Unleash Your Potential

How to Dress Business Casual - Men | eHow.com

2010-06-25T14:12:00.000+05:30

How to Dress Business Casual - Men | eHow.com

This is an interesting topic for those who work. Doesn't apply directly to me as I do not work in a formal office environment. When ever I go out to meet clients, depending on the meeting status I will dress up accordingly. Generally, I tend to avoid jeans unless I am meeting my friends. But I do dress in business casuals for most of my meetings, specially if it is not the first time I am meeting someone and if I am meeting them out side their office, which is the case often.

This article resonates with the dress code that my brother follows for his business casual. In my case, I can use some improvements to fall in line.

Pn second thoughts, where does this put Steve Jobs dress code?

13 Strategies To Jumpstart Your Productivity - Stepcase Lifehack

2010-04-30T10:05:00.000+05:30

13 Strategies To Jumpstart Your Productivity - Stepcase Lifehack

Idea Bank

2009-06-17T22:03:00.001+05:30

If you are like me, there are plenty of times when you see or hear about some of the new web applications, you go “That’s exactly what I thought of! Now why didn’t I follow it up?”. But someone else has actually through it through and then followed it through and executed the idea and made it a reality. While you, just kept that idea at the back of your head.

The difference between success and failure is in the execution. But in order to execute, you need to record and develop your idea. For this, you need to have an idea bank.

This notion of an idea bank is promoted in many productivity, self improvement systems as well. In GTD, these are someday/maybe projects. You record your ideas or projects that are lingering in your head. If you cannot put in a time line to it, you record it anyways and get it off your head.

I have recorded my ideas in so many different places that it is impossible for me to figure out where they are recorded at times. Worst thing that you can do is to record them in planners as when the year ends, the planner goes into storage and so does all your ideas in it. For this reason I have started to use a little black note book, to record my ideas. I was contemplating the options between high tech and low tech for this purpose. I have a few ideas stored in my phone as notes as well.

But I like the notebook for several reasons. I can generally write faster than I can type. Now with my adoption of iPhone, my typing speeds have diminished even further. And I tend to think more about words and spellings when I type whereas when I write these flow without thinking. Hence writing gives me the ability to concentrate in the idea itself rather than on what I am writing.

I am very fond of fountain pens. My love with fountain pens makes me want to write more. If I was typing I would keep the sentences short and type out a fewer sentences. But when I write, I would be more descriptive. Being descriptive when you are recording an idea is pretty good as otherwise there are times I have just written down a short sentence and some time later I cannot recall exactly what the idea was!

I also love good quality stationary. This is also a part of why I chose to write down the ideas as opposed to storing them electronically. Also the free flow of ideas, ability to draw diagrams or pictures to support it, is much easier with pen and paper.

But writing them down isn't entirely without its nuances. If you need to amend and expand and idea later on, it isn’t as easy as if you had recorded it electronically. Also I may not always carry my little black book with me whereas I will carry my phone. And these days, applications like Evernote, with it’s automatic syncing of notes makes it pretty easy to record an idea through one device and pick it up from another device. I did start using Evernote and I actually quite like the application. I think an app like Evernote will be a pretty good choice on a Windows Mobile device with the ability to draw things on notes in Windows Mobile. But this feature is not there (or I have not come across it if it is there) on the iPhone application and hence it is limited to what would be typed.

The other advantage of high tech in this regard is it will be easier to share your idea with anyone else. Specially with apps like Google Docs, it is a breeze to collaborate and develop an idea using a shared document. And there are plenty more applications for mind mapping and allows sharing mind maps too.

While I am still exploring all these high tech options, for the time being I am going to stick to my black leather book and fountain pens to collect my ideas. I would love to hear your views on these as well. Also, any pointers to great, free, web based mind mapping solutions are welcome.

Technorati Tags: Ideas,Pen and paper,Evernote,Google Docs,Fountain Pens

Reflections on life

2009-05-04T08:31:00.000+05:30

I can vividly remember my teens and my twenties. I'm glad that I lived up the years, experienced life to the full. Now that I am turning 33 today, life is taking a different path.

Those were the years that you could eat anything you want, play as much and party all night long and still make it to classes or work the next morning. Had no care for cholesterol or BMI or blood sugar! We played cricket, almost every day and cycled a few kilometers daily.

Now when I cannot play badminton for an hour at a stretch and when you do, the next day you feel as if a truck has run you over! Now the concerns are on losing weight and getting the waist line to a respectable figure, to a figure that you can tell a shop assistant without feeling shy! Typical life story of a Sri Lankan professional male?

But I am not lamenting in any way about how my life turned out to be. I am glad and proud of it in fact. True, I may be a little over weight and a few muscles that needs shedding, which I am working on by the way, but what i have, I truly cherish!

So on this birthday I like to thank all those people and circumstances that I am grateful about!

Thaththa - It's been a while since you bid adieu. But you have been the biggest influence in my life, my mentor and my role model! Need I say more? Except, I miss you and there isn't a single day gone by without me wishing that you were around!

Amma - Thank you for putting up with me for all this time. For bringing us up in one piece. You have been the strength of our lives! All relations tell me that I was a brat and now I know what it must have been like, because I have two of my own!

Lush - You are the best a wife can get! I thank my destiny every day for bringing us together. You love me and support me unconditionally and that is all a man can ask for. And you put up with all my sillinesses. I love you and promise to love you till my last breath!

Dinara and Dineth - You are the apple of my eyes. Thank you for bringing a joy into our lives which we did not know that existed before. You two are a handful (and more), but the joy of seeing you two blossom is the greatest joy in the world and brings a new dimension to our lives!

Malli - Thank you for being my brother, friend and advisor. Above all thanks for putting up with me. You give all you have and never expect anything in return. You have always been there for me and I truly value our friendship.

Siri/Diana - Thanks for trusting your daughter with me and also accepting me for what I am. You give me the space and the freedom to lead my life but yet silently support me. You're the best in-laws anyone can ask for!

Rukshan - I had a brother and then I found another! You are a brother to me and there is no in-law part in it!

All my friends - You know who you are! Far too many to name individually. I treasure every memory with you all and though we don't get to meet as often as we used to, I know our friendships will stand the test of time and distances. The great thing about the friendships that I have with you all is we can always pick up where things were left off! I have learned from all of you and all of you have been there whenever I needed you all! Remember the good times mates!

Relations - Thank you for being my relations! I do not regret anyone one of you being my relation. Some of us we meet only occasionally and some more often, but what ever the time and distances between us, our relationships will remain!

I have also to thank my past colleagues and bosses who shared the fun times with me, and from those of whom I learned quite a bit. Thank you for sharing those moments with me.

It is a great time to be alive. And a lot is going on in my life right now. So a few years from now, it should be interesting to see how my decisions have played out.

Technorati Tags: Life,Personal,Birthday

Marc Anderssons productivity tips at work

2009-04-18T16:09:00.001+05:30

I thought I would put Marc Anderssons productivity tips (at least some of them to work today). This concept is also very similar to the Zen To Done (ZTD) concept of Most Important Tasks (MITs). Here is my take on how it fared and how it came about.

I tried to come up with 3-5 things that I wanted to achieve today. Then I first thought of it, I was overwhelmed, everything that I had procrastinated came to my mind and I had a tough time choosing only 5 of them.

Another thing that I realized in this process was that I was not distinguishing between goals and chores. There are things that I have to get done in a day which are part of the projects that I am working on for clients. These are the daily tasks that I have to get done, no matter what. So if I was looking at MIT in this way, then there are basically three or four tasks that I am working on in a given day. In a way these are contributing towards the goal of earning a living, but then there aren't any room for any other personal or professional goals.

Another important task that I have been omitting is in the front of fitness/health. I am the closest to a couch potato. I spend most of my time in front of a computer and get little or no physical exercise. Since I started to work from home, the time spent in front of the computer has increased. So I need to put in a task/goal of weight loss/exercise/fitness to my daily task list at least a few times a day.

Another MIT to put on a list is to blog. Anyone reading this blog would notice how random the postings are. So maybe if I start to update the blog on a more frequent basis, with blog posts becoming a MIT for at least a couple of days a week, would do these blogs a great deal of good.

Come to think of this, my new found fondness to GTD and in particular to GTDAgenda.com blends in nicely with this scheme of things. GTDAgenda.com has a feature where I can define recurring tasks and even create schedules for exercises, blogging with frequencies that I want and they start appearing on checklists, so it does its part of making us guilty of not checking them off (doing them).

Technorati Tags: Productivity,GTD,ZTD

GTD in practice - an update

2009-04-08T19:09:00.003+05:30

This is a continuation from the previous post on my attempt with GTD, Giving GTD a try.

I didn't realize that it has been nearly two months since my first post on GTD. From then to now, I have managed to complete the part one of the book which covers GTD on a more theoretical level and am currently reading the phase of GTD implementation. I also managed to shed some misconceptions that I had about GTD, which I had written in my previous post. One of the main rants that I had was GTD's focus on stuff on the plate and less focus on goal setting.

But reading through the theoretical part, I understood two things:

GTD has goal setting. David Allen calls it views from different altitudes and proposes that we take a look at different areas in our lives from these altitudes.
GTD is not a philosophy on HOW you should set your goals. It is exactly, what it proposes it to be, a WORKFLOW to get things on our plate DONE.

Steven Covey calls this "Clock Vs. Compass". I do not think that we need to think of these as two mutually exclusive practices. I can think of incorporating both these practices, Steven Covey's principles to set direction and GTD to manage the implementation of these principles.

I have been practicing a basic form of GTD. I started with Google tasks after reading a post from somewhere about how to use Google tasks for GTD. Then I came across a more specialized application for GTD, GTDAgenda.com. This is a fantastic application for a GTD practitioner to kick start GTD in thier lives. Also, I found it impressive that the site has also incorporated and has road maps on how to use GTDAgenda.com to implement GTD (obviously, ZTD and even 7 Habits).

If you are using a site like this it is pretty easy to incorporate something like 7 Habits' staying on quadrant 2. As even Covey says, the tool should be flexible enough to shift things around and to keep our focus on quadrant 2. I think we can do this with a tool like GTDAgenda.com. I am planning on writing a post dedicated to my use of GTDAgenda.com. There are a lot of things that I like about that tool and at the same time there are a few areas that I think that can be improved to make the users lives smoother.

So far I have set up the systems in place to capture the tasks and also in my case the processing happens on a daily frequent basis. I am also managing to stay on top of tasks most of the time. But I am currently facing a mini crisis with conflicting demands on my time. And I am hoping that diligent practice of GTD will help me manage that as well.

The other is that I am sincerely hoping GTD would help me tackle my rather bad habit of procrastination. So far, GTD has been helpful in nudging me to get things done rather than putting things off. One thing of setting up next actions, is there is a mental push to get through the next actions. And the daily reminder email from GTDAgenda.com also serves as a daily reminder for me to focus on my daily tasks.

My ultimate aim is to practice a synergetic practice of GTD and 7 habits. I am still not sure whether GTD falls under the third generation time management practices that according to Covey, simply does not work. But for me GTD is more than a time management tool. And if you are using the right tool, it can be used as a fourth generation time/task management tool. And that is what I am hoping would come out of this whole exercise.

Giving GTD a try

2009-02-24T12:52:00.003+05:30

I have tried many productivity schemes from time to time but was never able to stick to one to see proper results or life changing habits. I seem to be getting back to my normal self after sometime and the latest seems to just die away. Adding to the list of many things that I have TRIED!

The latest obsession is GTD. I had read about GTD about a year back and then read a few articles about it, mainly from 43Folders.com and other GTD related sites. On the outset it seemed like quite a bit of work, just to maintain and keep practicing it. The work flow seemed like a it required a lot of work in itself. Apart from that, those days I was not so busy. I had a pretty laid back work load and had the freedom to pursue my other interests like coding (read moBlog) as well.

But with the change of careers, I was getting more and more work on my plate. Responsibilities of my role grew pretty much to the point that it became almost unmanageable. And I felt the need for the productivity system pretty badly. I was working across time zones, so my working hours morphed into my family or personal time as well. And I was being pushed to my limits.

Then again I started to think about GTD. Call it synchronicity or whatever you like, I ran into David Allen's book at a department store a couple of weeks back. I read through a few pages, it didn't come across as an interesting read, but I bought the book anyway. And I started reading it leisurely. Now, with my workload I get to spend a very little time reading. I am trying to balance my free time between family time and reading time, so my reading of the book is proceeding very slowly.

So far I have reached the last part of chapter two. While I am sure that the process is proven and works, I am still a bit skeptical about it achieving the desired life that we all want to create for our selves. David Allen is pretty frank about it and he states that he is taking a bottom up approach to getting stuff done. His work flow is more focused towards getting the stuff on your plate done, but does not pay much attention towards qualifying them.

I mean it helps you go faster, but does not give much thought about the direction you are taking. To use Stephen Covey's words it helps you climb the ladder faster, but it does not tell you much about figuring out whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall. Not much on goal setting either. The logic behind GTD is if you get more stuff done and clear your plate, then you will have a clear mind to think more about the lofty goals. So any goals can be put into a someday list!

Anyway, something is better than nothing and I will give a try to GTD. At least if I can get the things on my plate done, without allowing anything to fall from the cracks that will be a good start!

Live Mesh from Microsoft

2009-02-12T15:16:00.003+05:30

I have been looking around for a online storage for my frequent and important files which will also allow me to sync the files between my different computers. I use two laptops, a work laptop and a personal laptop. And I end up carrying my work laptop home because I sometimes have to work from home during a night, or just in case of an emergency.

I was thinking if there was a way where I could just work in my office laptop, save the files, come home and resume where I left off, on my home computer, wouldn't that be great? Also, it will provide a backup for all my files, in my home computer as well as some where secure on the Internet, so I don't have to worry about computer crashes and virus infections wiping out my data?

Sounds like wishful thinking? But isn't that what we all want?

I think I stumbled upon something that comes pretty close. Of course there are a few shortcomings, but those can be circumvented.

I just created an account at mesh.com (rather signed up with my LiveID) and also installed the client software on my Vista laptop. All the folders I created appear as folders on my desktop and all i have to do is to setup the synchronization settings on the folders and copy the files I needed to be synced to those folders. And the client software automatically syncs them with the Live Desktop (i.e. the online folder). And it will sync the files automatically if I install the software on another computer. That's what I am going to try next.

UPDATE: I found a better way of adding files to the mesh. After installing Live Mesh (beta) on your computer, you can right click on any folder and select 'Add Folder to Live Mesh' and set the sync settings. This uploads the folder to the Live Desktop! Great! This is just what I wanted.

Is this perfect or what? Well the answer is Almost! The only thing is it currently offer 5GB of storage space. But there is no mention of how you can get additional storage space, even at a price.

There are a few competing (or are they complementing) product offerings from MS it self. They have the Live Sky Drive, which is kind of a GDrive (well GDrive is still a mystery, SkyDrive is here). I think this is mainly targeted for online file sharing. Live Mesh can also do online file sharing. And then there is Live Sync, which can sync files between two computers. A little bit confusing if you ask me. I think what MS can do is actually integrate all of them under one service, Live Mesh seems like the natural way, and maybe offer more storage space to the users! Now that MS's service is out of the door before Google, maybe they should consolidate on this space and lock users in! More storage is definitely the way to go!

Things not to do when applying for jobs via email

2008-05-22T14:55:00.005+05:30

I have been going through several hundred resumes for the past week since our company ran an advertisement for recruitment. The response had been fabulous if you take the sheer number of applicants.

In this day and age, the most preferred way to accept resumes is through email. Email is fast, both for the applicant and to the company, and it allows rules based processing of hundreds of applications. So if you are not careful in how you send your resume across via email, chances are your resume may not go to the required person.

Your job application to a company created the first impression about you. So you have to be careful about how you do that.

Name:
Make sure your name that appears on the email is your proper name. I was not impressed by the emails coming from names such as 'cool dude', 'slgirls', etc.

Subject
Make sure the subject of the email is proper. Sometimes the advertisement will ask you to put a reference number or a particular text as the subject. Do as exactly as instructed in such cases as these may be processed by email routing rules. So if you don't follow their instructions, chances are your application will get lost!

Even if the advertisement was not specific about the subject line, use a proper subject for the email. The name of the post being applied for is a good bet.

Never send out emails with blank subject lines or generic ones such as Resume, CV, etc. That doesn't appear professional or gives a good impression about you. That will certainly give the impression of missing out on details.

Multiple To Addresses
There were emails which were sent out to several companies in one email. That is not a good thing either. If you were trying to create demand for yourself, you better think of better ways of doing that. It certainly gives the impression that you could not be bothered to send out separate emails for all the jobs you were applying. If that is your attitude when applying for the job, what will recruiters think of your conduct when you get the job?

Mail Body
There were several errors made in this aspect, which could have definitely been avoided if you were a bit careful. Some email bodies had previous mail forward information included, which showed me what you had been applying for over a few weeks. All it would have taken is the simple task of deleting the previous email history from the body.

There was one email which had a cover letter addressed to a different company!!! What does that tell me about the applicant?

It is always a good idea to write a short cover note on the email body, highlighting your experience or qualifications or skills which are relevant to the vacancy. Telling me about thing that I am not interested in, certainly will not score any marks for you.

Attachment(s)
Make sure that you attach your resume before you send your email. I had a few mails without resumes. Some had cover notes, and some didn't have anything to go by. How do you expect a recruiter to asses your suitability if there is no resume!

Then there were two resumes which were password protected. What are you expecting me to do? Email you back and ask for the password?

As much as possible avoid sending your resume is rare file formats. There were a few file formats which could not be opened. Good examples are avoid latest .docx or the .odt formats. You may be using the latest MS office or the another application, but don't expect your receiver to use the same. Also avoid sending them as zip files.

Send them as RTF or more common doc formats. The best bet is PDF.

Resume Content
Make sure your resume highlights your skills, qualifications and experience necessary for the job. If the advertisement had asked for specific skills, tools or technologies, highlight them in your profile. For example, we specifically asked for people with .NET/C# experience or expertise. I got a load of resumes which highlighted their Java experience and expertise, with no mention of .NET/C#.

When I was scanning through the resumes, I was looking for specific keywords; .NET/C#, ASP.NET. And when it came to looking for work experiences, we were looking for specific experiences. I had hundreds of resumes to go through, I could not spare hours on one!

Also, always list your most recent or most relevant qualifications first. Starting your qualification list with the first public exam you faced will surely bury your more relevant qualifications! Same goes for experience profile as well.

But most of the resumes failed to address the requirements we had listed in the advertisement.

General
These are general comments I thought of sharing after me experience of processing the resumes. Always keep in mind that you need to make sure your email reaches the right person and once it reaches that person, make it easy for them to open and view your resume.

