10 rules that can have exceptions:

Most of the principles in life can have exceptions. You should not trust any principle blindly. These 10 rules might or might not have exceptions.

1. Pareto Principle
2. 10,000-hour work.
3. Law of Diminishing Returns.
4. Power Law
5. Giving up.
6. Incremental Improvements( Business can avoid moving incrementally).
7. Give your 100 % percent.
8. Being curious always.
9. Lifelong Relationships.
10. You only love once.

10 ways you can use the tracking principle to your advantage:

1. If you want to read a big book, use MS Excel to track it. Every time you read a chapter, color a box.
2. Want to see the benefits of yoga? Write your emotions and feelings after a yoga session.
3. If you want to read books, take the Goodreads goal of reading books. (The results here will be much better than not tracking your goals. )
4. You can note down your sugar intake and compare it with average.
5. You want to reduce your judgments or your ego? Every time you make a judgment, write in a short pad. The process will be painful but awareness of it will make you judge less.
6. Don't rely on health trackers to gain insights about your body. Do it the difficult way. The pain will make you think more. 
7. You can also start meditation by tracking how many minutes you spend on it.
8. Analyze your trips to know if you are the kind of person who loves to travel.
9. Also, Track your video and movie consumption. Always see activities as investments.
10. Track your email check timings also. We waste more time than it is required in checking or anticipating mails.

10 ways to encourage cleaniness in our society:

1. Making people realize that one person can change a lot of things. 
2. Encouraging governments to spend more research on plastic materials.
3. Relying on video sensors to catch the culprits. 
4. More video documentaries being shown in schools and workplaces on environmental research.
5. Bills being designed in a way to encourage electricity savings. 
6. The village sarpanch and MLAs of the city should clean their surroundings once a month.
7. Making people aware of the psychological benefits of cleanliness.
8. Banning plastic bottles in hilly areas.
9. Celebrities promoting healthy alternatives (recyclable bags) to products like polythenes.
10. A cleanliness day to be celebrated.

10 questions to any persuasion expert:

1. What can we do to make people actually read “Terms and Conditions”?
2. Do we really need to tell people what to eat? Shouldn’t a human know that on its own rather than relying on a device?
3. On ethical terms, aren’t we enhancing the ego of the society by promoting products of scarcity?
4. Will the personalization/customization of internet services violate the principle that ‘Internet is neutral’?
5. Shouldn’t we also talk about depression openly when discussing persuasive strategies?
6. Will we ever be able to establish online peer groups equivalent to the rehab group or AA groups?
7. When journalling helps to address negative inventory, why isn’t it promoted in schools?
8. When discussing competition as a PS, how do we make sure it has a healthy impact?
9. Should companies inform consumers when they create internal triggers?
10. Parents are getting obsessed with tracking every move of their kids. Where do we draw the line here?

10 places/ things where we give mental energies but we should not:

1. On thinking about what other people think of my clothes.
2. Cognitive energy spent on thinking replies to emails, messages.
3. People who have like our photos or watched our statuses.
4. Thinking about digital celebrities whom we will never meet.
5. A student waiting for exam results.
6. A sportsperson thinking about his fans while playing.
7. A yogi/Meditator thinking about the benefits of meditation.
8. A singer/celebrity worrying about the views/like count.
9. A person wearing Fitbit always worrying about the steps.
10. An employee always worrying about his salary.

Review: Stillness Is the Key

Stillness Is the Key by Ryan Holiday
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Ryan Holiday is one of the prolific writers of this generation. This book is a short and interesting read.
This book was similar to Sadhguru's Three truths of Well Being on many fronts. This might be the most highlighted book of my life.

This book also contains a lot of paradoxes. Paradoxes like conserve your energy and act bravely, Say no to requests but be a human being, to act but also restraint sometimes. Paradoxes are not bad. They are the reality of life.

I am looking forward to reading the first 2 books of this trilogy.



View all my reviews

10 observations about time:

1. When you waste one moment in wasteful activity, you have wasted one moment to improve yourself.
2. Time spent in solitude in never wasted.
3. We are highly productive when we have deadlines for the task.
4. For using your time, remember ‘technique trumps effort’.
5. To avoid the regret of time wastage, live consciously (not acting for instant gratification)
6. We should also consider the mental energies in addition to the time wasted on social media.
7. We can have ‘time_journal’ to record everything we do on a daily basis.
8. One effective way for time management is to schedule your free time first or fill the time blocks with rewards.
9. You only have limited time on the planet, so you can be friends with limited people.
10. When you bargain with someone, you may save money but you are losing time. You should not waste 5 minutes for saving 10 rupees. 

10 inconveniences to negative habits:

In continuation of yesterday's post, we can add layers of inconvenience to other negative habits:

1. You pay cash instead of using a credit card to buy alcohol or a pack of cigarettes.
2. You go to fast-food restaurants only with one certain friend.
3. You use Instagram only on the web, not on the mobile phone.
4. You listen to songs only if you are walking or dancing.
5. The cookie jar is placed at the most distant point in the kitchen.
6. Only healthy things placed at eye level in the refrigerator.
7. Location wise phone usage in office/home. Designate certain areas to be phone areas in your home which are far away from your bed or study location.
8. Going to a pub/ bar only by public transport.
9. Listening to 5 songs only after doing 5 minutes of meditation.
10. Watching an episode of a sitcom only after reading a chapter of a non fiction book.

