Be Happy – You Will Never Die.

Be Happy – You Will Never Die.: In our worldly exchanges, we term Death to describe cessation or permanent termination of all biological functions which sustain a li...

Be Happy – You Will Never Die.

In our worldly exchanges, we term Death to describe cessation or permanent termination of all biological functions which sustain a living organism. Bodies of living organisms begin to decompose shortly after death. It is universal truth and we know that all known organisms inevitably experience death. When we know that death is an inevitable truth, why should we worry about it? Later or sooner we will die – whatever be the reason. The reasons which commonly bring about death include old age, predation, malnutrition, disease, suicide, murder and accidents or trauma resulting in terminal expiry.

But the question is whether we will die or not. The answer is, Yes, we will die. But you will not die. For this you may have to know -

First, what constitutes death? It is clear enough that people die when their lives end, but we are not  clear what constitutes the ending of a person's life. 

Second, in what sense might death or posthumous events harm us? Why are we so fearful and do not wish to die? To answer this question, we will need to know what it is for something to be in our interests. Why do we weep or cry when we see one of our dear attains death.

Death means end the vital processes which are those by which organisms develop or maintain themselves. These processes include chemosynthesis, photosynthesis, cellular respiration, cell generation, and maintenance of homeostasis. Then death is the ending of the vital processes by which an organism sustains itself. 

Let us add that ‘the ending of life’ is itself potentially ambiguous. On one hand it might be a process wherein our lives are progressively extinguished, until finally they are gone. On the other it might be a momentary event. This event might be understood in three ways. First, it might be the ending of the dying process—the loss of the very last trace of life. This is ‘denouement death’. Second, it might be the point in the dying process when extinction is assured, no matter what is done to stop it. Call this moment ‘threshold death’. A third possibility is that life ends when the physiological systems of the body irreversibly cease to function as an integrated whole. We may call this ‘integration death’. 

Death and What We Are

Death for you and me is constituted by the irreversible discontinuation of the vital processes by which we are sustained. Perhaps it is not bad to die at an advanced enough age, for people who live long enough may be ground down by life until they give up many of their goals. Also, they will have attained many of their aspirations. If already satisfied, or given up, a desire cannot be thwarted, even by death, so as we lose our motivation for living, death ceases to be objectionable to us. Perhaps death is bad for us only if premature in the sense that it comes when we still have interests such as salient desires that propel us forward in life, and only if meeting these interests is a real prospect.

We are left to wonder whether death would ever cease to be objectionable were we not ravaged by bad health and other hardships. It would be bad to live forever, even under the best of circumstances if we consider the relationship between our identities and the desires that motivate us to live.

Consider a woman who wants to die. She might still take the view that if she is to live on, then she should be well fed and clothed. She wants food and clothing on condition she remain alive. In this sense her desires are conditional, and do not give her reason to live. Contrast a father who is committed to rearing a beloved daughter: he desires unconditionally that the child do well, and his desire gives him reason to live, because he can rear his child only if he survives. In this sense, his desire is categorical, or unconditional. Categorical desires are essential to identity, and give meaning to life. Through categorical desires, we are attached to projects or relationships that are definitive of the self; faced with their destruction, we would feel our lives are meaningless, and that in an important sense we cannot survive as the persons we once were.

The bearing on death is, first, that people have good reason to condemn a death that is premature in the sense that it thwarts their categorical desires. Second, mortality is good, since people who live long enough eventually will lose the categorical desires with which they identify. Life will lose its novelty, and oppressive boredom will set in. To avoid ennui, super-seniors would have to replace their fundamental desires, again and again. But this is to abandon their identities; it is tantamount to death.

Lives of unimaginative routine will eventually grow stale if extended long enough. Of course, this is not supposed to comfort ordinary mortals, most of whom will die long before routine undermines the joy in living. But, we might avoid boredom by adding to our pursuits, and varying the way we approach them, without abandoning certain core interests that define us. Second, many of us would welcome a possibility of gradually transforming our interests and projects over time. 

Transformation is not death. It is distinct from, and preferable to, annihilation. Transformation would be death only if identity were wholly a matter of retaining (most of) our psychological features over time. However, it is questionable that persistence requires this kind of connectedness. Even if our persistence hinges on our psychological features, transformation need not be death, since transformation is consistent with the gradual, continuous change of our psychological features. If we could live endlessly, the stages of our lives would display reduced connectedness, yet they could be continuous, which is a property that is important in the kind of survival most of us prize. Even after drinking at the fountain of eternal youth, we would tend to focus on relatively short stretches of our indefinitely extensive lives, and over these periods we would prize connectedness, since we are animated by specific projects and relationships that can be developed only if there are strong interconnections among the temporal stages of our lives. However, sometimes we would turn our attention to relatively long stretches of life, and then, prizing continuity, we would phase in new and worthwhile undertakings that build upon, and do not wholly replace, the old.

We fear death because it is harmful for those projects which the person who is going to die had taken up and are still incomplete. The person who is going to die, will go out leaving behind everything as it is but the benefits of those projects won’t come up for the targeted beneficiaries. They would stand deprived of and be harmed by the death. Even if death is usually bad for those who die, it is possible that death need not be bad for us, if we prepare ourselves suitably. This might be possible if some form of preferentialism is true, and if, by altering our desires, we could cease to have any interests that dying would impair. For then we might be able to change our desires, in this sense: abandon all desires that death might thwart. Among these are desires we can satisfy only if we live on for a few days, but also desires we cannot possibly satisfy within the span of a normal lifetime, and the desire for immortality itself.

Changing of the desires would insulate us from harm from death by leaving us with no interests with which dying interferes. Unfortunately, our desires may not be malleable enough to fully change them. Moreover, even if we could fully change, doing so would have a significant drawback: it would leave us with an impoverished conception of our interests. For example, we could not have an unconditional desire that some project of ours succeed, or an unconditional desire that a loved one flourish. We could retain conditioned versions of these desires, namely: should I live on, let my wife flourish, and my project succeed. But limiting myself to a conditioned regard for my wife's well-being precludes my loving her: if I love her, I cannot be indifferent about the way an event will affect her so long as I will not live through it. Moreover, conditioned desires cannot motivate us to live. It is unconditional desires that prompt us to live on. Hence in avoiding all desires that would leave us vulnerable to death, we must give up the view that life is worth living, as well as the projects and concerns that constitute grounds for thinking that life is good. Any reason to (want to) live is an excellent reason to want not to die; to avoid the latter, we must avoid the former.

However, the core idea of adapting our desires is useful, if not taken to an extreme. It is prudent to avoid taking on goals we cannot possibly attain, and hence prudent to eschew projects that cannot possibly be completed during the course of a normal lifetime.

