Summary - Be super productive and organized. It’s all about improving the interface of your mind

I’m sure you are familiar with Gmail. Almost everyone I know uses it. That should say something about the service. Personally I find Gmail is the best solution to handling your email. It’s really one of the most organized and productivity minded solution designed.

Now what if I tell you that we can assimilate this concept into our way of thinking? Yes, putting a Gmail in your mind.

The mind really is a remarkable thing. We can only guess what it’s true pontetial will be and I’m very sure that it will still be a long way to go before we fully understand it. The problem is never about the mind, but how we interface with it. Imagine we are using a super computer and the only OS available is the DOS (some of you may not even familiar with the OS), it will be such a loss.

The same thing with this experiment I’m proposing. By applying some of the concept in Gmail to our way of thinking, hopefully we will be more organized and productivity minded.

Let’s get started shall we?

1) Gmail has always been in Beta version
I registered with Gmail quite a long time ago, and I remember that it was in its Beta version then. Many years later, for some reason, it is still in Beta version.

Let’s put a Beta sticker to our mind. Let it be official that the work on our mind is always in Beta version. There will always be things to improved. In my opinion, just the acknowledgment that our mind is a work in progress will help a lot. Of course we must be checking consistently on how to improve our mind.

2) Premium location of “Compose Mail” and “Inbox”
Just underneath the Gmail logo is the link to Compose Mail and Inbox. The link is not buried down the page or disguised in complicated flash button. That’s because an email is only about two things - sending and receiving email.

Figure out what are you about? If you are all into money making, than that is what you should put there in your mind. Limit the items to only two.

3) Report Spam Button
Almost all emails have this. Whenever spam emails received, it will automatically be flagged as spam and put in the spam folder. Sometime a few misses and you will have to report the email as spam manually.

Install a Report Spam button in your mind. If at anytime a negative thought comes to mind, immediately flag it as “Negative Thought”. Do this consciously as if you are actually clicking the button in your mind. If you think Gmail is smart to learn from your action, wait till you see what your mind is capable of.

4) Delete Protocol
You must notice that in order for you to completely delete an email, you will have to delete it two times, one in the inbox and another in the trash folder. The philosophy is, it is better to have millions of rubbish emails building up than to lose that one very very important email from your VIP.

The mind work at a more complex level, but the same philosophy applies. If you want to forget something, you will have to do some extra work. It is never as easy as clicking a button and hope it goes away.

I actually put up an entry on how to forget and move on specifically dedicated to a friend who wish to do just that. Please have a read if you are interested.

5) Emails in reply is grouped together
This is one of the differentiating feature of Gmail. And even though it takes me some getting use to, I find it very helpful. Previously I sometimes get an email from a long lost friend and I just can’t figure out what he is referring to as I can’t see my sent email to him. By grouping the emails in reply together, conversation and email make more sense and easy to track.

Interconnecting one point to another is exactly the basis of our brain. We do our thinking this way. We think of one thing for example cars, then you remember to send your car for maintenance, maybe after that you think of what else you want to do now that you are in the town, maybe shopping, which reminds you of the wife who love shopping.

Amazingly that you think of cars first before the wife I write more about this in this article - How to Improve Your Memory Using Spongebob

/end list

There are so many more features of Gmail that we can integrate in our mind. For example, the labels, Star, Search and the increasing free space etc. But I’m going to leave it to you guys to figure it out.

- I wonder -
Appreciate if you continue adding what else about Gmail that can be used in the comment section.

———— Personal Note ————-
I am always fascinated with the true potential of the mind. Maybe influenced by a lot of tv series, I sometimes wonder if maybe those psychic things like telekinesis and telepathy can really be done. What do you think?

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Summary - Most results takes time.. It pays to be patient.

Today’s entry starts with a person. It’s Alice. And Alice was sent to a motivational speech this morning, where the speaker talked about fulfilling her life purpose and make full use of her life. The speaker equipped her with all the right tools and her motivation is at the maximum level. So high that she is walking as fast as she can just to start doing her work.

People are actually noticing the change in her pace. She is finishing up all her work, and to their surprise, she even stays up until late at night to plan the for a presentation tomorrow. Truly a super worker.

