DONE rather than DO

Today morning, I posted a thought on Twitter – “Maybe, better looking at done-today list before sleep than to-do list in the morning”, it got some RT’s back. Anyway, I regarding that thought itself I think it makes sense and would work better for the following reasons -

1. When you have a TO-DO list, when you look at it is always pointing to future, the same TO-DO will be there tomm or next year.
2. Sticking on to a TO-DO list is great. However, it takes great will to do what you want to do. If your boss says to you to focus on something instead, are you going to stand up and say, “Nah! I don’t think so”? If you can, then have a TO-DO lifestyle. But read the next point too.
3. Even if are a TO-DO list person, make a DONE-TODAY list and compare it against your TO-DO list. This will help you set realistic expectations of what you can accomplish within your constraints.
4. DONE-TODAY lists focus on your abilities to accomplish things within your constraints. That gives yous a nice feedback to improve your strengths.
5. DONE-TODAY matters, TO-DO does not matter as much.
6. Your delta between TO-DO and DONE-TODAY should be ideally zero.
7. With DONE-TODAY list you can ponder over how your life or lifestyle or priorities are helping you where you want to get in life.
8. Your DONE-TODAY lists may turn into a nice autobiography of your and define you to the next generation.

I think you can come up with many more benefits of DONE-TODAY list… Chip in your thoughts and I will add them to the post

More points from Friends

1. @littlefluffycat (twitter) : done-today list shows us where our real priorities are. Sometimes the things we actually did are the more important things.

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What are you born to do?

Do you know what you are born to do?

Nature gives her indications in every step through every outcome of your multiple actions. It might be in the form of a lingering feeling or dissatisfaction, encounters with related people’s ideas, inspirations, happiness, etc. It is important that you realize when that happens for if you don’t the indications increase and later completely disappear. Realizing these indications and acting in accordance to your guiding principles is the key here. One problem everyone seems to have is not knowing how to act or receive these thoughts? Most of the times, introspection leads to fear and it scares away your will to follow the destined path. I think of fear and nature being opposites or that fear is the manifestation of one’s own insecurities fed by society in general. It is important to take a leap and shed the blanket of fear that wraps your real-self. Real self is subdued in normal people. It is chained down through fear of uncertainities. Once the fear is shed, the real self will be the guiding force in enabling you to carry your destiny.

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Projected dream

When I close by eyes, I see a crowd looking upto me, happy and hopeful,
All their worries drifted away, feeling content, yet powerful,
They tell me they see their aspirations in my eyes, they see their hopes reflected to them,
They tell me their children want to become me, and their children them,
It is only an image today, or maybe more than that,
It may be the future, or projection of my current self,
I can hear the symphony in the wind created by their breath,
creating a powerful current that takes my hopes across to far and away,
Bringing with it more dreams from those lands, from those people who want me to lead them,
It might be more than an image, it is future,
a projection of my current self

-Saranyan

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Power of One – Youtube

Big

• Are we BIGger than our society?
• Are our egos BIG enough to stop us from learning?
• Are our inhibitions BIG enough to stop up from trying?
• Are our insecurities BIG enough to stop from dreaming?
• Are our wills BIG enough to stop from quitting?
• Are we BIG enough to forgive?
• Are our ideas BIG enough to inspire?
• Are our thoughts BIG enough to change the world?
• Are our actions BIG enough to make us proud?

Be BIG in the right way!

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Do you?

• Do you lead when times are bad?
• Do you give hope when you lead?
• Do you generate a movement when you give hope?
• Do you create solutions when you generate movement?
• Do you attack seemingly impossibles with your solutions?
• Do you maintain spirit when seemingly impossible seems really impossible?
• Do you also maintain a positive spirit in your followers by maintaining a positive spirit?
• Do you see the impossibles spacing out “i m possible” due to the positive spirit of your tribe?
• Do you see a changed world with all the possibilities you created?

If you answered yes to atleast one of these questions, you are on the way to leadership. If you answered yes to all, you are a true leader.

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Self-evaluation

Self evaluation can be pretty tricky. More often than not one ends up with a conclusion that either overrates or underrates oneself. The trick to self-evaluation is to stay on the midpoint.

If you are a person who consistently undervalues your own achievements because your bar is too high, take a step back for once and think about your general trend in life. The biggest problem I’ve noticed with such people is that their evaluation intervals are very narrow. It is more like, what did I do last week to what I am doing now? Am I progressing? This will always get you napping. Don’t do that. In George Leonard’s Mastery, he mentions that progress to success or mastery should be measured looking at the general trend and not at neighboring plateaus and peaks. Put yourself in the shoes of a third person and take a look at your life. The trend may not be as bad as you think.

That brings us to the next case. There is definitely a chance to overrate your self when you do that. And false confidence will bring you down fast. When start feeling you are the best, take a step back again and think about all things you still need to do. Do some reality check. It will keep your head still.

Look at the overall trend with a bigger interval

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Why and how to tweet?

I was talking to one of my friends the other day and he asked me, “Hey, do you know about the junk website everybody is talking about? Twitter?”. That is what Twitter has done to the world – Polarization. Like every great phenomena, anything that polarizes people is bound to spread, talked about and cross barriers. Like several million people, for me tweeting was not a no brainer and hence this late start.

Why Twitter in the first place? Yes, it let you stay connected and is cool, but why should you twitter?  Here are ten reasons.

• Many tweets are more often status updates. They give you a personality.
• People following you are interested in knowing what you are up to. This may give a sense of importance.
• You can be perceived as a boring or a happening person. Depending on what and how you tweet.
• The more followers you have, the more people you reach (directly and indirectly) about an interesting thing you have done like writing books, blog posts, charity or …
• When people want to hear what you are doing, you want to do important and non-trivial things.
• You have a chance to promote your ideas to change the world.
• You have a chance to get more ideas to change the world.
• It gives you a sense of what people around you are doing and where the world is heading in general.
• It follows every definition of society as defined in Merriam-Webster.
• It is lot of fun to stay connected with the world.

What is the right way to tweet? I have just started experimenting this. However, looking at the successful tweets and the other kind, this is my general understanding.

• Don’t make your tweets a kitchen sink. Don’t dilute your tweets by tweeting about everything.
• If you are a Guy Kawasaki and have 90,000+ followers, we want to know where to find you giving your next speech. Until then, don’t tweet that you will be in Midas for an oil change for your car.
• If you are gathering a lot of followers, people are getting interested in you. Don’t drive them away by tweeting on unimportant stuff.
• If your tweet adds personality or wow factor to you, then it is a good tweet.
• Get followers and keep them. Getting followers is hard and keeping them is harder. The secret sauce is to continue building a good web personality.
• Use tweets to sneeze great products and experiences.

If you have more thoughts and ideas, feel free to pitch in..Happy tweeting.

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A Chance to Explore

Next time, before you give excuses not to do something, give it one more shot. Because you just might have been scared so far.

Immerse and enjoy yourself completely in the thing that scares you most. Give yourself a chance to explore the activity and bring out the best in you. You will be surprised to discover that it is now less scarier.

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Christiaan Barnard on Doubt

It was not a new emotion. Doubt was my oldest enemy. I knew it well. Yet I had never expected it to come this way, to arrive so suddenly with such a force at this crucial time. It was this which was most confusing. If I had become accustomed to its presense in my being, why could I not keep it within bounds? How did it sneak past the high walls of hope to appear now where it would do such a terrible job.

That was Christiaan Barnard before the first ever successful heart transplant surgery.

Christiaan Barnard did the first successful heart transplant

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