Everyone experiences death. Death and dying are an inevitable part of human life. Some people know ahead of time when their death will occur. Terminal illnesses, when diagnosed ahead of time, allow a person to set his or her affairs in order, make relationships right, and say goodbye to loved ones. In these cases, every person involved has a chance to gradually adjust and make peace with death, as much as possible. However, not everyone has this chance. Many deaths occur suddenly. Death can, and often does, strike without warning. No one is promised tomorrow. The only thing we can count on is today. 

Many people around the world turn to religion to answer questions about death and the afterlife, especially when someone is facing his or her own mortality. Strangely, even a brief glance at many of the world’s religions reveals that many theologies glamorize death, promising rewards in the afterlife, including increased understanding of God and the universe and even, in some cases, supernatural powers that were unavailable during the mortal life. Death often seems more attractive than being alive.

But the reality of death is that it should be avoided at all costs. Death is the worst thing to ever happen in all of existence. Life is a precious gift we are unable to recreate once it’s gone. The truth about death lays plain the harshness of the grave … but also the true beauty of the life we already have. 

Any study of the nature of death begs an important foundational question: Why must things die in the first place? Indeed, death is a grand mystery. Throughout time, every major religion, philosophy, and spiritual train of thought has sought to explain this mystery. It is a subject that touches the life of every man and woman, uniting the entire human race under a cloud of inevitable mortality. The rich and the poor alike meet the same end; the black and the white both go to the grave; the powerful and the humble all leave this planet eventually.

Interestingly, scientific research into single-celled organisms reveals that the nature of life, on a cellular level, does not automatically include a self-destruct mechanism for death. In other words, it appears that death is an unnatural part of life. Yet despite this, everything on earth eventually dies.

Many lines of religious thought simply accept the inevitability of death and instead try to offer better alternatives that await the faithful in the afterlife. These ideas bring comfort to many people who have lost loved ones or are facing death themselves, but they leave others wondering, “Why must death exist? Wouldn’t an all-powerful God eradicate death? Shouldn’t all life inherently live forever?”

So the question of the nature of death also brings profound implications about the nature of God. Maybe, some reason, God is not as powerful as He says, since the problem of death remains. Maybe God numbs our sensibilities after death, if we are promised happiness in paradise despite the horrors unfolding on our loved ones who are still alive. Maybe, if living a bad life truly results in eternal torment afterward, God is not really as loving as so many people claim. Maybe there are actually many pathways to God, or many such gods, and the mystery of death will be solved differently for each person, depending on their philosophies in life. Maybe there is no such thing as death, but instead a continual rebirth through reincarnation. Maybe, according to a train of thought that has grown in popularity since the 19th century, life is nothing more than a biochemical accident, and death brings with it a never-ending state of nothingness; the most common conclusion drawn from this line of thinking is that there is no God at all.

The mystery of death is so profound that, despite the millennia of religious doctrine, mythology, scientific research, and the many theories and explanations that exist on the subject, people today are more confused than ever about it. Even within individual religious groups there is often a stark difference of opinion on the nature of death. To see this, walk around a cemetery and cremation places and note the different inscriptions you may find there.

Clearly, the only way to decipher this profound mystery is to find an authoritative source of truth that will expose all error and remove the need for speculation. Are we fortunate enough to have such an authority? We believe so.

Now, we discuss this subject from another angle. Assume that you are like the Sun, eternally bright, warm and healing.  There is nothing in this Universe that can put your light out.  Your brilliance will continue on and on... for eternity.  Your inner light is always on, blazing bright and expanding.  You shine without even knowing you are shining.  The light of your awareness is continuous, even when the mind clouds your vision the Sun is always shining behind it.

The light that you are is forever here now.  There is always a flame burning within you. Even when you think all is lost, hopeless and dark, it is there.  Even after your body wears out, and you physically leave this amazing vehicle, you will see that the light of your creative lumin-essence goes on and on.  Something will continue to experience life, reality, and consciousness.  Death is the greatest illusion of them all.

 

If you truly want to get the most out of your time and experience the greatest experiences possible on Earth, you must first accept deep in your heart that there is no end to this experience called life.  You must know it deep down, so it becomes a part of you.  When you trust that which never dies is forever inside you, eternally free at the core, you become fearless and unstoppable in all that you do.  Every thing you do becomes successful.  Any goal you want to achieve will manifest because you will have no fear.  Your approach will be unfailing because you have nothing to gain or lose.  You can finally leap into the unknown with total faith, courage, enthusiasm and joy!  

The person who realizes that he/she is not really a person, but a soul that lives in this body is the only one who can truly be unconditionally loving and free.  Everyone else will give love with conditions and be attached to some form of expectation.  This is because they are attached to their ego, thoughts and body on some level.  They think this form is all that they are and thus are limited by it.  The advanced being knows otherwise.  The truly liberated soul has realized that they are pure undifferentiated consciousness that is beyond all thought and form, and is grounded and well established in the joy and freedom of being absolute unconditional love.

When you accept that there is no death in this lifetime, you begin to see everything with new eyes.  The typical stressful situations you're used to suddenly become exciting fresh new adventures!  Those people who challenge you on the deepest levels are truly your greatest teachers, and are welcomed into your heart on the most intimate levels.  This is how we can know and experience what real peace is like.  There is no longer any resistance, judgment or fear because you realize you are the eternal source of love.  All is forgiven and everyone is your friend.  It is truly discovering heaven on Earth, every single day of your life.

Recognition of the deathlessness in you is the fastest way to true freedom.  It comes instantly from a deeper investigation of your spiritual nature and an honoring of the very essence of your being.  This is what really matter most in this lifetime.  The source of who you are is where the ego life ends and the spiritual life begins.  You know you cannot bring any of this "stuff" with you when you die, so why invest so much of your time and energy into it?  Do not be attached to anything that you can place a label or name upon. Everything one day will fall away from you, like old leaves on a maple tree when hit by the autumn breeze.  Simply invest all your time and consciousness exploring the eternal light and love that you are.

It is like we were told as children to be afraid of a snake that is really a piece of rope.  It sure looks like a snake in the dark when the lights are dim, yet when you turn on the light and see the truth you just begin to laugh and laugh and laugh!  When you fully accept that death is not real, then you really start to smile and truly become alive.  You stop being afraid of everything in life completely.  You also stop procrastinating and start doing everything you always wanted to do.  You stop holding back your love, your words of appreciation, and your sacred heart energy, and every meaningful thing you wished to say to those who you care most about.  You start to share the gold which you always felt could not be shared.

