Perseverance beats everything else

The life throws many challenges at us along the way, hence we grow and get better at dealing with them. This is what we call experience and it is very important. The only way we can gain experience is by getting out hands dirty and feet wet. Putting ourselves in challenging situation is the only way we can get more experiences. When searching for jobs, experience is often measured in number of years. Whether this is a good way of measure can be a discussion, but it seems inevitable that no other metric seems suitable.

When famous people are interviewed, they mention several qualities as responsible for their success. They talk about understanding ones strengths and weaknesses, being passionate, creating oppurtunities, confidence and many other qualities. There is one quality which is atleast as important as others is Perseverance.

There may be a lucky few who may have become successful at their life without much hardwork and perseverance. We call these "the lucky ones". But the majority of successful people have worked exceptionally hard at one thing or the other. What makes them work for long hours? Passion is the answer. Being passionate about what you want to achieve is an important tick you need to get yourself going for those long hours. 

Here are a few examples of perseverance: 

• The first example which comes to mind is of Thomas Edison. Here are a few quotes by this great man.
• “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.”
• “Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”
• Check out this link from goodreads for more.
• Have you heard about "Angry birds" by Rovio. This is said to be their 51st game and six years. Check out the story.
• In similar ways, you can also find examples of Walt Disney, Henry Ford and other greats.

If you have other good qualities and lack perseverance, then you will not be able to go further in your work. 

Don't strain your eyes, they are beautiful.

Now a days we see a lot of people working on the computer for long periods of time in a single sitting. Staring at the screen can be dangerous for the eyes and sitting in a wrong posture can lead to back issues. Let us just concentrate on the eyes for now.

The list of problems which arise due to continuous staring at the screen:

• Blurred vision
• Head ache
• Back pain
• Neck pain
• Irritation in the eyes
• Problem with sleep

Facebook for newbies

Have you tried to explain how facebook works to your grandfather who is in his 60s. It can be a tricky task. In this post I will not explain how to use facebook. I will try to explain using pictures as to what facebook is. Let us dive in:

• When someone(Rambo) creates an account on facebook, Rambo doesn't have any friend yet. This is how Rambo would look like. The orange nodes represent other people and the connections represent friendship. 
  
• Now Rambo searches for people he may know in real life. He sees the profile of someone he knows. Let us call her Mina. Rambo wants to be friends with Mina. Mina is represented by a bluish colored node.

• Rambo sends a Friend request ( the "Add Friend" button) to Mina. Then he waits for Mina's response. Yellow line is represents the act of sending a friend request.

• Mina comes back from work and checks her facebook profile. She gets happy after seeing Rambo on Facebook. She accepts the friend request ( Green arrow) .. Now Mina and Rambo are friends now ( on Facebook)

• Rambo finds other people by using search tool, by checking the friends of Mina and becomes friends with a many people. The red lines show friendships of Rambo.His friends are represented in Purple. Now Rambo can share his life events and other activities with his friends. He also gets to know what his friends are doing in their lives through news feed.

• Rambo is now addicted to facebook. Dont be like Rambo.

Practice, perfection and Ambidexterity

I write using my right hand. I find it really difficult to write with my left hand.

If we go according to the old saying "Practice makes a man perfect", then I must be able to write with my left hand given I practice for long enough.

Now coming to the fact that ambidexterity can have advantages or not. According to a few sources, it is not beneficial and some sources say that it can be harmful to train ourselves to become ambidextrous. Some do say that it is beneficial. 

Whatever may be the benefits or harms it can cause, I will give it a try anyway. 

I will start today and practice for five minutes everyday. I will write with my left hand for just five minutes everyday until I see the results. I will keep updating the pictures of my writing every week. Let us see how many days I will need to get near perfection. 

Here is a pic of my writing using my right hand (dominant hand). I took 2 minutes to write this. 

Fig 1 :Written using my Right handed

• Week 0: (Pardon me for the poor pics, I will uplaod better pictures). The writing is not even legible. And I could only write few words in two minutes.

Fig 2.1 : 1st pic written using left hand.

• Week 1 : I wrote for one week, 5 minutes a day. Not a lot of imporovement ( Fig 2.2)

  

  Fig 2.2: After Week 1 of practice.

  
  
• Week 2: After two weeks, the handwriting seems more smooth. Still just a slight improvement(Fig 2.3)

  

  Fig 2.3: After Week 2 of practice.

Why learn a new Language?

Imagine you want to learn Mandarin but you dont have any other motivation apart from the fact that learning a new language can be fun and also you may be able to speak with 1 billion odd more new people. 

You can learn how to greet people properly in Mandarin and also know how to pronounce the different sounds. Although this seems to be simple, but believe me it is a daunting task. The act of learning a language can be very difficult with the added fun. It's a great combination to have, fun and difficulty. But, if you give, let's say ten minutes everyday, it will get very exciting to learn.

I will ask the question; What can be the benefits of learning a new language??

Let us try to list out the benefits and surely we will be able to list a few points which can serve as motivation to learn the new language:

• YOU CAN TALK TO MORE PEOPLE : This is the obvious benefit and this can be a rewarding benefit when you travel. The people will be more courteous towards you if you try to speak in their language. They feel good and can go out of their way to help you. 

• IT WILL IMPROVE YOUR FIRST LANGUAGE: Learning a new language will make you better in your first language. You will relook at the things which you had forgotten or overlooked with respect to your first language.

• IT WILL OPEN UP A LOT OF RESOURCES: When you learn a new language, you will hava opened a door to a lot of new literature in that language. Imagine you are reading a novel in Mandarin. How cool!!

• IT WILL HELP YOUR CAREER: If there is a posting abroad in a company you are working and you are the only person in your team who knows the language required, you will be preferred. The skills are important, but if you are at par with the skills, then knowing the new language can give you the edge over the others.

• IMPROVED MEMORY: While learning a new language you are memorizing new words everyday and therefore you are training your memory. This will improve your ability since you are practicing memorising.

• IT WILL MOTIVATE YOU TO LEARN MORE: The achievement you get in learning a new language will get you motivated to learn another language because of the points above. It is kind of recursive the way this thing works.

• LAST THING, IT IS COOL: No need to explain this.