Do you know what in her colleague’s mind when they saw her working that hard? It’s sad actually, but they are actually betting that all this momentum will be over in a week, two maximum. And you know what? For a reason that I will disclose later, I actually agree with them

Why do you think this happen? Like most people, she has failed to realize one of the biggest mistake we do when we are highly motivated. Allow me to elaborate.

The Mistake - She Expect Results Immediately
Succcess is not a one day thing. Realize this fact before you even attempt to being success. Alice may be working as hard as she can but if she expect to find job satisfaction overnight, she will be disappointed.

Just like a car, when it is first invented, it is just a box with wheel going downhill. Then the inventor wants to maneuvre the car and avoid all the trees, so he invented the steering. Then maybe it rains, so he put a roof on the box. For a car to be beautifully and efficiently designed takes hundreds of years and there’s so much more areas that we can improve.

Imagine improving our life.

So take your time improving your life. Be patient, in fact be very patient. As long as you are moving forward, you will reach there. I promise

How to avoid this mistake
1) Quantify your success
This may sounds like a fancy word but it really is not. People can always say “I want to be successful”. But when we asked them to define successful, I don’t think they will know the answer.

So find your answer. What is success to you. Maybe for Alice here, her success is to get an acknowledgment from her boss that she had done good. So once she know her definition of success, she will need to work on it. Maybe producing daily summary of work done, or proactively suggest ideas in a meeting.

She will be successful when the boss recognize her or know her name.

2) Aim for little success
This is the most important solution of all. You need to wake up everyday knowing that you will somehow be achieving your success that day. Imagine you waking up to the day you will be promoted the new General Manager of the company. Wouldn’t you be excited to work and perform even better?

That’s my friend is one of the secret to sustaining motivation. Aim for the little success everyday. For example, Alice will aim today to finish a job and handed it to the boss by hand. And when she does exactly that, she has succeeded in the day’s aim.

I’m sure she will continue this excellent quality through out her life if she wants to.

- Personal Note -
What’s your little aim for today?

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Summary - You want something, go get it. Period!
MBBDDH is nothing new actually. It’s a negative attitude that may very well be the one thing that will bring us down irregardless of what area we are in. That I can assure you.

MBBDDH stands for “Maybe Busy, Better Don’t Disturb Him”.

Have you ever wanted to call a long lost friend but in the end, you just cancel it because you think that he may be busy, and you are only disturbing him? He may actually be wondering why nobody is calling him? In the end.. it’s everyone’s lost since the friendship is ruined.

MBBDDH is not an attitude specifically for calling long lost friend. We are actually doing that in most of the things in our life.

Example 1 - The Blackout.
The electrical supply to your house is cut off. you just leave it as it is thinking that somebody else may have called to report.

• Result - you spend half a day without any electricity.
• What you should do - Call the electrical company to report. They may be able to fix the trip in just a few minutes.

Example 2 - The Promotion
There’s a vacancy for a job superior than your position now. You don’t go to your manager for his recommendation, you just hope that they will know that you are qualified.

• Result - the human resource had employed another person for the job.
• What you should do - Get recommendation from your manager and go to human resource asking to be considered. You must promote yourself even though you consider yourself as a very popular employee

Example 3 - The Broken Heart
You like a girl, she seem to like you too. You befriend her, flirting every now and then but never officially tell her that you like her.

• Result - After one year of being friends, she think that you just want to be her friends. And she move on with another guy.
• What you should do - tell her that you like her.

Conclusion - I remember a quote from the movie “The Pursuit Of Happiness” which goes something like this - “If you want something, go get it. Period!”

That short sentence is one of the most effective words I’ve ever seen. When we want something, why do we let our shyness, or our fear to stand in our way. Those feeling will never help us achieve what we want, so why bother entertaining them. Toss them aside and just go ahead.

- I wonder -
Any other example of where MBBDDH attitude is used?

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Summary - Associate with emotion and some practice
One of the biggest mystery of life is this - Let say tomorrow we are going for a trip oversea and we have to wake up at least 6 am just to get that flight. And somehow, we manage to wake up precisely at 6 am, not a minute sooner or later.

Have you had such experience?

This will happen almost everytime we are excited about waking up the next day. For example, first day at a job, or marriage. A theory suggested to explain this is that we have an internal clock built in to our subconcious mind. That will explain the accuracy of waking up time for some people, or the sudden nervousness when you forget an important thing to be done.

