Life Skill #3: Be happy, have Fun...

Life Skill #3: Be happy, have fun. It's a natural life skill, that's how humans have actually survived 'natural selection'.

Who doesn't wants to be happy or have fun ? Will it be a life if there is no fun ? Then how come it becomes so difficult ? For some it's damn easy and for others it's next to impossible why ? Well, I am not answering any of these question. This is something higher than the intent of the blog.

Anyways - for yourself & for everybody else on the team, know - the performance scales up multifold with happiness quotient rising. It rigs up the adrenaline, it attaches meaning to everything and works up to cope up with stress & confusion.

Remember happiness is viral, it spreads. It's not the successor of success, it is what leads to success.

Life Skill #2: Listen

Are you sure, you listen ? Is listening for sure a Life Skill ? Yes, my friend, listening is much dearer life skill, it is actually a survival skill, it will keep you alive in the time of natural selection.

The act of listening is referred primarily in two intents: listening for yourself and listening for others.

Listening for yourself is something related to 'sniff & scurry' (of 'Who Moved My Cheese' fame) wherein one  should listen with ears to ground (on the rails) for the sound of the train. It doesn't matter if one is in the tunnel or not; whether one can see the light at the end of tunnel or not - one needs to keep checking the rails. That's how you survive - you know the sound, listen to it, place thy ears firmly on the rails & listen

Listening for other is bit different. It's actually paired with the act of 'talk'. This is something related to latest blog of 'Tom Peters' - titled 'Time to revamp leadership training'. He is brave. He says - 'Leaders do People'  and to accomplish this - Leaders must listen, Leaders must become aggressive listener. Simply put -  "The goal: Become a full-fledged "professional listener." "

Over many years, I have met many organizational leaders, however I know only few who actually listen - and 'coz they listen they 'do' people. They bring out wonderful 'Wow' each time they interact (listen followed by talk)

The art of listening is not mastered in day or few. It takes patience (actually courage) to be on a chair & listen.

It will take effort to purposefully stop in between and listen to the thoughts of peer, even thyself or the surroundings. Practice the habit by reading a lot of stuff of wider spectrum, visiting places, get into situations, attend interviews, participate in fresher hiring drives over weekends, attend lectures, listen to audio books, stop watching TV - visuals interfere with listening, stop discussion and just listen, play with kids who talk a lot, solve without uttering a single word, use power of silence, improve vocab and use proverbs (this require command on language & literature both).

Doesn't matter where you are, who you are - stop talking; listen for a while, listen to the air, enjoy the fragrance, listen to sound of your soul; connect to thyself. Connect to Life Skill #1: Be Aware

Life Skill #1: Be Aware, Be Aware NOW !!!

Life Skill #1: Be Aware, Be Aware NOW !!! - this is life skill #1. Why it's #1 is out of context. The context is how to 'Be Aware' and use this skill to sustain.

In order to be aware, one needs to connect. where to connect, well connect thyself to yourself, connect to your intuition, connect to your HEART (not the mind), connect thyself to the next...this is how you would be aware, this is how I am aware.

Be Aware, keeps - Alerts On !!! These alerts ensure that opportunities find us, 'Alerts On' makes us available, keeps our radical valencies available for new connections to be made or stale connections to be kicked, yes my dear friend, while you make new connection, remember to Kick Stale Connection !!!!

Be aware to embrace glory, to kick habits, to smile and to appreciate novelty, to participate in revolution and leave mundane rotation. Be aware to speak, to say 'yes' and to know when to stand in denial.

Awareness will keep the flame alive, it will not let you rest, unless you achieve satisfaction, unless you attain peace, unless you reach enlightenment.

Be aware It's not success, It's not destination...It's the journey, It's the path, It's all about Salvation....!!!!

- this life skill was shared by my childhood friend 'Sandeep Gupta' - he is a traveller, he is on road to peace. He loves to smell the roses :)


I do not know why this chant is continuously going in my heart. Till I get the exact reason, I let it be quoted here in this first post on Life Skill to 'Be Aware'


'Then I saw the congo, creeping through the black. Cutting through the jungle with a golden track' - Vachel Lindsay' - The Congo. Movie : Dead Poet's Society.

Introducing Label: Life Skill

What is a Life Skill ? Definitions in wiki or dictionaries would differ, but this is how I define it. 'Life skill, is a trait, it's an attribute, which has the ability to make or break one's life.'

How does a skill qualify to be a life skill ? Let's understand from example. In stone-age, or say when man was hunter, the art of throwing stone or a spear was a life skill, 'coz man's life was dependent on it. Today there is no need, McDonalds and KFCs across the globe would prepare delicious meal for thyself.

As humanity has progressed, different life skills are required at different ages for different purpose to suit human desire for excellence !!!.

I was discussing this subject with couple of my friends, and I discovered that there exists a huge list of life skills today, every body considers or qualifies a very different set of traits he or she has honed over the period of years as life skill. This discovery gave me an idea to introduce the label 'Life Skill' and to write on the specific traits illustrating how these traits differentiate 'Winners' from 'Whiners' plus how to seed and nourish these skills.

So I ran a query within my friend circle to know all they can tell on these Life skill from the varied experiences they had. I received amazing response which is enough to trigger many many thoughts to publish under this label.

Folks, keep watching this blog and specifically the label 'Life Skill' to be illuminated.

One thing at a time

It may sound very simple to do 'one thing at a time', however it's not, at least not in complex work spaces and organizations of our time. Reason: Our mind is a wonderful object, it can focus and it can split focus at the same time.

Over the period of years I have seen, that almost all the time, myself and people around me have benefited by adhering religiously to this simple principle. The advantage of not getting knocked down by noise in the environment by multi-tasking weighs huge in favour.

We can argue about pros & cons and many other things, however the point I want to illustrate is how to actually do and implement this principle. While I was preparing to write, I came across a interesting post of Mark Forster with the same title on his blog 'Get Everything done'. You can read the post here.

In very simple words, he has spilled the secret sauce. The method is to list down everything (slotted already into tasks) in descending order of urgency ( not in order of importance - 'coz if they are not important, why they are on your list ;). [ This is just like AGILE methods, writing down user stories, prioritizing them, adding dog points and then allocating resources to complete the user stories. ]

Once you are done with the list, start putting an end date to each of the task after allocating 100% (or whatever % available) of yourself to the task. Once done, do S.A.V (Screw Around Vigorously - do it 'coz it fixes) and finish. No excuses to CYA (Cover Your Ass)

If you cannot finish on time, revisit the estimates and update all dates. remember not to skip to reduce the count of task at hand. Follow this principle and thy soul be rewarded in both long & short run with peace and comfort.