Phones and the Battery Life gripe

What do you see? You see a phone with about 37% charge and enough juice to take me through till 9 PM. After all, I have experienced it for the past 10 days or so. Now. Notice this.

The phone’s in charge. It’s plugged in. Why? I didn’t need to, right? It could have seen me through the day, right?

My point is, why bother? Why make it such a big issue? Don’t wait for a battery to go full charge and go kaput. Why have that 30% charge left, 3 hours to go? Use phone sparsely and live in tension?

This is not a big deal. It’s not a thing to be ashamed of. Found a plug? Charge if the battery is < 50%.

Be relaxed. This thing is not so important. Be free. Focus on other things. One of the things that you can focus on by the way is, Pomodoro! Read this great post on Medium to know more.

Phones are to be used. Not monitored

Getting Organized

I have been all over professionally these past few months. When I say all over, I don’t mean travel!

Well, my organization is currently at a crucial juncture of its evolution. We are in a fluid state. Which, while is very exciting, can be very taxing. It means everyone who is in some sort of a responsible position has to wear many hats. Everyone has to hold multiple threads. (For example – sales itself has multiple threads. Prospects are one thread. Sales calls are another. Finalizing sales CRM can be one)

So I am currently holding some threads. As I mentioned, the organization is in a fluid state and things are changing fast.

It so happens some days, that I start doing one thing, the mandate comes to do something else and I end up finishing none. I miss out on threads often because of wearing multiple hats. (by the way, I am using wordpress app on my mobile for this post and swiping on SwiftKey keyboard is amazing but I digress)

3 weeks back, I had a self introspection. I really wanted to know if I am getting more on my plate than I can chew, if I am lacking the maturity and the bandwidth required to do justice to my role?

I realised the bandwidth, the maturity is all about HOW to do and not about HOW MUCH.

Simply put, I have not been very organized and this is all about how I have been trying to organize stuff in the past few weeks.

I started seeking help. From articles, books, people.

Here it goes.

1. The Bullet Journal way of creating tasks : I have tried multiple apps. So many that it’s not funny also. Somehow, I was not able to MANAGE and get things done. Of course, I am not blaming the apps here, please. I am saying that I perhaps did not know to use them effectively. Wunderlist, Color Notes are still on my phone but I have started using pen and paper with the bullet journal methods to write and manage. This method requires you to make a monthly macro to do list and then breaking them down into daily to do lists.

I, for my purpose, have got a seven point formula now. 7 macro things for the month broken down into seven daily to dos for the day. I am trying to stick to seven. If something else comes up in between, I try to push it to the next day. Finish first, what’s on agenda for the day. Earn that day’s salary.

You can use anything to organize your day and activity. The key thing is being DISCIPLINED!!

 

 

 

2. There was this article in Forbes about eleven habits highly productive people have. I have imbibed two of them.

A) Eat the frog for the breakfast : Finish the least exciting, most boring yet important task FIRST. Because you will have the least attention span for those sort of tasks, it’s better to take them Head on and strike off your list. This has been immensely beneficial.

B) Never touch a thing twice : Another gem. If you have started one task, finish it off. So NOT leave it to take something else and come back to that. Once you start postponing, it gets postponed.

3. Follow one hobby : I have restarted reading. Doing something, what you love, once a day for whatever time you’re comfortable with re-energizes you. Seriously. I read. From a John Grisham to a  Lee Child, from a Kenneth Blanchard to a Jack Trout. It makes me happy. Can’t tell you just how wonderfully it shapes you up for the day or the next day!

 

 

 

 

 

4. There’s nothing called a work – life balance : Yes, there I said it. Both go together. Merge family chores in your to do. My Seven points of the month and seven points of the day have both. There’s no separate listing. One list. Get it done.

I am still far from where I need to be but I have started taking those steps.

Books & Pens!

The name itself is Phonesnmore. Uff!

Wow! 27th October 2014… Yes, that’s the date I last published something on my blog. Oh, and that too, on social media?

When I started working in the early 2000s, I used to carry a book with me for the time gaps between my meetings. I used to have a decent handwriting and always, a good fountain pen. Bit of an old school guy.

Then, in 2008, I joined Facebook, in 2009 I joined Twitter and around the same time I had started buying those Nokia phones with “smartphone” capabilities.

There was a point in time during 2011, I did not even remember, how many platforms I had registered myself on. Every break, every gap was taken over by my phone(s). Check Twitter/Facebook/WhatsApp and the ilk. Play games.

Money was being spent on phones and apps. Headphones and Earphones.

My books had silently withdrawn themselves to some carton box in some upper rack of my cupboards. My handwriting had gone to dumps. I was all about virtual world, virtual recognition.

Of course, my focus on my work and my family (touchwood!) was not disturbed by this. Well, not that significantly. But it was me who was lost.

This me was not me.

Somehow (thankfully!) the work increased. There was absolute chaos in my organization as we were finalizing our shape, our being, our future course. Past one year has went by in a jiffy. My Twitter/Facebook/WhatsApp fidgeting went significant notches down. Things stabilized around 2 months back but this time I was determined that my breaks and my gaps would not be owned by social media/gizmos/tech.

Of course, a part of that has to be these because I am not going back to the pre-historic era but books are back in my life. Just about to finish this book. (Well, on page 172 of 213).

Bought a fountain pen. Started writing on paper. Not exactly a diary but of course, something personal and not official.

It’s a book a month now.

Sales and Life are all about stories. The more you read, the more stories you have to tell. Oh yes! Some movies have been added to the watchlist.

Time to go back and say hi to the old me!