I have no proof on the theory, but I really believe that internal clock does exist. And wouldn’t it be a waste if we do not make use of this amazing gift.

Here’s some exercise that you can do immediately to harness the power of your internal clock.

1) Be insanely excited about waking up
The secret to waking up exactly at the specific time you wanted is actually making use of your emotion.

How many time do you able to wake up early when you know there’s something fun for you to do. Or maybe you are nervous about that first date, or when you know you will be called up by your boss for some big mistake you’ve done. Every one of these has one thing in common. You go to bed with an emotion associated to your future waking up.

If you go to bed, with an intense feeling about waking up tomorrow at 6am, you will definitely wake up at 6 am. Try it.

2) Guess the time without using any clue
This is a training I come up with to use the internal clock. At any time of the day, I will try to guess the time. It must not be a wild guess, you must try to search for the answer in you.

Another rule you must abide is that you must not make a calculated guess. An example of calculated guess is as such “Peter always leave the office at 1pm, so I know now is about 1.30pm”. Try to avoid this kind of analysis just to guess the time. In the end we want to train ourselves to be able to rely on the accuracy of our internal clock.

3) Play with your timer.
There’s one in your cellphone right? When you have nothing to do, play with it. Set it at 1 minute, and without counting the seconds in your mind, try to guess when will your 1 minute will be up. Maybe do a 10 seconds countdown.

With practice, you will be able to tell without looking at your watch, how long is 1 minute.

Advantages of a trained internal clock:

• You will be able to wake up anytime you want.
• You will be able to take power nap (5 minutes nap that will energize you back).
• No more waking up at random hours.
• You will appreciate the time you have better.
• A giant leap in your time management skill.
• A more discipline you.
• You can now sell your watch.

Conclusion - I truly believe there’s so much more mystery of our body that we still haven’t figure out. By doing this exercise, hopefully we will be one step closer to better understanding them.

- I wonder -
Do you believe in internal clock? When is your last time waking up exactly at the time you wanted?

———– Personal Note ———-
When I was a child, I was told that ghost will appear every night at 2 am. Thanks to my internal clock, I woke up every night exactly at 2 am. And man, I was so frightened at the time. I thought it was the ghost that woke me up since it is exactly 2 am.

Of course there are no ghost.

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Summary - Everyone can [insert verb], but only we do it with added value
Let me start with a very cliche introduction. There are basically millions of people in the world. Everyone of them think that they are one very unique person and that nobody can come close to become as unique as them. However, the truth is unless you really are the president of the world fighting aliens off the planet, you really are nobody in the eye of the world. So What makes you different?

I told you it’s going to be cliche.

Now locally, you have a job, you wake up everyday, go to work, come back from work, maybe do some charity work, spend time with family, and go to bed. What makes you different from other guys who goes exactly the same routine?

The only way we can become more than just a person who go to and come back from work is by adding value to everything we do in our life.

Example 1 - Everyone can walk. But if we are making new friends with every walk we took, we are adding value to walking. Maybe try to walk a different route and try another barber just to find new faces.

Example 2 - Everyone can talk. But if we are spending half a day just to talk about which one is cooler - batman or superman, it will not add any value to the 12 hour spent. Try to be very selective of what you speak. Not to the extent you are not speaking at all, just don’t waste it on worthless action. Add value to your conversation by making a good point, or asking question that will actually make you more knowledgable.

Example 3 - Everyone can also blog. But if you make a post with one line quote from somebody famous and that’s it, people will most probably get more value from google. Try to give your opinion on the matter. That’s what blog is all about anyway.

Conclusion - Everyone can [insert a verb here], but a person who will be remembered in history will always add value to it.

We are not going to be the most popular person on the planet just by doing this. But if you look at all the legends, this is one thing that they have in common. They add value. And we have to start somewhere.

- I wonder -
Who is the first person that come to mind when talking about adding value? Strangely the name Robin Hood comes to mine. He added value to stealing (not that I’m promoting such behaviour though)

———- Personal Note ———-
I once dreamt of becoming a walking encyclopaedia. I don’t actually bought one. I just read them at the library taking notes on the subject. You know how this will end. In just 3 days, I gave up the project. There’s just so much information and there’s so many other thing I can do with my time. Also there’s google

Photo Credit -Jo Jakeman

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