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?

Photo Credit - Rovlls

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Summary - Last resort method for student to get things done

The life of a student has always been like a tug war between being motivated and plain lazy. I know. I’ve been there. Some time, we become so motivated, we even seek for extra work just to enhance our learning. Another time, there are no motivational speech in the world that will make us wake up from that comfy bed.

When that laziness attacks and you have so many things to do, what would you do?

These are a few tricks that I tried as my last resort to get things done. Most of the time they worked. Try them and tell me how it goes.

1) Read standing up
Sometimes I have trouble waking up when I read my notes. So what I did was reading the notes while standing up. If you can walk that would be even more effective to combat those drowsiness. However I found out that my concentration deteriorates even faster walking.

2) One page at a time
This is my last resort to almost anything. If I have to read 20 pages of notes, I will force myself to read 1 page. That’s it. I promise myself that after that 1 page is done and I fully understand or memorize the page, I can stop studying altogether.

Usually by the time I understand the subject, I will be more in the studying mode and thus page 2

3) Report your failure to other people
This also should be used as the super last resort. Make yourself accountable. Not to anyone but to your parent. I know.. it may sound very childish reporting yourself to your parent but believe me it work.

All you need to do is to write an email (if your parent read email of course) reporting every assignment need to be done, and notes to be studied. And each day, you should HONESTLY write a progress email detailing your progress. If you didn’t touch anything on the subject, confess to your parent and give reason why.

If the shame of not doing anything didn’t move you to finish your work, I don’t know what will.

4) Bet with your lecturer
How about if you prepare one letter signed by you and give that letter to your lecturer when you started the semester.

Put it in writing that everytime you are unable to deliver your assignment in time, you will wash his car FOC. The lecturer will definitely make use of this offer. He will look for your assignment first everytime. And you will feel more driven to do your assignment.

5) Red card of wealth
This is a system I created just to give me an extra push with money. However, being a student I don’t have money. Not much anyway. So what I did is creating about 20 red cards per month. I put value to the card at about $10 per card. So if by the end of the month I still have 20 cards, that is like an extra $200 in my pocket.

Whenever I want to push myself to work, I will just warn myself that 1 card will be burnt down (literally burnt) if I didn’t do the work.

Where will the money come from, my current salary of course. Once I start working, I am entitled to spend the red cards guilt free

6) When motivated, do extra
There will be times when you just super motivated for no apparent reason. How? Still a mystery to me. What I did when I’m in that state is to do extra work. Maybe study those subject not yet covered by lecturers, do past year questions etc.

Why I do this? Because there will be times when I’m just super lazy and all the above will not change it. By doing extra work when I’m motivated, I will feel less guilty being lazy sometime later.

- I wonder -
What do you do as your last resort to get things done?

——– Personal Note ———
I still have a few more techniques, but a bit abstract to describe here. Maybe next time

Now that I work, I actually still practise some of the methods. I honestly give report to my manager on what I have done and what I still don’t do. He may not even care, but I am so ashame to report on task not completed, I usually will finish them all. Well most of them anyway

Photo Credit - Orangeacid

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Summary - The only way to be more efficient

Are you familiar with the term “Bottleneck“. Basically, the word comes from the actual bottleneck. Referring to the image above, the bottom part of a bottle is always bigger than the bottleneck. In short, if I flip the bottle upside down, the water flow coming out will be controlled by the bottleneck. The smaller the bottleneck, the slower it will be for the bottle to be emptied.

Debottlenecking is one of the basic process of engineering. For example, imagine a road with three lanes. Somehow it is noticed that there is always a traffic jam when the three lanes merge into two lanes. The merging point now will be the bottleneck. And if the engineers ever want to solve the traffic jam problem, this is where they should tackle first.

Now apply debottlenecking process in our life.

Example 1 : You are having problems with debt. You are paying monthly, but with your credit card at hand, the debt is still increasing. In this specific case, credit card is the bottleneck. Not only it is slowing your debt reduction program, it is actually making the debt grow. So once you have identified the bottleneck, you can eliminate it by maybe cutting the card into two and stop using it altogether.

Example 2 : Try debottlenecking in studying. Figure out what is slowing the process. Maybe studying in front of a computer with the internet on is taking most of your time. Then you should know what to do to make the studying process more efficient. You must disconnect.

Conclusion - One very important rule about debottlenecking a process is that you must only handle one bottleneck at a time. Studying for example has a lot of problems. You may be distracted by the internet, or maybe you have a family problem stuck in your mind. Even if there is hundred of problems, just choose one that is affecting you the most. Tackle that first and you will see the improvement. I guarantee that.