In truth there is nothing to be afraid of.  Everything is always on a divine cosmic plan.  The projection your mind has created in who and what you think death is or who you are is still a small slice of the truth.  The totality of you is beyond what you can imagine.  You don't have to be afraid anymore.  Are you afraid to look in the mirror?  You may not like what you see, yet you know that what you see can change if you're willing to look at yourself differently.  This tiny shift in perception is all it takes to step into the deathless experience of life.  This is my invitation for you.  Open your mind and see what its like to live the next 24 hours of your life knowing deep in your heart that you will never ever die.

You will find that the mind resists this experience or tries to manipulate and micromanage it.  The mind is used to living in being in control.  To live a life without fear is the purpose of your life, yet if the mind hears there is nothing to worry about it will truly get worried!  The mind is used to its job of being afraid and time bound in the 3D world of polarity thinking.  It doesn't know anything about living for an eternity.  That seems absurd, there are so many practical things to accomplish and being absolutely trusting would mean that nothing would get done.   Give your mind the option to explore what is behind the door.  Imagine what it may be like to just explore the sensation and knowing that you are an eternal being who will go on and on forever.  You have nothing to lose and everything to gain. If your present body stops its working, your inner will continue to enjoy your possessions what your friends, relatives and those who were jealous to you were not wishing you to enjoy otherwise. Now, you are freer and can get all the enjoyments without any bar.

Take it granted that once your body stops to function, it may not feel any pain whatever your body is subjected to. Why do you worry? That was made of earth, air, water, sky and fire and after death, the body is dissolved into these five elements. Your inner remains safe and free and that never dies. Death occurs to your body only because that is mortal one.

Be Happy – You will never die.

Be Happy – Socialize Yourself.

Human Beings are social animals. We mean that as per our nature developed from the primitive stage to day, we like to live in society. Civilization took further steps and our need towards materialism grew up. We know that when a lion gets hungry, he searches out some animal and when he gets his food, he goes to take rest. He does not care for the future that for tomorrow, he may hunt for some more animals and put them into his refrigerator for the use tomorrow. But as human beings, we try to arrange for our next generations. This gathering attitude makes us so mad and unethical that we are not able to think that what we are doing exceedingly, may eat up others’ genuine share. Our forefathers did not do so. They had Vasudaiva Kutumbakam’ as concept of their living.

Actually, Vasudaiva Kutumbakam  was ingrained in the way of  their method of living,  as an integral part of their culture. Their vision encompassed the whole humanity as one’s own part. There was no place for exploitation of natural resources, in fact animals and plants and even rivers and mountains were venerated. Their actions were seeped in a concern for ‘universal welfare’. Their interactions with alternate beliefs, faiths and even civilizations reflected tolerance and pluralism.

When sects like Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism emerged as reformist movements, even though as rebellion to what their propagandists considered wrong in the society, they had the freedom and space to grow. They had the knowledge of the eternal truth, the truth of the wholeness of universe. They knew it was a oneness and a perceived separateness from this oneness as an individual identity was a matter of awareness. Thus any action at any point in this oneness would affect the whole. The whole is aware what happens at any point in the universe and a response is triggered to every action.

Scientific researches of modern day confirm their knowledge of oneness of universe. Non locality is if you take two quantum particles that were twins and separate them billions of miles apart, and then do something to one particle here, the other particle billions of light years away will “immediately” come to know about what you did to that one particle here!! This quantum property has been confirmed by experiments. In fact, “all” particles in this universe are twins, in the sense they all can be traced back to a common ancestral origin. In other words, what happens to every particle should become known to every other particle in this universe! So the whole universe is “interconnected”?!’

It was this knowledge thousands of years ago that made our forefathers proclaimed ‘Vasudaiva Kutumbakam’ – ‘the world is one family’. Present day drivers of globalization can take cue from this knowledge. Though we have divided ourselves into political units – it is India, that is Pakistan, that is China, that is US, UK and so on. But if we see deeply, we understand that the people living in the different parts of our great earth are linked to each other in some definite terms. But our vested interests make us divided. Some of our groups fight with others just to gain some superiority or snatch away some of the holdings the other groups have. Why? You too can have. God has gifted you the same physique what the others have. You need to sharpen yourself and have genuine claim. No, materialism has made us blind. We fight with each other, but we forget what will happen if in the process itself, we take our last breath and everything for which we are fighting for will be left here.

With our efforts to gather, we have been busy so much that sometime we forget our duties towards our nears. Even our neighbors are not able to recognize us if we meet somewhere else instead of our own doorsteps. At the time of emergency, we do not get cooperation because at their time of emergency, we were busy in meeting our own schedules. Mostly, now-a-days, the society tends to work on reciprocal terms. Some people still believe in donating some part of their income to the charity, whatever be the reason of doing so – whether that is under religious dictates or surplus illegal amount to be converted into legal amount, such charities help needy people. It does not bring about eternal peace of mind. We need to purify the process.

A little socialization process of ourselves can make wonders in our lives. How? Through our frequent meetings with other persons can make us acquainted with their nature, changing environment and reconciling with them identifying their needs and putting forth your helping hands if they ever need. None is independent in the society – for some of the needs, everyone has to look on the other. If you have a lot of money, your money alone can not gather everything if you do not have contact with the producers of the materials you need. What will happen if you slip somewhere and there is none known to you to lift you up? Your moneybag will not lift you up if there is no helping hand. Undoubtedly, you are able to have helping hands around you, with your money but for how long so purchased hands may help you if they are lured by your enemies with better price? You need to win their hearts too and that is possible if you socialize yourself.

Become a part of your society, interact with others very frequently, very politely and with wish to help them out if ever they need graciously. One day, you may get better results if any emergency you face in your life.

Be Happy – Socialize Yourself.

With the advent of civilization, we, the human beings started to live in society. As our numbers grew, our needs also grew. Our growing needs made inventions and discoveries in search of the resources. The people formed groups and those groups became states with passage of time. By going through history, we find that in search of the resources, the people wandered here and there. Where they saw ample availability of the resources, they settled. After settling themselves, they invited other people and slowly their numbers grew up. Sometime, differences among them arose and there had been fighting to snatch the control of the resources. This is still going on.

Our interests to meet our needs clash with those who too are interested to meet their needs. Materialism promotes our wish to gather as many things as we can and in the process of gathering, some of us give up ethics too. Today, earning of money is accorded top priority by majority of us without keeping care of our health, time and other important factors. Our imbalanced chasing of money/resources has made us mad sometime making us forget our relationship, status, understandings, ethics and our character too. If we do not get success, we are not making introspection of ourselves as to what wrongs we made that we could not achieve success but we see someone else’s working to be responsible. Instead of improving our process, we start to plan to harm the person, we understand, to be responsible for our failures. Sometime, our greed also makes us attack others to capture their resources in illegal and unethical methods. This creates discontent and results into crimes.