We hope to start the interview process somewhere next week. More on that once we conclude that.

Wesak, Wesak, Wesak!!

2008-05-19T20:52:00.001+05:30

Happy Wesak everyone. At least those of you who are in Sri Lanka are enjoying an extended weekend of 4 days this weekend. Some of you have been lucky enough to go out of Colombo. But I am in Colombo for several reasons as there were a few things we had to attend over the weekend.

To start off with there was a ‘bana’ and an alms giving on Friday and Saturday. Then there was Vidara and Thedara’s birthday party. Then there is the fact that my parent company being in the US, requiring me to be in Colombo with broadband connectivity in order to support thier operations. This is one of the things that I will have to do, working on US calendar as my head office. Something I figured would nt be much of a hassle. But in the long run I will have to get some Sri Lankan holidays, at least ones like the Sinhala New Year.

Coming back to Wesak, the recent bomb blast and the security situation in the country will put in a lot of restrictions on the Wesak celebrations. At least people will be a bit reluctant to travel to see the wesak celebrations due to security fears. Even my mother did not go to the usual temple that she goes to obtain SIL as today there is some big program with a lot of big shots in attendance and hence she was scared about being at a locations which is a prime target.

So on this noble day my wish is for peace in this paradise island. May we be allowed to celebrate wesak in peace and harmony next year wihout the fear of bombs and loss of life!

A tribute to a father

2008-04-02T12:32:00.000+05:30

Dear Thaththi,

I remember that day, four years ago. The day that changed our lives in a flash. Can't imagine how time flies and how we coped up. But life goes on and we have come to terms! Thought I'd write a short note in your memory!

I am what I am today, because of what you made of me. The values you instilled and the love you bestowed. You taught me to live by principles and values. You taught me that knowledge is more important than money. You taught me love is unconditional. You taught me the virtue of patience (I was a brat and a half, wasn't I?). Above all, you taught me what a father should be to a child!

Today, when I stand in front of my kid, I ask myself, is this how thaththa dealt with me. Because I know, if I parent my kid, the way you parented me, nothing can ever go wrong!
It's been four years since you took your leave from us. The gods must have thought that your place was among them rather than among us! But what they failed to see was the impact it would have on us, how we would go on without you around!

We depended on you for everything. The mere fact that you were around was so much of a relief, we knew you would be there to put things right, if we messed up! Now that we are left to mend for our selves, I had no idea of the weight you were shouldering. Responsibilities you bore, with so much ease, you made it look like it was a breeze. Once they fell on our shoulders only did we realize the breadth and depth of them all. But with the grooming we received from you, we are managing!

We are all doing good Thaththi. I am sure you will be proud of us all. Then again, you must be knowing that! You gave us what it takes to live honourably and justly in this world. It wasn't money or assets. But it was an education!

I am not wishing you the bliss of Nirvana purely for selfish reasons. That is because I want you as my father in my journey through Sansara!

Till we meet again,
Loku Putha

Photo blogging with moBlog

2008-01-06T19:22:00.001+05:30

moBlog now supports photo blogging!

Posted from moBlog – mobile blogging tool for Windows Mobile

MoBlogger - Mobile Blogging tool for Windows Mobile Devices

2007-12-11T18:19:00.000+05:30

I have been toying with the idea of creating a blogging application for the Pocket PC / Smartphone devices for sometime. i had done some extensive research on it sometime back, but due to limited time available for coding 4 fun (as I call my experimental coding activities) I had been pushing this idea away. But since I got myself a Windows Mobile phone, this need kept popping up.

My initial reaction was to go back to the applications that I had come across earlier and try them out on the phone. Well the fist one I tried refused to work on my blog unless there was an active Internet connection. This was a major limitation as I did not want to be online while I was writing my post. I know that GPRS/3G usage is charged for the actual traffic, but the downside was an active Internet connection on the phone drained the battery! So that experienced was very short lived.

Then I did come across several other applications that allowed you to work offline, but I had small issues with them. Some I had issues setting up and running. They had exceptions. Some supported only one blog. I wanted something more as I have a couple of blogs. And I wanted my client application to support all of them without me having to delete and setup when I wanted to switch blogs.

Also, I still had the urge to develop an application myself. With my involvement in GMobileSync now I was experienced in working with the GData API as well. So I went to work on my Mobile Blogging Application: MoBlogger.

Here are a feature list:

Multiple profiles
Multiple Blogs within a profile. So if your blogger account has multiple blogs setup, all of them will work!
Work Offline - you can work offline and save your posts for uploading later.
Supports labels.

Sounds great right? Well yeah... except right now it only supports Blogger! But I am working on supporting multiple blogging platforms! The immediate platforms on the radar are Wordpress.com and Windows Live Spaces.

In the mean time if you would like to have a go at it, drop me a mail, I'll be happy to send you an installation.

October Challenge Update

2007-10-03T14:34:00.000+05:30

It's been good so far. I know it's been just 3 days. But I have kept my pledge of daily dose of exercises! What I have noticed is that I usually keep it for about a week effortlessly. Maximum of two and then my motivation wanders off. But with regular updates on my progress, I am testing to see whether the accountability factor has any impact on my motivation levels. Hopefully if I receive some encouraging feedback, it will work well for me.

Since it is a bit of a hassle to update daily on the blog, I have chosen Twitter as my main medium of recording updates. The fact that I can update from the mobile is a big convenience factor for me and the chances of missing updates with such a convenience are lesser. In order to publish my Tweets, I have added a Twitter widget to this blog's side bar. So this blog will also be updated with my Twitter updates.

Please feel free to follow me on twitter!

October Challenge

2007-10-02T13:06:00.000+05:30

I should admit, my August challenge did not materialize even by end September. No, this is not a post to blame it on anything or anyone else. It was just my undisciplined self that needs to be blamed. And the outcome was a pretty bad feeling of FAILURE!

But still I am setting myself another challenge for myself. But this time I am going to go a bit more lean! I will target a more achievable goal. A goal that I am more likely to achieve without requiring a drastic change to my routine and something I am more likely to achieve with my lazy self!

I will lose 2 kilos by the end of this month. I will achieve this my
committing just 5 minutes of exercise on most days.

Trying to give up my food indulgence was a total flop. It brought me to the point where I started to question that I am a plain sucker for good food! So I will not fight my indulgences hard, but I will try to control my portions.

But the end result I expect, no matter how I achieve it is to be 88 kilos by the end of this month!

I would appreciate if you guys can make me accountable for this goal!

My Zen Habits August Challenge

2007-08-07T12:18:00.001+05:30

Zen habits is a recent blog that I subscribed to recently. It is a wonderful blog about personal development and it is written with a perspective of of Zen Buddhism. It is all about simplifying your life!

Zen Habits runs a challenge for each month for his readers through the forum on his site. The users can register a challenge that they want to achieve within the month, and they are to practice and report progress online, through the forum daily. It is kind of like your personal accountability team.

This process of practicing a new habit for 30 days to internalize it has been proposed by many a personal development trainers. I first heard about it on Steve Pavlina's blog, and then I read about it on several books and other web sites and blogs. I have tried this approach several times, but at all times, it didn't go through for more than 2 weeks. I think the biggest reason was he lack of a personal accountability team. I never made myself personally accountable for my goals.

This time I decided to add that element to it. So I registered for the August Challenge on Zen Habits forum. I recorded my challenge for this month. But will I be motivated and to be accountable to the other people on the forum? Well, I could be, I could not be! But there is no loss of face if I don't!

So the way I figured it, in order for me to be really accountable for achieving my goal, I should put it here, on this blog. And everyday, I can make a progress update by way of a comment and intermittently, I can write a post reviewing the process. And come the end of the month, I will have to update on the result achieved.

Lose 5 Kilos by the end of the month.

I will attempt this by:

Eating moderately and not giving into indulgences
Exercising daily on the TimeWorks. The prescription is to do only 4 minutes a day!

Stay tuned for my updates!

Intentions and goal setting

2007-07-09T23:29:00.000+05:30

After reviewing a lot of literature about setting intentions and goals, I wrote down a few goals that I wanted to achieve in the short term and a few far reaching goals. In one of the books that I had read called The Success Principles author Jack Canfield stated that each of us should set a life changing goal.

I was searching for this life changing goal and I finally settled down to wanting to create a killer Web Site that would have over a 100,000 unique visitors a day. The reason I chose this as my life changing goal was the thinking that such a web site has the ability to generate a large passive income which can pave the way for the financial independence that I seek in my life. If a web site attracts over a 100,000 unique visitors a day, that web site should have the ability to generate a few hundred, if not a few thousand dollars in passive income.

To cut a long story short, I was thinking about a web site idea, as I had set myself the goal of launching this web site before the end of this year. It is then that a friend of mine came to me with an idea for a web site and asked me if I would like to join in with him and a another friend to start off on it!

I said yes without a blink. I agreed to meet up with them to discuss the idea further, as I had a gut feeling that it is a workable idea. The reason behind me writing this story is to go on record that the universe does respond to your intentions. When I wrote down the goal of creating a killer web site, I had no idea of what it was going to be on. But out of the blues, my friend came to me with an idea that they had been toying around with. The way I see it, the universe saw three people who were having the same intention and brought them together.

I am not sure if the others who are in this with me will believe this, but as far as I am concerned, the universe has answered my call. Well I know that I have a long way to go towards achieving the targets I had set on my goal for the web site, but the universe has answered my call and had paved the first step towards manifesting my intention. I am waiting to see how this will work out and I will record the progress here, what ever way it goes!

Want to increase your productivity?

2007-06-30T20:56:00.001+05:30

This guy knows his cookies. He was/is one of the best known guys in the technology space, he was the CEO of Netscape and now he runs two companies. And he presents interesting tips for increasing your productivity.

Marc Andreessen's article on Personal Productivity called The Pmarca Guide to Personal Productivity is pretty revolutionary coming from a guy who is so much connected with Internet and connectivity. I guess he also has felt the toll that connectivity can take on you.

First we worked towards getting ourselves wired so we will not miss out on things. We invented the telephone and then the mobile telephone, so we can stay contact-able while on the move.

Then we invented email and then figured out ways to get our email on our cell phones. Then we got wireless Internet also on our cellphone so we are always connected, where ever we were. And now, we are looking for ways to not to let the connectivity consume us.

It is very much like the nuclear science. First we spent millions getting the knowledge. Then we spend millions from preventing it from being abused (and abusing it in the process).

His tips are, in his own words, not suitable for people who have a structured lifestyle o a job. But if you can actually put them into practice, I think it will bring about a welcome change into most of our lives.

I am not very sure about his tip about not keeping a schedule. In my job, as much as I love to operate the way he proposes, I have to schedule activities in advance. A big part of my work involves scheduling activities both for myself and for teams as a project manager. So this is not for me right now.

I have had plenty of days, even after a full day at work, I end up thinking to my self, 'What did I do today?'. Sometimes what we do are not important but you end up doing them anyway's as they are in your face. As Stephen Covey suggests, we do urgent and un-important things and procrastinate Important but not Urgent things, things that can make a true difference in our lives. So his suggestion about coming up with 3 to 5 things to do for a day, the night before is a very good idea.

Putting this into practice, I can plan to get at least one important but not urgent things done each day. Since the planning is going to be done the night before, before you walk into the office where another lot of problems to solve are waiting in your inbox.

Again, due to the nature of my work, I don't think I can schedule emails for only two time slots during the day. I used to have my email client running in the background so I can respond to emails as soon as they arrived. But now I am actually closing Outlook when I run through my emails in the morning and switch to my other work. But I do check back a few times a day. Maybe I can have three schedules for checking emails, morning, afternoon and evening. I should give it a try and see how the response is from my colleagues and clients.

In any case, it is a pretty good article and contains many good and somewhat radical tips on ways you can organize yourself to become more productive in the information age!

Technorati tags: Personal Productivity, Personal Development, Getting things done

Be Lankan, Buy Lankan - the story of Micro Trend

2007-05-08T16:43:00.001+05:30

This I saw on a Micro Trend Car. For those of who don't know Micro Trend it is a locally assembled Chinese car. It is the second car to be put on Sale by Micro, the first company to produce a fully indigenous car.

When I saw this only it struck to me that I have seen only a very few Micro Trends on the road. You can't complain much about the looks of it, if I remember correctly it was designed by an Italian design firm. Since it is Chinese, it must be as good as any Chinese made car. But for whatever reason, you see more Cherry QQ's than Micro Trends on the road. And personally speaking I think the QQ is a bit hideous looking to start with.

Maybe it's the price factor. The QQ is a few lakh rupees cheaper. So is the Maruthy 800. But what about the cars that are in the same price range. The Maruthy Zen and the Maruthy Alto. I think they are in the same price range. But they seem to be more popular than the local make.

Maybe the deep down reason is that we do not trust our local makes. This lack of trust is keeping us away from the Trend. When I saw the Trend for the first time, I thought it was a pretty good looking car. There were two things that kept me away from it, it's size (I need a bigger car due to my long limbs) and the lack of automatic transmission (it's a luxury that I have come to enjoy too much with the bumper to bumper traffic on Colombo roads).

So why do people choose the Indian or the Chinese varieties over the Sri Lankan assembled Chinese car? Maybe the price? So if the government gives the company enough subsidies to help them bring the price down, then they may have a pretty good market.

But the good news is the two Korean SUV's assembled by Micro in Sri Lanka seems to be having a good response from the market. The secret there maybe because they enjoy a price advantage. So why not do that for the cars and create a Sri Lankan automotive industry?

Technorati tags: Micro Cars, Sri Lankan Automotives

Dependency on connectivity

2007-05-07T11:55:00.001+05:30

We are having Internet connectivity problems at work these days. Due to lightning, our network equipment has got damaged and hence we are on a very slow Internet connection.

This slow connection made me realize how dependant I have become on the Internet. Without a speedy Internet connection, I am seriously handicapped. Come to think of it, it is not just Internet that I have come to be dependent on. It is overall connectivity that I have come to depend upon.

I feel seriously lost if I step out of the house without my cell phone. It has become a part of my lifestyle so much I feel insecure without it. More than the incoming calls, I need it in case of an emergency. Not that I have managed to come out of many emergencies thanks to my cell phone. I wonder how my mother does without one.

The Internet too is becoming second nature. If I don't check my mail for a day, I feel as if something is a miss. It is not that I am expecting anything on the mail. Just that I need to be on top of my mails. I hate to come to my mail box with mails that are several days old and the total running into a few hundred.

There's another side to emails. You feel a strange loneliness when you haven't got any mail for a day. But thanks my clients there's hardly a day that goes without me getting a mail with some lame and sometimes stupid complaint.

What would it be like to spend a week without emails and your cell phone. Unfortunately, I cannot afford to do that while I'm on the job. I am obliged to answer my cell phone as it is a company phone and if I don't answer my mail within the day I am bound to end up with a few more complaining about the lack of a response.

So has technology made our lives easier or has it made us more connected and tied down and made us slaves to the technology? Can we go home after work and just forget about work? We can't. If something comes up, we are bound to get contacted over our cell phones. We will have to answer our urgent emails from home. I even work from home over the week ends, responding to client queries and resolving issues.

I think technology has blurred the line between work and private time. We can no longer have a truly private time away from work. If something comes up, by the mere fact that we are connected we will have to respond. So who gets affected? It is our families and the relationships that get affected.

I think we lack a certain level of discipline. Just because we are connected we should not jump to work while you are at home. I had a client once in Singapore who had clearly drawn a line between work time and private time. If you contacted him during off office time even for a small clarification, he would politely tell you that he would answer the query when he gets to work. I think it is a worthwhile discipline or a practice that you should develop, unless of course you are a workaholic.

The ideal Scenario

The ideal scenario out of this connectedness would be an ability to work from home. To have the ability to spend more time at home but still get work done. To be able to remotely work from home. But our mind set and the culture has not come to that stage where our physical presence is not required at work. I think we have not got used to working in that fashion.

But the good news is we are getting there fast. I have seen geographically dispersed project teams working on projects using collaboration tools and thier productivity is no less than them being on the same room.

Taking time off

I want to take my annual leave for at least 10 days at a stretch and be away from my emails and cell phone during that time. I will dedicate all my time to spend with my family and maybe do some reading. That will be some holiday.

Now if I can sort things that are pending so I can actually go on that holiday...

Technorati tags: Internet, Connectivity, Work Life Balance

The Dyer Dozen.

2007-04-23T10:39:00.001+05:30

I just finished listening to an audio program by Wayne Dyer called The Power of Intention, which is based on his best selling book. This is a very interesting audio program which talks about a topic which I have developed an interest on lately. Wayne Dyer has been an authority in this area for quite sometime, but to me he was a late discovery.

I got introduced to this topic via Steve Pavlina's blog. Steve called it Intention-manifestation. I have to tell you honestly my earlier dabbling's with this topic has been disappointing, which led me to be very skeptical about this topic.

But after coming across a new video called The Secret, my interest in this topic grew again and my recent dabbling's have been quite revealing! In this program they call it The Law of Attraction. The concept is to attract what you want to your life. This process has what you need to do to attract / how to attract and being ready to receive.

Wayne Dyer proposes twelve rules for realizing the power of intention in his The Power of Intention book. Here are those twelve golden rules. I will just list them.

Want more for others than you want for yourself -This is selflessness.
Think from the end - Think about the results.
Be an appreciator - Look for what is valuable, not worthless.
Stay in rapport with source energy - be in a state of harmony with your source. Always think is this how my source thinks?
Resistance - every thought you have that is other than that which you emanated from is resistance.
Contemplate your self with the conditions that you want in your life.
Understand the art of allowing - take the path of least resistance.
Practice radical humility.
Be in a constant state of gratitude - this is a great way to weed out the negative thoughts from your mind.
Don't condemn the problems
Play the match game - Am I matched up with the field of intention?
Meditate - take control over your mind.

This list is an exhaustive list of things that you can follow to make the power of intention work for you. I found this list basically talks more or less about the same things that the other authors in this topic area also talk about. The difference is each author has one or two additional things in the list. But invariably, you will find the same core things appearing in all lists.

Technorati tags: Power of Intention, Wayne Dyer, Law of Attraction, Steve Pavlina, The Secret

A GLObal COmmunity for sharing the Internet Revenue

2007-04-17T16:15:00.001+05:30

Do you know how Google makes it's money? By selling advertisements. It's search engine is used to push targeted advertisements to millions of users. When someone clicks on an ad Google serves along the side of the search results, it makes money.

Google realized that limited advertisements on their search engine alone is depriving them of hoarding space to publish their ads. So they then came up with AdSense, where web site owners could sign up to serve Google ads on their web sites. And through this model, Google shared the revenue with the site owners.

