Fun with Experiments

#171

I love experimenting - new food, new furniture layouts, new types of attire and accoutrements, new genres of books, songs and movies, what have you. 

Sometimes they work well, other times they either fizzle out or I land in a faux pas. The intent though, almost always works out - being willing to try different things and keeping an open mind when trying them out - a happier me!

Experiments also allow me to explore other sides of me, step outside my comfort zone only to have the thing I try out become the new normal. This behaviour of mine has seen a surge during WFH.

For instance, I started working in the living room with the sofa on the left side and my work table on the right. Experimenting with switching the position of both ended up improving my productivity - don't ask me why, but I'm happy I did it and the layout has stayed that way till today.

Starting to cook itself seemed like an experiment. Attempting to cook different cuisines itself was a series of experiments - from the basic South Indian meal to Mexican rice to Thai curry to Noodles, Pasta, and more. Surprisingly, all of them turned out great, encouraging me to experiment more. I realized that even for those experiments that don't work in my favour, I'm still happy I gave it a shot. You're better off than not having tried it at all.

So for those of you who are afraid to step outside your comfort bubble, come out of the 'safe' zone and you'll astound yourself by doing things you never thought you could do before!

It's time to say yes to things.

Braindump!

#170

Use brain-dumps to avoid getting overwhelmed

I find that when I am particularly stressed and/or feeling overwhelmed for one reason or another, I like to grab a piece of paper and a pen and dump all my thoughts on those pages.

It’s so therapeutic!

Pen and paper allows:

1. scribbles

2. tables

3. giant love-hearts

4. arrows

5. triple-underlining for emphasis

Once you get started you’ll want to pour out thoughts quickly. Put that phone aside and grab a pen and your diary. Figure out what you're feeling at that moment. Jot down where you're spending those hours that seem to get by very quickly. Write down granular versions of your goals. Look at how you're spending your time. Be honest. What might you want to be doing a year from now? Five years from now? It surely is scary to think about and jot down, but exciting to ponder over the prospects of what your brain thinks you could be doing! How much might you want to be earning? What might your future lifestyle look like on an ideal day?

Come back to reality. Write down one thing you want to change. Figure out a way to fit that into your so-called busy schedule. That's it. You're good.

Hopefully, after this exercise, you get a renewed sense of motivation and realize it’s all going to be okay.

Opposite Advice

#169

You've often heard people say, plan the night before, write out motivational messages, hustle, hustle, hustle, and celebrate even the small wins. Here's some food for thought that does not agree with any of the aforementioned:

 

"Every once in a while, evaluate your sequence, cross over what was done, and add new high leverage activities, that didn’t make sense to be done earlier."

 

1. Stop hyping yourself up before sleep, promising yourself that as soon as you get up, you will rock the day. This not only builds up false expectations, which may lead to demotivation if you procrastinate, but also puts added pressure in case you don't receive adequate sleep. Instead, wake up, and plan from there.  Tackle one thing at a time based on what works in that circumstance.

2. Don’t burn yourself out. In the beginning, people tend to rush into forming new habits, but in the beginning when any behaviour is fresh, your actions towards your goal may be unstable. Allow yourself to fail. Allow yourself to do whatever you can and slowly improve over time. Focus, for the first several weeks, on being consistent and not breaking the chain.

3. Focus on that hour. From the moment you wake up, even though your goal should be to do the best you can for the day, your focus should be in the hour that’s ahead of you. You're more likely to be more better disciplined that way and get things done in a streamlined manner.

4. Don't reward yourself for small completions. Working on your goals shouldn’t be something dreadful, that you have to reward yourself with. Learn to treat the accomplishment of the subtask itself as the motivating factor.

 

“People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing — that’s why we recommend it daily” — Zig Ziglar

A Walk in the Terrace

#168

Evening walks have become exceedingly popular this past one and a half years, thanks to the pandemic. Digital detox, away from phones, TVs, laptops, and the endless number of screens onto the terrace, where you get a minuscule chance to be one with nature.

