why’s’ and ‘how’s’ and ‘never-succeeded-befores’. Then you need conviction, and the ability to stand by that conviction when other (smart) people look you in the eye and say, “no way, nuh uh.”

Attention

You can buy attention (advertising).
You can beg for attention from the media (public relations, Web).
You can bug people one at a time to get attention  (sales).

Or you can earn attention by creating something interesting and valuable and then publishing it online for free: a YouTube video, a blog, a research report, photos, a Twitter stream, an ebook, a Facebook page.

Confidence

Confidence is rocket fuel for your business life. Confident people have a come-this-way charisma that generates a following. When you possess total confidence you are willing to take risks. When you have it, you propel yourself and your team forward into the future.

Knowing

There is no such thing as boring knowledge.
There is only boring presentation.

Download "what matters now" from this link.

Posted via email from Saqib Awan

This ad is a public service message?

This obvious advertisement for a food supplement on the front page of a newspaper (The Nation, 24-Dec-2009) is a public service message?
How?
Am I missing something?

Posted via email from Saqib Awan

Power crisis, environment and bikes

This news item about Copenhagen's bike friendly streets prompted me to write this. Copenhagen is the city where a recent climate conference concluded.

Power load shading and now natural gas load shading (here in Pakistan) in winter has severely crippled our home and business life. Using a bicycle to commute is one possible way to save energy, keep our environment a bit cleaner and keep ourselves healthy. I know it is going to take a lot of courage to adopt this poor man's mode of transport in our status conscious society but why not?

If you live at a place where roads are not too busy (we don't have bike lanes) and your work place is not far away, you can use it for your daily communte or just for the supermarket trips.

But on larger scale we need our government support to take initiative and make our roads bike friendly. This surely is going to cost much less than any new power or gas pipeline projects.

Meetings

Enough

From Derek Sivers blog:

Two friends were at a party held at the mansion of a billionaire. One said, “Wow! Look at this place! This guy has everything!” The other said, “Yes, but I have something he'll never have: enough.”

And ...

I live simply. I hate waste and excess. I have a good apartment, a good laptop, and a few other basics. But the less I own, the happier I am.

Derek was a multi-millionaire who gave away all his wealth to a trust.