Why and How to Keep Important Things in Order
Let me tell you a story.
“He Sleeps in a Storm” from a sermon by Rabbi Albert Lewis, 1975, as read in “Have a Little Faith” (page 93) by Mitch Albom.
self-improvement
Why You Should Break The Routine, Sometimes
To Break the Routine or Not to Break the Routine?
I woke up feeling low-spirited today morning.
As my 7:10 am alarm rang, I extended my arm and fumbled for my phone on the floor, where it lays at night. I switched off the alarm. Then I pulled my arm inside my white duvet again and closed my eyes. My partner shut off his 7:20 am alarm, too.
While he pushed his phone under his crumbly pillow, we took a peek at each other, and then our eyes closed.
77 Deep Questions About Life [And My Answers]
Important Life Questions to Ask Yourself
I remember a quote that once said, ask the right questions. Over the years I have realized that questions are much more important than answers. Without asking the right queries we can never hope for the right knowledge.
But it took me a while to even understand what questions I should ask of myself. Some of those doubts were always there in the background, hovering, emphasizing that I didn’t understand life. I had a vague feeling that I was dismaying over things that didn’t matter while ignoring the universal realities that would pull me out of my little problem bubbles. But I wasn’t sure. And I never took out time to pin those deep questions about life, and, hence, could never answer them.
The process of questioning deepened when I started writing and reading full-time. As I had redesigned my life from a corporate cycle of drudgery, I was too eager to question everything and to be better at things. It was like I had found vigor again. The more life changing books I read, the more I understood, and the more life questions I had.
As Franz Kafka once said, “Anyone who cannot come to terms with his life while he is alive needs one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate… but with his other hand he can note down what he sees among the ruins.”
The effort continues.
I am putting down some thought-provoking questions that have hitherto found me here. I have followed a natural course and have clubbed thematic questions together.
I have answered all the questions to keep an account of my thoughts on the matter. As you will see, I have some answers, but some of the questions to life still dodge me. You can completely ignore my responses and find your own.
Along with the important questions about life and their answers, I am also putting down the books that have helped me understand the matter.
I plan to update these self reflection questions and answers year-on-year or whenever my understanding changes.
Till then, I present to you the questionnaire of life from my lens.
30 Practical Tips for Working From Home
Handy Working-From-Home Tips
Even though I have already written about how to work from home successfully, I’m putting another list of handy tips for working from home. In between then and now, I have gained three more years of work from home experience, and, hence, this piece.
Also, the first article on working from home productively was more about the importance of maintaining a routine and keystone habits. Having a great routine helps in running our lives irrespective of what we are doing, but there are innumerable small (keystone and other) things that we can do to be more efficient, have more fun, and not burn out while we are at home. This article is a collection of quick ideas that we can follow to cruise through a work-from-home life smoothly.
Now let me get straight into this list of practical work from home tips and tricks.
Trigger Warning: Humor ahead.
Travel Inspires Change and One Small Change Can Transform Our Life
Everything begins with a story
Let me recite a story from Charles Duhigg’s book The Power of Habits. This is a true story of a woman named Lisa(as per the records) who was the subject of a scientific study for understanding behavioral change and habits.
Please note: Though the story is the key to appreciate this article, I am summarizing the story for those readers who don’t want to read it. If you want to read the story, go to it here. Else continue reading the summary.
Deep Quotes About Life I Couldn’t Help Sharing
Like many others, I read about the lives and work of many great artists, writers, physicists, musicians, innovators, and thinkers. But rather than quoting them, I generally prefer to share my interpretation of their ideas. I feel I haven’t assimilated their words well if I share them plain rather than kneading them with my thoughts.
Benjamin Franklin, Elon Musk, Virginia Woolf, Ruskin Bond, Rainer Maria Rilke, Vincent van Gogh, Marcel Proust, Nietzsche, Josh Waitzkin, and The Little Prince of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry — I’ve adapted lessons, inspirations, and visions of all these great human beings.
But it is not always about the source or amalgamation of motivation. Ideas and inspiration need to keep floating in the universe irrespective of where they come from. After all, we are only the means to an end, and we all need a guiding light.
In this piece, I am sharing some of the most deep, inspiring quotes about life I have come across. The hope is to read these avant-garde quotes, to come back to them whenever we need them, and sift through them even when we feel we don’t require them. Thus we keep ourselves soaked in inspiration and don’t let it deplete.
Let the journey of imagination and belief begin. (Also Read: What is Self-Improvement)
Important Things I Have Learned So Far
The Artist is no other than he who unlearns what he has learned, in order to know himself .
E.E. Cummings
While writing full-time for almost three years now, I have spent a lot more time looking inwards (and would continue to do so) than I did before. When I reflect on myself, I see how imperfect I am. With this self-knowledge, I am able to look outwards with more compassion. I have also realized that life, though, complex, is also simple. It all depends on how we look at things.
These growing insights into the external and internal world lay the foundation of my personal growth and creativity, both of which, in turn, help me understand more. (Update May 2022: I’ve been reflecting inwards for close to five years now. And I’m updating this list of things I have learned as per my current understanding. I also have my learnings from the year 2022 written down separately, in case you want to look at the latest only.)
Learning paves way for more learning.
In this piece on the most important lessons in life, I share everything I have learned so far. I have penned down the ways that help me simplify things. I believe that all that is important must have made itself available to my mind and heart while I’m writing the article. And if I have missed something, either I do not care about it enough or the learning will appear in some form later.