On my own terrace, I say hello to all of my neighbours’ pots and plants. Looking across from one end of my terrace, I see a bunch of girls dawdling and almost eating their microphones while talking inaudibly. The other end has a few old ladies, perhaps in their sixties, rocking air pods and headphones while briskly walking in their sneakers and saris - an interesting combination but no longer a rarity. 

I don’t see many people on some of the other buildings' terraces but I do notice clothes hung and I turn it into a guessing game - look at the clothes and deduce who they might belong to. One batch is easy to guess - a woman's clothes and not too many of them - probably a girl living on her own in this city. Another set of clothes hung on the building facing the opposite street had an array of mixed clothes belonging to a couple whom I’d seen visiting the terrace not very often, that too at the beginning of last year. Recently, there are cute onesies and other tiny clothes being hung along with the regular batch - no points for guesses here!

Let’s talk birds. Two huge Banyan trees standing tall, facing each other, with the terrace I’m standing on in between them. One of them inhabits a murder of crows (learning the names of collection of animals finally pays off), who get quite chatty around 6PM and fly around for a bit after their round table conference while the other tree has mynahs and a few other smaller birds I don’t yet recognize, and a swarm of dragonflies hovering near the two trees. By 7PM, as darkness falls, one can see a cloud of bats flying east to west, origins unknown, landing on one of these two trees for a while before flying back and forth trying to find a comfortable spot to hang upside down.

By this time, I’m back home, having climbed downstairs in a bit of a hurry, as I’m kinda spooked by bats sometimes, especially when it’s dark. Besides, I would’ve reached my target few thousand steps for the day and all set for dinner and night meetings. Evening walks are like reading a book for me - they transport me into an alternative world for a short while, making me appreciate what’s happening there, and forget about the worries and other ongoing things back in the real world, a much needed refreshing hiatus.

Burger vs Fries

#167

After a month of struggling to balance cooking with household chores with office work with hobbies with virtual socializing, we thought it might be nice to order in every once in a while to save ourselves that time and energy in making something at home. Boy, was it bad! I ended up gaining 3 kilograms in just one month. For me, gaining weight used to not be easy at all. Now it's the opposite - hustling to lose weight via cardio, skipping, equipments, yoga, and staying away from rice and other unhealthy complex carbohydrates.

I slowly started tracking my weight on a weekly basis, sometimes losing 500 grams, then gaining it back within a day or two, tracking my calories intake via a food diary, and tracking the exercises I'd do every day, which varied a lot initially and then stabilized to a fixed set. During this period, I was super curious to learn the ingredient proportion and the calorie amounts in everything we ordered - pizzas, burgers and fries, coke (Coca-cola I mean, not the other one!), biryani, pasta, burrito, and more. I found out an interesting thing about one of the most popular food combinations in the world - burger and fries. 

Did you know that you're better off eating 2 burgers rather than 1 burger with fries?

I didn't until I read about it. The burger and fries combo has a lot of fat and carbs, which give it about the same number of calories as a burger, but very little protein. By swapping the fries for a second burger, you double your protein intake while simultaneously reducing both your fat and carbs intake. Burger + fries is listed as one of the top five unhealthiest meals in the fast food category.

Let's look at the calorific values. A typical burger with large fries amounts to around 1200 calories with 1700mg of sodium. Bump it up to a combo with soda to supposedly "save" costs, you'll be consuming a whopping 1500 calories with that one meal alone! A regular burger from McDonalds has 250 calories and 13g of protein. A medium portion of fries has 337 calories but only 3.3g of protein. A burger has 31g of carbs while the fries are at 42g. Moreover, the fries have double the amount of saturated fat (3g) as compared to a burger (1.5g). I'm feeling full and unhealthy just writing this.

Swapping those scrumptious-but-harmful fries for a second burger - what about 'balance' though? For that, it would help to talk about the ratios of the crucial components of any food - carbohydrates, proteins, fat. As most of us learned in school, carbohydrates provide us energy, proteins fuel our muscles, keeping us full for a good period of time, while fat helps us absorb vitamins and minerals and keeps cells healthy. Maintaining a well-balanced ratio of these three components will result in fewer cravings, lesser desire to binge-eat and better control of what we eat.

