Gmail

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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Lamborghini
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?

Photo Credit – OmniNate


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Cleaner

Summary – Motivation for the demotivating little task

It’s spring cleaning today in my house. And I must say that even though I’m cleaning the house on the go daily, when it’s time for spring cleaning, there are always a lot of things to do. It can be very demotivating to see so many things to do when you are already doing so much cleaning it on the go.

The amazing thing is these things to do are just small tasks that you can do immediately like putting away newspaper for recycling, or wiping up the dust on the furniture, or arranging the DVDs. Little things that somehow there’s so many of them, you just feel very very demotivated.

I don’t know about you but I find these techniques to be quite effective especially for motivating us to do all the tedious small tasks.

1) 100 Items And You’re Done
Whenever you are picking up socks or taking out the garbage. Count and shout the number of task you have done. An example –

You are picking up socks, shout “ONE!”
Then straight away do the garbage and shout “TWO!”

The rule is you must not stop unless you have done 100. I’m getting excited even writing about it 🙂

2) The Amazing Race “Insert Your House Here”
Cleaning the house is not a one time thing. You will be doing it for the rest of your life. Why not make it a race. Create a list of things to do and do all the thing on the list (duh!). But you will have to time how long it takes you to finish the list. For example you take 3 hours this week. Next week try to do the same task in 2.5 hours. If you break that record, make a big deal out of it. Go out at a fancy restaurant with your loved ones to celebrate.

I wouldn’t tell her what’s the occasion though. 🙂

3) Soundtrack Yourself
Burn a cd of songs that you really like. Play it while you’re cleaning. You can sing to it, you can even dance to it, but promise yourself that there will be no repeat for the playlist. When it’s over, it’s over. So motivate yourself by saying that if you can’t finish by the time the songs are over, you will have to do the work without any music.

Hopefully the fear of boredom will help clear the area a bit faster.

4) Attack The Giant First
Just like in war, we need constant motivation through out the war. In this war for cleanliness, it is recommended that you do the bigger thing first. For example, moving the heavy furniture. Do this first and the rest will feel like the easiest thing to do.

5) In-Law’s Visitting Scenario
This is actually my favorite. I noticed that I can clean the house faster and better when I keep convincing myself that my in-laws are coming. I notice this when they actually came to my house a few months ago. My house never looked cleaner. 🙂

6) The One-Minute Rule
This rule is actually proposed by Gretchen from The Happiness Project. According to the rule, anything that you can do in one minute time, should be done immediately. No question asked. For example, you come back after work and you see an umbrella misplaced. You can of course choose to ignore it and do other thing. But if you are applying the one minute rule, you will pick up the umbrella and put it to its rightful place. Why? Because it will only take you less than a minute to do that.

– I wonder –
Any other ideas on how to motivate ourselves doing those tedious little tasks?

———– Personal Note ———–
Now that we have a new member of the family, our daughter Zafirah. The mrs and I have come up with an agreement that one of us will have to look after Zafirah at any time. I’m telling you. A lot of my existing schedule were thrown out the window 🙂

But I’m more than happy to do that just to see her smile. Did I tell you that she is now smiling 🙂

Photo credit – Givepeasachance


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wimax

I wrote two entries today, the MBBDDH attitude (an attitude that will stop you from getting what you want) and this.

Remember when I complained about the slow internet connection I’m having. I took my own advice and actually did a very thorough research on Wimax. I just need to get better internet connection.

I make some calls, do a lot of online research just to get the status of wimax connectivity here in Malaysia and guess what, finally I found this notice (Refer picture) actually handed to me while I’m shopping the other day.

WiMAX is finally HERE!!

Now remember the speed I mentioned the other day? Downloading a one-hour movie in 1-2 minutes? It’s happening right now.. And I am definitely getting one.

I just hope that the pricing will be affordable. I am now using GPRS type connection and it cost me about RM66/ month for a 5-10kB/s speed. Truthfully for WiMAX speed of about several MB/s I don’t mind at all paying up to RM150 for it. I believe P1 (the company who will be running this WiMAX) will launch the service any time soon.

However, I really hope the speed will be consistently fast and that there is no problem with the weather and all, like our beloved Astro. All this condition met, I will consider myself a satisfied customer already.

This is me imagining.. What will I do with such speed and wireless connectivity?

  • Spend less time on the net so I can spend more with my family
  • Visit my friends’ blog on a daily basis
  • Visit all my network’s site such as 9rules and entrecard
  • Maybe started video blogging once a week
  • Venturing into podcast

The truth is.. I need the faster connection so that I will be able to spend less time on the net and more time with the new love of my life.. My daughter Zafirah 🙂


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