This and many similar programs are great if you have a web site or a blog and if you had people coming to your web site and clicking on the Google ads on your site. Click through rates will depend on a lot of things. For starters the ads shown on the site was based on the site content, so they were somewhat relevant, but is it what your site visitors are looking for?

And what if you don't have a web site or a blog and what if the traffic to your site was not so great. You were being left behind.

Cry no more- Welcome to AGLOCO. The Global Community of Internet surfers.

Come again? Global what? And how is it going to benefit me anyway? AGLOCO attempts to share the internet advertising revenue with the internet surfing community. Not the web masters and web site owners. Just normal everyday people like you and me, who spend a a significant part of our time browsing through the web, for information, for work, for entertainment or because we have nothing better to do. AGLOCO through it's viewbar, which is to be released shortly, will serve ads based on your preferences, which means you are likely to get the most relevant information pushed to you.

Of course, AGLOCO will charge the advertisers and content participants for doing this. But the beauty of this is, they will share that with you. Of course, they stand to earn a chunk. But then again, they are doing all the work, and they are sharing their revenue with you. So what?

The other thing about this is, there is no catch. You don't have to pay anything upfront, you don't have to sell anything to get qualified (of course if you refer others you stand to earn more - what do you think I am doing here ? ;)). You just have to download the view bar (when it becomes available, which should be pretty soon) and then go on surfing the internet just was you would do always.

So what are you waiting for? You got nothing to lose. Jump into the bandwagon. Earn a portion of billions of internet advertising revenue while you do surf. While you are jumping into the band wagon, go through this referral link to sign up.

Technorati tags: AGLOCO, Advertising Revenue, Passive Income, Context Sensitive Advertising, Surfing, Browsing

Synchronicity

2007-04-11T21:07:00.001+05:30

It's a strange thing. I am really starting to see some synchronicities.

I did realize that our mind spots things when we plant an interest. The most common example is when you sort of notice a particular car model, you will start spotting that model quite often that will make you wonder how on earth all these cars are suddenly appearing out of nowhere.

Similarly, I have been reading a few books / articles /audio clips and videos on the topic of law of attraction, or intention manifestation and it seems that everything I hear, including the songs that I notice on the radio seem somewhat related to that topic.

Sometime back I was reading a post on Steve Pavlina's blog about the how intentions manifest and he mentioned that there is an alpha state and a beta state. The alpha state is where you get some sort of an acknowledgement from the universe. I have been seeing a few of such synchronicity on some of the intentions that I intended. I had some of those ' creative winks' from the universe.

The period that usually make us give up on the intentions is the period which Pavlina calls the ' calm before the storm' period. I too had such periods where after a small creative wink from the universe, where there was a period which was more or less silent. The acknowledgement that I received seemed to be the only thing that was coming forth. Things seem to have gone back to the state that it was before. Skepticism starts to set in to your mind, questioning your intention and the whole idea about the law of attraction.

It is this period that you need to guard against. Intentions do become true. They are a self fulfilling prophecy. So when you start to question the intentions and start to think about the opposite, these opposite thoughts then become your intentions. Some other author has called this period, the period where you have hit a plateau. It is as if no matter what you do, you don't seem to be getting anywhere. This is the period where people give up just as something is going to materialize. It is like the last mile.

In my case, after a silent period, I am starting to see beta reflections or some real positive and long term outcomes for my intentions. I may be a little too early to predict this as I am assuming that I am seeing beta reflections. But by the looks of things, they seem like substantial beginnings. And I am exited. I am looking forward to the universe guiding me through to manifesting my intentions.

I miss you thaththi

2007-04-06T11:28:00.001+05:30

It's been three years! Three years since you suddenly departed. Without a warning, without any signs, you suddenly left. I was out of the house at that time. By the time I came to you, you had already gone. Not even a good bye! And I found myself, hugging your lifeless body and crying, unable to believe that you are not going to wake up.

I had to stop crying, I was worried about ammi. I was worried about malli. I was the eldest, I had to be responsible. I was old enough to take up the responsibility. But I wasn't ready. I wasn't ready because I never envisioned a life without you. I guess I took you for granted. But then as Buddha preached, life never can be taken for granted.

You were more than a father to me. You were my best friend. You understood me perfectly. When I was restless, you gave me the space to grow. When I needed protection, you were a tower of strength, always by my side. You allowed me to live my own life. Never tried to force your dreams or expectations on me. When I did things that you knew were going to fail, you never told me not to. You allowed me to find out for myself. Always there, in case I fell. But when I fell flat on my face, you never said "I told you so". Instead you asked me, "What do you want to do next?"

Last year was a tremendous year in my life thaththi. I too became a father. I now have a little daughter. She is such an adorable kid, I wish you were here thaththi, to see her! She is just five months old, but I sometimes tell her about you. I tell her how much you would have loved her, if you were around. I regret her never getting to know you. She missed the opportunity to know her other seeya. But I will make sure that she will know about you. And I will try to become the father, that you were to me.

Lushi also misses you thaththi. Though doesn't know you that well, though she has met you only twice, she misses you too. She has instantly liked you the first day she saw you. She had thought you were a fun father-in-law to have. You with your jokes and mild manners, you had taken your place with her. She regrets not knowing you better. But I keep telling her about you, about all those little things that you did for us.

Amma has still not got over your departure. She took a long time to get back to her self. Well not really her old self. I guess she can never get back to her old self, because you were such a big part of her for such a long time.

I know malli misses you too. But we have never really spoken about it. You know malli is so much like you. He doesn't want to show his pain to anyone. He keeps it all inside. But I know he misses you terribly. You were his world!

It was you who showed taught us to accept life gracefully and to make the most of it. You taught us the values of living by your principles. You taught us to do our best and to happily accept the results. Your lessons are still in our hearts. Your lessons allow us to live consciously and make the right decisions in these testing times. Not matter how long it has been I still miss having you around thaththi. I used to ask you before every decision I had to make. You never made the decisions for me, instead you showed me all the options. Now, I have to seek the options on my own. I miss your far sightedness.

Above all, I miss your love. I miss your friendship. And I miss you!

We will be having an alms giving in your memory on the 7th (tomorrow). I wish you a short journey through sansara and wish you the supreme bliss of nibbana. But until such time, I want you as my father in each reincarnation! So long thaththi, till we meet again!

Picasa web albums upgrades free storage limits

2007-04-05T15:37:00.001+05:30

Seems Picasa has upgraded the free storage limit from 250 MB to 1 GB. This is certainly good news as I had already used up my 250 MB limit. Since then, I had been uploading my pictures to webshots and snapfish.

Now that the storage limits have been upgraded, I can upload a few more of my albums to Picasa. That will be good for me as it will allow me to keep more of my albums in one place. Also, hope Picasa will allow uploading of videos as well.

Wonder how long more I will take to use up my 1 GB space. Hope Google will keep upgrading free disk space on Picasa. Way to go Google!

Technorati tags: Picasa, Digital images, Free photo storage

Sri Lanka beat England by 2 runs

2007-04-05T07:40:00.001+05:30

What a match! A real nail biter at the end. It came pretty close to the Sri Lanka vs. South Africa match, which we came so close to pulling off with Malinga's brilliant bowling. This time if was Dilhara who did the trick for us. Here I am trying on my expert match commentator cap :)

When we were batting the runs came very slow for us. The commentators very getting sarcastic about our batting till about the 30th over with them showing people dosing off on their seats. But I think our team batted with a game plan. The idea would have been to not to give too many wickets away in the beginning and then to open up towards the end of the innings. But unfortunately, we really couldn't open up towards the end of the innings either. Our shots kept finding the fielders directly with an occasional boundary.

According to the commentators, given tech condition of the pitch, a competitive target was in tech region of 270. Maybe they underestimated our bowling attack. I thin our bowlers did a great job to bowl the Englishmen out.

As we were battling and at one stage when England seemed to be in control I was dead scared that we should lose. I was fighting myself to contain all tech negativity. Our victory now keeps us within the top four teams. I hope we end up being on the third spot. Then we will probably meet New Zealand in the semis's. Let's see how it goes.

Congratulations Sri Lanka. You did great and made us all proud! You are flying our Sri Lanka flag high in the air in the Caribbean. There are forces who are trying to deviate your attention to other matters other than Cricket, which you can do nothing about. Don't get distracted by those who are trying to pull the fast ones by playing dirty mind games. Keep your concentration on Cricket, and you will have the final laugh!

del.icio.us tags: Sri Lanka Cricket, Cricket World Cup, Sri Lanka vs. England

Creating my personal workspace

2007-04-03T17:28:00.001+05:30

I was reading Dilantha's post on the perfect workspace, and it just struck me. I no longer have a personal workspace. I have given up my desk at home ( no longer have a desk as such) and at office also I have got too used to moving desks too frequently.

I used to be the most generous guy at work, giving my desk to accommodate the newest member in my team and moving in to any desk that was available. The fact that I was on a laptop and the office having wireless connectivity helped. I personally didn't mind at all. I was more concerned about keeping my team members together rather than me having a permanent desk.

But I think my boss became worried that I might get hurt and ensured that I got myself a permanent desk when we re-organized the office. There was nothing to worry really. I was not bothered or feeling lesser because I was moving about. I was happy to be of any help. I was more interested in being part of the solution, rather than a part of the problem.

But, now that I have got a desk, and a quite large one at that, I was still not feeling very attached to the desk or the place. The result, a very impersonal desk. No photos, no personal stuff (well except for a teddy that my wife gave me for this Valentines' day). I usually pack up my laptop and go at the end of the day, so when that is gone, there's nothing on the desk except for a pile of papers.

Looking at the photos on Dilantha's post and the related links, I now have an urge to personalize my work space. First project would be to personalize my office desk. Let's see what I can do to make it personal and to make the place a very enjoyable place, considering the fact that I am spending most of my day at this desk.

Then I would move on to creating a cool desk for me at home as well.

del.icio.us tags: Personal workspace

Sri Lanka beats West Indies by 113 runs!

2007-04-02T10:13:00.001+05:30

Our team did it in style last night. We beat the hosts WI by 113 runs.

At the start, we looked a bit edgy. I was scared that we were going to see another fantastic collapse by the Sri lankan batting order. But our master blaster clicked. And with his 25th century, he brought victory to the Sri Lankan team.

Just remembered something. I remember someone saying that in order for Sri Lanka to win Jayasuriya has to play a big inning. Well, I certainly hope that is not true in all cases, but yesterday he DID play a fantastic innings. Oh and not forgetting the 3 wickets he took!

It was also nice to see Mahela coming back into runs. He needed to perform. He was getting a bit branded as a failure as he had not scored big runs, except in the match against Bermuda, who were the weakest of the minnows.

So what is next? With England on the 4th. Come to think of it, it is not much of a rest for our team. But hen again ICC has always been biased against us.Giving us the worst schedules. But that hasn't prevented our guys from performing.

Congratulations Sri Lanka.Keep up the good work! We are keeping our fingers crossed, hoping that you would make it to the Finals! And beat the crap out of the Aussies, in a repeat of 1996 finals!

del.icio.us tags: Cricket World Cup, Sri Lanka, West Indies

End of the Financial Year

2007-03-30T19:43:00.001+05:30

It is the 30th of March. The end of the financial year. I had a few targets to meet, to ensure that the company meets the revenue targets set for the year.

We were following up on the projects that were planned to be closed for this year very closely. We were reminded of the targets every week and during the last few weeks, a few times during a week as well. I am not complaining about anything. I was happy to be reminded as that was helping me stay on course. For some strange reason, I never felt pressurized by the responsibility. I felt completely at ease.

I even volunteered to push one of the projects which was due to finish in April into March, in order to be able to invoice this year. And I am happy that I was able to meet the targets. My team also delivered. It was them who felt pressured and worked their butts out in order to deliver on time. Thank you guys! you stood tall and delivered!

Now that we achieved the financial targets for this year, from Tuesday on, I will have to start planning for the financial targets for 2007 now that we have secured more work and the securities project set to go live in the coming months.

del.icio.us tags: Work

Google Calendar - yet another calendaring app???

2007-03-23T17:48:00.001+05:30

del.icio.us tags: Web, Productivity, Google

I am sure most of us who have used Google beyond the searching platform would have had a look at Google Calendar (GCal). I did too and then thought to myself, why would I want to enter my diary again into another application. I mean, not that my schedule was packed, I was already using my Outlook on my Laptop and I had my PDA sync' ed to it. But the main reason for non-adoption (I am trying out almost all of other Google services), was the the duplicity of data input.

I can across this article on WebWorkerDaily which talks about a program that can synchronize the GCal with the desktop. And it also talks about a few more hacks that you can do with your GCal to make it more usable and helpful.

Now, I should get my schedule on the calendar and start playing with it.

Connecting to SQL Server Express from a Pocket PC application

2007-03-20T07:25:00.001+05:30

del.icio.us tags: SQl Server Express, Visual Studi o2005, .NETCF 2.0, Pocket PC Applications, Software Development Tips

I was recently trying to do a small sample application with SQL Express and Pocket PC's. Basically I wanted to try out a code to automatically synchronize with a database running on a network, when the application was cradled.

My solution was very simple. I used a dataset in the PPC application and updated to and from it to the database.

From my previous experience with PPC applications under .NETCF1, I remembered that PPC apps need the IP of the database in the connection string. Also, you have to set the SQL Server Express to accept TCP/IP connections as well as SQL Server Authentication. Instructions for all of that can be found on Daniel Chong's blog post. So I will not delve into that further here.

But the problem I faced was, no matter what I tried, I got an SqlException called "SQL Server does not exist or access denied." I searched the web high and dry and I still I was baffled. Then I tried trying out different combinations for the connection string and I realized that my emulator was not connecting to my PC at all. Delving in deeper, I realized I was running a wrong ActiveSync version. I was running version 3.8 and Visual Studio 2005 requires version 4.0 or higher. So I upgraded my ActiveSync version and enabled network connectivity on the emulator, everything worked great!

So a few pointers to remember when accessing SQL Express databases from Pocket PC (.NETCF2.0) projects:

Ensure that SQL Express is set to accept remote connections. By default this is disabled.
Ensure that your SQL Server is set to accept SQL Server Authentication as well.
Fix the port for the SQL Express database.
Create the connection string with the IP and the Port. eg: Data Source = 192.168.1.2,1433;Initial catalog=Pubs;User Id=****, Password=***;
SQL Server Express installs with an instance name. Never give this instance name in your connection string. eg: Data Source=192.168.1.2\SQLEXPRESS... This gave my application an error which could not be caught with exception handling within the managed code.

That's about it. Hope this helps someone out there. Any questions or clarifications, just ask.

Sri Lankan classifieds web sites

2007-03-11T11:45:00.001+05:30

One thing I like doing on Sunday is to go through the classifieds. Not because I am looking for something to buy. But because, I like to figure out the market value of things and at the same time to figure out what's in demand.

When it comes to the web, the classifieds web sites for Sri Lankans were not much. But since of late, a few sites have come up, some catering to specific market segments and some catering to the general market. I'll put down my take on those:

Cars:
www.autolanka.com - This is not a classifieds site as such. It is dubbed to be the most popular motoring related web portal in Sri Lanka. They have a section where they list vehicles for sale, for a FEE though.

www.cfautomart.com - Maybe the older site,but seems to have lost its ground to the new entrant. Has a listing service with photos, which is a PAID service and a FREE service which are only text ads.

General:
www.kaddai.com - I am not entirely sure, but I think they are trying to emulate ebay. Don't know what the conversion rates are, but frankly, I think the site can settle for a bit more visually pleasing design.

www.lankaads.com - A FREE web site. Simple design and provides quite good account management features.

www.lankapola.com - Another shopping site. In their case they have approached this more from a more online shopping mall concept. They seem to have gone for partnerships with businesses and providing a cyber outlet through their web site.

www.shotads.com - New kid on the block. A FREE classifieds site that allows you to upload PHOTOS as well. Quite a good feature when considering free ad postings. Doesn't specifically target the Sri Lankan market. But I am sure it is Sri Lankan web site. I think it is a good site if you are looking to promote your items internationally.

Property:
www.boomi.lk- Seems to be the most popular real estate website. And it is free. Comprehensive service and customized for the real estate market.

There are numerous property listing sites that are maintained by property brokerages. I am not listing them as they probably list only the properties they are selling for a fee.

I am sure there are plenty of other sites out there. I will post them as and when I come across them. In the mean time, if there is something I have missed, please post them as comments.

Spilling tea all over the laptop

2007-02-24T17:01:00.001+05:30

I'm glad they make the laptops the way they do. They in that earlier sentence was Dell and I am referring to the fact that they make their laptops to endure a full cup of tea all over it!

Yes, it happened. I don't know how it happened, but it did. I spilled a cup of tea all over my laptop yesterday and I thought that would have been the end of it. I promptly switched it off, dried it as much as I can using tissues and let it dry for only about 5 minutes. I had to switch it on, as I had an urgent email to send. At that point of time, sending the email was more urgent than drying the laptop.

It booted up, but the scratch pad was not working. I used a USB mouse and finished my tasks for the day and packed it brought it home. I switched it on again today, praying to god that it will boot up. Not only did it boot up, even the scratch pad seems to be working.

Better be careful now. I am not sure whether it will take on a another beating with another cup of tea!

Using Timers with Windows Services in .NET

2007-02-22T16:01:00.001+05:30

I was trying to help out a colleague by writing a small Windows service for one of his projects. The requirement was for the project to run periodically in a server and copy some documents from one place to another. Since this was a chance to get my hands dirty with some coding, I jumped at the chance.

Writing the service was a price of cake. But I hit a brick wall. The timer I had used (System.Timers.Timer) was not firing. As usual,I checked the tutorials to see if I was doing it right, and seemed it was all right. But still it was not getting fired when the service is started. So I started digging. And I came up with this article which explains using the Timers with Windows services. Helped me. Hope it helps someone else out there as well.

PS: It feels good to do coding on .NET.

I feel good - to be back on a .NET project

2007-02-21T13:47:00.001+05:30

I feel good! Why? Because I am getting back to managing a .NET project after a long time.

For about an year I was managing Java projects. While I have nothing against Java, to me Java seems to be an overly complex language. I don't want to get in to an argument here. I don't want my Java teams members to get offended either. But my personal preference has been .NET all along.

This time around, I get to set the technical direction for the project as well. So I am going ahead with ASP.NET 2.0 and .NET AJAX Extensions and AJAX Toolkit. I want to use all the new cool features in ASP.NET such as the Master Pages, Generics, and maybe even .NET 3.0 features such as workflow support.

Hopefully, I will update this space with the progress I make with this project. Should put a weekly task in my Calendar to update this space.

Welcome 2007!

