Manage your energy

I come home at 6:30 PM and then have dinner and try to play with my son before preparing for the next day by sleeping etc.

But I feel I'm out of energy by that time, but I want to have enough energy left to do what I want to do.

I found the following advice from the power of full engagement by Tony Schwartz. Here are some things that spoke to me.


Our bodies have a natural 90 - 120 minute cycle where it goes from highly alert and focused state to a concentration trough where it is distracted and unable to concentrate. During this time, it is best to take a break and so something unrelated to work.


If you're stressed and reach out to a default something to beat it like smoking or mindless browsing, try replacing it with deep breathing instead.


If you're feeling emotionally down or depressed, the best solution is to find things for which you are grateful for and express appreciation for them. That will bring you out of your depression and make you feeling good.


If you want to do some things daily but they seem to get squeezed out of your schedule, then try making rituals out of them so that you both allocate some time for them and also they become part of your daily routine.



Of course the other regular advice of be focused, serially single task, work on long term leverage activties - our usual focus rules help.



Then eat healthy, exercise and drink plenty of water - regular diet and exercise advice help too.



Once a day connect with your why - Why are you doing what you're doing - Meditate or journal about this. This will help clarify and recommit to your goals and start the day with more energy.



It is a good time to remember the future self test- Will what I'm doing now help or hinder my future self. Always try to help it as your future will become present soon enough!



Engage fully with what your'e doing and be grateful! 

Tagged: Confessions

Sandy, tagged me to take this forward.

The tags idea is to confess certain things about me. I can tell a lot of things but I will tell you some things which are on top of my mind now.

1. I am looking for ways in which I can make some difference with the skills, I have developed in the IT industry. Specifically, I am looking for ways to contribute to java based web or stand alone applications. It can be open-source or closed source. I know there are many ways to contribute to open source projects, but I am looking for a co-worker or a mentor, especially on android, google app engine and HTML 5.

2. I have a lot of dreams, and if you have read atleast three posts from my blog, surely you would have noticed it. So what is my current dream - dreaming of a machine called 'Omnitor' which is a  self assembling vehicle which can run on land, water or air. This thought occured after reading about the deadly air plane crash in Islamabad, Pakistan. I feel it can be done and that some research should happen on this angle to make air-travel safer. I will write a post about it later.

3. I am also thinking about meeting a man who disconnected himself from the grid to live completely on solar energy. Yes, he generates solar energy during summer months and even stores that by electrolyzing water and storing the hydrogen. He then uses this hydrogen to generate electricity in winter months. He says he is net energy positive and there is no need for maintainence of the equipment. I see the future here. It costed a lot of money to set this up. So I was thinking of how to do that. Is this replicable. How to achieve this a lesser cost etc.

4. Ofcourse, this is nothing new in India but the pervasive corruption in Commonwealth Games organization again made me cringe.Also Rajesh's Jains new series 'Pretty Good Principles' for India also made me think of how to stop this corruption. I have heard that Singapore was able to eliminate corruption in one single generation. Read Atanu Dey's Lee Kuan Yew on India posts to understand the leader of Singapore. Hope India has one leader of that calibre.

 5. I am reading the book Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus by John Gray and I am amazed by the revelations in that book. I find that patterns to be true. Following his suggestions has surely improved my way of correspondence with my wife and also made the relation even lovlier. You can catch the summaries at my book summary blog.

I know, I know, these don't amount to confessions, but I feel 'real' confessions don't help anyone. They just rock a smooth sailing boat. So instead of that follow any of the above links and be transported into what my thinking is.

I ask Ketan, Srinivas and Vyshu to carry forward this tag. Also do let me know @thisisananth if you have any clues regarding the first one.

I'm Tagged - Things I love

My friend Sandy, has tagged me for two things..

Tell me three good things about myself..and tag others. and notify them in their blogs to carry on the tag.

Tell seven things that nobody knows...and tag seven others and notify them..

So three good things about myself...