Would you pay to tweet?

Back in the symbian S60 days in 2009, I had purchased apps left, right and centre and would have paid around $300 on various apps. Well, I had paid for a twitter client too! Gravity ($10).

Then I made a deal with myself. What all apps I will pay for?
1.) Should contribute to my professional growth
2.) Should add significant value to camera and camera related features (they create memories, family memories)
3.) Should make me learn something

You see, Twitter does not fit in up there. There are lot of free apps available to you, including a very capable official app.

So what happened? Well, I paid 301 bucks and bought Plume. Did it tick any of my check lists? No. Was there no alternative to tweet? There were many.

Exactly, not everything is within rules. I tweet. And in close to 6 years, I have sent 81700+ tweets. When you use a  service more than often, you need the function married with UI/UX. Experience matters. I paid for aesthetics. You need things that look beautiful and work flawless.

When you buy apps, you don’t buy apps. You buy experience.

So a list of my paid apps/service and whether they tick the checklist:

1. Evernote ( Professional tick)
2. SwiftKey ( Professional tick)
3. Camera Fx Premium ( Family tick)
4. Zinio ( Learn tick) well, not the app technically but Time, Forbes, Inc subscriptions
5. Lapse It Pro ( Family tick)
6. 1 password ( Professional tick)
7. My Backup Pro ( Professional tick)
8. Plume ( Exception)

But still, Plume does not hold the candle to Tweetbot.

That being said, if there’s no app to use Facebook but only the paid ones, will I buy that? Hmm, so what’s your story?

Automakers and their last watershed models in India

I was just wondering what cars have defined the fortunes of their makers. When I say the last, I do not mean the iterations of that, I mean that car. Let’s create this list

1. Maruti Suzuki – Swift
2. Hyundai Motors – i10
3. Honda Motors – City
4. Toyota – Innova
5. Mahindra and Mahindra – Scorpio
6. Tata Motors – Indica
7. Ford – Figo
8. Fiat – Punto
9. Renault – Duster
10. Skoda – Octavia
11. BMW – 3 series
12. Mercedes – E class
13. Audi – Q series
14. Nissan – Not yet launched
15. Volkswagen – Vento
16. Mitsubishi – Lancer

Was just wondering which one is most disruptive and which one is most innovative.

Would love to know what you think of it!

What are the “one tap” apps on your home screen?

https://www.evernote.com/shard/s9/sh/40285d79-46d6-4e3c-a7cd-5360a48d7f11/69ce4b29afe87767bdc3ee91d6c40dba

You are only one of two!

https://www.evernote.com/shard/s9/sh/39880575-5475-4ab6-aee8-467dcac5dd3f/fac5ecbc9ce8e82ea89fcc9a58a84eb8

Sorry for being a lazy bum and directly posting a note as a post. Sigh!

Twitter Analytics – vain or gain

I got introduced to analytics.twitter.com a month or so back. While it make sense for the businesses is no brainer, does it make sense for individual users, had me intrigued.

I have been tracking it everyday for the past 30+ days. Yes, everyday.

Some observations.

1.

This statistics is basically your dashboard of the impressions your tweets create. Does not mean much if you are tweeting mundane things (what I do most of the times!) but ofcourse, if you have a serious message, you would want to maximise your impressions. Whether your tweet is making that impression or you need to alter the way your message should be spread. However, for majority of the individual users not running a business or a blog, this dashboard is a vain thing.

2.

Another basic stuff. Most of the time, we bother about how many retweets do we get. Only 1, only 10? Mummy! 😈
That’s basically bull-crap. What you should be bothering about is the green oval and not the red one. The green one, aka the engagement ratio is basically the crux of the matter. How many times people engage with your impressions tells you, whether people are finding your tweets worthwhile or not. It’s everything. It needs to go up to engage meaningfully with your audience.

Don’t give me that line of “I tweet for myself.” Go, write a diary in that case. ☺

3.

Another important thing to check is, whether your impressions result into engagements. Having an impression of 200 with 3 engagements or having an impression of 50 with 10 engagements. Your call. Analyse your tweets, track and make your call.

Basically all this makes sense to a blogger, business or an enterprise but remember, there are people following you and your tweets go in their timeline.
You have a duty to ensure, you are  on filling their timeline with junk, waste or filth. Be interesting. Always 🙂

Happiness is

Happiness is NOT having an expensive phone
Happiness is being able to do things with your phone, you want to do

Happiness is NOT owning a big sedan
Happiness is going on a random drive with your loved one

Happiness is NOT having the membership of the most exclusive club
Happiness is taking a leisurely stroll in the park with your dog

Happiness is NOT owning a bungalow
Happiness is coming home to a waiting wife and daughter

Happiness is NOT living in Bandra, Worli or Town
Happiness is having good caring neighbours

Happiness is NOT being a CEO
Happiness is earning your bread by living your dream

Life gives you one shot
Live your dream
Make your passion pay your rent

Things to remember – Evernote

I went Premium on Evernote on 3rd September and till now, I am happy with my decision.

Since most of the stuff I save there are either official or personal, I can’t share as to how exactly it has become a critical go to app for me.

Today, I found a random use case that I can share!

I am off to my hometown after 2 long years in October and there are lot things that we need to take. So I have created a notebook for that trip.

Under that, various notes are coming up! The first one is a list of activities my daughter intends to do there. The second one is a photo note of things we need to pack and to remember, where exactly have I stored them.

So when I start my packing in about a month, I will know that these two things are here and are due for packing.

Oh, and otherwise? As I said, I am happy, I went Premium! Two reasons, offline notes, massive space.