10 strong passwords for social media accounts:

Often we are addicted to things because they are convenient. You use internet a lot because it's cheap and available everywhere. But we can resist this addiction by adding some layers of inconvenience like tough login passwords. Some passwords like

1. "Isitreallyimportant?"
2. "Isitreallyimportant?Isitreallyimportant?"
3. "IshouldDevoteOneHourEverydaytoExercise"
4. "WatchingCommentsOfOthersIsAStupidThing"
5. "ThereIsNoUseOfGossiping"
6. "JunkMediaAndJunkFoodAreBadForMe"
7. "IsItImportantForMeToKnowWhereMyFriendsAreTravelling"
8. "ComparisonIsAThiefOfJoy"
9. "BooksAreAlwaysBetterThanReadingNews"
10. "IWillUseThisOnlyOnceInADay"
11. "OneThingIAmGratefulForToday"

10 things about not using screens for entertainment:

1. Watching comedy shows/ memes/ passive learning.
2. Interacting with someone for a definite purpose, not for fun.
3. You can joke with someone on call but don't chat to crack some jokes.
4. Always reply late to messages so that your mind does not act compulsively.
5. Video games may improve cognitive skills but there are a hundred other activities that I can do to achieve similar benefits and they will also provide me physical fitness.
6. Watching videos on the phone affect our eyesight badly.
7. WhatsApp groups are never useful they are rather promoters of one propaganda.
8. If we are bored anytime, it's better to face our thoughts rather than inputting some more information to the brain.
9. Screens are a threat to Deep work philosophy.
10. Watching sports matches is a time-consuming affair. Sports should inspire us to play more not to get entertainment more.

10 ways to increase or start your reading habit.

1.  Read the biographies of the people you admire or start with comics or magazines.
2. Start reading with physical books and later switch to kindle. Reading habit will be easy to form on physical books.
3. Start with 10 mins of daily reading and increase the time every month. It's easy to go from 50 to 60 minutes than starting with the aim of an hour.
4. Start with the book which is less than 100 pages long.
5. Have some books which you can re-read in the future. Call this section "rereading " and return to it whenever you feel low.
6. Replace smartphones with the book. You should have a book with you every time.
7. If possible, write your own chapter reviews or book reviews to consolidate your learning.
8. Drop books if you don't find them interesting.
9. Find a problem and then read a book about it. You will be highly motivated to read it. E.g. I am having a problem with sleep so I am reading "Why we sleep" by Mathew Walker. 
10. I read books that have a Goodreads rating of more than 4. This is a fairly good rule. It works 90% of the time.

10 things we should be grateful for.

1. Education- the ability to read.
2. A perfectly working brain.
3. Fit legs.
4. To access information about anything on the internet.
5. To practice any religious beliefs.
6. Ability to eat any kind of food.
7. Having your own website.
8. Email
9. Ability to empathize with others(mirror neurons)
10. Ability to see the world.

10 examples of flashbulb memories:

Flashbulb memories are those memories that a person remembers when a famous incident happens. Most people remember what were they doing during 9/11 or with whom they were when India won the cricket world cup.

1. Watching superhit movies with your friends. When you hear about that movie in the future, you will remember your friends.
2. Going to concerts with favorite people.
3. Going to your first celebration of any festival with special people.
4. Going to a famous tourist destination with your friends.
5. Visiting 7 wonders with a special friend.
6. Starting an important habit like yoga with a friend.
7. Inviting close people to your sibling's wedding.
8. First road trip with friends.
9. Eating special kinds of foods/ drinks with that friend.
10. Cycling with close friends.

10 things I learnt from Mahatami GANDHI:

1. Concept of Brahamcharya: Gandhi’s definition of Brahmcharya is the best I found.
2. “Beauty is of character not of face’.
3. Everyone should have their own experiments in their life.
4. Read works of every religion and experiment with the beliefs of that religion.
5. “Man should look upon every woman as his mother, sister or daughter.”
6. When Gandhi was young, the thoughts he had about sex were like a teenager.
7. Also, experiment with the kind of foods you eat. Don’t become like an animal when you eat.
8. Gandhi had more interest in his spiritual philosophy than practical philosophy.
9. It is better to not leave your children entirely to school education. Gandhi homeschooled his kids.
10. “ Truth is the ultimate God.”

10 ideas for this blog:

1. 10 mistakes humans should not make while invading mars.
2. 10 habits of daily life where compound interest is happening.
3. 10 innovations in camscanner app.
4. 10 ways charging of devices will happen in this century.
5. 10 changes in religion laws that should happen.
6. 10 ethical dilemmas of daily life.
7. 10 negative qualities of Punjabi culture.
8. 10 thoughts about freedom of speech.
9. 10 jokes about wrestling.
10. 10 types of cool flags that nations can have.