Clean up and Stay Connected

With Every Breath, Chant Mantra. Inhale Sanjivini and exhale Sanjivini.

If there are negative thoughts, send healing with every mantra.

If there are positive thoughts, let them spread in your whole body.

In there is no thoughts, just inhale and exhale continuously being grateful and with surrender bhaav.

Review of Apple News

Apple News App introduced in iOS9 brings integration of bringing news to you and increase consumption. I see impact on many applications/feeds due to this feature.

To make it better application, I think below features can be added in future release

1. Add # of words in articles
2. Option to auto highlight text as reading. Putting option of reading speed, pause selection and chunk size selection
3. Able to create my own booklet from different articles, notes highlighted

Learn to Earn

Learning means Lots of Earning. It's true in today's Information Age where you need to keep on learning to move ahead.

Keep learning to be eligible. Focus on learning. If you enjoy it, soon you will be expert in extracting learning from reading, listening and any day to day situations from self or from others.

There is infinite knowledge so focusing on one subject may get boring or lowering motivation after some time so try to learn different subjects at a time to keep the excitement of learning. Find ways to share learnings. If you work on cause ( learning), effect (earning) will bound to happen.

Happy Learning!

Push Limit to build Habit

When you want to build habit, it often becomes "boring" activity to carry out or to start it.

To carry through it without getting distracted:

• First step is to build a system to make you aware of it like Reminder application.
• Second step is to try to do just little extra when you feel friction in mind. 
• Last step is to create "pause" to reflect, log activity done.

To Start:

• Create Hope to find motivation to start when Reminder pops up and then just focus on doing task 
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• Reflect and create purpose to keep you motivated.

Japanese Way

If You are afraid of starting any task or study thinking how much you have to do and keep postponing for tomorrow; just try this...

Start the task; set a timer for 20 mins and just keep doing it. Once timer goes off, stop and take rest. There is no need to look how much you completed. Repeat again after 5-10 mins. 

Just enjoy doing the work whatever you want to do for next 20 mins and feel peace and satisfaction within you.

In Japan, they do it for cleaning for 20 mins as mindfulness activity.

Being Consultant

Become a Consultant in every way. Your objective is to identify problems, find solutions and Package them as solution.

If you can help for bigger purpose, you will be more successful. However, focus needs to shift to start doing things right now that you feel you should do or will do down the line. No need to worry about speed etc just focus on doing things at a time matching to vision. You may need to change paths more often and you need to be ready for it.

Inspiration Quotes

“Believe in yourself, and the rest will fall into place. Have faith in your own abilities, work hard, and there is nothing you cannot accomplish.” –Brad Henry

“I don’t care how much power, brilliance or energy you have, if you don’t harness it and focus it on a specific target, and hold it there you’re never going to accomplish as much as your ability warrants.” -Zig Ziglar

“Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole live believing that it is stupid.” –Albert Einstein

Become Action Taker

Do you know what do you want or seeking? Most of us are not clear on vision as we live in past and worrying about future.

First step is to become aware and be present. Mindful breathing using any App can help you if you find it difficult.

Once you enter in zone, see what's causing problem  and what's solution you are trying to seek. Write it down.

Now create the state what it should be instead of finding solution on Google. Create happy thoughts about it in present to build hope

Now create action list to achieve those steps to form as Habit. 

Now create reminder based on priority of action items. There may be many habits you may want to form and it's ok. Just need to focus on most important one you feel which will give you result immediately following Pareto principle. Keep others in your list with less frequency or create dependent on most important one.

Now start doing it and log it using automated system so that you are more focused on action than tracking, logging, reflecting.

Hope this will clear path and speed up path to know what exactly you want.

Fail forward; learn lesson by taking action and keep on refining steps.

Before Moving on...

It was tough decision to move on from dream company to pursue personal goals. Typically, everyone  writes their last day email; however, I had seen so many such emails and going my colleagues one by one; there was no desire to send an email to unknown DLs. Hence writing my notes here to capture my thoughts.

However, I am satisfied before moving that I accomplished what I set goals 2 years back when I landed to US with all ifs/buts. I will jot down only positive outcomes.

