Content management

I have been struggling with this for more than a couple of years. First of all I am trying to find A or THE tool that can manage my content. Second, I get overwhelmed by the hell lot of things that pass by me. Or at least that is what I perceive it to be. I can't even tag the content that I am trying to bookmark in deli.icio.us. So, I make the following observations:

• First of all I need to be able to classify the content appropriately. Say first by classifying the content using common nouns, then by using proper nouns.

It is an ongoing thing and I will update this piece as I discover the mystery.

Words from Late Benigno Aquino

“Here is a land in which a few are spectacularly rich while the masses remain abjectly poor, where freedom and its blessings are a reality for a minority and an illusion for the many, a land consecrated to democracy but is a land of privilege and rank, a republic educated to equality but mired in an archaic system of caste.”

Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation

This piece talks about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. It has some classic pieces that needs some attention:

People's praise, a fat pay-check, a big watch, a nice car, a big house.. all those things have gained such importance in our lives these days, probably because of the advertising and marketing industry's triumph in convincing us we are all losers, unless we have these symbols of success.

These symbols have become very much what people measure themselves up against, signs of achievement and in fact rabbits, that whippet-like youngsters mindlessly chase around a track for, not because they necessarily want it, but because a lack of self-reflection and awareness has made it possible for the world to substitute individual values with collective definitions of what one SHOULD do, have or seen to be doing.

The only way to avoid getting caught up in materialism is to understand where your happiness and fulfillment comes from.

We need the courage and honesty with ourselves to open up and examine our lives and ask ourselves the hard questions.

As the chairman of Hewlett Packard said on many occasions; "profit is what allows us to be here, but profit is not the reason for us to be here".

I suppose serving the test of time is what all of us earn for ultimately - fashion, fads, hairstyles all change, our jobs change, even our lifestyles - but who we are, well, if that rests on a more solid foundation than simply with the size of our car and the trappings of our latest salary package, means we also have the fortitude to last through the hard times.

Some nuggets by an Ex-manager of HLL

• Seek out to grassroots level experience - that is where basic understanding happens.
• Deserve before you desire - have a realistic estimation of your capabilities and strive to improve them.
• Play to win, but win with fairness - the two examples provided were truly awesome and is very inspiring. If one can reach this level of fairness, then they are pure and confident.
  
• Enjoy whatever you do - without it, proficiency cannot probably come out.
• Be passionate about your health - lest pay for it gladly in the old age.
• Direction is more important than distance - or in other words, leadership is more important than management.
  

Symptoms of autism

The only way to cure from it is to become conscious of it. Most of the mental disorders, I believe, can be cured by being conscious about them.

• cannot explain what he/she wants.
• language skills are slow to develop or speech is delayed.
• doesn't follow directions.
• seems to hear sometimes, but not other times.
• used to say a few words or babble, but now he/she doesn't.
• throws intense or violent tantrums.
• has odd movement patterns.
• is overly active, uncooperative, or resistant.
• doesn't know how to play with toys.
• has poor eye contact.
• gets "stuck" doing the same things over and over and can't move on to other things.
• seems to prefer to play alone.
• gets things for him/herself only.
• is very independent for his/her age.
• does things "early" compared to other children.
• seems to be in his/her "own world."
• seems to tune people out.
• is not interested in other children.
• walks on his/her toes.
• shows unusual attachments to toys, objects, or schedules (i.e., always holding a string or having to put socks on before pants).
• spends a lot of time lining things up or putting things in a certain order.
• unconcerned about dangers around him/her
  
• dislikes playing pretend.
• seem to have tremendous difficulty learning to engage in everyday human interaction.
• appear to lack a "theory of mind".
• Making friends in real life and maintaining those friendships often proves to be difficult.
• exhibit poorly modulated behaviors
• increased levels of self-stimulatory behavior, self-injury, or extensive withdrawal in overwhelming situations.
• oversensitivity or under reactivity to touch, movement, sights, or sounds.
• physical clumsiness or carelessness; poor body awareness; a tendency to be easily distracted; impulsive physical or verbal behavior;
• difficulty learning new movements; difficulty in making transitions from one situation to another;
• social and/or emotional problems;
• specific learning difficulties/delays in academic achievement.
• develop obsessions or routines around foods, restricting what is eaten to certain colors, textures or types of food; alternatively they may obsessively avoid certain foods with similar characteristics.
• Communication difficulties may contribute to autistic people becoming socially anxious or depressed or prone to self-injurious behaviors.
• A slight change in the timing, format or route of a routine or trip can be extremely disturbing to them.
• Autistics sometimes have persistent, intense preoccupations. For example, the child might be obsessed with learning all about computers, television programs, lighthouses or virtually any other topic. Some may repeat words from movies and watch certain bits over and over again. Repetitive behaviors can also extend into the spoken word; perseveration of a single word or phrase can also become a part of the child's daily routine.