We must understand that it is the rule of nature that those who take birth vanish one day. Nature has gifted to everyone a limited time to live, not a single second thereafter. Further, you are not allowed to keep anything, any person with you after your time to live be over. The quantum of that time is not known. Your time can expire any day, any time, any moment whatever be the reason and you may take your last breath, that too, beyond your control and without your own permission. Then, why do you gather all those things which you are not able to enjoy during your life time? Do you gather for your next generations? How do you assess that your next generations can enjoy them? There are many cases when we see father/mother witnessing death of the kin during own life. We gather the materials to enjoy during our life and surplus for our next generations without knowing about the future. But we are doing it. Actually, we are committing the sin of hoarding those materials which can be used by other ones too. We are depriving them of their genuine share in the gifts given by the nature to the mankind.

This is true that this universe belongs to those who are brave and active. Those who wish to live easy life without doing any thing, should not be allowed to have comforts on other’s cost, labor and action. If you wish to live your time happily, you need to sweat yourself. It is our duty to groom up our progeny so well that at their time, they must understand the importance of the work. We must learn from the birds. When a bird sees its chic to have grown up sufficiently to fly through its own feathers, it kicks out that chic through the nest to earn the food itself. The chain goes on. We must follow. The day our generations may learn how to earn, we would be able to live happily by concentrating our efforts on our earning limited to our needs of the present and some savings for the emergencies. If we care for our present, the future stands insured itself.

Our forefathers had propounded the concept of  Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam. It is  a Sanskrit phrase. If we break up this phrase, we find that  "vasudha" means the earth, "iva" is as a; and "kutumbakam" means family. That means that the whole world is one single family. The concept is not just about peace and harmony among the groups in the world, but also about a truth that somehow the whole world has to live by some rules like a family, set by an unknowable source. This is the reason why we think that any power in the world, big or small cannot have its way disregarding others. The nature balances every thing. If we disturb the process of nature, we find many calamities in result.

If we go through the history, we find that in the Vedic thought thousands of years ago, another verse which was in the form of a prayer “Loka samastha sukhinau bavanthu” – May the world live in peace, had been promoting pleasures for all. The people did not just pray for the happiness of humans alone. They prayed for every living creature in the world. “Sarve sukina santhu, sarve santhu niramayaha” – May every living being be free from ills and miseries and attain peace.

Today we talk of ‘global village’ and ‘globalization’. Globalization by definition is ‘the process of transformation of local phenomena into global ones, a process by which the people of the world are unified into a single society and function together’. While globalization started as an economic phenomenon driven by business interests, it is today perceived as a unification of economic, technological, social, cultural and political forces. However, although globalisation aims at diluting and dissolving the political boundaries of nations, nationalities, cultures and diversities, the world today is witnessing strife, wars, conflicts at all fronts and on all accounts i.e economic, political, social and cultural !

Why so? We are not honest at our heart. We talk of globalization but we eye at the markets and resources available at the other ends. We need to be honest. Our forefathers who proclaimed 4,000 years ago that ‘world is one family’ were not seen to be in such conflict. Although the underlying objective of the two concepts appears to be the same, there obviously is a difference between the process of ‘globalization’ being attempted today and the principle of 'Vasudaiva Kutumbakam' that was ingrained in the culture and way of life of our forefathers. We will have to go back to the philosophy of our forefathers.

Today, globalization has been motivated by economic interests and not out of a concern for ‘universal welfare’ – economic interests of those searching for new markets and better resource mobilization. Its advocacy for free trade was adopted by different countries as it did lead to cash flows in otherwise deficient economies. However, the whole process being motivated primarily by economic interests of a few powerful nations and corporations, the emphasis is on pursuit of financial gains. It leads to satisfaction of economic needs of many people in less developed countries, though not all, thus nations’ policies and actions have started to get structured around greatest financial gains to benefit their societies.

Though we are happy to see that progress and success has started to be measured in material terms, other concerns such as environmental issues, or human perspectives of emotional richness or social well being, are not necessarily cared for. Moreover, the survival in the new global business markets is dependent on improved productivity and increased competition and in such highly competitive environments, human actions are getting centered on self interest and greed.

In this pursuit of material progress - production, distribution and consumption of an increasing number of goods and conveniences is the creed and each competes with the other to produce more with less. More skills, better technology, better access to cheaper resources even if through the exploitation of natural resources of the earth or through better, bigger bombs to maim and destroy opponents, all in pursuit of more financial gains! Although many of the wars being waged in the world appear to have religious and ethnic basis, the underlying motives are now being perceived to be economic – competition for dwindling resources of the world. Troops and weapons are being deployed where local people threaten corporate investments and returns!

We need to rethink over our policy of globalization and come back to Vasudaiva Kutumbakam’ in its letter and spirit. We need to live together and live happily by adjusting our needs to promote peace and fraternity amongst all the human beings with care to other creations as well.

Be Happy – Live Together and Live Happily.

Be Happy – Concentrate at One Job at One Time.

Generally, we find our computer to hang out when we impatiently give a number of commands successively. Sometime, we feel that our computer is working slow or has stopped to work for a while. But it is not so. It continues to work and execute our commands, but one by one. When it feels overburdened, it stops to work and we have to re-start. It applies to our bodies too when we feel overwhelmed?

It's not just the number of hours we're working, but also the fact that we spend too many continuous hours juggling too many things at the same time. What we've lost, above all, are stopping points, finish lines and boundaries. Technology has blurred them beyond recognition. Wherever we go, our work follows us, on our digital devices, ever insistent and intrusive. It's like an itch we can't resist scratching, even though scratching invariably makes it worse.

Tell the truth: Do you answer email during conference calls (and sometimes even during calls with one other person)? Do you bring your laptop to meetings and then pretend you're taking notes while you surf the net? Do you eat lunch at your desk? Do you make calls while you're driving, and even send the occasional text, even though you know you shouldn't?

The biggest cost — assuming you don't crash — is to your productivity. In part, that's a simple consequence of splitting your attention, so that you're partially engaged in multiple activities but rarely fully engaged in any one. In part, it's because when you switch away from a primary task to do something else, you may enhance the time it takes to finish that task by an average of 25 per cent.

But most insidiously, it's because if you're always doing something, you're relentlessly burning down your available your own energy over the course of every day, so you have less available with every passing hour.

I know this from my own experience. I get two to three times as much writing accomplished when I focus without interruption for a designated period of time and then take a real break, away from my desk. The best way for an organization to fuel higher productivity and more innovative thinking is to strongly encourage finite periods of absorbed focus, as well as shorter periods of real renewal.