How about swapping burgers altogether for a more healthy choice going forward, eh?

Snippets from a Meditation Course - Learnings

#166

1. Maintain a meditation notebook.
2. Jot your experiences and reflect on your journey.
3. Count your breath - 1 for inhale, 2 for exhale, 3 for inhale again, and so on until you reach 10. Restart the count and repeat.
4. Sit in a chair, check your posture, adjust your seat if it's too high or too low, have your feet rested well on the floor, keep your spine straight.
5. Experiment with your thoughts, become aware and observe them.
6. Follow your train of thought and see where it leads.
7. Relying on motivation can become an obstacle. Force the position instead.
8. Walk slowly and be mindful of each step, experiencing the earth beneath you.
9. Find a mix of techniques that works for you - visualization, meditation in groups, walking meditation.
10. Continue practising regularly.

Snippets from a Meditation Course - Weeks 16 Through 20

#165

Paraphrased from the book 'Roaring Silence':

There are no ordinary apples.

Questioner (Mr. A): What is it like to experience the colour and texture of thought?

Practitioner (Mr. B): Pray tell me this - what is it like to see this apple? What is it like to touch the apple?

A: It’s cool and waxy . . . It’s very green, isn’t it! This doesn’t seem to be like an ordinary apple [laughs].

B: [laughs] There are no ordinary apples.

A: What?

B: There's no ordinary anything. You become able to experience the colour, tone and texture of thought because you develop the experience of openness in which you can see thought in its spatial context, space being the non-dual perception of emptiness and form. You have the apple in your hand, you can feel it. You're not distanced from it by thoughts about it. You simply catch the apple in space, and there it is – in your hand. 

Week 16 - Walking Meditation

Find a quiet place without distractions or obstacles like an empty room large enough to walk in circles. Walk with your eyes looking downwards at about 45 degrees but keep your head upright. Allow your eyes to relax and gaze to move smoothly over the ground.

Be aware of each part of your foot as it presses the ground. Be aware of sensations of your trackpants brushing against your legs and the slight brush of air against your skin. Walk at half your normal speed to experience this. If you're lost in thought, gently bring yourself back to the awareness of the present moment and sensations.

Try this for fifteen minutes every time you meditate.

Snippets from a Meditation Course - Weeks 11 Through 15

#164

These weeks spoke about flow, Lhatong, anger, and forgiveness. Lhatong is the Tibetan word for Vipassana, the Buddhist term for 'insight.' It allows you to see things as they really are.

On flow: To develop awareness of the mind and body, try to observe various aspects when thinking. What impact does change have on our lives? What do you think about when you have nothing to do? What do you envision for your future? What do you see yourself doing, talking, if your friends were here, or family?

On forgiveness: it does not imply that we allow ourselves to be trampled. It is rather the skill to avoid churning up our own emotions by endlessly reminding ourselves of the injustice.

On anger: when hatred is dissolved, employ anger to concentrate and see things clearly, which thereby help us become aware of our feelings and possible responses to the situation. Let's act in a way that prevents harm to ourselves and others. Observe the root cause first before making any decision. Sometimes anger can stem from fear too. As humans, we deliberately make ourselves angry to avoid feeling the underlying fear. Be alert for such signs. 

Snippets from a Meditation Course - Weeks 3 Through 10

#163

What happens when you lose the motivation to meditate? 

That used to happen frequently, now it's more exciting than boring, since I've spent so much time analyzing the why. Weeks 3 through 10 covered a variety of topics. One of them was the loss of motivation as a common obstacle. When you first begin to meditate, it is new, strange, exciting, and promises extraordinary benefits. Later, meditation may seem like an unpleasant chore.

The primary antidote to this is finding inspiration all around you. Read meditation books, listen to others' experiences after they have meditated for a while. Dive deeper into all the benefits that meditation provides - for the physical, mental, and spiritual well-being. Find a group to meditate with, the buddy system usually works well for such things. To iterate learnings from the first week, maintain a meditation notebook and look through your experience with meditation to re-inspire yourself. 

