Category Archives: positive thinking

Power of positive thinking and Glass Half Full mentality

Time to Spread Some Holiday Cheer

Here’s Wishing you All the Best for 2017!

Goodbye, 2016!

We wish all of you all the best in 2017! May this new year bring lots of success and happiness in your life.

As we say Goodbye to 2016, let us remember the positives and try to not dwell too much on the negatives. In the USA here, we have gone through a nasty election season which saw the country more divided than ever! However, we and those in parts of the world which are conflict free have been fortunate to see peace and prosperity. We hope and pray that 2017 brings peace to more parts of the world and pray for those who have been affected by war and tragedy.

Let us all pull together and do our part for making this world a better place for all of us.

Here’s to all or our friends!

Your friends at TechologyPark.com

Achieving Work-Life Balance – Parkinson’s Law

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Sometimes Less is more. Less time for work that is.

Today, work-day often is 24×7 affair, particularly if you are running your own small business. You are always checking your emails, answering emails from your prospects or customers. Although you may be seemingly enjoying your weekend or vacation, it is often hard to get away from work completely.

I used to be that way too. But lately, I have found that getting away from work completely, say for weekends or on short vacations, actually rejuvenates you and make you more productive. And you get just as much done in the allotted time, if not more. Remember the famous Parkinson’s Law: “Work Expands to fill the available time for its completion”?

This statement, first made in 1955 by British author Cyril Parkinson for an article for “The Economist” is one of the most profound observation. So when you reclaim your personal time to be spent with family, friends, and on non-work things, you end up compressing the time available to finish the work and you manage to do it!

This past memorial day was amazing. Our two sons were back from college and with us for a few days. The week before my older “twin” boy (older by 7 minutes), declared that on Memorial Day, we were going to clean up both, our garage and basement. Our detached garage (which is actually used as a workshop and storage area) had become a complete mess – it was impossible to make your way from the front to the back). Basement had also piles of paper and stuff – things that we collect. So we had a three day deadline to clean up the mess that we created over past 10-15 years. Actually we got a late start on Saturday, but by 3 pm we had over half the stuff in the garage separated out as trash to be thrown out. And we discovered how great the “1-800-Got-Junk” was. While we were creating a giant pile in the driveway for a trash hauler, I was pleasantly surprised that I could book a time for Got-Junk people to come an haul away all the junk the same day in the 3-5 pm window! So with 3 pm deadline looming (which was just about 3-4 hours since we started our clean-up), we had to finish separating out the trash in just a few hours. And true to Parkinson’s law, we managed to do it. On Sunday, while my sons put up some organizers and shelves in garage and organized the tools and other stuff in the garage, me and my wife tackled the basement and got it completely cleaned and organized by Monday evening. One long weekend, two seemingly endless tasks, done very well and within the available time. One more victory for the Parkinson’s law.

Yes, with Teamwork, focused energy, and a hard deadline, we are capable of doing amazing things. But we are after-all humans – we need to be reminded of this often.

Do you find yourself procrastinating on things that must be done? Or always falling behind in your tasks? And always stressing out because things are not getting done? Or working all the time?

We needlessly stress out on things on our “To-do” Lists, make complicated plans, give our tasks unnecessarily long time lines and then put them off till the last minute because we fear tackling them.

Next time, just try these few simple things:

Enjoy your weekends and reclaim your personal time. Get unplugged from your laptop or cellphones and get plugged in to your family and friends and hobbies
Remember Parkinson’s law – You do have time to finish your tasks and goals. Give focused effort, compress your time-frame to get things done, rally your team members, and simplify your tasks and goals
And keep reminding yourself about Parkinson’s Law every time you try getting stressedI love Nike’s slogan – ‘Just do it’. Instead of endless planning, just plunge ahead and start tackling things you are putting off.

Reflections this Holiday Season – Reason to be Thankful

GLASS HALF FULL

Hello Friends:

This is one of my favorite times of the year. Ah! The holiday season. Time to take it a bit easy, spend time with your family and friends, reflect on the past year, make some resolutions to improve myself in the coming year (and beyond), and help those who are less fortunate.

Sometimes, as I listen to the news now-a-days, it seems that usually the focus is on all the negatives – bad economy, grid-locked congress, rising national debt, vitriol-filled political attack ads, violent and hate crimes, Euro-crisis, Arab Spring like protests everywhere we look.

So let us step back and be thankful and grateful for the good things that we do have:

Iraq War is Over: Yesterday I was watching a special on ABC’s 20/20 about Troops returning home. We have ended a major war in Iraq and all of our troops are home. Although we have been fighting two major wars abroad – in Iraq and in Afghanistan for past several years, most of us are too far removed from it to feel any pain. After all there is no war tax, no shortage of goods here, no real sacrifices that most of us have to endure. By contrast, these troops and their families, friends, and relatives have made a huge sacrifice in defending our country and fighting against evil. They had put their lives on the line for us, they put their lives on hold, left their families including young children for months or years on end to fight a war on foreign soil under difficult conditions.

We are thankful that they are home now with their families and for their enormous sacrifice. And when we come across them during our daily chores, let us talk to them, express our gratitude and try to learn more about what they did, where they had been. Many war veterans feel kind of disconnected when they come home – that we are disconnected from the war, and not interested to learn more about Iraq or Afghanistan or what they did. Let us make them feel welcome and make them feel at home. And if any of you are hiring, give them a chance to get back into civilian life.

The Grass Greener on this Side: In all of the talks about debt, and economic slow-down facing us, we often harp on the negatives, but forget all of the good things we have. I often remind people when they are complaining in general about how tough their lives are (and my family hates me when I do it to them), that there will be millions of people who will happily trade their lives for you. After all we can move about in the streets and express ourselves without fear of being shot, arrested or tortured. Our economy is still more robust than many other countries, our schools are still better than those in most other countries, and I feel that USA is still the most open country where anyone, irrespective of their ethnicity, economic or social status can still make it with hard work and determination. And USA still has the best college education system I feel of anywhere.

We can Still Dream of Better Tomorrow: I think no situation is worse than someone in a situation where the future is bleak and there is no hope of better days. And there are lot of countries and places where people are in dire situation and they have nothing to look forward to. Fortunately for us in the USA, it is still possible to have our dreams, and we can always hold on to our beliefs that tomorrow can be better, that the future can be brighter, if only we can work harder and smarter.

So let us be thankful in this holiday season for the blessings and things we have received, be compassionate and helpful to those who are less fortunate and continue to foster and work towards our dreams to make not only our lives, but the lives of those who are not so fortunate better through our words and actions.

Wish all of you a very happy holiday season and the very best for the new year.

Yatin