If you're a manager, here are three policies worth promoting:

1. You May Maintain Meeting Discipline. Schedule meetings for 45 minutes, rather than an hour or longer, so participants can stay focused, take time afterward to reflect on what's been discussed, and recover before the next obligation. Start all meetings at a precise time, end at a precise time, and insist that all digital devices be turned off throughout the meeting.

2. You Must Stop demanding or expecting instant responsiveness at every moment of the day. It forces your people into reactive mode, fractures their attention, and makes it difficult for them to sustain attention on their priorities. Let them turn off their email at certain times. If it's urgent, you can call them — but that won't happen very often.

3. You Should Encourage renewal. Create at least one time during the day when you encourage your people to stop working and take a break. Offer a mid-afternoon class in yoga, or meditation, organize a group walk or workout, or consider creating a renewal room where people can relax, or take a nap. 

It's also up to individuals to set their own boundaries. Consider these three behaviors for yourself:

1.  You May Do the most important thing first in the morning, preferably without interruption, for 60 to 90 minutes, with a clear start and stop time. If possible, work in a private space during this period, or with sound-reducing earphones. Finally, resist every impulse to distraction, knowing that you have a designated stopping point. The more absorbed you can get, the more productive you'll be. When you're done, take at least a few minutes to renew.

2. You Can Establish regular, scheduled times to think more long term, creatively, or strategically. If you don't, you'll constantly succumb to the tyranny of the urgent. Also, find a different environment in which to do this activity — preferably one that's relaxed and conducive to open-ended thinking.

3. You May Take real and regular vacations. Real means that when you're off, you're truly disconnecting from work. Regular means several times a year if possible, even if some are only two or three days added to a weekend. The research strongly suggests that you'll be far healthier if you enjoy your vacation period fully, and more productive overall.

A single principle lies at the heart of all these suggestions. When you're engaged at work, keep yourself fully engaged, for defined periods of time. When you're renewing, truly renew. Make waves. Stop living your life in the gray zone.

So you've got an idea for some business activity on a small scale to start with. Congratulations! Now, it's time to figure out how to make it one that survives and even thrives.

Many would-be entrepreneurs are held back by fears of failure due to the risks of starting a business. But there are ways to lessen those risks -- by taking a sane, step-by-step approach to getting ready to launch. 

Here are seven fundamental steps for planning a low-risk launch:

1. You Should Know how you'll fund it. There are many costs to starting a business, even if it's an online one. Do you have money saved up, or access to a credit line you could tap? Will you work a side job? Get relatives to help you? Have a strategy for meeting the preliminary and working expenses.

2. You Should Be realistic about ramp time. Even with a simple business idea, expect it will be at least six months to a year before the business starts throwing off enough cash to support you. Know how you will cover your living expenses until then.

3. You Should Keep overhead low. See how you could start getting sales before paying rent on a big retail store. Try a kiosk, direct sales, e-commerce or even renting space within an existing store.

4. You Must Have a business model. Just because a good venture is started without any idea how the business would make money doesn't mean you should do the same. The reality is the vast majority of businesses that begin this way will fail. Figure out a revenue model at the start.

5. You May Test your idea out on prospective customers. It's better to find out if nobody would buy your product before you invest time and money in launching it. You may get primary or secondary data about whether there is a real market for what you want to sell.

6. You Must Be ready to evolve your idea. Venture funders like founders who know how to "fail fast." Don't cling to what's not working. One key entrepreneurial skill is quickly recognizing problems and testing out new twists on an idea until you find the approach to which customers respond. 

7. You Must Build your network. You will not succeed at this alone. You must  search out other associates in business and similar industry, who will be a sounding board and share their experiences.

If you decide to go for it and start a business, be committed to it. If you're not passionate about what you're trying to do, you probably won't stick out the inevitable bumps in the road.

Be Happy - Concentrate at One Job at One Time.

Be Happy – Be Youthful.

The period of youth is pivotal for human development. Youth is a wonderful thing. In youth we learn; in age we understand. It is a critical period of personal change, when you consciously begin to explore and apply your knowledge, values and beliefs about individual and collective life. “There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will truly have defeated age.

In your young age, you take on new responsibilities, becoming agents of change in your communities. Sometime, you may feel yourself as problematic children but no, you are ray of light for the elders if you lend your helping hands seeing that one day, you may also come to that stage. Your age group provides tremendous source of intellectual and social potential waiting to be channeled and developed towards socially constructive ends.

People grow old only by deserting their ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up interest wrinkles the soul. You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt; as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fear; as young as your hope as old as your despair. In the central place of every heart there is a recording chamber. So long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer and courage, so long are you young. When your heart is covered with the snows of pessimism and the ice of cynicism, then, and then only, are you grown old. And then, indeed as the ballad says, you just fade away. Much education today is monumentally ineffective. All too often we are giving young people cut flowers when we should be teaching them to grow their own plants.

It is true that the future will depend a great deal on the manner in which educational programs and methods are designed to release your latent potentials, preparing you for the world you may inherit. The connection between education and individual and collective wellbeing is well established and it is imperative to focus on a particular dimension of education, namely education in service of community which in our experience is central to the transmission of individual and community life.

Forces that influence the intellectual and emotional development of a child are not confined to the classroom. Media, technology, family, peers, the wider community and other social institutions convey messages that may be reinforcing in some respects and contradictory in others which could add to your confusion, about identity, moral purpose and social reality. As such formal education needs to go beyond the exclusive aim of helping you to secure gainful employment. Educational processes need to assist you to recognize and express your potential while developing in you the capacity to contribute to the spiritual and material prosperity of communities.

Usually, we divide our life span into three parts – our childhood starting from our birth. Our youth starting from our adolescence and our old age when we feel ourselves tired even to finish our daily routine. It is frankly admitted that during our childhood, we have to depend on others for meeting our own needs. But as soon as we attain our adolescence, we dream to reach heights of our life and start to scale those heights. With the passage of time, some of us do achieve the heights and some may not do but time factor impacts our age decreasing our productivity. Here, we need to be happy. For that purpose, we may have to awake ourselves and keep the sense of being youthful always alive after attaining adolescence and to the last breath. The day we start to feel that we are getting old, our worries regarding the security of our future may snatch peace of our minds. Hence, we need to eliminate our thoughts of being old.