Squeeze More Time Out Of The Day

We want to achieve somethings. But we don't have time for that. Why? Either we want to achieve too many things or we don't manage our time properly. But a small hitch is that unless we don't have the skill to estimate things properly, we cannot decide whether we are really dealing with too many things or we are just inefficiently using our resources (including time). I will write on the subject of proper measurement and estimation of tasks later. This is very important because it will let us know how much we can accomplish in a given period of time and thus lead us to schedule finite number of things, achieve them, have a sense of accomplishment, and be happy. Any gross overestimation of our capabilities will only lead to disappointment.

Irrespective of what situation we are in, it is always good to manage our resources efficiently. This will lead us to be a more productive person. A recent article on how to have a 36 hour day has the following interesting tips (I don't agree that you can squeeze out 12 hrs, it will be far less, nevertheless better than usual):

• Improve your sleep: Sleep whenever you feel so, but always get up at the same time everyday. Steve says so. When you lay on bed, sleep properly. For this, keep your bed room as a bed room. Keep it dark, clean and quiet.
• Improve your diet: It is said that much of body's energy is spent in ingesting and eliminating the stuff we take in. So, if we let our digestive system go easy on us, then we will have more energy to spend for other things. So, keep the diet to items like vegetables, fruits etc. that are easily digestible.
• Multitask: We are told generally that multitasking activities does not work. But one key are where one can multitask is to mix physical and mental activities. Say exercising and listening to some useful audio. Multitasking two mental tasks can infact lead to more time spent.
• Get organized: Mess creates unnecessary pressure upon us. This unnecessary pressure gets released in the form of tension and results in depletion of energy. The key here is to arrange things so that our mind gets completely convinced that things are at proper places and feel relaxed. Given that, it can do better things. Not only that, if we are better organized, we can access/retrieve our stuff faster and easier which also increases our productivity.
• Use software tools to your advantage
• Cut TV
• Seek help from the system, instead of trying to get everything done by yourself.
  

A single theory

Ever since I started to reflect upon the state of things and make sense of them, I am tempted to build a single framework for explaining all of the things in the world. Literally everything. By a single framework, I mean by asking a common set of questions to start making sense of things. Questions are of different kinds, as everybody knows.

Making sense of things is, as a matter of fact, as simple as asking right set of questions. Some questions make us understand things. Some questions make us suspect things, some make us wonder, some make us feel, some make us reflect, some make us invent, some make us discover, some make us innovate and finally some make us generate more questions.

Questions are at the heart of advancement of human thinking. So the theory that I am talking about can be said as The Theory of Questions. :-)

This blog..

..is supposed to be my view of things as I make sense of them. It is also supposed to represent my consciousness. I link my consciousness to this blog. Consciousness is a very important concept in our lives. It is what makes one reflect upon self. It is what brings present into picture. I cannot, at this point, probably explain it more vividly, but I have a point, you see. I have decided to tie my consciousness to this blog because I tend to lose my consciousness very frequently and lose track of things. By doing this, Instead of storing umpteen things in my mind, I just store a pointer to this blog. There are moments where I forgot that I have stored a pointer also. But this is the minimum thing that has to be kept in the mind. I also intend this blog to be a place where I write something concrete so that I force myself to think long about things that come in my way. In short, I intend this blog to be my accountability tool.

One of my interests is to understand how knowledge is stored and organized, and more importantly how it is extended. This is a very general theory and has no inclination towards any particular branch of knowledge. (In a way, one can say that, it is consciousness that enables humans to generalize things :-) , which is a very powerful concept in the advancement of human knowledge).