2010 Resolutions Review

So another year comes to an end. It has been ten years since I left my childhood home in 2000 after my tenth standard. 
I have come from Adilabad to America :) .. Its a cliche, but I want to look back. I want to thank my parents & brother for everything they have done for me. :). Thanks to dear wife for the wonderful moments we shared.Oh ya, I am sorry that we are not together as I write this,but most of the wait is over. Thanks to all my friends & colleagues who have helped me, supported me and encouraged me. Life wouldn't have been this great but for you. Thanks to my teachers & mentors for patiently guiding and growing me. 


With that gratitude, let me review the goals for this year. 
1. Health:

wake up at 6 am daily -

Not a success as being onsite, to talk with people in India, I had to sleep late which inevitably makes me wake up late. 

Exercise and run daily

I think I exercised for about a month, and then I went to different place and ran out of habit. And winter came and I completely forgot about running

Run a half marathon

No progress but it is going straight into my next year resolutions. 

Drink a smoothie daily (almost)

Did it for few days, then I didn't have car to buy fruits from costco and fell out of habit. Not sure it is going into next year goals though. 

2. Career

Avoid multitasking as much as possible

Old habits die hard. This is one of them, I get distracted very easily and it has not been an easy task to become more focussed and having more attention to detail. It is a work in progress and I would rate this was a good success. I used software tools, pep-talk, hard rules and still found it difficult to do one thing at a time. Finally, one technique called Pomodoro has helped me habitualize this. This is a simple system and you should try this if you want to become more focused. 

Do the best with what you have -  ( Should have zero issues with my work )

Ok this is not a smart goal, because it is not really measurable. But even with this ambiguous condition, I have to say, my best is far above what I have done. Due to the lack of attention to detail, made some blunders but apart from that a good year with work. 

Join another degree - either political science or Green energy

Hmm, didn't officially join due to disadvantages due to being on H1. But had a lot of education reading Hacker News. Hacker news is the single source after Kathy Sierra which made me get interested in UX & design.
Learnt a lot of interseting things like. 

Everyone can be creative by shipping - Seth Godin

 Real Artists Ship - Steve Jobs. If you like to receive links to interesting articles like this, follow me on twitter @thisisananth

So in this way, I am getting education without the degrees. Anyway, degrees are not required if you  are consistently creating things. 

3. Relations

Strengthen relations with existing friends with emphasis on giving

Develop relations with people in fields of interest ( alt energy, raw foods, music, pd)

Go to a trip with family once

I am in US now, so couldn't go to family vacations this year but apart from that I reconnected with lot of my school mates and new friends through facebook and my blog. This has been a very good year in this regard. Hopefully we will grow lifelong friendships. :) 

4. Finances

Earn 30 lakhs :) 

Hmm, wanted to test law of attaction with this but it fell flat :) Though, I saved more than all the other years in my life , fell far far short of that figure. I reached just 10% of the said figure. 

5. Personal

Write 60 blog posts atleast

Ohh.ya done :)

Write a short story and publish it.

Done - here

Read atleast 10 books this year and write the reviews

Fell short of ten but read some books though

The Switch

Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus

The War of Art (not art of war) 

and three other telugu novels. 

Apply and use 'Ten faces of innovation' in work to have atleast one innovation.

None I can think of  ..!!! Actually I didn't use them  ;) 

Apart from that I actually overcame the laziness to write an android application. :) 

So thats my year.. Hope you all had a great year 2010. I wish you, my friend, a very happy new year 2011. 

2010 Resolutions - Progress Report

It has already two months into the new year so I thought it would be good to review my new year resolutions and take them forward. So let us establish some ratings to determine how I am doing.