I’m not sure about you, but I find that by imagining the problem I’m having as a bottleneck motivates me to settle it. When I know that something I did is affecting the efficiency of the whole process, I just imagine it as the bottleneck. Immediately I just want to eliminate it because I know there’s no other way to empty a bottle faster.

- I wonder -
What is the bottleneck in your life?

Photo credit - Etwood

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Summary - Start with a small win
A typical morning, I was waking up when I heard this conversation in my head (Not in an insane kind of way)

Willpower - OK you need to wake up now
Lazybone - What? now? I still want to see the ending of the dream.
Willpower - But you are going to be late.
Lazybone - Will you please just shut up?
Willpower - erk OK

/end conversation

Of course the conversation is made up. But have you ever had similar experience? Where the problem with your productivity is not due to procrastination but because of your weak willpower.

Some may call it discipline, but the fact is the stronger your willpower, the more likely you will be able to finish up your work and do what’s necessary. So how do you strengthen this willpower to withstand any temptation that may come?

Let him win the small battle
Willpower is really just a part of us, just like our muscle. If we didn’t do any exercises, it will become weaker. Period. However if we immediately start with intense exercise after a long rest, it will not be stronger, it will be painful instead. So start small.

Exercise your willpower by letting him win some easy round.

1) It’s never easy. Before anything, we need to establish that it’s never easy to overcome temptation or procrastination. It’s not impossible though. Once you understand this, you will know that it will take a lot of effort to win the war. And that itself will strengthen your willpower tremendously.

2) 1 minute timer. Set your timer in your cellphone for 1 minute to rest during working. Enjoy that 1 minute and when it’s up, straight away continue working. This will be his first victory.

3) You’re the boss. How about saying this exact word everytime you sense your willpower is about to be defeated. Just imagine he’s really the boss of you.

Some may not like being bossed around, but who else would be a better boss if not the best part of you - willpower

4) Start the tough war. It’s easier to let willpower win when we really enjoy what he is asking us to do. For example, eating ice cream. For a start this may be a good idea, just to let him win a few round.

But we will need to step up a bit by start winning some tougher rounds. Maybe you don’t want to go to work or washing your car. Win this. And your willpower will immediately be stronger.

5) Never negotiate. Temptation being a temptation, is tricky with words. They know exactly how to manipulate you into letting them win. Try not to negotiate. An example of negotiating is “Ok, I will wash the dishes, but afterward I’m going to play PS2 for the entire night”. You see what they’re doing?

This kind of winning will never strengthen your willpower. It will only make it worse.

- I wonder -
Any other methods to strengthen our willpower?

———- Personal Note ———–
I always have fancy dream usually in the last hour of my sleep. The kind of dream that you will want to know how it ends. The most recent is how I survive being flown away by a major tornado

Photo Credit - doughkeeney

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Summary - You can either gain speed or weep

It has been a very hectic week. And when I look at it, it was all worth it For those who just tuned in, I was promoted to being a father on the 27th May.

One thing that I noticed is that a lot of my routine has been affected. I have to put aside blogging for the past few days. The same goes to other habits I’m trying to stick on like doing exercise etc. Everything get pushed behind.

Don’t you think it is very frustrating when all your habits get pushed aside? like suddenly you are forced to eat a buffet after years of dieting, or forced to rest in bed due to leg broken when you have been training for a marathon months.

Personally, I do. I find my peace everyday when I write here in LessonInLife. However, due to unavoidable reason, I have to stop writing for a few days and that sometimes make me frustrated.

This is however a very wrong approach to life. We should never be frustrated when something else come in our way. By being frustrated, people will usually take more time to return back to the original plan.

For example, a man who undergoes diet, suddenly were forced to break that diet because he’s travelling oversea and he wanted to have a taste of the local cuisine there. When he came back, he noticed he gained a few kg.

If he took the normal reaction by being frustrated, he will probably give up the diet altogether and eat even more than before. “What’s the point?”.

The best way for him to handle mishaps in habit forming is to accept that fact about him gaining a few kg, and immediately starts back his diet. Why bother cursing himself about that gained weight? It will still be there after all the frustration and curse.

Conclusion - When there were speed bump in our life, we can choose to either regain back our speed or park aside and weep. Between the two, which will get to the destination faster?

- I wonder -
What’s your most recent speed bump in life?

———– Personal Note ———–
The baby was diagnosed to have G6PD Deficiency. Which generally means she will easily get Jaundice (or the Yellow Sickness) whenever she’s in contact with certain chemicals. Alhamdulillah, as of now, her level of Jaundice is under control. We will be monitoring like a hawk

Photo Credit - Andrew.Petro

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