2007-01-13T23:36:00.001+05:30

Another year has dawned. This time I welcomed the new year at home, with the latest addition to our family, our daughter Dinara. We were up at midnight, holding her close to us as she was getting a bit annoyed at the sound of all those crackers which were being lit by all our neighbours.

From that start, the year so far has been pretty good in many ways. Work was somewhat hectic, but then if it slows down too much I myself will get bored with it. So, in a way I like having a hectic work life, as long as I can manage it.

On the personal front, the first few weeks of the year has brought a lot of good news to me and my wife as well. The future looks pretty much exiting. I have a strange feeling, 2007 will be a good year!

VS2005 Crashes when loading a solution

2007-01-07T22:40:00.000+05:30

Ok, it did it again, today.

I was trying to work on a project that was long overdue and when I finally found the time and sat down to do it this afternoon. So I fured up VS2005 and clicked on the solution from the startpage. VS loaded the whole project and then after about a second or so, gave me an error message saying it encountered some unexpected problem and closed down.

This is the second time that I got this error with VS2005. On the first occasion teh solution was to re-install VS2005. So again, now I am re-installing VS2005. This is annoying to say the least. And it seems to be taking ages to do it also!

December 2006 update

2006-12-29T02:17:00.000+05:30

I just noticed that i have not made a posting since 1st of December. Well you can’t really blame me as this was one of the most hectic months of my life.

First, the baby kept me busy. She immediately had two impacts on my life. First, she made me impatient to run back home. I didn’t want to miss her growing up. And I was trying to compete for her attention with my wife, as she was practically spending the whole day with her. I was getting jealous!

Then I was down with Chikungunya. It was one heck of a sickness. I was feeling as if a train had run me down! Couldn’t eat, couldn’t do anything else except maybe sleep. And I was down mentally as well. I was messing with my mind too.

So with all these going on, I had a pile of work at work to finish. I still have the pile. Still trying to device a way to either do it, or run from it.

Anyway, we have come to the end of one of the most eventful years of my life. A lot happened this year. Most of it good! (Material for another post around the 31st, hopefully)

PMP

2006-12-01T23:35:00.001+05:30

I have passed the Project Management Professional (PMP) exam! Now I am a PMP.

In my last post about the PMP examination I mentioned that there were a lo tof questions which I felt could be very subjective. I am glad to note that my thinking is in line with what PMI designates as body of knowledge in project management.

Also, with this exam I have completed my professional development objective for the year. This was a target that I had set for myself sometime back, but I was not sure about covering it this year as the PMP exam in Sri Lanka kept getting postponed. With the constant postponements, I also sort of lost my touch on the knowledge areas and I had to completely study from scratch. But I am glad to fulfil my objective at least towards the latter part of the year.

I wish to thank a few people who made this possible for me. First I would like to thank Madu Fernando, who was my trainer in the accredited educational program, Aruna Kooragamage and the PMI Colombo chapter team for organizing the exam in Colombo. And Kevin, thanks for pushing me. Last, but not least my family, specially my wife who kept pushing me to study and taking all responsibilities of the baby and freeing me to study. Thank you love!

del.icio.us tags: PMP, PMI, Project Management, Exams

CBNSat is back!

2006-11-27T16:29:00.001+05:30

Good news to all CBNSat subscribers. Seems they have go the go ahead to start transmissions today. So we can look forward to our favorite programs again.

The past few months without any decent entertainment has been painful to say the least. There was nothing much worth watching on TV.

Wishing CBNSat a roaring success, on the rebound!

Technorati tags: Entertainment, CBNSat, TV, Sri Lanka

Had a peaceful Sunday, after all

2006-11-27T12:55:00.001+05:30

It was nice to be home on a Sunday without having to worry about any work. I did have a lot of work piled up for this week (which I am tackling right now), I made a decision to not to worry about them, as I needed to give myself a break and to spend some time with family.

I have been spending time with my family but during the last week, I was pretty much drained out by the time I went home. Which left me falling asleep and hardly spending anytime with the baby. So I needed to properly spend time with them, by being there with the body, mind and soul. Not just physically. My wife was also getting annoyed with me for not spending any quality time with them (her and the baby).

So I spent the Sunday, just playing around with the baby. Meddling with my computer as it had crashed the day before and looking for a car to buy. I guess I managed to spend time on all activities, but this time, I managed to spend the time on it without my mind bothering about something else. I think finishing the PMP exam was one heck of a relief!

Technorati tags: a day in my life, personal, family

Live Writer Update for Blogger beta

2006-11-25T16:15:00.001+05:30

I have been having this problem with inability to post to blogger blog, from the date I migrated my blogger account to the blogger beta. I knew that it had something to do with my migration but somehow missed out on looking for a Live Writer upgrade. When I faced this proglem again, only did I remember to look for a Writer update, and I found it. Seems it has been available for sometime. So if you too are having a problem with the blogger beta and Live Writer beta (notice that both are BETA's), donwload the updated Writer version from here: http://windowslivewriter.spaces.live.com/

Happy blogging with Blogger beta and Writer beta.

Technorati tags: Blogger beta, Live Writer Beta

PMP Exam

2006-11-25T15:58:00.000+05:30

Today was my D-day. Had the PMP examination. This was a four hour marathon!

I am not going to disclose anything about the exam. I did sign on a paper that said that I am not going to disclose the questions to outside parties. But what I can say is that it was a very subjective exam. Meaning they had asked about what should be done in different situations. I felt that those answers could be very subjective as what each person would do will depend on a lot of environmental factors, organizational culture and the personal preferences and characteristics.

But what I found good about the exam was that it did not hinder me because I did not know the inputs, tools & techniques and the outputs by heart. I did read all of it, but could not remember all of them. I am not good at memorizing things. But where ever it made logical reasoning possible, i remembered the process. The exam was not that heavily dependant on these. They had asked for some of those, but i managed to answer them using logical reasoning and logical elimination.

Well, all of this would hold true if I do get pass the exam. As I said, since it was a very subjective set of questions, I guess it will depend on closely my thinking and PMI's thinking aligns. Let's wait and see.

Seagull Softwares is a scam

2006-10-27T22:53:00.000+05:30

Seagull Softwares was a company that was promoting a work at home data entry job system in Sri Lanka. They charged a registration fee upfront which was 1.5 times the monthly pay, which meant you become profitable only after you complete two months with them.

But apparently the work was pretty easy. You could buy work slots and for a computer savvy persona slot was only about 10 minutes of work per day. So this would have become a method of easy money in most people's eyes.

It also offered a convenience like no other earning opportunity. It was flexible and it required not special training. Also, it allowed a lot of those who were unable to work an opportunity to earn. Specially given the fact that part-time work is virtually non-existent in Sri Lanka.
So they had a great demand. I heard that people stood in queues to register themselves in this scheme. There had been people who had bought hundreds of slots and was employing others to do the work.

Guess what, about a three days ago the Police has busted the place. The scammers have jumped the country. Apparently it was a racket which was run by a couple of Indians. The web site is registered under the name of Raj Sekr in Chennai. They have not made payments to people for the last month or so for the work performed. And there and been a lot of people who have registered but who had not completed one months work to become eligible to pay.
Somehow another smart fellow has managed to scam a lot of people and vanish with their money.

Who said there is free lunch? Or rather easy lunch...

Affno Strikes GOLD (twice) at BCS Awards

2006-10-25T18:27:00.000+05:30

Last weekend was a great weekend for Affno as we won 2 Gold awards (for the two entries in two categories we participated in), won the Overall Silver Award, across all 13 categories and won a special award from the Institute of Chartered Accountants.

For this years National Best Quality Software awards, Affno submitted entries for 2 categories. We made an entry into the e-government category with our Town Planning Services Management Solution (TPSMS) as well as the Financial Applications category with Retail Market Booster (RMB) - our online stock trading solution. Out of all 13 categories FA was the most keenly contested category as it had the highest number of entries (11).

After the initial category presentations both our products were called for a second presentation, this time for the overall awards.

TPSMS won the e-government category. RMB won the FA category beating other solutions like online banking solutions. I think it was a well deserved award as RMB has already proven itself in the Sri Lankan market, with 6 of the top stock brokers going online with it! RMB also bagged the overall Silver award as well the Institute of Chartered Accountants award for the best Financial Application.

This makes Affno the most successful products company in Sri Lanka. There was no other company winning two categories and four awards in total. Great show Affno team!

As for my part I am very happy to be a part of this great team and for doing my bit in getting the awards for Affno, because I was a presenter for both presentations for RMB. But I missed the party last Sunday night as I my wifee was not feeling well and instead of going to the party I decided to stay at home with her. But hey, I was there when I was needed most, for both of them, for Affno and for my wife!

Registering for PMP exam

2006-10-07T00:29:00.000+05:30

Finally the PMP (Project Management Exam) is going to be held in Colombo. The date has been fixed for 20th of November. To be able to sit for the exam you have to complete the registration by the 20th of October.

Filling up the registration form for the PMP exam is a project by itself. Since I posses an accredited educational qualification I have to show 4500 hours of project management work experience. This gets more complicated when you have to show a breakdown of time spent on each of the process groups; initiating, planning, executing, monitoring & control and closing.

My life was made a bit easier by the fact that the application form is available online and it can be filled and saved to continue later. Also, as you go along filling it, the application itself tells you how much more you need to cover in order to become eligible. This is the most interactive exam application form that I have filled. I have to admit, this is IT used in a practical manner.

I realized that I needed to run through my projects as I needed to first workout the time I have spent on each of the projects that I have managed earlier as well as to gather the time I have spent on each of the tasks so that I can work out the tie spent on each of the process group. Life was made simpler again by a spread sheet that was forwarded in the PMP study group email. This spreadsheet calculates the contact hours when you put in the dates. Good for me!

So now I have raked my brains and have come up with the projects that I have managed along with the time lines. A lot of my former colleagues helped me to find the dates lines of older projects. And having the old emails archived helped to a great deal too. The spreadsheet tells me that i have covered my 4500 contact hours. So now I am off to the online application form to put it all across to PMI.

Does pregnancy make a woman less capable?

2006-09-30T22:48:00.000+05:30

I am prompted to write this due to a recent experience of a lady.

This particular lady was working for a very progressive (at least on the outset) company successfully managing a division of about 50 people. She was instrumental in setting up this division and she has trained the workforce single handedly to achieve very successful service levels. Her job was particularly made tough by the fact that Sri Lanka does not produce qualified people in this area. So it is essential to recruit and train the correct people for this job. And this particular division earned respect in general from within the company as well as from their customers for providing an efficient and courteous service.

Then this company expanded. Naturally this division was also expanded and diversified. She had participated on all the activities related to the expansion. She met the potential clients and had performed some activities beyond her scope such as training potential client organizations on behalf of her company. She identified her best staff to man the new operations and trained them further. She did everything that was expected out of her division to tackle this new business opportunity.

On the day before the launch of this new business, she was told, over the phone mind you, that the higher management of the company has decided to put another guy in charge of this operation because they felt she would not be able to handle it due to the fact that she was PREGNANT! And the person appointed was someone who had no clue about the operation, but because he was a guy, they thought he would be able to put in more time!

It is true that being pregnant she will not be able to spend her every working hour to the company. But they did not seem to have an issue with that when they got her involved in setting up the new operation. But after her doing the hard work, if they have a concern with her going on maternity, they should have the decency to discuss it openly with her, explain their concerns and let her be heard. But what they have done is unprofessional and unethical. Letting her find out from others that she will be replaced and after realizing that the cat has been let out, just confirming it over the phone, without giving her the due respect of telling it to her face to face!

What beats me is does it mean that being pregnant makes a woman less capable? They knew very well that she was pregnant when they requested her to help out with the ground work. They knew the time frames when she will be going on maternity leave. But still they never had any issue with her pregnancy then. But despite her doing all of that they had no decency to tell her properly that someone else will be appointed, probably because they know that their case was not very strong. So they get away by telling her over the phone!

It's pretty funny to me. Seems these guys have missed out the point. They are here because at some point their mothers decided to give birth to them. Obviously for a woman being a mother is more important than anything else. But holding that fact against her is a violation of her human rights. They are lucky that it is Sri Lankan lady and she does not want to take them to courts over the matter. But I believe that she has a pretty strong case. At least I think it is essential to bring such practices out to the open. Such companies should be avoided by the citizens, for their unfair and unethical treatment of mothers!

Contracting Vs. Permanent Employment

2006-09-30T21:41:00.000+05:30

Came across this interesting post which was trying to compare the difference between permanent and contract positions. Where.Deers.&.Antelopes.Play It is a post that has started a very diverse discussion from different view points. What triggered me to write this post was because I was also once a contractor and I faced a few issues by virtue of being a contractor, especially in the case where I needed to raise some capitol from banks.

In Sri Lanka, no bank will ever lend you any money if you are a contractor. They seem to have taken the notion that permanent jobs are forever and contract jobs are temporary. I guess what they have not realized is the fact that no job is permanent, whether it is contract or permanent.

When I took up that particular post, I had no hesitations on taking up a contractual position as I had confidence on my self. I was confident of being able to get a renewal at the end of the term. I always believed in giving back my worth to the company that work. If I feel I am not doing my worth, I get worried before anyone else does.

So for me it was not much of a differentiator. What I was more interested in was the challenge and the environment. I was more concerned about delivering what was expected out of my, because one thing that I cannot bear, is being a failure in my own eyes.

But in general I think the environment also has to adopt to be more flexible towards contractors, specially in Sri Lanka. If the banking system shuts down contractors from basic needs such as getting a housing loan, car loan etc, then that is going to force some people to seek permanent jobs. This will create an undue demand for permanent jobs as well as makes it harder for companies to fill short term man power usages through contracting.

A lot of contract staff in Sri Lanka tend to work for foreign companies. This practice is adopted by these foreign companies to stay more flexible because of old labour laws that are in place, which makes it almost impossible for a company to fire an employee, unless that person commits some serious crime. So in order to not to get locked into carrying un-necessary luggage they prefer to get people on contract.

If the government wants to promote foreign investment, they will have to work on bringing in legitimacy to the contract workers, by amending laws that would ensure that they are treated in the same level as the permanent employees. If this is done, I think eventually Sri Lanka will also have a talented pool of contractors who will be able to quickly move in to a job and fulfil the requirements. This will also enable the companies to be more agile as they will have flexible access to talent; proven and exposed talent. People who are exposed to new technologies and more diverse situations, thus providing solutions that are proven and tested, avoiding the invention of the wheel over and over again.

Chinese @ Peach Valley

2006-09-23T08:18:00.000+05:30

Ended up going out for dinner last night. We had no plan to dine out, but when we ran in to Lasal, we figured the best way to kill some time was by doing dinner. I hope the lie he told his mom to skip the dinner invitation he had would not be traced back to us!

Tried Chinese at Peach Valley last night. Lushi has fallen in love with a menu we tried sometime back and we went to try that again. Then we moved on to IlGilato down Duplication Street to have an ice cream. There was is a Cafe Lavinia that is co-housed in the same building. Tried the Caramel Latte. It was pretty good. Thankfully last night was not one of Lasal's vegetarian days, so we were free to try out the meat and fish as well.

Peach Vally is pretty amazing. You find the place packed to almost capacity almost on all nights. I am sure one part is their food. And the other is the fact that have a bar inhouse. So it doubles up as a restaurant / bar.

After a pretty hard week the weekend is finally here. I look forward to chillout, relax and some quality time with my family. I haven't visited my mother in about two weeks so must go see her. Amma I hope you would understand why I was unable to visit you as I was buried in work.

As for this weekend Lushi wants to do some cleanups around the house. Let's see how things go. I just hope that I wont catch a cold after the cleaning, which sometimes happens to me when I get exposed to dust!

Blogging using Windows Live Writer (Beta)

2006-09-21T19:48:00.000+05:30

I am posting this entry using Windows Live Writer. So let's see how this turns out.

Out of the tools that were listed on live.com, this was one of the tools which I liked because I thought that it would enable me to post to multiple blogs. Seems it does, but strangely it did not allow me to setup a Live Spaces Blog! Talk about ironies!

And one more thing. I ran a spell check after writing this post and it caught blogging as a word that is mis-spelled. This in a blogging tool. That's funny!

30 Day Trial for Regular Exercise

2006-07-07T17:50:00.000+05:30

Steve Pavlina proposes a good technique for installing new habits. It is analogous to the shareware industry which allows you to try it before you buy it. Similarly, Pavlina suggests, when you want to adopt a new habit, without fretting about it and its impact of doing it forever, to make a commitment to adopt it for 30 days. And at the end of the 30 days, you can asses the benefits and decide whether you will continue with it or abandon it.

The mentality of starting something for 30 days is it will lessen the enormousness of the task. When we want to try something new, we usually get scared on the idea of doing it forever. But if we set our mind to do it only for 30 days, this initial resistance will be lesser as our mind will think of it as a temporary habit and will have less resistance for the first 30 days. But by the end of the 30 days, it should have got installed as a new habit.

I was thinking of areas that I can personally apply this principle in my life. One area that I really need to develop a habit is in regular exercise. Hence I decided to adopt this habit building method for exercising.

I have started exercising several times in the past but for some reason or the other, everytime I gave up after sometime. The last reason being my exercise machine broke down!

But this time I am going to start an exercise regime that is not dependent on any machine. And I will make it public as well. I will update on this blog everyday about my progress. This way I am adopting two methods of installing a new habit. the 30 day trial method and the public credibility. I will at least exercise to keep my credibility in public.

Hopefully, after 30 days, this would have become a habit!

Having a good day, everyday

2006-07-06T17:12:00.000+05:30

This is a concept that is very valid. We are conditioned to think in terms of accomplishments and we spend a lot of our time, locked in tasks that we absolutely are not enjoying. We do these tasks targeting a goal and we forget to live each day in the process.

I wrote on this topic a few weeks earlier as well, but at that point I was concentrating on finding enjoyment in everyday tasks. But another thought hit me. What if we populate our days with things that we enjoy doing? What if we do things that we like doing and set our goals in such a way, that they are achievable by doing tasks that we enjoy doing. Doing that will help us come up with goals that are more congruent with the tasks that we enjoy, and the goals itself will be more congruent with our inner self.

There are a few basic things that you need to set in order to have a good day everyday. If you are stuck in a job that you hate, or hate your boss or your co-workers, I don't think you will be successful in having a good day. If that is the case, then may be you should look for a change. I know this personally because for a while I was in a job that I absolutely hated. It was such a relief to change that job and I found an immediate increase in my happiness levels and effectiveness. So find a job that would mean something for you. According to Stephan Covey a person looks to fulfill 4 aspects through their work, body/mind/mental/spiritual. Look for a job that fulfils all four aspects for you.