Distinction: Exceeds Expectations

A - 90% objectives met

B - 50% objectives met

C- 20% objectives met

D- 10% objectives met

E - 0% objectives met

Health: In the category of my health, my progress has been very bad. My resolutions were to wake up at 6 in the morning daily, exercise and run daily and drink a smoothie daily.. but bad to say I haven't been implementing anything consistently. So the report is D because I have some days done that inconsistently. I am thinking of joining a running club and then take it forward from there. I have identified a club near my place but in US without a car it is impossible to go anywhere. So I think it would take more than a month for this to be implemented. Regarding waking at 6 and drinking a smoothie, I am sleeping late so I think I will just take it light for now. But I hope to make progress on it.

Career: In career my resolutions were not to multitask, have 0 issues and to join another degree. To be frank, these are not big resolutions at all. I am unable to stop multitasking and I haven't done much development in these three months to see if they have issues at all. Regarding joining another degree, I am in the process. Though it is not 100% met, this will be rated B

Relationships: So I wanted to strengthen existing relationships with more emphasis on sharing. I am a very independent person and sharing doesn't come naturally to me. I am a voracious reader and I feel that I have something valuable to share like interesting articles or useful information, but I don't send emails to people which are the best methods for communication. Also, I feel that I don't communicate heart-fully and connect well. And regarding my reluctance to share, I think my friend Rajesh, points out in his blog on why smart people are reluctanct to share because they feel that what they know is obvious knowledge or just background thinking. To quote him

Two things:

1. The point that what is obvious to you is not obvious to many other people who are not at the same level of expertise so it is worth sharing them.

2. Not noticing what’s in your “background thinking.” It may be in your background thinking but it’s not in the background thinking of everyone else. So, once you notice this, you can easily package this knowledge and share it.

Read more: http://www.lifebeyondcode.com/2009/12/26/why-some-smart-people-are-reluctant-to-share/#ixzz0h57fjqLz
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike

So noticing that I decided that I will share more in the coming time, but I am yet to follow up on that. So still have a lot to do here, and I feel that I can do more in communicating empathetically. Basically lot of scope for improvement and regarding progress, I am sharing more on twitter and my retweets have also gone up. I would give myself only a C, because I have to go forward a lot before, I can feel that I am sharing well. I think this has to happen in real life also. I am reluctant to give advice or say something even what I know because I feel that it is so obvious. I think I have to take part more in the conversation because then I will know what I know and what I can add. Hopefully I can do that more in the future.

Finances: 30 L...That is the magic figure for this year. I didn't know how I would get that much when I wrote it for then, my onsite was not confirmed but now, I am in US earning more than what I could in India. But still, the amount will not come to that which means I should have some other ways of earning too, but at this point I am not excessively bothered about that as money is just a return for the value I provide. So I am concentrating on increasing my ability to create value and share value and then this would just be the side effect. So I think it would meet 50% of desired value. So I will give it a B

Personal: Only this I would say is progressing well in expectations. I have written 12 posts in this year and of them only one I think is outright useful post and most of others have been sharing myself which would have ofcourse helped the reader. And regarding writing story, i have written something, but I have to polish it more. If I don't get time to polish it I will publish by end of this month as it is.

Regarding books, hopefully I will get time to read some classics as I miss my library in India. So this is also a B

So basically, I have to catchup a lot in health, relationships. Career and personal goals are going well but can be better.

Will write a next progress report May 1st week. Till then, take care.

Give me any suggestions that you feel will help me.

If you have resolutions, may be it is a good time to review the progress.

My New Year Resolutions

Its new year time again and it is time for resolutions.. :)

1. Health:

wake up at 6 am daily

Exercise and run daily

Run a half marathon

Drink a smoothie daily (almost)

2. Career

Avoid multitasking as much as possible

Do the best with what you have - not a smart goal - just qualitative ( Should have zero issues with my work )

Join another degree - either political science or Green energy

3. Relations

Strengthen relations with existing friends with emphasis on giving

Develop relations with people in fields of interest ( alt energy, raw foods, music, pd)

Go to a trip with family once

4. Finances

Earn 30 lakhs :)

5. Personal

Write 60 blog posts atleast

Write a short story and publish it.

