Category: Personal Advice

Why stinker email ?

Posted in Personal Advice2 Comments

Do you know ? If yes, then feel free to skip the article and directly jump to the comments section and add your thoughts there. I really want to find an answer.

For the rest of the article, I am just going to express some of my thoughts on this subject which may or may not be coherent.

Lets first understand why email ? 

So that we can communicate. When we don’t need the addressee to respond immediately. When we don’t want to (or  not in a situation to ) give the addressee a phone call or use instant messaging or talk face to face.  Also, when we want a communication recorded in writing. Or save a bit of time so that you don’t have to walk up  / call a person ?

Is that it ? Dear reader, please help me get more. If you have other thoughts in mind – jump to the comments section right away and share your thoughts.

Ok, now lets look at the limitations of an email – 

  1. Emails cant carry your facial and voice expressions.
  2. Emails do not give the other person a chance to clarify immediately and fix the confusion / mis-conception / doubt right away.  Once sent, the damage is done.
  3. Emails get recorded. You ll be shown your stinker email at the time of your appraisal.
  4. Human mind tends to read a slightly positive and slightly negative message as only negative (or worse highly negative)

 

Thats all I had. Also, here is an interesting perspective.

Please do help me out with your comments.

 

Turn off that fancy “Push” mail

Posted in Personal Advice, ProductivityTagged , 1 Comment

With being “connected” becoming so easy we tend to get addicted to checking our emails on the phone as soon as a new mail arrives or every few mins to every hour (or in that order) even when we are not “at work”.

At a restaurant while having lunch with friends / family (or even alone), at dinner table at home, at the intermission of a movie, just before you go to sleep (and your wife trying to sleep by your side), just after you get up in the morning……

W**!
Keep work at office and not in your pocket or on your dinner table or worse….in your bedroom.
Do keep in mind that constant distractions like mails / calls / smses hamper your ability to concentrate, your peace of mind and drastically impact your productivity.
Turn that push mail / periodic fetch OFF.  Fetch mails manually only when you really need to.
Enjoy the warmth of your moments with family, friends, enjoy the morning sun and go  to bed with a satisfied smile for a day well spent.

Why you must read blogs ?

Posted in Personal AdviceTagged 6 Comments

If you want to read  about your  interest areas (and not general news), this post is meant for you.

Have been wanting to talk about it for quite some time now. I started reading blogs around 3 months back and I realized in this short time that this way of consuming information, gyan as well experiences is the easiest and fastest. If you are already reading this, I know you don’t probably need this but still here is a quick list on why I read blogs:

Get expert perspectives and opinions.

  • Very few field experts actually get covered by journalists in news papers, magazines. Its not about on-line vs offline, but blogs vs everything else.
  • The frequency at which an expert talks in his own blog is much higher than any other media.

Get to know latest studies, discoveries, inventions, important personalities in the interest area.

  • This one is obvious. At the same time, this may be as good as other online media.

Get an opportunity to directly interact with the blog author especially in context of the blog.

  • This is not always the case, at the same time such opportunities are rare otherwise. Also, in-case of a blog the context is already defined, so it becomes much easier to interact and be precise as well as concise.

Its Free

  • I love this one. You dont have to pay $$ for magazines, articles, journals, reports. In some cases, you may want to spend the money but un-less you are that serious about your interest and you are willing to spend, blogs come in really handy.

Informal and un-adulterated.

  • This makes it much easier for you to relate to and get the exact feelings, opinions the expert may wants to express.

Very easily accessible.

  • Open your google reader or any other css reader and thats it.
  • You may also like to have mail subscription so that you get the content into your mailbox which you can access offline as well.
  • There are wonderful apps for mobile devices as well, which allow zooming-in, text flow-ability and offline access.

Very low time investment.

  • It takes me about 5-15 minutes to scan through a blog post and the return on this investment is very high most of the times.

Very easily manageable

  • You can keep track of “toRead” and “already read” posts through your css reader, mailbox and other online tools as well.  Compare this to offline-media and there is no way to do this except writing down your own notes in a notepad, which sucks big time. I tried maintaining a list of offline print media articles I wanted to read and it just did not work on a regular basis. In a very short time, I lost track and stopped doing the housekeeping just because it was so hard and took so much care and diligence from my side.