Fight Email Addiction - Take a Break

When I worked for an MNC, I used to have 100+ emails everyday. So much so that psychologically I equated my ability to respond to all emails by the end of the day as being productive! At one point, I felt I was not living if I wasn't reading my emails - this feeling was strong during the weekends. This syndrome is bad and is widespread. Google engineers got enough feedback to put up a feature to enable you to take a break from email (Google's Gmail), see here.

Last Lecture of Randy Pausch - a Must-see

On September 18, 2007, Carnegie Mellon Virtual Reality professor Randy Pausch delivered his last lecture that made a lot of people rethink their lives.

I watched the full length video and was deeply touched. I remember a saying: it is not how many years you live in your life, it is how much life in your years that matters. This is the man who have lived his life to the fullest. He has a lot of learnings to share.

See it here.

Randy died recently on July 25, 2008.

Growinglane: A Fast Lane or Slow Lane

If you are familiar with the motivation industry, you should know how the "motivators" pump you up and get you to set extraordinary goals. You probably have demanded yourself to earn one million buck within one year (despite the fact that you only earn 3,000 bucks a month), have effortless "passive income" going into your bank in two years, and then retire and do whatever you like by the age of 40. If you don't impose yourself these goals, you are deemed hopeless and have no chance to "make it" in your lifetime.

A case in point: If you have not watched "The Secret", you must have been living in a cave for the past decades. See how the authors make you believe that you can make your fortune by just believing.

As this motivation industry flourishes, there are a lot of people who have gone through the "workshops" or "seminars". So there are more and more people setting audacious goals.

However, not many of them realize that to achieve something, your need factors (a term used by economists), or conditions (a term used by Buddhists), or blessing (a term used by Muslims, Christians, etc). You can put in a lot of effort, but if the factors are not there, you just won't make it. Okay, the motivational speakers have asked you to push yourself. So you do. You jump into fields that you are not having any strength. You start selling insurance, mutual funds, option trading, or some MLM, or some forms of "get rich quick" schemes. You start online businesses, blogs, hoping that you will make it big one day. You rush yourself through, and neglected your health, your spiritual life, your family a long the way.

Many people get stuck.

Success doesn't come with force. It comes when you and the factors (or conditions, or blessing) are ready.

Over the years, I realized that the biggest factor required for success is time. Your skill need time to develop. You need time to build your products and services. Your customers take time to get familiar with you and have confidence in you. You need time to build your marketing channels. The list goes on. So you need time.

So if time is required, then don't rush it.

We have at least two options: (1) rush it, because you need to retire at 40, doesn't matter if you ruin your health, since you will have all the money to treat your failing health after you "make it";  (2) take your time, enjoy the journey, take good care of your health, and live long enough so that you have more time to grow your wealth, and to enjoy the fruits of your labor.

For me, I will take the second option on my growinglane.