Month: March 2010

The ‘Seek to understand’ story..

Suppose you’ve been having trouble with your eyes and you decide to go to an optometrist for help.

After briefly listening to your complaint, he takes off his glasses and hands them to you.

“Put these on,” he says.
“I’ve worn this pair of glasses for 10 years now and they’ve really helped me. I have an extra pair at home; you can wear these.”

So you put them on, but it only makes the problem worse
“This is terrible!” you exclaim. “I can’t see a thing!”

“Well, what’s wrong?” he asks.
“They work great for me. Try harder.”

“I am trying,” you insist. “Everything is a blur.”

“Well, what’s the matter with you? Think positively.”

“Okay. I positively can’t see a thing.”

“Boy, you are ungrateful!” he chides. “And after all I’ve done to help you!”

What are the chances you’d go back to that optometrist the next time you need help? Not very good, I would imagine.

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I guess we have all been guilty of this at some time! Loved the story..

To think, re-think and act..

How many times have we been caught doing something futile?

It’s a bit like this – Imagine a person who owned a car running on petrol/gas. Let’s also imagine he’s used to taking car of his car very well and cleans the exhaust pipe every single day so his car lets off no exhausts.

One day, he replaces his petroleum driven car with a diesel one.

Obviously, his exhaust pipe cleaning exercise will have no real impact, will it?

Often times though, he would possibly just continue with it because of the comfort it provides. Mentally, it re-assures him that his car is being taken care of (when it actually isn’t). It’s just that he’s too old now to change his ways..

We associate this people who age, but I feel it is when we are young that we are probably more guilty of doing this – guilty of choosing convenience over reality..

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The reason for this post is that I’ve been following a daily routine for a long while but I see today that, over the past 3 days, it has become redundant due to some changes and I’m still laboring under the old system without sensing purpose. The reason is that changing it would mean mental effort..

And that’s when I realized that most of what we do could just be absolutely redundant if we don’t ‘Think, re-think and act’

After all, what is a day without purpose?

Little productivity boosters – Texter, Mouse, Launchy and the like..(Predominantly Windows)


‘Sometimes when I consider what tremendous consequences come from little things, I am tempted to think, there are no little things at all.’

A few such things that came to my mind when considering laptop productivity are the following –

1) My Mckal mouse: For 3 years, I lived off an IBM mouse as I did not want to waste cash on buying a new one. Yes, the IBM mouse gave dozens of problems especially after the 1st 6 months but no, I did not feel spending cash on something as stupid as a mouse was worth it.. And boy – was that a mistake. The mouse has saved many many hours of time which could have been lost fiddling on a touch pad/ correcting the issues caused by a bad one. Here’s a pic of the mouse available for only 20 bucks @ Challenger @ Funan.

2) Texter: Texter is a brilliant little tool created by Lifehacker that saves tons of time especially for those who have emails streaming in by the 100s. This is a text replacement tool. A simple example is –

Most emails require a greeting like ‘Hope you are doing well.’ or ‘Thank you for your email! :)’

Texter enables you to configure keystrokes for these sentences. In my set up, I’ve got hyd for hope you are.., tyf for Thank you.., brg for Best Regards, Rohan etc..

3) Launchy: Another time-saver. Launchy helps open up any application. After a simple download and installation, launchy can be opened up with alt-enter and typing ‘word’ and pressing enter would open up microsoft word instead of going through the process of going to the start bar and searching etc.

Launchy can also open up favorited/book mark websites on your browser and can also be configured to open music files among others.

4) Ninite: Ninite brings them all together. Going through the ninite list itself would give you a list of some great free software.

4) X1 – For those who use outlook as their email client, there’s no better way to search and find email as fast as you type.

Other small windows utility that tend to add a lot of value in the background are –
Wizmouse
Taskbar Shuffle
Quickmonth calender

**For more advanced users, OneNote is a wonderful addition to your toolkit. And when combined with Dropbox, makes for a killer combination.

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There’s a LOT more when it comes to productivity boosters but I thought I’d start with a basic list first. I love looking out for new additions myself. A very good list is Lifehacker’s 46 apps we are thankful for.

Happy productivity boosting! And if you do have any interesting software/apps to recommend, please do leave it in the comments..

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And–which is more–you’ll be a Man, my son!