If we keep ourselves youth always, we would like to maintain our body and spirits in the same way. It is essential to keep our energy and vigor up for which we may have to regularly undertake physical and mental exercises to tone up with some supplements as be prescribed by our health care taker. In the process, we may have to give up some of our addictions and demerits also for which we need to study ourselves to know what our weaknesses harm us and in what respects. If we introspect ourselves more vigorously and try to keep away those factors which are responsible to make us old whether they are physical, mental, financial or social, we would be able to keep ourselves young always. What are physical factors which can reduce your youthfulness? They can include extraordinary exertions, lack of proper medical services, long illness or injuries. Mental factors may include unpeaceful family life, indecent environment, inferiority complex etc. Financial troubles like unemployment, business loss or short of finance to meet the essential, social and other requirements can also affect your health. Social circumstances which are not conducive to your status or outlook may also lead you to break down. For being happy, you need to work hard to overcome such conditions. If you succeed, you will not be old at any time.

Be Happy – Be Youthful.

In India, Jaitley files for Rajya Sabha, is worth Rs 158 cr

It is good that the politicians all over the world are growing to be rich. In some countries like India, they are required to declare their assets while filing their nomination forms for election to any constitutional body. But it is not fair for the democracy that the law making system is controlled by the capitalists. A capitalist can not permit the law making body to make any law which may damage his present and future interests.

Democracy should not mean a system for rich and to be managed by rich. We must do something to ensure that we should fix up a maximum limit of worth as the SURVIVAL WORTH, to enable a person to live his life comfortably and those who have worth more than that fixed limit, should be debarred to participate in politics. If a person having more than the survival worth, still wishes to participate in politics as per his own addiction, he must surrender the extra amount of the worth to the State. This action will enable other citizens who have the qualities to prove as worthy Statesmen but are not able to come forward due to paucity of the richness at their end.

Similar action should be taken for those families whose worth is more than the survival worth but still get reservation benefits on the basis of their caste or religion.

Be Happy - We May Make Our Politics Free Of Money.

Be Happy – Be Disciplined (Part 5).

Talent without discipline is like an octopus on roller skates. There's plenty of movement, but you never know if it's going to be forward, backwards, or sideways. Actually, a mind that is disciplined, controlled, is free within its own pattern; but that is not freedom. The end of discipline is conformity; its path leads to the known, and the known is never the free. It is life-inhibiting, is at the very least curtailment of vital activity insofar as the latter cannot develop as it wishes but is confined within specific limits and subjected to specific rules.

It is the undisputed fact that all discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness. It is not crazy to think of discipline as a chariot. Without discipline we would drive ourselves crazy. It is the duty and the hope of all who would enjoy the benefits of society and of instruction. It is the process by which energy is directed along certain lines to the exclusion of others. Instead of being expended in many ways in unreflecting response to every stimulant applied, it is concentrated and made to focus itself upon a single point, or rather is confined within certain narrow limits. Discipline is often spoken of as acquired power. A more exact statement would seem to be that discipline is ability to make energy effective by confining it in a certain channel.

With the modern civilization where we treat right is the might, discipline is a necessity, as a regulator of society, so that those who break its rules may be taught the necessity of obeying them.It brings us effort, sacrifice and suffering. Later it brings us something of an inestimable value: something of which those who live only for pleasure, profit or amusement will always be deprived. This peculiar indefinable joy which one must have felt oneself to understand is the sign with which life marks its moment of triumph. It is an index to doctrine.

Discipline and punishment

Discipline and punishment refer to the methods and motivations that drive us to create an ordered society. Discipline can include punishment in its regimen, but it is not always the case. It refers to training methods that are used to impart a body of knowledge to a disciple, and while punishment can be used for training as well, it has also been inflicted for retribution or vengeance. Both discipline and punishment are readily witnessed in institutions or anywhere that has an established authority figure. What follows is some great advice on developing discipline. No matter what you aspire to you will find it requires a certain level of discipline. And if someone does not follow the discipline, he must have some punishment for the welfare of others.

Engaging in genuine discipline requires that you develop the ability to take action. You don't need to be hasty if it isn't required, but you don't want to lose much time either. Here's the time to act: when the idea is hot and the emotion is strong. Let's say you would like to build your library. If that is a strong desire for you, what you've got to do is get the first book. Then get the second book. Take action as soon as possible, before the feeling passes and before the idea dims. If you don't, here's what happens - You Fall Prey to the Law of Diminishing Intent - We intend to take action when the idea strikes us.

We intend to do something when the emotion is high. But if we don't translate that intention into action fairly soon, the urgency starts to diminish. A month from now the passion is cold. A year from now it can't be found. So take action. Set up a discipline when the emotions are high and the idea is strong, clear, and powerful. Fall on the floor and do some push-ups. You've got to take action; otherwise the wisdom is wasted. The emotion soon passes unless you apply it to a disciplined activity. Discipline enables you to capture the emotion and the wisdom and translate them into action. The key is to increase your motivation by quickly setting up the disciplines. By doing so, you've started a whole new life process.

Another factor of seeing the greatest value of discipline is to increase self-worth, also known as self-esteem. Many people who are teaching self- esteem these days don't connect it to discipline. But once we sense the least lack of discipline within ourselves, it starts to erode our psyche.

One of the greatest temptations is to just ease up a little bit. Instead of doing your best, you allow yourself to do just a little less than your best. Sure enough, you've started in the slightest way to decrease your sense of self- worth.

There is a problem with even a little bit of neglect. Neglect starts as an infection. If you don't take care of it, it becomes a disease. And one neglect leads to another. Worst of all, when neglect starts, it diminishes our self- worth. Once this has happened, how can you regain your self-respect? All you have to do is act now! Start with the smallest discipline that corresponds to your own philosophy.

Make the commitment: "I will discipline myself to achieve my goals so that in the years ahead I can celebrate my successes." Chart out your priorities, design your strategies, calculate your resources and discuss with your seniors and implement them with strictest discipline, you will find the astounding resulting.

Be Happy – Be Disciplined.

Be Happy – Be Disciplined (Part 4)

Discipline is necessary and good. The man under no discipline is like the spoiled child whom nothing satisfies. You can't raise successful children without it, but that does not mean that discipline should repress or tyrannize. Discipline should lead to powerful habits of direction, work, and good judgment. Good discipline produces strength, not weakness; creativity, not banality; responsibility, not self-indulgence. Always remember that discipline is like a two-edged sword; it is not only to correct children when they are wrong, but to direct them to a way that is right. Fair and reasonable discipline is like a fence that provides protection and defines limits, demonstrating both care and concern. A person without discipline is like a ship without a rudder in the storm of life. Discipline is like the helm of a ship; it gives direction. It is like a vaccine. It inflicts lesser pain now to avoid greater pain later.

Discipline is like sandpaper. It feels rough and abrasive when it's in motion, but the final result is a smooth and polished surface. He who hath not Discipline is like a race-horse without a rider. Self disciplining means self orientation for achieving the goals at the earliest, within the resources available and streamlining the efforts towards the target. Persistence is one of the most important pillars of self-discipline.