If you find this job, then that will solve a greater part of the equation for you. After finding this job, or converting your job to fulfill these aspects you need to look at ways to convert your tasks to enjoyable tasks. Some of the things like doing small tweaks to your environment, etc will help in some ways. You can find tips for these in Steve Pavlina's article here. Here Steve actually speaks of ways in which you can get more enjoyable tasks done in a day. I guess you can take that as a guide and come up with a list of things that you may like to include in your day. A few things that I enjoy having each day is the time that I spend with my family, specially my wife. I enjoy the time I spend driving to and from work with her. This is our private time that we talk about a lot of things.

In the mornings we talk of what we intend to do in the day and the evening ride is spent talking about how the day went off. This time is very important as it is the time that we spend on strengthening our relationship, finding out what's going on in each others work lives. This also frees up our evening for deeper level of communication!

In my view it is far more productive to enjoy the process rather than to focus on the end result. If you are going to spend the majority of your time locked in things that you don't enjoy for a few minutes of glory, you should really question the rationale behind your thinking. Your life is essentially the combination of all that time, not just a few moments of glory. So is it really worthwhile to sacrifice your life for a few moments of glory?

Live the moment

2006-06-05T13:01:00.000+05:30

I have been having this image on my desktop because the moment I read it, it touched a very deep vein. And I realized that if this moment is not enjoyed we are never going to be happy, ever!

I remember a piece of advice that my father gave me long time back while I was back in school. He told me, that I should live my life in a way such that anytime you stop and look back, you should not have any regrets for things you have done and things you have not done. I never really understood the true meaning of this until I saw the above.

I was browsing Steve Pavlina's blog after a long time today and here it was, a post where he talks about living the present moment, called The Power of Now. Well is it a synchrocity or not I don't know, but it sure is a sign that is telling me that I should concentrate more on enjoying the present moment.

The way I see it enjoying the present moment has a lot to do with being contend with what you have. Either you are happy with what you are and have or you learn to be happy. My religious teaching tells me to find happiness with what is already there. And I never realized that it did not mean that we should not be ambitious, but rather it tells us to enjoy the present moment and not to leave living your life until your ambitions are achieved.

Reading Steve's post opned my eyes a bit more. That is why I thought of sharing the news through this hoping it will help more people. When you hear the good news, you should share it!

Presentation Tips

2006-06-02T12:40:00.000+05:30

This is a very useful resource for anyone who will be making presentations as part of their work or education courses.

Whilst most of the tips can be attributed to common sense, it does give some points that you will not think of. It is a simple presentation in itself which is very easy to retain. I hate tips that run for pages. I think tips which are longer than a few short points defy the purpose. You are not reading the tips to remember a long list of tips. You are likely to pickup a few that will stick with you or appeal to you. In that sense this is a very good reading…

The Craig Web Experience: Presentation Tips

The power of conditioning

2006-04-19T11:07:00.000+05:30

I got this story on an email today. If this is true, it is the power of conditioning. Something that we need to break free from. It is interesting to read, and even more interesting to think long and hard about…

As I was passing the elephants, I suddenly stopped, confused by the fact
that these huge creatures were being held by only a small rope tied to their
front leg. No chains, no cages. It was obvious that the elephants could, at
anytime, break away from their bonds but for some reason, they did not.

I saw a trainer near by and asked why these beautiful, magnificent
animals just stood there and made no attempt to get away. "Well," he said, "when
they are very young and much smaller we use the same size rope to tie them and,
at that age, it's enough to hold them. As they grow up, they are conditioned to
believe they cannot break away. They believe the rope can still hold them, so
they never try to break free." I was amazed. These animals could at any time
break free from their bonds but because they believed they couldn't, they were
stuck right where they were.

"Like the elephants, how many of us go through life hanging onto a
belief that we cannot do something, simply because we failed at it once
before?"

Pausing in Pursuit

2006-04-12T14:37:00.000+06:00

This is a very interesting post on the Fast Company Blog.

Can you honestly answer this question? When was the last time you can remember you not thinking about your business? Work? Or whatever that we are pursuing?

I was personally thinking very hard to remember this moment. But honestly, I could not think of a moment that work, or projects that I am involved in, were not hovering over my mind. Even if I was involved in something else, things to be done, to be completed were on the back of my head and I was never really free from the tasks.

I am sure the companies that we work for will like it, but is this the life we really want. We are so engrossed on the results, we forget to enjoy the process or to take a proper break? I always had a policy of leaving work at office, but lately, the other projects that I am involved in were taking up my free time. SO I am left with no free time, and my sub-conscious mind always working!

Heck, I need to change this pattern, before this hunger totally consumes me! I have a very important phase in my life coming up and I want to be completely involved in that. So let me put the work and projects aside, and try to be fully involved in these activities. I want to take a break in my pursuits and enjoy the moment. As it is said, I wanna enjoy the ride, not just the destination. For all I know, I may never really 'arrive', as the destination keeps changing, as the world changes!

Ten Principles of Highly Ethical Business Leaders

2006-04-03T12:10:00.000+06:00

I found these ten principles in a mail that I received from a colleague. This was a publication by the Institute For Business, Technology & Ethics.

Treat all employees as unique, valuable individuals - Never treat anyone as though (s)he is dispensable, without value or just a number.
Support each employees freedom, growth and development - Never view anyone through stereo types and images, or as fixed and unchangeable.
Communicate to employees by name with respect - Never use or impose demeaning, trivializing, or derogatory names on others.
Model and encourage a balanced life of good work and rest - Do not adopt policies or make demands on employees that undermine balanced lives.
Honor and respect employee families - Never undervalue the significance of families and friends of employees.
Protect employees' life, safety and health - Never harm or jeopardize the physical well being of anyone.
Create a working environment free of sexual harassment - Do not allow communication or activity that is sexually inappropriate.
Be fair and just in financial matters - Never tolerate unfair wages, prices or financial practices.
Communicate honestly and truthfully - Never mischaracterize people, products, services or facts.
Cultivate a positive attitude towards others and thier accomplishments - Do not give in to envy or the temptation to take credit for the work of others.

I think these are very good practices for any business leader to follow. These practices will build trust and faith. The relationship between the leader and the employees will be one based on trust and this will naturally lead to better results. Because now that the leader will discover that his/her employees are motivated than ever.

As the saying goes, the relationship is worth more than any short-term result.

Workplace Conflict Resolution

2006-03-17T18:22:00.000+06:00

Workplace Conflict Resolution: People Management Tips: Managing Your Human Resources is a pretty good article on resolving conflicts at workplace. If you are a boss like, you are likely to faced at least one such situation where you would have had to step in to resolve conflicts between people in your team. I have had to do it and more recently my wife had to do it several times.

It lists three main points. While leaving you to go read the article for full details I will just list them here:
1. Do not avoid the conflict, hoping it will go away
2. Do not meet separately with people in conflict.
3. Do not believe, for even a moment, the only people who are affected by the conflict are the participants.

I think a very common mistake all of us do, when trying to resolve it is, we first meet the parties separately to get their side of the story. I think it deepens the conflict because, when you listen to them individually, it tends to polarize their stance more. It becomes self-fulfilling to them.

This article also lists steps you can take in resolving such conflicts.

Aspiring Mangers: Do it Your Way

2006-03-15T15:17:00.000+06:00

A very interesting article; Aspiring Mangers: Do it Your Way on the British Computer Society (BCS) web site re-confirms the basic notion of intention-manifestation.

In this article, which is based on a speech given by David Taylor, author of the Naked Leader series of management books, it is said: "work out where you want to go or who you want to be, and then do it. He stressed that it is not necessary to know how to get where you want to be; it's the 'what you want to be’ that is important. Concentrating on the what means the how falls into place. It's important to be persistent and active."

He has also said, "Don't spend all your time planning – take action. If something does not work in trying to reach your goal, try something else. Decide what you are going to do and close off every other possibility." This is the same what Steve Pavlina says in proposing Intention-Manifestation. He uses another term for this which he calls ready-fire-aim approach.

It is good to knoe that knowingly or unknowingly, there are more than one proponent for this model.

Accumulating Knowledge

2006-02-16T16:49:00.000+06:00

I have always been a great fan of knowledge. Being a life-long student fascinates me! I have the knack for learning things, figuring things out and also to put two and two together. I have always wanted to know things; be it about the latest developments, news or politics. I just wanted to know. My curiosity always took the best of me. But I used to focus my attention on one subject for a while and once I figure it out, I tend to lose my interest or focus my attention on a new topic or a subject.

My introduction to the internet was a blessing. I have learned more on the web than I have learned from all other mediums combined. The ability to find information on any subject under the sun, in an instant, on demand, is a facility I wish I had while I was in school. The net is perfect for my learning pattern to learn about short topics, in resolving problems, in finding information on topics, where the knowledge can be absorbed fast.

When it comes to learning entirely new subjects in more detail, where the time investment required is significant and knowledge area is quite new to me, I tend to prefer the more traditional medium of printed books. Books have been and still are a big fascination for me. I was used to getting books as presents when I did well in an exam. My father, an avid reader, instilled the habit of learning from and loving books in us from a very early stage. Up to this date, both I and my brother are keen readers and book lovers. I still make it a habit to buy at least a new book every month. And I also delve into my personal library, where there are books that I inherited from my father, which I have not read so far. Once I pick up the basic foundation of a new knowledge area from books, I supplement, upgrade and enhance this knowledge from the web.

Another thing that I noticed while in the process of writing this post is how my learning pattern has evolved over time. When I was in junior school, till I was about 17, I was never a fan of self-learning. I was more of an absorber of knowledge when I was being taught. I tend to digest what I was taught, and went with this first digestion. I turned to books or self learning only when the first digestion was unclear or forgotten.

Gradually, this pattern changed towards self learning when I moved on to higher studies. Specially after high school, while in university, I picked up the habit of self learning. I was more comfortable to learn from books. I completed two professional diplomas mostly by self study. And in one of those exams, The British Computer Society Diploma examinations, I became the Best Worldwide Candidate. And this exam was done completely by studying on my own. That too was mostly just reading the recommended texts. This achievement instilled great confidence in me on my ability to learn on my own. And this confidence still serves me well to this day. Even when I go for training programs now, I tend concentrate on the books rather than the trainer. I am more confident in reading the book and understanding it rather than learning from the trainer.

Also, keeping abreast with the political and environmental changes is a great quest. What we term as general knowledge is being aware of what’s going around us. Knowing the happenings around us help us to better respond to changes, opportunities and threats.

One last thing. I have seen many people who are great in accumulating knowledge but are very poor in practical application. Knowledge is the tools that equip us in day to day life, in solving problems and finding solutions. Knowledge that is not applied is useless. To my eternal quest is to apply the knowledge that I have accumulated. One great way of applying it is by sharing it with others. Knowledge sharing allows innovative ways of applying the knowledge, simply because, different people apply it differently. As I have said in my personal mission statement, I look forward to share my knowledge freely and willingly!

Deciding What to Do With Your Life

2006-02-07T17:01:00.000+06:00

There is a post with the above title in Steve Pavlina’s blog. This is a very interesting article. Also, this article re-iterates the points I have made based on Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Steve’s article is like a summary of these three habits: Be Proactive, Begin With the End In Mind, and First Things First.

Steve starts off by making the point that if we do not make a conscious decision on what we do with our lives, we will end up living a life that is handed over to us. This is exactly the same point that Covey makes to drive the importance of being proactive and to begin with the end in mind. Basically, Covey’s first two habits drive the points: I am the creator, and I write the script of my life.

In Steve’s post he says that as we grow in consciousness we will ask ourselves the question, “what the heck am I going to do with my life?”. In Covey’s literature, Covey encourages the reader to find the answer to this question by practicing the habit of beginning with the end in mind. If you have come to the stage of asking yourself this question, after reading Steve’s posts I suggest you pick up 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and read it thorough.

As a first step Steve suggests that we try to understand the reality as accurately as possible. This is very similar to Covey’s habit of being proactive. The idea that Steve presents is very similar to the idea presented by Covey on Principles, values and beliefs.

In his post Steve questions us whether we are passionate about our lives right now? This is a very important question that we must get right. I have seen too many people who living thier lives for a moment that is to come in the future. They have put away their passion, happiness and content to the future. They are sacrificing their present for an unseen future. It is essential that what ever that you are doing right now, you are passionate about it. Live each day and each moment passionately. Whatever your purpose in life, it has to make sense to your life, right NOW!

Then comes the question: does your purpose make sense in the long run. This is the very question Covey asks his readers at the start of begin with the end in mind chapter in 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. If you think at the end of your life and think, where you want to be, what you would want to achieve and the purpose of life that would make sense to you, then at the actual end of your life, you would not regret a living your life, the way you did. It is essential that we evaluate each action we take, each response, with the end in mind. By doing so, your actions will be congruent with your values and principles. So at the end, you will look back at your life and get a feeling of “I did my best!”, and leaves you at peace with yourself.

So if you see yourself coming to an end, then it is better for you to get out of it as early as possible and change directions. If your current job is not heading towards the future that you want to have, then change it now. AS Steve says, if you are happy even if your life end this moments, if you don’t have any regrets of things that you should have done, then you are on the right track. If not, work on eliminating those disappointments as early as possible.

The third question that Steve poses is whether our purpose makes sense at different levels of consciousness. This is the rational behind Coveys suggestion to base our center of principles. Because, as we develop our consciousness, we may change our beliefs and our values. But the correct principles are changeless. So, if our purpose is based on principles, then as our conscience grow, our core will remain unchanged, because they were based on the correct principles from the beginning. Because our values and beliefs were based on a changeless, solid foundation.

Finally Steve asks the question what happens to our purpose after our death? It is an interesting questions because very rarely that we think of existence of our purpose after our existence ceases. But if our purpose exceeds our physical existance, then we have given our purpose an immortal standing. If there are people who are willing to carry forward our purpose, after our death, and they are doing it through tier own convictions and free-will, then our purpose has exceeded human potential and has reached noble dimensions. If your legacy survives after your extinction, then your life has reached immortal dimensions.

Read this post. It is a very thought provoking post. And it will actually simulate your mind to seek the purpose of your life.

Personal Mission Satement - Ver 1.0

2006-02-06T00:27:00.000+06:00

Okey, I have come up with a personal mission statement. If I keep this till I prefect this, I may never publish it. So I thought about just going ahead and putting it on here. So if I do make changes, I will add a new version. Anyway, I think publishing it is like officially adopting this as my creed! So, I am making a commitment to it.

Personal Mission Statement of Sampath Dassanayake:

I will be a light, not a judge.
Succeed at home first - I will love my family unconditionally and will be available.
Excel at work - I will give 100% to the job at hand, without worrying about the next promotion or the job.
Be proactive - I will act before being acted upon. I will be my own creator.
I will create my own destinity (Begin with the end in mind)
I will organize my life around deepest priorities. (First things first)
I will seek a win/win solution at all times.
I will seek to understand and then be understood.
I will look for Synergy in life.
I will work on balanced renewal of physical, mental, spriritual and social dimentions of my life.
I will develop at least one onew proficiency a year.
I will not fear mistakes nor failures. But I shall never forget the lesson.
I will work towards becoming financially independent.
I will keep my expenses within my earnings. I shall not get into debt beyond my earning capacity.

I have also created another mission statement around the current roles that I play. Here it is:

Roles and Goals:

Individual - Myself is my greatest asset. I will seek balanced renewal of my spiritual, mental, physical, emotional and social dimentions of my life.
Husband - My wife is my companion and best friend. I will be honest and true to her and will love her unconditionally and will accept her for who she is.
Son - I will love and care for my parents to the best of my ability.
Brother -I will be there for him as a friend whenever he needs me.
Employee - I will give my best to the job at hand without worrying about the next job or promotion.
Entreprenuer - I will work towards achieving my entrepreneurial dreams.
Teacher - I wil share my knowledge freely and willingly.

Intention - Manifestation - Why I have been failing so far

2006-02-04T23:19:00.000+06:00

One of my posts have recieved a comment from Steve Pavlina!!! I am a great fan of Steve’s Blog and I have written a few posts based on Steve’s posts. And today, Steve has left a comment on one of my posts. I decided to write this post as a response to Steve’s comment. I actually started off writing this as a comment, but in doing so, I realized that it will be better posting it as a new post.

Yes, I understood that the model of Intention-Manifestation was focusing on the intention part alone. I read Steve’s posts on Intention-Manifestation and I understood his basis. I actually, understand it better than at the time that I wrote this post.

To be honest, I have not been successful so far on this model of goal achievement. I think the main reason behind it is, i still have not been able to come to terms with the fact that I can manifest something, just by intending it. I think my mind is standing on my way. It is not conditioned to think that this is possible. The years of reasoning and scripts handed over to me have taught me otherwise and I am trying very hard to breakaway from those scripts.

But I do not think that this model is false either. Because, this model is very close to the philosophy of Buddhism. According to the teachings of Buddha, it the Mind that is the supreme element that rules everything else. All buddhist teachings are geared towards achieving control over mind. Meditation is all about controlling the mind. The supreme bliss of Nibbana is achieved, when one gains full control over the mind. So this model is true. But years and years of conditioning has taught me things like “No guts, no glory” or “No pain, no gain”.

I have been reading since I wrote this last post and I have become a bit more convinced. But I still have a long way to go. I still have to master the art of Intending. I think that is where I am failing. I am still nt getting the intention pasrt quite right. So, natuarally, the manifestation is not happenning. Witha little bit of help from people like Steve, and from the reading that I have been dong lately I hope I can gain a little bit more control over my mind. And then, hopefully, I can also simplify my method of achieving goals!

Thanks Steve, for leaving a comment. The fact that you commented on a post of mine is enough o keep me motivated in continuing with this blog!

Personal Mission Statements

2006-01-27T10:45:00.000+06:00

In todays’ world, almost all the companies have a Mission and a Vision. According to management philosophy, a company should atleast have a Mission, if not a Vision and a Mission. According to its proponents, having a Mission will help the company to galvanize its people around its purpose. Celebrity management guru Jack Welch has dedicated a complete chapter of his best selling book Winning on creating missions and the process to use in developing the mission within an organization.

So, if a mission helps a company to reach its goals, then why not use the same concept in our personal lives. This is the principle advocated by personal effectiveness guru’s like Stephen Covey. This is the basic idea that he presents in one of his habits in 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
When we are considering creating a Personal Mission, then we have to ensure that this mission is congruent with our innermost values. More than the values, it is essential that the mission is aligned with the correct principles. Values are the map, principles are teh territory. we may end up with an invalid map. But we have to traverse the correct territory. So, a mission should evolve out of a Principle Center. As I have expalined in my earlier post, it is essential that we base our life on the correct principles. Covey dwelves more deeply into this topic in his article Center on Principles.