• First development project though career wise not that fruitful, but happy to fit in big shoes of matured process and to be able to introduce few innovations in Reporting. In end,
• Increased client satisfaction rating (Engagement Feedback improved with no open actions from when joined the project). 
• Was able to handle multiple demands and expectations from client and offshore team. 
• Was able to get new reporting applications to increase from 3 marts to 8 applications for active development
• Opened up opportunities for Cognos development. 
• Offshore team had raised concern about no onshore reviews happening, testing/estimation issue and lack of onshore opportunities for Cognos. I am glad that with continuous team efforts, all these aspects were addressed and we went into "managed service" mode to increase flexibility for rotation and at the same time create win win situation for Client. It was fun learning to create estimation sheet for Cognos for various factors.
• Last 6-7 months I took up Support project BI Delivery lead role as challenge without following common culture, still project can become successful and stable. Happy to see 
• Define how we can operate to meet clients need. 
• Added Cognos and QlikView app support as well as Admin support successfully
• Identified gaps and worked to fill on them every day at both client as well as Team end. End result is every one was happy to get their "data" and new project.
• Successful transition for freshers to take up responsibilities to meet project goals.  
• When joined, I was given one zip of document; by the time of leaving, have all knowledge documents, status templates, highlights, optimized run for month end runs; Cognos Environment stability; inputs to project team to create more development opportunity to use system correctly. It was good to have all rights to build solutions and I cherish moments working with ST colleagues as well as Infosys team mates. I enjoyed teaching tricks while learning new one. There was always a solution created instead of complaining for more work or issues.. that was the best part of engagement

• On Leaving,
• Team sent Big Thank you email as departing notes. That was one of the most cherished moment in this tenure and made me feel that yes I did something good. Working as teammate rather than treating them as resource became number one priority as I matured. I am grateful to team for giving opportunities to practice ways of working and finding out work around.
• Met with Offshore GPM with whom had long discussion about plan about my career growth that didn't happen. It proved everything still goes with perception rather than who does ground work.
• Proved that Inspired by Intellect and Driven by Values is only on paper when manager tries to negotiate to take back resignations. If someone works and delivers should be counted if some corporate wants to retain talent; not based on talking. I had all data points to tackle questions professionally. However, it was good to see them realize mistake for not engaging Employees and questionable approach of always fault finding instead of adopting approach of creating solution.
• From last project, one of offshore person (who left company) and who was quite hostile to me in beginning; it was great achievement to get thank you. Those are my true earnings while being at Infosys.
• I got call from my Pune SPM (Rajesh Bhujbal) to say farewell. I am grateful for such considerations. Hope, same attitude is engraved in who becomes manager. 
• In my first project at Infosys, I am grateful for Piyush, Ashish Chabbra, Arun P, Ajeet Mohanty, Sumit Singh, Abrar, Akshay Mehta, Tushar Balerao, Denny to name a few who helped me understanding corporate culture and broke myth that being intellectual is not enough; but you need to "play" according to game to survive in competition. I learnt it and hence seeking my own path :)
• I had made lots of friends and did night outs before (9.15 hours policy).  Thanks Infosys for that. Some policies made tough decision for me to move out; however, some in the end provided enough reason for me to move out. 

Looking forward to continue on journey to learn new lessons technically and non technically.

Hope to get better and better and more focused to help more...

Signing Off to start new adventure...

Take Action

When sea is calm, you don't need to sit. You need to rest when you are out of energy. Recharge but take action towards your goal. Make more attempts to reach there. If you can't find your goal or action, just start with helping people around you. Sometime being there is what all you need. No place for fear or plan or have vision. If nothing is clear, do what your heart says and just do it! You are human who is action taker by nature. Use energy to ask questions and go for seeking answers for them. Create need and work to fulfil. In the end, there shouldn't be any need you thought should have worked on.  

Learning from Meditation Shivir

Don't wait for things to happen. Make them happen.

Have an attitude of gratitude, serving ; being humble and always there to help out; take lead when problem comes in and convert in opportunity.

Keep focus on what others are saying or feeling and have pure intention to serve rather than just pure result based. Implement and work on cause and effect will come. Adjust to align with goal. Think and write down what do you want to accelerate in achieving it. How to achieve; do Sadhna, sewa and sankirtan with pure bhaav, devotion. Don't be bound by limitations and make yourself limitless. Give your fears to Shiv shiva and Guru. Feel that you already have what's needed to preform a job and just do it.

Life is about making habits to transform you; merge with infinite. 

Build Morning ritual and Evening rituals for prioritize activities to achieve your goals.

Use of Cloud to Take Notes and keep Journal together

Below are some use cases for increase learning rate and share content:

• Write in Journal on Laptop/iPhone and Publish to Cloud. Keep Dates, insight
• Write in Notebook and take picture and publish entries in Cloud
• Read from Kindle/articles online and publish self learnings as mind maps/linear list to Cloud. Keep reference
• Review notes and create maps for revision and publish to Cloud

Under Journal Folder create two folders:

• Raw Data - to keep data as they come in and first level review
• Consolidate Data - to condense data based on goal, keeping presentations etc. It can further be organized based on problem statement.