There are other ways to get back on track too - force yourself to sit in a meditative posture. Before starting the session, stretch your neck up and down, sideways, and in a circular motion. Stretch your arms, rotate your wrists, force a smile, and massage your face. You'll notice you've gained a tad bit of energy to begin meditating. If it's the other way round where you're too excited to calmly sit and meditate, take deep breaths and exhale with your mouth as slowly as possible. Do this a couple of times to relax your mind and muscles.

Snippets from a Meditation Course - Week 2

#162

During the second week, the Aro Meditation course walked through obstacles and their antidotes. It spoke about being persistent with the endeavour of meditating as the so-called obstacle and the antidote as the gentleness with which your mind must try to approach meditation. In the first week, sitting with the spine straight was no cake walk. However, it became easier in the second week. Sometimes sitting cross-legged worked, while other times Vajrasan worked best.

The subsequent weeks spoke about thoughts - from forcing thoughts out of the mind to remaining without any thoughts whatsoever to following a train of thought that arises in the mind. There are myriad techniques, so it is important to choose one that resonates with you. For me, following the simple train of thought helps. Over time, I've learnt to slow the train down so I can become aware of each thought that comes and goes by and how it makes me feel. 

Other times, I meditate about meditating. I try to observe and find the 'why' of meditation. What do I hope to achieve out of meditating ten minutes every morning? I have also tried to vary the time of meditation - sometimes mornings work best, other days I meditate at night to help me fall asleep. On weekends, I meditate twice a day and dive deeper into finding the 'why'. It helps me focus, it helps me concentrate at work, on my blog, and more. I start becoming more mindful of tasks like cooking, brushing, etc.

Snippets from a Meditation Course - Week 1

#161

I'd heard of gratitude journal, decision log, and BuJo until now, but TIL about a 'Meditation notebook', where you can record your meditation goals, experiences, and reflections. It's a pretty interesting way to progress through your journey of meditation. I started off by finding even five minutes of sitting in silence as excruciatingly long and having to try to control a gazillion thoughts flashing by a million miles an hour. 

If you think about 'how to meditate', it's a pretty easy recipe: "Be here now." Sit someplace quiet and comfortable, close your eyes and watch your breath. That's it! Only when you actually do it, if you've never done it before, will you know that 300 seconds is a long period of time when you're sitting trying super hard to control your breath. Initially, controlled breathing turned out to be counterproductive as it ended up with me feeling breathless, but gradually, it began to feel more natural. I'm happy to report that I can now comfortably meditate for about fifteen minutes, which is a darned good progress over five minutes. I still have a long way to go but I know I'm getting there and that's motivating.

When you meditate, try to be aware of what you're feeling and once you're done, note in your journal what you felt and how you felt during those few minutes - did you actually feel relaxed? Or since thoughts kept cropping up, you felt angry or agitated? Sometimes you may have even fallen asleep. Jot everything down. In the first week I wrote in the meditation notebook, one of the days I had written down "what a waste of time!" I don't feel that way anymore, thankfully.

Filtered Reading

#160

While others are busy infinitely scrolling through Facebook and Insta, successful people double down on an underrated skill that will change the way you approach reading.

In today's age of information overload, we are constantly trying to keep up due to FOMO (fear of missing out) but also constantly distracted from deep work and creative productivity. As Herbert Simon said "A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention". Our physical and digital environments are surrounded by more and more content , some of it educational, some of it 'fake news', some of it utterly useless information. Due to our devices designed to reinforce our confirmation biases by feeding us only what we constantly search for, it keeps us from knowing what is actually true. Moreover, too many good options combined with not enough foreknowledge on which is the best leads us to second-guess our choices and judgement on what is 'right'.

As Charles Dickens wrote in A Tale of Two Cities:

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us."