According to Frankl, as quoted by Covey, each of us detect our mission rather than invent it. This goes on to imply that we have to discover the mission out of our basic paradigms. We cannot totally become someone that we are not. It is man who is being questioned as to what the meaning of his life is; man cannot question life. Man can answer to life by being responsible for his own life! So we have to dwelve deep into our own lives and find out first, the innermost values. The next step is to align them with correct principles.

Creating a mission is dependant on the first habit of being proactive. As long as we do not accept the responsibility of our lives, we cannot write the script of life. Threfore, it is essential that we accet the responsibility for the life, before we proceed to write the script. Speaking of a computer metaphor, we will not write the program as long as we don’t accept the fact that we are the programmers.

Writing the Mission Statement:

As Covey writes, drafting a persons mission statement takes time and effort. It takes many revisions and treading unchartered territory. Because, essentially the personal mission becomes the criterion by which you evaluate all your actions. Also, the process may be as valuable as the product as well. Because, in the process, you discover yourself, maybe in a way that you never have before.

Discovering the personal mission requires one to use two skills that are associated with the right brain: imagination and conscience. It requires one to imagine the unchartered territory in the process of creating a personal mission. We have to imagine and visualize, what we want to achive out of our lives. What footprints do we want to leave in the hearts of those that we come to contact? While visualizing this future, we have to bring our conscience into play and evaluate it. We do not want to be become something that we dont believe in becoming, do we? By visualizing, we affirm or second the objective.
The effort put into visalization and affirmation will work as a form of programming our minds. When we visualize and affirm the destinity that we want to create, our mind gets accustomed to this detinity and it will influence our behaviour towards achieving that destinity. This is another reason why the proces is as important as the result. This is very similar to the priciples of intention-manifestation.

Another way of arriving at our mission is by identifying the roles that we play in life and then identify the accomplishments that you want to achive in each role, while maintaining a healthy balance between the roles. In todays’ context we have seen people succeeding in one area of life while failing in others. Good exampls are those who succeed in career sometimes fail as a spouse / parent. Therefore, it is essential that we identify this balanced achivements in each of the roles.

After reading this chapter in 7 Habits of Highly Effective People I have made an attempt at creating a personal mission statement for myself. It’s been a few weeks now, and I have still not arrived at a mission, that I am willing to adopt as my constitution. On a personal note, I have found the approach of identifying the roles more adaptable. Maybe this is because, my visualization and affirmation skills are not developed. When I tried visualizing the overall mission without getting into roles, I always visualized, parts. And I failed to visualize the complete whole. That made me think in terms of roles.

I will put up my personal mission statement once I am more comfortable with my creation. And in the mean time, if you are interested check out these great resources.
http://www.franklincovey.com/missionbuilder/index.html
Creating a personal Mission Statement
And if you have any comments, please leave them here. I would like to know your views.

Blogging @ WordPress

2006-01-24T16:09:00.000+06:00

I have started another blog at WordPress: Sampath's Mindspace. I was compelled to do this because Blogger has no feature to categorize posts. I wanted this feature of categorizing posts to enable me to organize my posts. Also, since of late I have been quite a bit of an effort to writing my posts, and I didn't like them dissapearing into archives fast, with very little ability of linking them together and organizing them.

I will keep on posting to this blog as well. I will mostly post the posts related to personal development to this blog. But I will maintain Sampath's Mindspace @ WordPress as my main blog. And if blogger decides to add these features in a future date, I will consider coming back to Blogger permenantly.

Begin with the End in Mind

2006-01-20T13:58:00.000+06:00

It has been sometime since I read this chapter. To be honest now I am in the 4th chapter of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I got so caught up with reading, and other tasks, I intentionally skipped writing this article.

The basic idea presented in this chapter is about going through each day with an idea of where we want to be ultimately. But, for most of us, this idea about the ultimate destination is not clear.

How many of us go through life with a clear goal? How many of us have a clear vision? Do we spend each day doing things that move us closer to these objectives, or are we really moving away from them? Are we really clear about what we want from our lives? Or are we living lives that are being scripted by our upbringing, society and environment?

Covey starts the chapter with a high impact visualization exercise. He wants the user to imagine going to a funeral. And when you walk in and see the coffin, it is you who is lying in the coffin. It is your own funeral that you have come to. And there are four speeches to be made, one by your family, one by a friend, one by a colleague, and the last speaker from community or church. The basic question asked is, what do you want them to say? What character do you want them to see in you? The second question is, are you living your life that way?

With this powerful understanding, Covey drives into us the impact of living each day with that end in mind. Have this as the frame of reference to all the activities that we do each day. So each day will be spent in a meaningful way towards achieving that vision. Well at least, it wonÂt violate that vision.

There is another important factor. IF we are to know where we want to go, and to plan the means to achieve it, we have to figure out where we are. So the first understanding is to understand where we are now. By knowing that, we can figure out the direction that we need to step into. To borrow Covey's analogy, you donÂt want to be busy climbing a ladder, just to discover after reaching the top that the ladder has been leaning against the wrong wall. This is the difference in efficiency (speed that you climb) and effectiveness (the wall the ladder is leaning against). Efficiency without effectiveness can be catastrophic. And Covey's argument is, we can only be truly effective, when we begin with the end in mind. As it says in Alice in Wonderland, if does'ntoesnÂt matter where you are going, then any road will do.
This is also the difference between leadership and management. Leadership is determining the right thing to do. Management is doing that thing right. We should think about effective leadership and efficient management.

For this principle of beginning with the end in mind to be practical, we have to understand that all things are created twice. That is, first it is created in the mind, then physically.

How many of us, go over and over a plan or a blueprint, before we actually build a house. Visualizing over and over again. But do we do the same with our lives? DonÂt you think, if the house we are going to build requires that level of attention to dedoesnt doesnÂt our lives deserve more? The funny part is, if we do not design our lives consciously, we will be living a life handed down to us by default. When we let life go on, without actually taking charge of it, we are living the life as designed and handed down to us, by others. So whether the first design was ours or not, what we are is the result of that first result!

To design our own life, we need to develop our self awareness, imagination and conscience. We need these human capabilities to design our lives, so the second creation will be the way we wanted it.

So, the golden question is, how do we write our own script in life? We have to use the human capabilities of self-awareness, imagination and conscience. Through self-awareness, we are aware of our own capabilities and limitations. Through imagination we have the ability to create in our minds, things that are yet to be realized, our potential. Through conscience we can develop the personal guidance needed in achieving our potential.

In the process of writing our own script, we will come face to face with scripts that are being handed down to us, which are limiting us and are ineffective. The realization of such limitations in itself will act as powerful paradigm shifts. When such ineffective scripts are discovered, we are able to respond by choosing write new scripts that are more congruent with our values and principles, which are more effective and is in harmony with our self.

So, what is the best way to make sure that we spend each passing day, minute, second with the end in mind? Covey suggests that we write a personal mission statement. You can call this your lifeÂs philosophy or your creed, but name not withstanding, it will be the guiding framework for you, like a constitution is the framework for a country. This mission statement will focus on what you want to be, your character and what you want to do and the values and principles upon which everything else will be evaluated.

Our mission statements should flow from the center of our circle of influence. This center is the collection of our most basic paradigms. Covey equals this to the lens through which we see the world. This center comprises of the most basic principles that we uphold and our values. It is through this center that we derive our sense of security, guidance, wisdom and power.

Covey describes 10 such centers; namely: spouse, family, money, work, possession, pleasure, friend and enemy. And he provides guidance on how we can identify our centers by describing how each center derives the sense of security, guidance, wisdom and power. And usually, from time to time we fluctuate from one center to another.

But, all of these centers have a flaw. We are allowing external factors to influence our sense of security, guidance, wisdom and power. The ideal center should be one that of principles. Then, our lives are built on a foundation that is solid and more permanent than the other centers.

And finally, Covey gives more guidance on writing the personal mission statement and using it throughout our lives. I hope to discuss that in another posting because I believe that in itself is worthy of its own posting.

NOTE: Reading 7 Habits of Highly Effective People has had a tremendous impact on how I see life and how I view my relationships. It has helped me identify my flaws and helped me to look at life in a different perspective. I see life in a more meaningful way now. As I read along and as I keep applying the underlying theory and practices into my life, I am sure that I will derive even deeper meaning out of life. I hope it will help you out as well.

Reactive Vs. Proactive Language.

2005-12-29T12:07:00.000+06:00

While reading the habit 1 of Stephan Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, one interesting fact that I noticed is that our language gives away our proactive and /or reactive nature in us. The language that we use naturally reflects whether we are acting proactively or reactively. So it is interesting to note the language that we use, be self-aware, to step aside from our own selves and to notice the language that we are using.

If we are being reactive, Covey suggests that we will be using language that usually absolves us from responsibility. Our language will suggest that we are the victim of the situation, environment or our conditioning, rather than the feeling of being in control.

We make so many generalized reactive statements that reflect the deep buried reactive nature and the conditioning that we have received over the years. These statements are so generalized, we tend to accept these as part of our nature or the way the world is. Consider statements like,
“There’s nothing I can do”
“They make me so mad”
“That’s the way I am”
“I don’t have the time”
“They do that to me”
“I have to do this”
“I can’t, that’s me”

Then there are reactive statements that that put us at the mercy of others, where we shun away from responsibility and blame everything on the other person or a particular factor.
“If only my wife was more understanding…”
“If only my boss was not a jerk…”
“If only my work didn’t take up all my time…”

Another way to identify the reactive language is to identify the have’s in our language. These have’s put away our happiness or our effectiveness to be based on the out come of some other incident, or an occurrence. This language puts the problem out there. It is in effect saying that we are being limited by something out there, something that we do not have at the moment. That is statements like:
“I’ll be relieved when I have my loans paid off”
“I’ll take a vacation when I reach my targets”
“If I had a degree”
“If I had a better job”
“I’ll start exercising after the workload eases”
“If only I had a more understanding wife”

Such language, as mentioned earlier absolves us from responsibility. The whole intention is to shift the responsibility away from us. But in the process, it radiates that we are not able to chose our response and that the situation or the other party or the environment is driving us. It emits the notion that we are helpless, victimized. We tend to blame factors external to us for all our problems and miseries. It puts the problem out in the circle of concern, away from the circle of influence. And we become to engross by this, this becomes internalized and we start to believe and act according to the victims’ mindset.

As the chapter on being proactive suggests, if you listen carefully for one full day, to your own language and to the language of those around you, we will better understand this.

So if this is the language of reactive mindset, then what is the language of proactive mind?
Covey suggests that proactive language, embraces responsibility and takes charge of the situation. Nothing is left to chance. If something is being done, it’s not because we are forced to it, but because we choose to do it. Remember, we are response-able, free to choose our response. So we are not victims, but we are the masters. And proactive language exuberates this.

Proactive language puts our actions within the circle of influence. It does not put the problem ‘out there’. It identifies the part of the problem that is ‘in here’. It will identify parts of the solution within direct control or indirect control areas. It will sound like this:
“Let’s look at what we can do”
“Let’s choose a different approach”
“I will do this”
“I am in control of my own feelings”
“I can do this”
“I choose”
“I will”

And proactive language will consist of the “be’s” instead of the “have’s”. It will focus on what we can be, or what we can do, rather than depending on the outcome of something else. Such as “I can be more loving”, “I will be more compassionate”, “I can be more understanding”, etc. When we focus on things within our control, things within our circle of influence, we are concentrating on being rather than having.

So, watch your language and identify your reactive and proactive moments. And then, you can work on converting the reactive moments to proactive moments through the advise given by Stephen covey in his best selling book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

Be Proactive

2005-12-28T12:43:00.000+06:00

I had finished reading this chapter more than 48 hours ago. But since I was on vacation, and I promised my wife that I’d stay away from computers during the vacation, I could not post this earlier.

The first habit of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Covey, is titled Be Proactive. It is the first habit, which will move us from dependent state to the independent state, and it is the first step of the private victories that we are to achieve.

The word proactive is perhaps one of the most widely used buzzwords today. We talk about proactive approach to anything and everything. So what does it mean? Before reading Covey's definition, for me proactive meant foreseeing the future and acting based on this foresight. Now for me, this required the ability to foresee the future, or at least a glimpse of the future and to take action to meet the needs of the future. While this may be somewhat correct interpretation of Pro-activity, Covey provides a more simpler and meaningful definition.

Proactive means we are responsible for our own lives, our own actions, and our own decisions. We have the ability to choose our response. We have the ability to choose our response, free from our emotions, based on our values. We have the ability to be our own creator.

This is somewhat in contrast to what we have been taught. There is a deterministic model, which teaches us that we are determined by what has happened to us; by the conditioning that we have received. Genetic Determinism says that we have inherited our behavior; Psychic Determinism says that our upbringing determines our behavior, and Environmental Determinism says that the environment around us is determining our behavior. All of these theories suggest that we are determined by these factors and that we are not the ones responsible for our own selves. This is lame! But there are a lot of emphasis placed on these factors that we have gone to the extent that we have started to define mankind as animals that respond to stimuli.

If we are blindly responding to stimuli, based on the conditioning that we have received, to say the least is very un-human. As humans, we posses few abilities that distinguish us from the rest of the animals. And these capabilities give us the inexcusable responsibility of selecting our response to the stimuli. Covey talks about four such human endowments: Self Awareness, Imagination, Conscience and Independent Will.

Self Awareness is our ability to think about our own thought process. We have the ability to step aside from ourselves and to look at our own self from out side. This is the ability that allows us to separate our minds from our feelings and gives us the ability to choose.

Imagination is our ability to create in our minds something beyond the future. We have to ability to visualize something that is not the present. Something that we WANT the future to be.

Conscience is our deep awareness of right and wrong. The deep buried principles in us that we have come to accept without question.

Independent Will is our ability to act, to choose the response, free from other influences.

As humans possessing these qualities we have the ability to choose our response to stimuli, without just reacting based on our conditioning. We have the ability to look at our own thought process and imagine the response that we want to select, validate that response from our conscience and choose the response, free from other influences such as emotions and feelings.

The proactive person will act based on values, not impulses or emotions. When we act based on our emotions we become reactive, allowing the emotions to guide us, not our values and principles. As the saying goes "No one can hurt you without your consent." As Covey puts it, it is not what happens to us that hurt, but our response. What matters most is not what happens to us, but how we respond.

As humans we should act, not be acted upon. But most of the time, we wait for the right circumstances to act. We wait for the right time to come, we wait for some external factor to change to act. But, if we are proactive, we will also create the circumstance rather than wait for it to happen.

If we do not act, we will be acted upon. If we do not act, we are inviting others to act upon us. By being reactive, we are allowing the others who stimulates us to act upon us. When we are responding to a stimuli, to trigger the response, others come to learn about the stimuli that they should give us.

Circle of Concern and Influence

There are things that concerns all of us. Out of all those things that we are concerned about, there are things that we can do something about and there are things that we cant do anything about. The things that we can influence are the Circle of Influence. If we are proactive, we will focus our energy on our Circle of Influence. We will work on things that we can have an effect on. But reactive persons will focus their energy on Circle of Concern out side their Circle of Influence. The end result is simple, their energy is not going to yield any results.

All problems and situations that we face into three categories.

Direct Control problems are problems that we have direct control over. These are problems that can be solved by working on ourselves, our behaviors, our habits. These directly fall under our circle of influence.

Indirect Control issues are concerning other peoples' behavior. We can influence them through our methods of influence. Still these fall under our circle of influence.

No Control issues are things that we can do nothing about. Things such as our past, situational realities, national economy etc. fall under this category. We have to accept these as such. We must learn to adopt to them and to live with them. Accepting this fact puts our response within the circle of influence.

No matter in what category the problem belongs to, our response should fall into our circle of influence. By choosing our response we are expanding our circle of influence. One way that we can expand our circle of influence is by working on our selves, on our being. On my being.

There is one important point made in this chapter. That is while we choose our response, we are accepting the result to that action. Though we can choose our response, we cannot choose the consequence of our action. The results to any action is governed by natural and universal law. The choice is in the circle of influence, but the results are in the circle of concern. When we pick one end of the stick, we pick up the other as well. I find this aligned with my beliefs. As Buddha has taught, all our actions carry with them consequences. His teachings are all about choosing actions which does not have bad consequences.

A few valuable lessons:

Past mistakes are also out in the circle of concern. You can't undo them or recall them. But accept them, and learn a lesson. Acknowledge a mistake as soon as it becomes evident. Correct it and learn the lesson.

If you make a promise, keep it. When you make a decision, stick to it.

Know that we are responsible - Response - able.

Act or be acted upon.

Basically, we are own creator!

Footnote:This is the chapter summary of Steven covey’s & Habits of Highly Effective People, Habit 1 – Be Proactive, as understood by me. I am placing this content in this blog following Covey’s advice on how to make the maximum out of reading the book; by reading each chapter with the intention of teaching someone it’s contents. I have instead, written the content here in the blog.

7 Habits of Highly Effective People

2005-12-21T13:46:00.000+06:00

Ayubowan!

I just started reading 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. This is my second time that I am reading this book. The first reading was about three years ago, at the time I was really not that bothered about developing effective strategies in my life; at a time when my life was centered around seeking fun & pleasure and was having plenty of it.

But this time around the situation has changed. Now I am actively interested in developing effective and efficient habits / strategies. And I just remembered that 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey was lying in my book shelf. So I dug it out. And this time around, without just reading it through, I will be putting into practice the "Application Suggestions". Also, this time around, I am determined to delve deeper into the content and ponder and reflect upon myself as I go along. This will help me in internalizing the habits into my life; well not as exactly as they are, but as they appeal and agree with my values. Hopefully, it will help me clarify my values further.

Covey suggests two paradigm shifts that will increase the benefit that the reader can reap from the book. The first one is to not to treat the book as a 'book', but to rather treat as a companion on the long run. That is as our understanding deepens, to come back to the book time and again to expand our knowledge, skill and desire. Putting it into perspective, in this second reading I am able to understand the concepts more deeply and broadly. I remember on the first reading there were things that I just skimmed through, without thinking about it ever again. But this time around, every sentence speaks directly to my mind, makes a more deeper sense. And I am glad that I came back to reading it.

The second paradigm shift that we are to focus on is to transform ourselves from the role of the reader to the role of the teacher. Covey suggests that we read the book with the purpose in mind of sharing what we learn within 48 hours of us reading it. This will give our mind a signal to comprehend the subject matter since the mind is looking forward to sharing the knowledge. And without it first understanding the material it knows it cannot attempt the second task.

So this is the approach that I am going to adopt in this second attempt. I will share through this blog, my understanding of each habit as I finish reading each chapter. Hopefully someone out there will benefit from that. AND I hope that I wont get sued for copyright infringement!

But before I start sharing my understanding of the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, I think it is appropriate to set the ground. I mean, Covey does not start talking about the habits straight away. Before we attempt to understand, adopt and internalize the 7 habits, we have to understand a few things about ethics, values, principles, paradigms etc.