This collection of lessons is more a cheat sheet for me and less a guide for a reader looking for life’s wisdom. But I do hope I have shared experiences that will help one sail along this immense sea of life with a bit more ease.
This list of life learnings is long with sections randomly arranged. If you like the article, consider bookmarking it to return to it later at a time of need.
While you are here, also consider checking out my collection of deep meaningful quotes on life. I have put these together from years of reading.
Why You Shouldn’t Be Okay To Be Bored With Work
Why We Believe Work Is Boring, Why Is It Wrong To Think So and How to Fix It
A lot of us get bored with work. But we think that it is okay to get bored at our jobs and we continue working. In this article I unfurl why we expect work to be boring, why it shouldn’t be, and how does this belief harms us.
Why Do We Think That Being Bored With Work Is Normal
We always say that work is supposed to be boring — because adults separate the idea of fun and work early on for us.
Since childhood, we are trained to think that work sucks. We are told that we should play all we want for we would have to work one day. We see elders going to their jobs, but they don’t seem to have fun — they say that work is something they have to do even if they get bored at work and don’t enjoy it.
No one ever mentions having a good time as part of a profession/job, and we start believing that work is a dull thing grown-ups do to earn money(the more the better) irrespective of how they feel about their profession.
Now no one can ever enjoy 100% of her work 365 days a year(I’m happy if you do) but the problem arises when we are mostly bored of work and do what we do to only get money.
We witness enough close people following the idea that work is boring.
My father opened his shop every day of the week except Tuesdays. He never complained about his business, but he never cared if he enjoyed his work or not. He was only concerned about making enough to raise his family. Our teachers, relatives, elder siblings all seemed to pursue a career to earn at their maximum potential.
Fun was never discussed in the context of work and even frowned upon. In his book Le Petite Prince, the French philosopher Antoine de Saint-Exupéry raises similar thought-provoking questions about adults keeping their matters of consequence disjoint from (and above) fun.
You want to work or all you want to do is have fun? Someone would say when we created a game out of a mathematics problem.
From our younger years to adulthood, we grow up concreting the idea that something we enjoy can’t become our career.
But this isn’t true. Let me tell you why.
You Are Unproductive Because You Don’t Have Goals
What does this guide on Why are Goals Important contain?
- What is productivity?
- Why are goals important?
- How to set goals?
- How to achieve goals – Goals versus System
- Your Takeaway
- References
- What’s next?
What is Productivity?
Productivity is a measure of doing things efficiently. It is the rate at which you deliver work.
We adults constantly worry about our productivity.
I wake up to a long to-do list. By the end of the day, I have only picked a few items from the top. Even after working all day long, everything important still seems to be in the queue.
Rather than thinking about what I have done, I think of the work I haven’t done.
One blog post is published. But what about its marketing? I made that phone call. But what about the email I had to send?
Some days, I don’t work with a task list. On such days, I am hazed in the cloud of things to do and cannot focus on one thing.
Pending tasks hover in the sultry evening, and then it is a never-ending game of self-blame.
Hiking in Dharamshala – Under the Rhododendrons and Into the Icy Summits
During the six weeks I lived in the Bhagsu village of Dharamshala, trekking in Dharamshala was one of my favorite activities.
On a sunny day when I was walking from Bhagsu village towards Mcleodganj, the idea of going to Mcleodganj seemed mundane. There are many places to visit in Dharamshala, but I wasn’t interested in any. So I took a detour. Instead of continuing going straight to Mcleodganj, I took the road on my left that went downhill.
I had seen the road many times before and had wondered about its destination. But that day the road seemed to promise the solitude I was looking for. Hell, we all know I wasn’t going to get much peace in Mcleodganj unless I strayed away in its back lanes.
When I had walked downhill for a while, the road disappeared after leading me to a cluster of few tiny houses. Where was I to go then?
Yoga in Dharamshala – With an Introduction to Yoga in India
The History of Yoga in India and Practising the Art in Dharamshala
When I went to Chile in 2016, many Chileans asked me if I knew yoga. While traveling around South America for nine months, I realized the popularity of yoga in the world.
Apprehending the vast influences of yoga and seeing the craze of the westerners towards India and yoga, I became a wanna be yoga learner.
In those immature years of my life, I wanted to be a solo female traveler who also did yoga. I wished to bend myself one-eighty-degrees on the sultry Goa beaches and the summits of the mighty Himalayas alike.
After all, the social media pictures of yoga teachers and practitioners over the internet kindle enough narcissism that you forget the real purpose of yoga (if you ever knew) and only admire the overwhelming curves on the trending photos.
Yoginis look like the epitomes of Urvashi from the Indra palace. Maybe we can compare the Yogi to Shiva who is said to be the first-yogi or the Adiyogi?
Those yoga pictures look as perfect as the postures held in the frame, but remember that pictures don’t tell the entire story.
Yoga is not about a few jazzy posts on Instagram or Facebook. And I kept this in mind when I traveled to Dharamshala and practiced yoga there.
Yoga, a word derived from the Sanskrit word Yuj meaning join, means union — of the mind, body, and soul.
Yoga is not only comprised of Hatha yoga and physical exercise but it is an ancient science which has various methods to amalgamate mind, body, and consciousness. Practicing wholesome yoga leads one towards personal awareness and development.