Kapil's Korner » google reader

Get motivated and not distracted

Kapil — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 13:44:48 +0000

Traveling by train, I overheard 2 middle aged gentlemen talking.

A: Do you know how many businesses does Anil Ambani run? … 19.
And how many do we run?

B: Not 19 for sure.

A: Correct we barely manage to engage ourselves in 1 or 2 and call ourselves over-worked. And when new opportunities arise we console ourselves that we are currently very busy to focus on new work.
What does ‘Anil bhai’ do? He goes out and grabs the opportunity with both hands and then worries about how to manage it.

B: it’s human tendency to be lazy and not kick ourselves to get involved in things more than what’s already on the plate.

A: More than “laziness” it’s our mind-set which says “NO” first unless we are pushed to do it. We need to keep motivating ourselves.

Suddenly this conversation caught mid-way had ended on superb note telling me that it’s so very human to always say NO first, push off the work and only take it up when it comes under pressure onto us. Every weekend I get charged to take up new work in the week and promise myself to say YES to a job and then figure out how to accomplish the task. Of course all weeks are not the same and sometimes you want to just finish off what’s on the plate without getting onto anything more. But then a few things which help me stay focused to achieve more.

I spend the first 30 mins in office only evaluating my work lists and putting down all the thoughts I may have for the day. This could be ideas, meetings and phone calls to be completed.
That being done, I send off emails to the respective teams which are as detailed with all necessary material put in so that I am not disturbed during the day for a file which could have been sent earlier in the morning itself.
Discipline. I try not to distract myself away from work related stuff. I load Google Reader only if I know there is no reading, thinking to be done on work related subjects.
On the not-so-busy weekends I try and spend time with my little notebook thinking of value additions that I can make at work.

Of course as the gentleman said, all this helps only if you have the RIGHT MIND-SET to do more. I’ll try and write something on creating a right mind-set but for now tell me what’s keeping you motivated.

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Sharing articles from my Google Reader

Kapil — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 13:07:22 +0000

This is going to be fun. I try to keep up with a lot of blogs I have been enjoying over this time. Quite often I come across something interesting which is worth sharing with all my readers. But not all of them our worth a blog post. Google Reader’s Share Item is a very handy tool.

When I am reading the posts in the Reader, to share the story all I have to do is click on and it will put the story in my Shared Items. From here I have inserted a piece of code into the blog template which generates a very nice little box (check the navigation bar on the right).

So when you drop in here, make sure you take a look at my article picks. Enjoy!

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Google Reader now bookmarked

Kapil — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 10:18:32 +0000

I was reading the new feature updates about Google Reader. I have been waiting for this application to get better so that I could change my reader from bloglines. I had really not experimented much with Reader earlier, so I can’t really make a comparison of the changes.

However, a few things which I liked about the Reader:

Nice, clean and user-friendly inter-face
Option to e-mail out blog posts
Add tags / Add star – Good if you happen to refer to blog posts often

Arjun, here has some more review on Google Reader.