Paradigms and Principles

Covey starts out by describing the Inside-Out approach. In his analysis he talks about how our perceptions affect the way we see the world. He compares our perceptions to the lens through which we see the world. He talks about two paradigms of personal development, the personality ethic and the character ethic. The character ethic concentrates on developing values such as integrity, humility, fidelity, courage, justice, patience, etc. This school of thought says that the foundation of personal success is through the development of these basic character ethics. But, such development takes time and effort.

But as the world progressed, we became obsessed with doing things faster and in instantaneous ways. So the time consuming character ethics took a back seat and more instant success formulas came popular. These quick fix methods concentrated on our personality, on what the others saw in us, on ways to project ourselves as required in the eyes of the society. Though not all these methods were bad, most of them lacked substance and only offered temporary solutions. Although, personality ethic tried to encompass the character ethic as part of its offering, it treated character as a small part of the total approach, not as the cornerstone. I mean, for how long can you pretend to be someone that you are not. It's only a matter of time till you get exposed and show the world the real you! Personality ethic is very beneficial, if you develop your character first! Your primary greatness flows out of developing values that are in agreement with the natural laws of the universe. In other words, by developing goodness in our character to the level that the world is naturally easy with you. Once you achieve this level of primary greatness, you can achieve the secondary greatness of fame, recognition and fortune via the techniques of personality ethic. When your character is based on values, your personality will shine easily.

According to Covey 7 Habits of Highly Effective People encompass many strategies of effectiveness. They are the basic habits that allow us to be effective - to do the right thing. Once we discover the right thing to do, we can look for ways of doing it right; ie. Efficiency.

Our values and ethics represent the way we see the world. They represent our paradigms. The models that we apply to the things around us, how we understand things, how we perceive and interpret the world. Covey compares paradigms to maps. This helps us to understand a basic difference between paradigms and reality. Map is not the territory. It is some sort of representation of the territory. So it is essential that we find the correct maps before we attempt to find our way using a map. If you have the wrong map, all other techniques will be of no use. Hence it is essential that we get the map right. All of us have many different maps in out heads. But there are two basic ones: maps on the way things are or realities and map on how things should be or values. All our interpretations of the world are decipher through these maps. And we go on to assume that the way we see the world is the way the world really is or should be! There is an excellent example that we can try out in the book that helps us realize this. Basically the lesson is, we see the world based on the conditioning that we have received over the years, as childhood experiences, as traditions, and training and education, etc. What we actually see, is what our mind is trained to see. And how we see the world affects our relationships with the world, how we treat and feel about the world. And our behavior is governed by it. I think this explains how different people tend to be more proactive, more entrepreneurial, more lazy, etc given the same opportunities.

We have to experience a paradigm shift inorder to break away from the traditions, from the way we were doing things, if we want to achieve a significant breakthrough. All significant breakthroughs have taken place after experiencing a paradigm shift. And making paradigm shifts to happen is not an easy task. Sometimes paradigm shifts are instantaneous. We come across a "Aha" experience. But sometimes, these shifts are slow and happen over time. If we really think hard about our past, on what we were, I am sure all of us will be able to understand at least one or two paradigm shifts that we have experienced over time or instantaneously. But when we want to make a quantum leap, we have to shift our basic paradigms. The paradigm shift that Covey attempts to make in us in 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is that there are natural principles that govern effectiveness, which are unchangeable and real. As the saying goes "It is impossible for us to break the law. We can only break ourselves against the law".

There is one more thing that we have to understand. Paradigms are not the reality. Just as maps are not the territory. They are just an attempt to describe the reality, just as maps attempt to describe the territory. Sometimes the territory would have changed since the last update of the map. This means that the map is not insync with the territory and needs updating. There are times when our values may be different from the principles. In such cases we need to deeply look at the world to understand the principles. If we take a deep look at social cycles, we see the same principles surface from time to time and giving birth to new interpretations. But the basic principle remains unaltered. 7 Habits of Highly Effective People contains examples of these.

Basically principles are fundamental guidelines for humans. They are the territory. They are not values. Values are maps. Values sometimes violate the basic principles. Principles are not practices; practices are specific actions, they are not universal. But principles are! The closer our paradigms and values are with the universal principles, the better off we are.

Covey says that the way we see the problem is the problem. When people see the success of a well principled person, they try to to emulate the success by adopting the same techniques. But because of the difference in the value systems, they do not necessarily work on the other person. We attempt to concentrate on quick fix without attempting to treat the underlying issues. We attempt to adopt "outside-in' remedies to our problems, when we actually need "inside-out" solutions. When the change required is from within us, we attempt to change the other. When the problem is within us, we see the problem as out there. When we need to find a solutions for ourselves, we try to give solution to others. We have to start with ourselves. The problem is not out there, it's within us. By changing ourselves we can find the solutions.

When we think that the problem is out there, we are telling ourselves, "there's nothing I can do about it. I have nothing to do about it. something out there needs to change." So we feel helpless, victimized. We allow others to give solutions to us. We feel that we don't have any control over the situations. We are controlled by the environment. But, even for a second we do not think "maybe the problem is not out there. maybe I can do something about it." If we can change this paradigm shift, we will attempt to address issues, by looking at what we can do about them. We will start to think, maybe I need to look at this in a different way. Maybe, I need to change. I personally have many experiences of this nature. Everytime I disagree with my wife, I start off thinking that I am right and that she is wrong. If I keep at it, I come to the absolute conclusion that I am right; there's no fault on my side. So I put my defense walls up and wait for her to come to my feet. When it doesn't happen I get irritated and I start to feel victimized. When we finally talk about it my wife comes up with her side of the things and then I start to see my mistakes, how I could have handled it differently, etc. This time around, I hope that I will be able to realize the mistakes on my own. That I will identify my contribution to the problem and correct it, rather than waiting for her to correct herself.

I plan to shift my paradigms to a more deeper, meaningful "inside-out" approach. I shall correct myself before I try to correct others.

Strange Conincidence

2005-12-14T10:53:00.000+06:00

Today, in the morning I was thinking about a friend that I have not spoken to for a long time: Manjula. The last time I saw him was at his wedding and after that he moved to Aussie in a hurry and since then I had not spoken or mailed him. Although once, I asked a mutual friend to send me his new email address, I never followed it up, when I did'nt get it. So, I decided to follow it up and get his mail and to write to him once I got to office.

Surpised was I to get am IDD call on my way to work. And I was even more surprised to hear that it was Manjula! Strange coincidence. It was really good to hear from him.

Is this some kind of proof that Intention - Manifistation works?

Spookys World

2005-12-12T11:46:00.000+06:00

Ayubowan!

Allow me to welcome my bro to the world of blogging. He's blogging at Spookeys World.

I have always considered him a more eloquent writer. So this should be interesting to watch how his blog is coming along. From the first two postings that he has done seems like he's on to some interesting topics!

Welcome to the world of blogging bro!

Inspiring thoughts

2005-12-09T10:59:00.000+06:00

I got these in a chain mail. But since I found it to be inspiring and valuable, I thought of posting them here.

Time Management - Value your time Â It is a diminishing resource
Vision - Nothing happens unless first a dream
Strategy - Those who are victorious plan effectively and change decisively. They are like a great river, that maintains its course, but adjusts its flow.
Innovation - If there is a better solution, find it.
Teamwork - Teamwork is the ability to work together towards a common vision. It is a fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results.
Momentum - A little push in the right direction can make a big difference.
Opportunity - When one door closes, another opens. Seize the opportunity while the path remains lit.
Possibilities - Our thoughts and imagination are the only real limits to our possibilities.
Growth - The rung of a ladder was never meant to rest upon, but only to hold your foot long enough to put the other foot higher.
Focus - Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you fail to focus on your goals.
Service - Success in business and service go hand in hand.
Attitude - If it is to be Â it is up to me.

And a few more quotes:

Your attitude determines your altitude
Whatever the mind of man caconceiveve and believe, it can achieve

Be inspired!

He who makes no mistakes makes nothing

2005-12-01T15:48:00.000+06:00

This is a proverb that should be taken seriously by all those who are scared to make decisions. For this has counters the biggest failure that most of us have, Failure and Mistakes. Fear of failure is the most common factor that limits human potential. Why do we fear failure? Because, the word failure in itself is synonymous with negativity.

But is failure so bad? I mean, if you don't fail, how will you learn. How will there ever be an advancement, if none of us have failed? Do we do the things right on the first attempt? Haven't we all learned lessons from the past failures and mistakes of the human kind. Isn't it because someone else or ourselves have failed or made the mistakes, that we know to avoid them now, without repeating them again and again.

We are bound to fail at least once in life. And because of the fear of failure, we do not attempt to go out and go for our dreams, we are making a bigger mistake than trying and failing. We are shutting down our own chances of success. Because of this fear, we are only going to give our dreams a half hearted chance at most. Because even when you make a go at it, with the fear of failure under your belly, you are already giving yourself only half the change. Your own mind is taking away the other half because of your fear. If your fear is bigger than your conviction then the net result is fear. So how can you expect your endeavors to succeed, when your net output is negative?

Is it interesting to delve deep and see why we fear failures and mistakes? Is the human race supposed to not to make any mistakes? I don't think so. The very reason why the human have become superior to other species is because we have the ability to bounce back from failures; to learn from mistakes. It is the lessons that were learnt from mistakes that helped the human race to advance. Thomas Edison failed 999 times before he could come up with the electric bulb. Had he given up at the first, second, tenth, hundredth or the five hundredth failure, what would have happened? Someone would have invented the electric bulb, but it wouldn't have been Edison!

I think the lesson from Edison is never small. It is one of the best lessons of perseverance and learning from mistakes. As Edison said, he did not fail 999 times, he just discovered 999 ways of it not working! That is the spirit that we should follow. If we fail doing what we were doing, then we should not give up, we should find out what went wrong and not make the same mistake again, the next time we try.

And it should be interesting to see why we fear failure. It's mainly because we fear the perception of others towards us, that we fear making mistakes. This world is full of specimist, that they expect everything to fail. They find it hard to believe that this world is full of possibilities. They fear the unknown and hence they prefer to stay in their cocoons and predict failure of everything, rather than the success of anything. It is their own fears that they try to impose on others. And everytime you embark on a new journey, you will come across atleast a few of them that will tell you exactly why you are doomed to fail. They will tell you plenty of examples of failures, but they will not remember any successes.

But, no matter what anyone says, I'd say, if you are convicted enough about your goal, go for it. If you believe in yourself, go for it. Even if you fail making a go for it is worthwhile. Simply put, you need to learn the lessons. You need to find out for yourself, the ditches and potholes. So you can avoid them the next time around. As the saying goes, forget the failure, but not the lesson. Don't forget, there's a lesson in everything that happens, if you look.

Also, there is another risk of never failing. Say, all that you try works out in the first attempt and if you never fail, you will become complacent and will lose your agility. You will go on not learning any lessons, and you get in to a bigger trap. And if you fail, then you would have lost your agility to get up and brush up, failure will hit you too hard.

So, never fear what others might say, never fear what the world will think. Dont fear mistakes or failure, they will only teach us a lesson. Remember - He who makes no mistakes makes nothing!

Intention-Manifestation

2005-12-01T11:17:00.000+06:00

Ayubowan!

There is a terrific article by Steve Pavlina on Cause-Effect vs. Intention-Manifestation. This is a super article because this is an explanation about an aspect that is overlooked by modern science or the success coaches of our time. And the Million Dollar Experiment is a uncontrolled experiment of this theory.

But if you delve deeper into the article it will make you realize, this is the best way of achieving our goals, by using the most powerful means that we have at our disposal - our mind!

When I come to think of this, this phenomena is nothing new. This is something that our forefathers knew and preached. But as the human race became materially advanced, they simply neglected this aspect and true to Darwinian theory that became almost extinct. Otherwise, most of the teachings of Lord Buddha deal with the power of mind and on becoming the master of the mind. But, since we are currently so far away from this level of consciousness we are at a loss to understand the Lord Buddha's teachings.

Coming back to the topic at hand, the first step in getting our mind to become our mind to do the work is arriving at our decision firmly. By this it means we cannot be having second guesses about our decision or be half hearted. We have to decide, and be committed to our decision. We we are only 100% committed to your decision only will our mind take it as a command. This is a point made by several authors including Napoleon Hill and Tony Robbins.

Napoleon Hill says when you decide on what you want to do and start moving in that direction to burn all the bridges that you cross. So you cannot retreat at the first sign of failure. Tony Robbins talks about the power of the decision: "Making a true decision means committing to achieving a result, and then cutting yourself off from any other possibility".

So once you have made the decision without doubt and second thoughts and when you are clear about it, your mind takes it as a command and goes into work. Napoleon Hill says that at this point the mind makes use of the infinite intelligence. And once your mind taps into the infinite intelligence, it will show you the ways and means of achieving your goal in ways that you never knew were possible. Some of these things would have been there all along, but you just failed to see them in the correct light. Some of the things would be totally new and you would now see them. Steve Pavlina calls them Synchronicities.

I think, theory aside this is something that is well worth a try. Why we wont believe in this is because we were never taught that it is possible to make things work this way. And we are naturally conditioned to be suspicious about the things that we don't know. But, to say the least, this is ancient wisdom that is being re-discovered. The oldest evidence of this aspect can be found in the teachings of Lord Buddha. Buddhist teachings are mainly towards to conquering of the mind. He who has conquered the mind conquers everything.

I, for one am going to set a goal and hand it over to the mind and the universe to manifest it. And, once I set my goals, I will record them in this blog, so I can later on follow it up and share the progress. At least it will serve as evidence for the skeptics.

Hit Counter Added

2005-11-30T14:59:00.000+06:00

I added a hit counter to my blog today. I wanted to get some idea about how many people were visiting my blog, so I did this as this was the easiest to do. I could not find any such stats with Blogger (you can't complain much when you get to blog for free with them.)

The counter I got was from freelogs.com and it was decent and had a template to match my blog template.

So lets see how many are actually visiting my blog, trying to figure how many are reading it will be another matter altogether.

Get A Life!

2005-11-23T16:59:00.000+06:00

I ran across an interesting article on Fortune calledGet A Life!. It is an interesting and provocative article which sheds some light on how a few selected companies are trying to strike a balance between their top employees work and their personal lives.

It is interesting because the current norm in thinking is that you have to work 10-15 hours a day in order to prove that you are a top producer in your company. This norm is a proponent of working hard over working smart. Even if you work smart and manage to finish your tasks you will find more work on you table the next day. This in turn turns people away from working smart.

For a while I have been trying a strike a balance between my personal life and my professional life. I value my personal time as much as I value my professional time. One of the main reasons that I work is to support a quality personal time with my loved ones. Though I have achieved that target, I often it is at the expense of my professional life, because I choose to let go of some star assignments because it will cost me my personal life.

But the article speaks about a few examples where a few companies have re-designed some jobs in order to allow the employees to have a better work-life balance. I liked one quote in the article which read "Companies need to be 24/7, not the employees."

And another fact we face in Sri Lanka is the emerging super economies of the region, India and China have a work ethic of 18 hour days. And us being the tiny neighbor, we are trying to compete by overdoing them. And laments comparing our hours with that of theirs are very common. Is our approach correct? One good example is in this article itself, where it compares the work ethics of three teams in India, China and Hungary. And it boils down to the approach that each team had taken towards the work.

So the question still remains. Are we willing to do whatever it takes reach the top? What is the price that we are willing to pay? I for one, don't want to be the next Bill Gates or Jack Welch. Instead of reaching the top and drawing a 7 figure salary and missing out on my kids growing up years or sharing my life with my wife, I would rather draw a salary that will sustain my family and share those moments. But that would mean that I may miss out on some opportunities out there. But if I let my life go by, there's way that I can pull it back. I do not want to wake up one day, all alone in a big house with a swimming pool. I'd rather wake up in a humble bed, with my wife next to me, to the shouting of my kids!

Chitika eMiniMalls

2005-11-23T13:37:00.000+06:00

After reading Steve Pavlina's blog and the post about the Million Dollar Experiment, I decided to follow some of the additional revenue generating schemes that Steve had mentioned. I followed Steve's referral link to Chitika eMiniMalls and signed up with them.

It took Chitika eMiniMalls around five days to process my application and yesterday I got a mail admitting me as a memeber. So now this blog will carry Chitika eMiniMalls ads. And hopefully this will monetize my blog bring me some revenue.

The only complication that I had with setting up Chitika eMiniMalls was that you have to define the key words beforehand. Unlike Google Adsense, it does not populate the ads by the content of the blog. So this means that the ads on Chitika eMiniMalls will always be based on the keywords that I defined earlier. I will try to do my best to tweak and tune the keywords as and when my blog entries take on different themes.

So if you are looking for a way to monetize your web site or your blog, go ahead and give Chitika eMiniMalls a try. And in doing so, please use these referral links to sign up. You wont lose anything and you will help me earn something as well.

Million Dollar Experiment

2005-11-16T15:06:00.000+06:00

Steve Pavlina has a very interesting blog post about using the intention-manifestation model to guide your mind to achieve a goal. In his Million Dollar Experiment, he is going to use this model to attract a million dollars to himself, by allowing himself to be guided by intuition that will be guided by his intention. And he has opened his experiment to the public, whereby others are also joining into his experiment.

This method is very similar to what Napoleon Hill is talking about in his famous book Think and Grow Rich. In his book, Hill talks about how we can guide our mind to achieve wealth. According to Hill, if you make your mind to believe that you want something bad enough, then your mind will intuitively guide you towards achieving your goals. But in order to get your mind to tap into your infinite knowledge and to intuitively give you guidance, you need to make your mind really believe, without doubt, your desire to achieve your goal. For that you need to constantly remind yourself about your goal, like every morning and before you go to sleep.

Hill's approach to me seems a little bit more focused than that of Pavlina's. I am not trying to dispute Pavlina here, I am a great fan of his writings and I learn a lot from them. But Pavlina's approach which is based on The Millionaire Course by Marc Allen, seems to be more generalized. Since I have not read Allen's book I am not going to comment on that, but I will try to compare Pavlina's thinking to that of Napoleon Hills.

In Pavlina's post he says: Presently there's nothing in my life that's already in motion that seems like it would generate $1 million or more except over the very long term. So I have no idea how this money is going to manifest, and I have no existing plan to create it. I'm just going to choose to believe that it will manifest, and I'll allow the intention to sink into my subconscious for a while and see what comes of it. But in Hills book, he tells us to find decide on a way that we intend to make the money, and to fix a time frwithinthin which we intend to do it, and then to sell that idea to our own mind. Once our own mind accepts the fact that this is a the way that I am going to make money and that I am serious about it, then the mind will tap into our infinite intelligence and intuitively guide us towards achieving our goals. This confirms my argument that Pavlina's method is more generalized than that of Hill's.