Read atleast 10 books this year and write the reviews

Apply and use 'Ten faces of innovation' in work to have atleast one innovation.

2008...2009

A new year has come... Time for reflecting on the year gone and to think of the happy moments which are etched in our hearts, time to think of the lessons the past year has taught us and to go ahead and to realise our destiny.

2008 has been a great year because I learnt a lot of things regarding character, ethics, morals and relationships. Relations help us correct our flaws and become more loving, giving and stronger being. I dont think we can learn about these things any other way than through living through them.

The world has also had its share of disasters like the financial crisis and the Mumbai bombings and happy moments like Obama being selected as the president of United States.

Looking forward to 2009, I am hopeful my learning will continue, I will become a more conscious, loving and courageous being in 2009. My focus for this year will be 'being in the flow' or living in the present, which roughly translates to doing whatever I am doing in the best way possible.

I want to end this post with this prayer

Asatoma satgamaya,
Thamsoma Jyotirgamaya,
Mrutyorma Amrutam gamaya..
Om shanthi shanthi shanthi hi...

Wish you a happy new year 2009.. :)

Following New Year resolutions...CAT

I have written in my previous post about my new year resolutions. In that my first wish was to study in a reputed university. I also wished to bell the cat. When we fail doing one the first time, I gives me a special kick to try and conquer that. It is the time when " I can do anything" rings very loudly in me. I wrote CAT in my graduation year. I took coaching in TIME institute but fared very badly in the exam. I got only 75 percentile. I always wanted to do a better job next time. I had stopped preparing for CAT after I joined my present company. I will write the CAT this year and hence if it is to produce a good result, it is imperative that I start preparing from now. So I will track all the best articles on the web on helping you to prepare start and also how I am progressing in my preparation. I was already hooked on to some useful materials on the net on how to prepare for CAT. Before preparing my schedule I wanted to browse through different available strategies and information available. One very good article which I browsed and felt helpful is at
http://catiimatales.blogspot.com/2006/08/how-to-prepare-for-cat.html

This is written by a IIMA student I think it can be very helpful to all of us. He has stressed the importance of starting early, good coaching, taking tests and practice.
More on CAT preparation later..!

A New Year Dawns

Twenty years have passed from the time I was born. From my days of tenth standard, I have made new year resolutions only to break them. But still I make them just to orient my thoughts as to where they are going. There have been lot of thoughts brewing in my mind now I am unable to make up my mind on what to write in the blog. I love solitude and staying alone and whenever I am alone, I day dream of all things I want to be in my life. I have decided to chronicle the thoughts which I get the most so that I can get closer to my purpose in life.

I wish to study in a very reputed university-- I got this thought after reading the novels of Jeffrey Archer, Sidney Sheldon and John Grisham about university life and how great it is. So I want to crack CAT this time so that I can be part of a great institution.

I wish to contribute to the society. I want to make people realise the importance of education and how our perspective develops after good education. I want to make people question atleast the most blatant frauds and deceptions in the society. I still haven't thought out a way of doing this.

Again blame it on the novels I read I want to be very very rich only to roam around the world to desired places as and when I think of them. For this I want to be financially independent and to have other means of income than the regular salary I get monthly.

Next thought is to be more understanding of people and be truthful to the maxim - "A friend in need is friend indeed". To be frank, I love being alone. I dont know why but I have never completely opened up to people except to a very few. Hence I want to be more open and more helpful to people in my daily life. On the whole in the end what matters is

" You are rich or poor in life by

Smiles around you..
People you are with..
Friends you make..
Ideas you have..
Dreams you chase...
And the love you spread.."

I have been dreaming about these things from my childhood. I want to make better progress on each of these spheres this year and this is the place where I observe my progress.

"Every morning as we wake up we have two choices:
1. To go back to sleep and dream
2. To get up and chase the dreams."

I have slept for long .. Now its time for me to wake up and chase my dreams.. Wish you all a very happy 2007.