What Is Persistence?

Persistence is the ability to maintain action regardless of your feelings. You press on even when you feel like quitting.

When you work on any big goal, your motivation will wax and wane like waves hitting the shore. Sometimes you’ll feel motivated; sometimes you won’t. But it’s not your motivation that will produce results — it’s your action. Persistence allows you to keep taking action even when you don’t feel motivated to do so, and therefore you keep accumulating results.

Persistence will ultimately provide its own motivation. If you simply keep taking action, you’ll eventually get results, and results can be very motivating. For example, you may become a lot more enthusiastic about dieting and exercising once you’ve lost those first 10 pounds and feel your clothes fitting more loosely.

When to Give Up

Should you always persist and never give up? Certainly not. Sometimes giving up is clearly the best option. Have you ever heard of a company called Traf-O-Data? What about Microsoft? I am quoting their story just to emphasize over the importance of giving up.

Both companies were started by Bill Gates and Paul Allen. Traf-O-Data was the first company they started, back in 1972. In 1971, a company called Logic Simulation was inventorying the streets in Kent, Wash. They placed traffic counting boxes, which had a hose going from the box across the street, on some streets. Each time a car crossed the hose, the box increased its count. The results were recorded as holes punched into paper tape, one of the main computer storage media of the time.

Bill Gates, when he was a high school student, got a job processing the data, to count the holes in the paper tape and produce a report. He also transcribed the results onto punch cards to be transferred into another computer.

Rather than doing all the work himself, Gates hired fellow students at Lakeside School. One of these fellow students was Paul Allen. In 1972, Gates and Allen purchased an Intel 8008 chip for building an automated car-counting machine. They formed a company, named as Traf-O-Data with its headquarters in Allen’s dorm room at Washington State University. Paul Gilbert, a friend of Gates and Allen, designed the hardware while Gates and Allen wrote the software. Because the hardware did not yet exist, they tried to write a program on the Washington State University IBM System 360 to simulate the 8008 chip. That way, they could program on the IBM System 360 and transfer the program to the Traf-O-Data device when it was finished.

Around this time, defense contractor TRW was looking for programmers. Both Gates and Allen were hired. While there, Allen developed the 8008 simulator to run on the TRW PDP-10 computers. This allowed Gates and Allen to begin work on the Traf-O-Data software.

After leaving TRW, Gates was accepted into Harvard University. With everything going on in his life, Traf-O-Data barely limped along. By 1974, Gilbert had finished the hardware, and Gates had mostly finished the software. However, the company had no device to automatically read the paper tapes.

An acquaintance of Gates’ father came up with a solution. The device would feel the paper tape with specialized metallic fingers to count the holes. It became known as the squeeze reader. A prototype worked well and a representative of the King County Engineering Department was invited to Gate’s parents’ home to see a demonstration. The squeeze reader failed completely, and no sale was made.

Traf-O-Data, now a partnership between Gates, Allen, and Gilbert, needed a professional paper tape reader. Gates used $3,400 of his own money to purchase an Enviro-Labs Model GS-311 Paper Tape Reader. Traf-O-Data used the device to process the paper tapes generated by traffic counting boxes and produced some revenue. Eventually, the State of Washington offered free traffic processing services, ending this revenue. In May of 1979, Traf-O-Data sent letters to clients saying they were suspending business. Gates’ first business had failed.

Much of the details of Traf-O-Data are lost. This is to be expected since the business was started and run by teen-agers. Gates has claimed that Traf-O-Data had revenues of $20,000 to $30,000 per year over its life. More reliable estimates put the amount closer to $10,000 to $20,000 total.

Some timelines report that Traf-O-Data was renamed Microsoft. This is incorrect. This fallacy is based, no doubt, on the fact that Gates and Allen were involved in starting both Traf-O-Data and Microsoft. Although Traf-O-Data did not become Microsoft, it is no doubt true that the experiences Gates and Allen had with Traf-O-Data helped both of them when they started Microsoft.

Gates and Allen ran it for several years before throwing in the towel. They gave up. Of course they did a little better with Microsoft.

If they hadn’t given up on Traf-O-Data, then we wouldn’t have such rich collections of Microsoft and Bill Gates today.

So how do you know when to press on vs. when to give up? Is your plan still correct? If not, update the plan. Is your goal still correct? If not, update or abandon your goal. There’s no honor in clinging to a goal that no longer inspires you. Persistence is not stubbornness.

If you’re growing at all as a human being, then you’re going to be a different person each year than you were the previous year. And if you consciously pursue personal development, then the changes will often be dramatic and rapid. You can’t guarantee that the goals you set today will still be ones you’ll want to achieve a year from now.

In order to make room for new goals, we have to delete or complete old ones. And sometimes new goals are so compelling and inspiring that there’s no time to complete old ones — they have to be abandoned half-finished. I’ve always found it uncomfortable to do this, but I know it’s necessary. The hard part is consciously deciding to delete an old project, knowing it will never be finished. I have a file full of game ideas and some prototypes for new games that will never see the light of day. Consciously deciding that those projects had to be abandoned was really hard for me. It took me a long time to come to grips with it. But it was necessary for my own growth to be able to do this.

I still had to solve the problem of setting goals that might become obsolete in a year due to my own personal growth. How did I solve this problem? I cheated. I figured out the only way I could set long-term goals that would stick would be if they were aligned with my own process of growth. The pursuit of personal growth has long been a stable constant for me, even though it’s paradoxically in flux at the same time. So instead of trying to set fixed goals as I did with my games business, I began setting broader more dynamic goals that were aligned with my own growth. This new business allows me to pursue my personal growth full-out and to share what I learn with others. So growth itself is the goal, both for myself and others. This creates a symbiotic relationship, whereby helping others feeds back into my own growth, which in turn generates new ideas for helping others. Anyone who’s been reading this site since last year has probably seen that effect in action.

The direct and conscious pursuit of personal growth is the only type of mission that would work for me. The value of persistence comes not from stubbornly clinging to the past. It comes from a vision of the future that’s so compelling you would give almost anything to make it real. The vision I have of my future now is far greater than the one I had for Dexterity. To be able to help people grow and to solve their most difficult problems is far more inspiring to me than entertaining people. These values started oozing out of me as I ran Dexterity because I favored logic puzzle games that challenged people to think, often passing up the opportunity to publish games I felt would make money but which wouldn’t provide much real value to people.

Persistence of action comes from persistence of vision. When you’re super-clear about what you want in such a way that your vision doesn’t change much, you’ll be more consistent — and persistent — in your actions. And that consistency of action will produce consistency of results.