1. I always make a sincere effort at being honest. I don't like to cheat anyone even the government.
2. I will take life as it comes and accept whatever happens.. .
3. I generally live by the motto - 'sontha labham koncham manukoni porugu vadiki todu padavoyi' said by Gurujada Apparao - which means (We should sacrifice some of self-mindedness and help our neighbours in need)

Now seven things which others don't know about me... Not many if you see my profile, you will know all about them..but let me say them again.

1. I am a big dreamer.. I always dream of a place where all the people of the world live in co-operation, honestly . All the crime and this cheating in the world perishes. etc. Following these thoughts, I supported LokSatta which promised a just society. And I also introduced non-conventional ideas like single world govt and VenusProject here.
2. I believe that lack of proper education in values is the main reason for the current ills facing India. Hence education is one topic which is close to my heart.  The current system of education doesn't really make use of the individual abilities and interests of the students. Many alternative approaches like homeschooling - (A homeschooling student was the youngest to clear IIT JEE this year.) and non-degree education are being practiced in the world. I have written extensively about it in Parikrama foundation profile, to this govt I vote. If you need a full perspective listen to this talk by Ken Robinson, about how schools kill creativity, and Atanu dey's posts on education.
3. I am big supporter of Renewable energy production methods. You all know how the electricity situation is in India and hence exploring the sources of energy is important. I have written about how U.S govt is supporting them and written about the possible future here.
4. I love reading and I think in an average day I read atleast 20 different blog posts. And ofcourse I like music and movies too. I am a regular visitor of idlebrain, and movie buff blogs  I think there is ample proof of it in this blog ;)
5. I am a fan of Google and the way they have revolutionized the internet.I have publicly shown my love for them here and here. I am also a tech enthusiast. I regularly visit Techcrunch and Techmeme. Currently I am very much interested in Android and Android development.
6. Something critical of me: I think I am easily distracted and I am not practical enough. Ofcourse, seeing all the things above, you could have easily figured it out. But I am sure big dreams are required now. It might seem big for India at the present moment but I am sure this is possible and will be done someday. And for my part will have to stop living in dream world and come out to make those dreams a reality.
7. Lastly, I am an atheist and have arrived here with lot of thinking aloud. To know my reasoning read my arguments here and here.

Thanks to Sandy for tagging me. This has been a very good post, mostly summarizes the themes of this blog.

Now to tag people, I don't know anyone. All my followers don't have a blog and those who have already have been tagged. But I ask any of the commenters to carry this tag forward.

Renewable Petroleum - Will it finally stop the dependence on imported oils?

Image by PNNL - Pacific Northwest National Laboratory via Flickr

As a proponent of renewable energy sources, the news that the government of America has announced the Recovery Acts funds to the research of renewable energy sources. So I hopped to the list of projects selected for the funding and I saw the technology whereby petroleum is produced in a renewable way. An excerpt from the post

“Electrofuels” - Biofuels from Electricity --- Today’s technologies for making biofuels all rely on photosynthesis – either indirectly by converting plants to fuels or directly by harnessing photosynthetic organisms such as algae.  This process is less than 1% efficient at converting sunlight to stored chemical energy. Instead, Electrofuels approaches will use organisms able to extract energy from other sources, such as solar-derived electricity or hydrogen or earth-abundant metal ions.  Theoretically, such an approach could be more than 10 times more efficient than current biomass approaches.

See all the projects here

How does this work?
Scientists are modifying the genetic pathways in which bacteria like E.Coli uses to store its energy in the form of fatty acids.Fatty acids contain carboxylic acid and hydrocarbons. If we remove the carboxylic acid, then petroleum can be easily generated from the remaining hydrocarbon.

So how do they modify the pathways? LS9 Inc, a company working in this field, redesigned genes using a computer and synthesized them.When the genes are introduced into bacteria, they excrete the hydrocarbons in designed structure. They can be refined later to form usable petroleum. There are many more companies working in this field.

And these bacteria use the co2 from the atmosphere for creating these hydrocarbons. So these act as a sink to the already existing hydrocarbon. This is also added advantage of these technologies.

All these things have left me highly excited about the possibilities. I hope we are very near to realizing renewable petroleum and the day when India and other oil-importing countries stop importing oil and generate their own petroleum which saves a lot of money for other developmental activities.

Read more about the technology and the companies here