People who are able to absorb useful knowledge in a short time while keeping away the irrelevant data have a huge advantage over others. Despite a barrage of information coming at them with full gusto, they are able to discern the beautiful sounds from amidst the cacophony. They are able to change their approach to the news and other information from a reactive to proactive one. This is the underrated skill. 

In order to glean the helpful tidbits from the endless sea of knowledge, ask yourself when you read something: "Does this have the potential to fundamentally change my life?" While incremental knowledge that further confirms what we already know to be true is temporarily entertaining or exciting, it is quickly forgotten. Today's gossip is tomorrow's past rubbish. But today's breakthrough knowledge upends the status quo and helps us see a whole new side to things by challenging our beliefs.

Another way you can look at and imbibe new information is by learning how to learn and using mental models to convert plain text into your own self-formed analogy, story, metaphor, diagram, chart, what have you. Mental models are representations of phenomena that have been observed across time, across fields of study, and across domains of life. They deliver the maximum value out of the knowledge consumed because of their condensed nature.

Benefits of Music

#159

“Without music, life would be a mistake” – Friedrich Nietzsche

Did you know?

Happy or sad music affects how we see neutral faces.

Ambient noise can improve creativity

Moderate noise levels promotes abstract processing, leading to higher creativity

Our music choices can predict our personality

Blues and Soul fans - high self-esteem, are creative, outgoing, gentle and at ease

Jazz fans - high self-esteem, are creative, outgoing and at ease

Classical music fans - high self-esteem, are creative, introvert and at ease

Rap fans - high self-esteem and are outgoing

Opera fans - high self-esteem, are creative and gentle

Country and Western fans - hardworking and outgoing

Reggae fans - high self-esteem, are creative, not hardworking, outgoing, gentle and at ease

Dance fans - creative and outgoing but not gentle

Indie fans - low self-esteem, are creative, not hard working, and not gentle

Bollywood fans - creative and outgoing

Rock/heavy metal fans - low self-esteem, are creative, not hard-working, not outgoing, gentle, and at ease

Chart pop fans - high self-esteem, are hardworking, outgoing and gentle, but are not creative and not at ease

Music can significantly distract us while driving (contrary to common belief)

Drivers were tested while listening to their own choice of music, silence or “safe” music choices provided by the researchers. Of course, their own music was preferred, but it also proved to be more distracting. They made more mistakes and drove more aggressively when listening to their own choice of music.

Even more surprisingly, music provided by the researchers proved to be more beneficial than no music at all. It seems that unfamiliar, or uninteresting, music is best for safe driving.

Music training can significantly improve our motor and reasoning skills and especially Classical music training can improve visual attention

One-sided phone calls are more distracting than normal conversations

Music helps us exercise

Listening to music competes for our brain’s attention, and can help us to override those signals of fatigue, though this is mostly beneficial for low- and moderate-intensity exercise. During high-intensity exercise, music isn’t as powerful at pulling our brain’s attention away from the pain of the workout.

My own 'Did you know' from when I was little: "Music makes work fast!"

Habits of Highly Influential People

#158

Verbal habits of highly influential people - 

1. Share positives first, then negatives:
1. Professor Daniel O'Keefe mentions that sharing opposing viewpoints will allow you to be perceived as more influential than sticking only to the benefits of your own position, because you can address the fact that no idea is perfect.
2. Discuss potential limitations along with demonstrating how you will minimize or overcome them
3. Talk about the other side of the argument but circle back to show why you're still right, and remember to draw positive conclusions
2. Take bold stands:
1. Stand behind your opinions with vigour to instill confidence in your listeners
3. Pace yourself:
1. If your audience might disagree, go faster, as it gives them a small window of time to form counterarguments when listening to your next point
2. If your audience is likely to agree, speak slower to give them time to evaluate what you say and match it with their own initial bias
3. If your audience is neutral, speak fast to capture their attention
4. Make sure you're right:
1. Despite all the above points, take care to reiterate the most important aspect - your actual message. First and foremost, you need to be right. Be clear and concise, to the point. Win the day because not only your data and reasoning are solid, but also your conclusion is concrete and correct.

Ensure that when you persuade others, you put forth undeniably logical points.