Can you identify a part of your life where you’ve demonstrated a pattern of long-term persistence? I think if you can identify such an area, it may provide a clue to your mission — something you can work towards where passion and self-discipline function synergistically.

Be Happy – Be Disciplined.

Be Happy – Be Disciplined (Part 3)

Discipline means to use your time best. How? Have you ever had the experience of looking back on your week with the sinking feeling that you didn't get as much done as you'd hoped? When building a successful career or a business of your own, your time is perhaps your most valuable asset, and your income is a direct result of how you spend your time. You cannot buy any more time than you're given, and the clock is always ticking.

You Must Keep a Detailed Time Log.

The first step to better managing your time is to find out how you're currently spending your time. Keeping a time log is a very effective way to do this, and after trying it for just one day, you'll immediately gain tremendous insight into where your time is actually going. The very act of measuring is often enough to raise your unconscious habits into your consciousness, where you then have a chance to scrutinize and change them.

Here's how to keep a time log. Throughout your day record the time whenever you start or stop any activity. Consider using a stopwatch to just record time intervals for each activity. You can do this during only your working time or throughout your entire day. At the end of the day, sort all the time chunks into general categories, and find out what percentage of your time is being spent on each type of activity. If you want to be thorough, do this for a week, and calculate the percentage of your total time that you spent on each type of activity. Be as detailed as possible. Note how much time you spend on email, reading newsgroups, web surfing, phone calls, eating, going to the bathroom, etc. If you get up out of your chair, it probably means you need to make an entry in your time log.

You may be surprised to discover you're spending only a small fraction of your working time doing what you'd consider to be actual work. Studies have shown that the average office worker does only 1.5 hours of actual work per day. The rest of the time is spent socializing, taking coffee breaks, eating, engaging in non-business communication, shuffling papers, and doing lots of other non-work tasks. The average full-time office worker doesn't even start doing real work until 11:00am and begins to wind down around 3:30pm.

You Must Analyze Your Results.

The first time I kept a time log, I only finished 15 hours worth of real work in a week where I spent about 60 hours in my office. Even though I was technically about twice as productive as the average office worker, I was still disturbed by the results. Where did those other 45 hours go? My time log laid it all out for me, showing me all the time drains I wasn't consciously aware of -- checking email too often, excessive perfectionism doing tasks that didn't need to be done, over-reading the news, taking too much time for meals, succumbing to preventable interruptions, etc.

You Must Calculate Your Personal Efficiency Ratio.

When I realized that I spent 60 hours at the office but only completed 15 hours of actual work within that time, I started asking myself some interesting questions. My income and my sense of accomplishment depended only on those 15 hours, not on the total amount of time I spent at the office. So I decided to begin recording my daily efficiency ratio as the amount of time I spent on actual work divided by the total amount of time I spent in my office. While it certainly bothered me that I was only working 25% of the time initially, I also realized it would be extremely foolish to simply work longer hours.

Efficiency Ratio = (Time Doing "Real Work") / (Time Spent "At Work")

You Must Cut Back On Total Hours To Force An Increase In Efficiency.

If you've ever tried to discipline yourself to do something you weren't really motivated to do, you most likely failed. That was naturally the result I experienced when I tried to discipline myself to work harder. In fact, trying harder actually de-motivated me and drove my efficiency ratio even lower. So I reluctantly decided to try the opposite approach. The next day I would only allow myself to put in five hours total at the office, and the rest of the day I wouldn't allow myself to work at all.

Well, an interesting thing happened, as I'm sure you can imagine. My brain must have gotten the idea that working time was a scarce commodity because I worked almost the entire five hours straight and got an efficiency ratio of over 90%. I continued this experiment for the rest of the week and ended up getting about 25 hours of work done with only 30 hours total spent in my office, for an efficiency ratio of over 80%. So I was able to reduce my weekly working time by 30 hours while also getting 10 more hours of real work done. If your time log shows your efficiency ratio to be on the low side, try severely limiting your total amount of working time for a day, and see what happens. Once your brain realizes that working time is scarce, you suddenly become a lot more efficient because you have to be. When you have tight time constraints, you will usually find a way to get your work done. But when you have all the time in the world, it's too easy to be inefficient. You Must Gradually Increase Total Hours While Maintaining Peak Efficiency.

Over a period of a few weeks, I was able to keep my efficiency ratio above 80% while gradually increasing my total weekly office time. I've been able to maintain this for many years now, and I commonly get about 40 hours of real work done every week, while only spending about 45 total hours in my office. I've learned that this is ideal for me. If I try to put in more time at the office, then my productivity drops off rapidly. The interesting thing is that the system that allowed me to optimize my effectiveness at work also created a tremendous amount of balance in all other areas of my life. Even though I was able to use this approach to triple my business productivity, I still gained plenty of time to pursue personal interests. Time logging is the intelligent choice to ensure optimal productivity without increasing your hours. But time logging need only be done periodically to provide these benefits. I do it for one week every 3-6 months, and over the years it has made a huge difference for me, always providing me with new distinctions. If I go too many months without time logging, my productivity gradually drops as I fall back into unconscious time-wasting habits. You'll probably find as I do that your gut feelings about your productivity are closely related to how much real work you actually get done. When you feel your productivity is lower than you'd like, raise your awareness via time logging, measure your efficiency ratio, and then optimize your efficiency to boost your productivity back up where it belongs. Time logging is a high leverage activity that takes very little time and effort to implement, but the long-term payoff is tremendous.

When you pursue the path of developing your personal productivity, it may cause you some days of hair-pulling and teeth-gnashing, but it does eventually pay off. I think many people are attracted to the idea of becoming more productive out of basic common sense. It doesn’t take much brainpower to figure out that if you use your time more efficiently, you’ll complete more tasks, and therefore you’ll accumulate results faster. Personal productivity allows you to create enough space in your life to do all the things you feel you should be doing: eat healthy, exercise, work hard, deepen relationships, have a wonderful social life, and make a difference. Otherwise, something has to give. Without a high level of personal productivity, you’ll likely have to give up something that’s important to you. You have conflicts between health and work, work and family, family and friends. Industry can give you the ability to enjoy all of these things, so you don’t have to choose work over family or vice versa. You can have both.

One thing more, you may go in some industry because it is only one tool among many. It will allow you to complete your work efficiently, but it won’t tell you what work to do in the first place. Industry is a low level tool. Working hard doesn’t necessarily mean working smart. But this weakness of industry doesn’t remove its powerful place in your personal development toolbox. Once you’ve decided on a course of action and see your plans laid out in front of you, nothing can do the job as well as industry. In the long run your results will come from your actions, and industry is all about action.

Calvin Coolidge observes that nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan “Press On” has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.

Be Happy - Be Disciplined.