Ever Visited Some Distant Recesses of Your Mind?

If you have a smartphone, then you are likely to suffer from ADD. Whether it's constantly responding to texts or just scrolling through your news feed every hour even though you know there's nothing to see or just getting bogged down by the influx of official emails, we are all too preoccupied with being preoccupied.

In comes virtuoso travel writer Pico Iyer explaining the virtues of sitting still. Something we Indians have known or practiced all along but somehow forgot about. Check out his fabulous, sensible TED talk where he reveals that the best place he ever visited was the one he was presently at. After that stop reading my blog, switch off your Wi-Fi, put the phone on flight mode and have a digital Sabbath.

Better Living through Your Mobile.

As much as I like to run, I can't bring myself to do it regularly. I could debate that it's not my fault what with a 12-hour work day and not being able to just get up but the fact is every time I don't run my health takes a hit. Every time I do my sinus issues are not acting up, I'm even more energetic and let's face it spending less time hunched near a computer.

I'm sure most of you face this issue. While a complete overhaul of your life is less than likely, little changes are. Say you try a little app called Google Fit.

Then you could start walking a little more every day. You could turn everyday exercise into a little game - you could beat yourself as I did on Tuesday or you could barely meet my target as I did on Wednesday. Fact is you'd haul your ass, get some exercise and if anything, have a little fun for no expense.

The best part of the app isn't it's functionality. Yes, it doesn't eat as much power as a traditional pedometer app. It's  a stellar execution of Google's in-house material design philosophy. What really makes me value the app is how it shows that with just a little change, your phone and technology in general can help you live better.

On that note, let me reinstall Duolingo again.

PS: Shipping every day is hard. Well harder than I expected it to be. Hope you are enjoying reading through my #YourTurnChallenge posts too.

Make Office Banter More Fun - Use Movie Quotes Instead of Corporate Jargon.

Life can get dull inside cubicles. You could watch a project 'being scaled'. A strategic initiative growing 'strength to strength'. If you walk in to the wrong conference room, you could even see the magical spot 'where the rubber meets the road'.

And if you too are tired of all these trite cliches, then it's time you livened up the workplace by using action movie quotes as often as possible. It'll extremely professional. You will gain a whole lot more attention and not to mention the fact that your colleagues would look forward to your pep talk.

Here's some instances where you can use some choice testosterone fuelled one liners.

A colleague is over promising to a client or his superior - bring about a course correction by using Top Gun's priceless repartee 'Son, your ego's writing cheques your body can't cash.'

When your team gets a job that's too big, too tough, too complicated and has too short a timeline, channel your inner Arnold Schwarzenegger, and say: 'If it bleeds, we can kill it.'

What to do when a colleague questions the fact that you didn't involve them on a key project? Go with your gut - unleash your Nicholas Cage, speak in his Con Air country bumkin drawl and say 'Sorry boss, but there's only two men I trust. One of them's me. The other's not you.'

And if and when a colleague comes through? Nicholas Cage has you covered with 'Just so's ya know, <insert colleague's name>, there's now three people I trust.'

Go on. Make your office a better place to work. Be the action hero you were meant to be.

#YourTurnChallenge is killing me. It's fun but hard.

She.

She is the words of an Elvis Costello song,

She's the manic pixie dream girl who can do no wrong.

She lights up an entire room with her smile,

She has nothing but kindness in her eyes.

She's fodder for such schoolboy poetry,

She's perfect - just as you expected her to be.

But then perfection is a folly,

And if she's perfect, how real could she be?

She's a bundle of contradictions,

She's a raw mass of nerves,

She's knobby knees and crooked teeth,

She's the round peg in the square hole,

She's a live wire that makes life seem full of rich possibilities.

She's nothing like the flabby mass of cliches you've grown to love,

But if you give it sometime, you'd see she's a gift from above.

Find Your Me Time.

I know you've been working 12-hour workweeks. I know you have a 2-hour commute to make. And yes, I also know its 2-hour both ways. I know you have a thousand errands to run over the weekend. Errands you are most certainly going to push to the next week. Look, I know your to-do list will never be close to complete yet what I'm asking you to do something for yourself.

Whether it's sipping coffee by yourself in the evening while looking at the sunset or trying to start a new hobby, unless you find a way to take out time to do something for yourself every you, you are going to lose it. And it's not that you need to do this for yourself, it's for your loved ones, and your work. Some quiet time will do you a world of good. It'd keep you sane. It'd let you stop from getting too involved in things and let you come back with a fresh perspective. It'll ensure that on your next round of interviews, you will actually have something nice to say when they ask, 'So, what do you do for fun?'

If you think you are too busy to afford yourself the luxury of 20 minutes every day,  you are wrong. You do get 1440 minutes just like every one else, and giving yourself 1.3% of it isn't going to bring the world to a halt. So go on, take a break. 

PS: The title of the post reads as if it's an Expedia ad. :)

This was written as a part of Seth Godin's 7-day long #YourTurnChallenge. It aims at getting people to blog for 7 days continuously and getting them to commit to shipping things. I blogged about a great ad yesterday but I wanted to right something more straight from the heart and then couldn't find the time. Yes, couldn't give myself some 'Me Time'. I hope the post before it still counts. 

What a Lovely Mix of Great Editing, Direction and Soundtrack.

Body positive messages often take a somber tone. Perhaps too somber that they may not be noticed. The 'This Girl Can' campaign from England encourages women to get out there and well, exercise without the fear of being judged. They get right to the point in the first frame and Miss Elliot's 'Get Your Freak On' works like a charm. Especially love how every shot is cut to the music - the 'Quiet' riff at the end of the second verse works as a great prologue to the film's crescendo.


No more talk now, watch and you know, get your freak on.

... But What If No One Notices?

Doubt. Good ol' unsullied, formidable as fuck doubt. Whether you are just starting off as a creative or someone trying to pursue a hobby more seriously, doubt plagues every creative person's endeavours. All the time. It's not so much so the effort but the idea that you could do something and that the world wouldn't take notice.

So if you are about to start a project and doubt's stopping you in your tracks, making you wonder if anything you do is actually worthwhile, I've some comforting words for you.

NO. Nothing you do is actually worthwhile. You will not strike gold. That cute girl in class won't comment on your blog. Even your own siblings won't like your tilt-shift photos on Instagram. It's far better if you admit right at the outset that you could do your best but still not get recognised for it.

Life is unfair after all. Credit is not often given where it's due. But what's worth noting is that unless you actually put yourself out there, credit would never come to you.

So pick up that pen, write that sonnet. Let it be terrible. Let the rhymes be off. Just put yourself out there. Chances are what you do today might not bring you fame or fortune or whatever you might seek. Chances are what you might do tomorrow would mean squat to the world but the oft chance that whatever little art you put out there achieves critical mass rests on your perseverance of putting yourself out there. There's a reason why they say hindsight is 20/20.

So, shall we get started then?


PS: I wrote this because Seth Godin asked me to. No, well, not exactly. This is a part of the #YourTurnChallenge - a weeklong challenge that encourages people to ship things by blogging everyday for a week. This is Day I. Hope Day II goes well too.