After I read Think and Grow Rich. I was very interested in his work and now I am in the middle of How to sell your way through life

For whatever is worth I am going to take part in Pavlina's public experiment: Million Dollar Experiment - Version 2.0. So I can see the practical implementation of intention-manifestation theory. As opposed to Pavlina, I am getting into it for the money, not for the experiments sake.

Winning by Jack Welch

2005-11-01T20:50:00.000+06:00

I finished reading Winning by Jack Welch today. (While I was waiting for my wife to come after work). I had been reading it for over a month now. It had far too many valuable advices to be grasped in one stretch of reading. Hence I read through the book not skipping a single part, even if some of them were not really immediately relevant to me.

Overall the book was very good. It covered the whole gamut of management, things that are usually not covered in a single book. Obviously, the man has seen it all and done it all. And most interestingly the book is filled with past experiences and real world examples and was a real insight on how the corporate operates and more importantly on how to create a winning culture in an organization.

More importantly the book enabled me look at myself and my performance from the point of view of the boss. A critical evaluation of my performance. A real eye opener that not only opened my eyes, but also gave tips and advice on winning on the job as well. Hopefully I will be able to make use of them. Also, I look forward to writing about some of the topics in the book.

Web Hosting, Domains, Ecommerce, Email and Marketing Tools from Yahoo! Small Business

2005-11-01T14:29:00.000+06:00

Looking for a domain name? Hurry. Yahoo is giving Domain names for just $2.99 /Year. Says it's a limited time offer. I for one, think it's a great deal. Go to Yahoo!

The downside of running your own company

2005-10-31T15:09:00.000+06:00

This is an interesting blog entry by one of the leading authorities on .NETCF development - Chris Tacke.

Here he is talking about how one client has played them down for $ 12,500. Wow! The client has taken thier goodwill for a ride. And he is trying to counter this by creating bad press for the client. Here is what he's got to say in his blog entry called The downside of running your own company

Are you looking for mobile software for a Pest Control or Pest Management business? Something that your field technicians can use while in the field to quickly update the status of traps, bait, etc.? How about an application that synchronizes back to an enterprise server so your pest management data can be stored globally for quick reporting as well as updating the technician's daily schedule and routing? Well I suggest you choose anything other than the ePM Solution from Eye-On Solutions of 4720 Montgomery Lane, Bethesda, Maryland (headquartered in Pittsburgh, PA). Josh Roberts, the President of Eye-On Solutions, LLC had the application developed and is selling it, yet paid nothing for it - essentially stealing it from OpenNETCF Consulting, a company who also developed the SDF.

Choose any of their competitors you'd like. Start at the IPMRC for general information or purchase from Insight Direct, PestPAC or anyone else in Pest Control Magazine. I just ask that you do not purchase any product or service from Eye-On Solutions. Thank you.

I posted that snippet here because this is a very real danger that independent software contractors face. We take up to do projects for clients and along the way, you assume that you have a trusted relationship going on, so you release all the source code to the client, hoping they will accept it and release the payments, and they make a run with your work!

I guess the only way to avoid such situations is to work through 3rd party intemediataries and by placing the contract amount in an escrow. This way you are assured of the money if you finish the job properly. The downsize is probably you will have to foot the escrow charges. But I guess that is the cost of doing business.

I have worked through several escrows. But after a while and you build up the trust you can work directly with the client. But even then, I prefer to work on a weekly or bi-weekly schedule, where I release work done in iterations and get paid for that, minimizing the risk of not getting paid at the end.

Good Luck Chris. I hope that you manage to get your money!

Exiting or Closing a .NETCF application

2005-10-31T14:54:00.000+06:00

For the better part of today I was trying to get the Form.Close() event of my applications' main form to get fired. But no matter what it seemed to not to get fired. And in the process of trying to figure out why it was not so, I found out a thing or two as well.

1. You should not use the Application.Exit() method to close the application. This makes the app to terminate the execution and return control to the system. ow you may say, that it is what you needed to do. But the bad part is this will not trigger the Close() or Closing() methods and hence the clean-up code is not performed. Also, if you have manually put any procs to execute in either of these events then they will not get executed.

So I changed from Application.Exit() this.Close(). But, still my Closing() event was not getting fired. So I delved further and discovered this. In .NETCF apps, the MinimizeBox property of the form is set to True by default. This is done to enhance the app performances. So this way, when the user clicks on the X button on the Top, the form is minimized. And hence, is the form is called again, it is being called from the memory; improving application performance. This is good in mos cases where you want the application to remain in the memory once it is loaded. But in cases where you want the application to quit, when closed, this is not good behavior. So what you have to do is to set the MinimizeBox property to False. Then the X on top righthand corner of the form will change into a OK. And clicking OK will actually quit the application.

Here is my code sample asking the user to confirm exiting application etc.

if (MessageBox.Show("Do you want to Exit the application?", "Confirm", MessageBoxButtons.YesNo, MessageBoxIcon.Question, MessageBoxDefaultButton.Button2) == DialogResult.Yes)
{
//Do whatever needs to be done.
this.Close();
}
else
e.Cancel = true; //This prevents the form from being closed.

Well, hope this helps someone out there.

Codezone

2005-10-18T09:28:00.000+06:00

Found a cool new site on a blue Monday morning: codezone. Hope this will keep me busy. Seems a cool site. I hope it will keep me uptodate with the latest in MS world. I need to get my hands dirty with some coding today.

Tech.ED 2005 Sri Lanka

2005-10-14T15:42:00.000+06:00

Ayubowan!

Learn.. Solve.. Grow.. was the theme.

Today was the end of the first ever Tech.Ed in Sri Lanka. Overall the sessions were good. The speakers were very good and delivered the stuff pretty well. I suppose everyone would have enjoyed the sessions and would have learned at least one thing new.

I for one, found a almost all of the sessions that I attended pretty interesting and informative. I managed to gather the an overall picture of the capabilities of the .NET 2.0, specially new enhancements and capabilities towards developing for mobile devices. I picked up pointers on where I need to concentrate.

But to be honest, I found that I was aware of most of the things they were telling. So I guess I was not so bad in terms of keeping up. Importantly, I know what I can do new with VS.NET 2005 and I am looking forward to that.

Learn I did. Solve I look forward to. Grow, will come along naturally!

Get well soon -Wifee!

2005-10-08T13:10:00.000+06:00

My sweetie went through a laparoscopy operation on Thursday to remove her Gallbladder because there were stones in it. It is so sad to see her with those four cuts on the tummy and in pain with limited mobility. It breaks my heart to seee her in any kind of pain. I hope you'd get well soon and come back to normalcy, SOON! I wish you a speedy recovery.

Love ya!

Happy Birthday Google!

2005-09-28T10:28:00.000+06:00

Google is 7 years old!

I have been a big fan of Google and almost all its services. I simply love the simplicity and comprehensiveness in thier offerings. I tend to turn to Google to find information about anything and everything. And I use Google almost every day.

I love the way they offer simple products, take the search, or Gmail or Picasa or this: Blogger. THe interfaces are simple and Intuitive. Navigation is a breeze. Of course, for arguments sake, these are kinds of interfaces that are suitable for a certain types of applications. I would not want my programming IDE to be this simple, for I will get annoyed with its limitations very fast in that case. But having said that, Google has the best interfaces for what it does.

I have been reading quite a bit on Google's activities lately and seems they are on thier way to re-define how we do computing. I for one, is looking ofrward to that!

To go or not to go

2005-09-21T10:26:00.000+06:00

I have been toying with the idea of becoming an Independent Software Consultant (ISC), which is a glorified name for a freelance programmer, for sometime now. There was a time that I was quite confident that I could make what ever I make in my day job very easily as an ISC in a couple of weeks, provided I find work.

The biggest worry was not having a steady income, although the potential for earnings was higher. The only way to ensure a steady income was to work a dedicated amount of time for a client every week.

For this, I did find one client in the US, but his timings were not very practical for me. Working for him required me to stay up for most part of the night for six days a week. And that was taking away the time that I had to spend with my wife. So after a couple of weeks, I said no to that deal.

Then I had very good deal going, where I was maintaining a software for another client. This was a web-based application and the client, who was a software development company themselves, had me maintaining a system they had developed for a client. It was developed using ASP.NET, a skill which they did not posses, and they had got it developed by a freelance programmer who was not available anymore. They used to send me the bug lists, which I received in the morning, and I use d work on them during the day and upload the deliverables to their server by my evening, which was their morning. And I billed them by the hour.

This was a deal that worked very well for me for a few months, until my contact point there suddenly decided to leave that company. He introduced me to another contact person, but he was rather non-responsive and I was left in the dark. I did get paid for my work though. But right now, I am without a proper long term working arrangement, so my recurring ISC work has come to a halt.

But on the bright side, I have two freelance projects that I have taken up which needs to be finished. So I might as well use this time to complete these and get them out of the way and then start looking for more projects.

And who knows, I may get landed with a few long duration projects and I might actually become a full time ISC, and say good bye to my low paying day job!

The Demise of Jangama portal

2005-09-19T17:03:00.000+06:00

The Jangama portal site has had a natural death. When you are not updating the content of a site at least on a daily basis, it is natural for that site to see a natural demise.

I was looking for a free hosting service which was capable of hosting a DotNetNuke site. But, there were virtually none. And, I was reluctant in spending time in creating a portal as a sub domain in some other web site.

Losing an unborn child

2005-08-28T18:49:00.000+06:00

The saddest that can happen to a person is losing of a loved one. But when this loved one is your unborn child, you have a feeling of complete and utter loss, because it takes away a heap of hopes you had pinned on the future.

Losing a child is the most sorrowful event a parent can face. Losing an unborn child is the most painful experience for parents to be. Though his existence has been only for a few months within his mothers’ womb, still the loss is the same. Medical science may say that his chances for survival was only 80% and that the other 20% has taken precedence in this instance, but that is no explanation to a weeping heart. That does not bring any consolation or mend the shattered dreams of sharing the life with him or all the plans we had for him. And that day, 19th of August will be one of the darkest days of our lives.

Though you did not exist in this world even for a day and that you had no identity in this world, for your mother and I, you will be our first child that we never had. Though you are not with us and we never got to see your face, you will be our first (un)born.

Until the day we meet again… good-bye my child.

Re-birth of Jangama portal

2005-08-04T15:56:00.000+06:00

After a lapse of some time I started on the Jangama portal today. I found a great new host and am in the process of setting up the site. Now I want to create the portal as a general portal site. My earlier aim was to create a portal for mobile users. But now I feel having it as a general portal would be much better rather than going in as a specialized forum.

I have updated the DNS entries and have informed the host to do the necessary configuration changes as well. So in the day or two www.jangama.com should point to my new portal. Hope I'd have people registering and contributing to the portal.

Money Value of Time

2005-08-01T18:44:00.000+06:00

Last week I made a decision. I decided to let go of a very lucrative part time job inorder to spend more time with my family, i.e. my wife.

My offer was to work online everyday from 9.00 PM to Midnight for a US based client. ANd the pay was very good compared to Sri Lankan salaries. But the tradeoff was it was the time of the day that I had for my wife.

I tried it for a couple of weeks. The pay was good, I could see a lot of money coming my way. But we hardly got any time together. Had no time to take her out, even to go shopping after work or to go out for dinner. I had to rush back home and log in by 9.00.

The result was I was always tensed up everytime I got caught to a traffic jam on the way home from work and my wife had to do all the things by her slef, so everywhere by her self. This was not something we were used to doing. We were used to doing things together. And we were missing each other even though we were in the same room.

So I quit the job. Now I may have lost my additional income stream. But I have got back something much more valuable. Time spent together with the person that I love most!

We're so exited!

2005-07-25T14:02:00.000+06:00

Today is a very very special day for both of us; me and my sweetie.

Why? Because we confirmed that my sweetie is pregnant. WOW!

When I went to collect the test results the lab technician said "Congrats! The test is positive. Your wife is pregnant!" And I couldn't stop grinning!

When I came back to the car, Lush kept on asking me What? But I couldn't tell anything, I was just grining. I had tears in my eyes. I finally told her "Your pregnant!"

Boy was that good news or what! She had tears in her eyes, and so did I. We were so happy!

SO now, my wify is officially pregnant! We are so exited and so happy, we dont know what to do next!

I love you sweetie. You are going to give me the best present ever! A Kid!

QuickMBA: Short Articles

2005-07-19T15:30:00.000+06:00

QuickMBA: Accounting, Business Law, Economics, Entrepreneurship, Finance, Management, Marketing, Operations, Statistics, Strategy
I don't think these articles will help an MBA at all. Cos these are very brief and just gives you an introduction or a summary to the topics discussed. But to be fair, I think they provide good entry points to many topics and acts as refreshers for those like me, who have studied for an MBA but is not using all that you have learned in your day to day life.

I enjoyed reading up the economic stuff. It's after a long time that I read any economy related stuff, after the MBA exam on economics! But what got me there was the article on Steven Covey's 7 habits of highly effective people.

Happy reading all you folks!

BrowserCaps and other Browser Testing/Detection Resources

2005-07-15T10:30:00.000+06:00

BrowserCaps and other Browser Testing/Detection Resources:

If, like me, you have been struggling with FireFox not rendering your ASP.NET pages the way you have designed them, and if they seem to be working perfectly in IE, then you may be scratching your head trying to figure out what the heck is wrong.

Well, I dunno if the problem is with .NET or FireFox, but it seems the problem is that .NET considers FireFox to be a downlevel browser. It could be because the signature of FIreFox is not identifiable by .NET, since FireFox was not around when .NET saw the light of the day.

But whatever the reasons are, the good news is, because of the flexibility of .NET, you can fix this from .NET. So you don't have to wait till FireFox fixes it, you can do it yourself. Well if you are wondering how to do it, then read Rob (@slingfive) Eberhardt's BrowserCaps and other Browser Testing/Detection Resources:. He tells you what you need to do.

Good luck.

Happy Anniversary Malli & Shiyara

2005-07-08T16:46:00.000+06:00

It's my brothers' 1st wedding anniversary! It's been a year and within that year he has already become a father of twin girls! Life is moving pretty fast!

Happy anniversary Bro!

Managing Scope Creep

2005-07-08T15:54:00.001+06:00

I am sure every project manager has faced this problem at least once. When a project is in progress, the clients discover new ways of doing things, discover better to have things, or they discover the things that they missed or forgot to mention.

I have been experiencing these kinds of scope creeps from my clients time to time. As the project reaches it's end, before they have to sign off they discover things they must have in order to go live, but forgot to mention in the outset. Obviously these are things that I did not anticipate or budgeted for.

I try to stick to the original project scope as much as possible. But at times in order to strengthen the relationship with the client and with the view of retaining him/her for the long term or just as a favour if he has been a good client, I accommodate a few, provided they are not major work.

But a more professional and realistic approach that I have adopted is to explain to them the gravity of these new requirements and to explain to them the that I have not estimated for these work. But I don't totally let them down. I do offer to tackle these tasks as a separate project.

Doing this gives me a slight advantage. Firstly, I am very clear about what needs to be done and can make a better assessment of the work required and hence can give the client an accurate estimate on time and cost. Because by that time I have already analyzed the problem and and devised a solution as well. Also, since the solution is already in my mind I can provide the solution pretty fast. Thirdly, I get a steady stream of projects. From the point of view of the client, they are also comfortable with working with me because I have already impressed them with my prior work!

From a marketing point of view also, I think my strategy is helpful because I am building long term relationships with my clients. As the saying goes it's more profitable to retain a client than to find a new one. The trick is client satisfaction without too much of a cost to you!

Working across time zones

2005-07-08T15:29:00.000+06:00

I am feeling quite good today. Cos I managed to finish one project on time and the client accepted my work without even a wink of the eye. It was a good project and he was a good client. I'd really love to work for you again Ramon.

And I had to chat up two other clients because we were having serious communication gaps. The gaps were created mainly due to the time zone differences. When I work they are not and when they do I am not. So I send them a mail asking for a clarification or explaining something I have done and I end up getting an answer the next day and my response goes to them the next day etc. So I decided to get things moving faster, so I had to stay up and chat them up.

They were productive sessions. Clarified and agreed upon almost all the things that were pending at hand. So today I did what I promised I'd do and sent them the stuff. Now tonight I have to chat to them again to see their response. Unless I don't get that done tonight, I'll only be able to catch them on Monday evening. Cant wait that long, cos my deadlines are nearing.

The only thing bad about client interactions that go late into the night is that does not digest well with my wifee! She hates it when I have to stay up to work cos she misses cuddling upto me! Well, that's something I'll have to find a way to balance. Can't disappoint her at any cost!

How to Become an Early Riser

2005-07-07T12:41:00.000+06:00

Getting up early has been a bit of a tricky issue for me and my wife. We always set the alarm for pretty early in the morning and usually end up continuing to sleep past the alarm.

And accidentally I came across this blog post on the webHow to Become an Early Riser. It's a pretty interesting article and by the looks of it has become very popular as well. The comments will vouch for that.

While you are on the subject, read Steve's follow-up article How to Become an Early Riser - Part II.

I am going to try and put in to practice what Steve says. And I am going to persist.

And check out Steve's blog while you are at it. Seems a pretty interesting guy!

Determining time zone a web site visitors time zone

2005-06-04T18:08:00.000+06:00

Recently I faced a challenge to write a server side script in .NET to determine a users' time zone. This was coming from a client in UK who was having a high traffic web site and he wanted an efficient way to determine the time zone of a user. The main condition was that it could not use any client side scripting and that it had to be very efficient.

After searching the web I realized that there were no free services that provided this kind of service. There were a few that did this for a fee.

But there were a few services that provided the visitors country based on the IP of the visitor. So I went ahead and proposed a solution where the country was discovered through one of these free services or a database and then to construct a database that contained time zones and countries.

So I used the free web service at http://www.hostip.info to determine the country and then used my database to discover the time zone. this solution worked perfectly.

But the client refused to accept it because it consumed a web service. He insisted that consuming the web service will eat up his band width and that it was not feasible for him. Then I was searching around and came across the GeoIP lookup database that is being used in the DotNetNuke portal. Since this was a free database, I then changed my implementation to use this.

And I used caching to improve the performance and this was accepted by my client. Thanks Official Project Base!

It's my sweeties' Birthday

2005-06-03T14:24:00.000+06:00

Birthday greetings to the cutest, most beautiful and sexiest woman on earth - My Wife!

Greetings from your everloving hubby!

Sent her flowers and gave her 6 cards. She loves cards! Well looking forward to gtting her a memorable present later today, cos I havent got it as yet!