Saturday, May 17, 2008
Best Site to Stream.
Some of the sites I use to stream movies/shows.
OVGuide
TvLinks
TubeZoom
PikVid
Veoh
OpenHulu
Channel Chooser
QuickSilver
Joox
OVGuide
TvLinks
TubeZoom
PikVid
Veoh
OpenHulu
Channel Chooser
QuickSilver
Joox
Friday, May 16, 2008
29 Ways to Carry Out Random Acts of Kindness Every Day
Thanks to Aravind from ArvindDevalia.com
The time has come when we cannot just rely on others to make the world a better place – each one of us has to do our bit.
It is therefore time for people to be more and more aware about their Personal Social Responsibility (PSR).
PSR is all about doing to others what you would like others do to you. It is about recognizing how your behaviour affects others, and holding yourself accountable for your actions. For example, contrast someone being well mannered and kind, with someone being rude.
And this brings me nicely to the theme of this post - being kind to others.
Kindness is contagious - and as part of Personal Socially Responsibility you might want to consider carrying out random acts of kindness on a daily basis.
It is truly a win/win/win situation. The person you are being kind to benefits through your help. You feel good for having helped someone. And the world is a better place through your kindness.
Never underestimate the impact of a single act of kindness. I still remember, after many years, the time someone stopped and helped me after my car had broken down down. Since then, I have stopped on the road myself and helped stranded motorists a number of times. All because of that single act of kindness by a stranger.
Also, it is important to carry out your acts of kindness without expecting anything back.
So where do you begin?
To get you started, I have listed 29 ideas below. And why the number 29? Because it is as good a number as any - and also because I couldn’t think of idea number 30!
Put them into practice and also create your own:-
Send someone a hand written note of thanks.
Make a card at home and send it to a friend for no reason.
Buy a lottery ticket for a stranger.
Put some coins in someone else’s parking meter.
Buy a coffee for the man on the high street selling The Big Issue magazine.
Cut your neighbour’s hedge.
Walk your friend’s dog.
Give a compliment about your waiter / waitress to his / her manager.
Send someone a small gift anonymously.
Stop and help someone replace their flat tyre.
Let someone jump the queue at the bank.
Pay for the drinks on the next table at a café.
Treat a friend to the movies for no reason.
Give a huge tip to someone when they least expect it.
Hold the train door open for someone rushing to get in.
Give up your seat for someone, not just an elderly person.
Write notes of appreciation at least once a week.
Talk to a homeless person and have a “normal” conversation.
Pick up some rubbish in the road which would otherwise be lying around.
Compliment a work colleague for their excellence.
Recommend a competitor to a potential client.
Give another driver your parking spot.
Give a piece of fruit to a delivery person.
Help an elderly neighbour carry the rubbish out.
Tell all your family members how much your appreciate them.
Leave a copy of an interesting book on a train / bus.
Buy an inspirational book for a friend.
Send a thank you note to a person who has helped you in the past.
Smile a lot.
What goes around is sure to come around - happy helping
Please apply these ideas in your life from today - and share your own ideas and how you get on with spreading kindness in the world in the comments. That way I won’t have to think up idea number 30 myself!
The time has come when we cannot just rely on others to make the world a better place – each one of us has to do our bit.
It is therefore time for people to be more and more aware about their Personal Social Responsibility (PSR).
PSR is all about doing to others what you would like others do to you. It is about recognizing how your behaviour affects others, and holding yourself accountable for your actions. For example, contrast someone being well mannered and kind, with someone being rude.
And this brings me nicely to the theme of this post - being kind to others.
Kindness is contagious - and as part of Personal Socially Responsibility you might want to consider carrying out random acts of kindness on a daily basis.
It is truly a win/win/win situation. The person you are being kind to benefits through your help. You feel good for having helped someone. And the world is a better place through your kindness.
Never underestimate the impact of a single act of kindness. I still remember, after many years, the time someone stopped and helped me after my car had broken down down. Since then, I have stopped on the road myself and helped stranded motorists a number of times. All because of that single act of kindness by a stranger.
Also, it is important to carry out your acts of kindness without expecting anything back.
So where do you begin?
To get you started, I have listed 29 ideas below. And why the number 29? Because it is as good a number as any - and also because I couldn’t think of idea number 30!
Put them into practice and also create your own:-
Send someone a hand written note of thanks.
Make a card at home and send it to a friend for no reason.
Buy a lottery ticket for a stranger.
Put some coins in someone else’s parking meter.
Buy a coffee for the man on the high street selling The Big Issue magazine.
Cut your neighbour’s hedge.
Walk your friend’s dog.
Give a compliment about your waiter / waitress to his / her manager.
Send someone a small gift anonymously.
Stop and help someone replace their flat tyre.
Let someone jump the queue at the bank.
Pay for the drinks on the next table at a café.
Treat a friend to the movies for no reason.
Give a huge tip to someone when they least expect it.
Hold the train door open for someone rushing to get in.
Give up your seat for someone, not just an elderly person.
Write notes of appreciation at least once a week.
Talk to a homeless person and have a “normal” conversation.
Pick up some rubbish in the road which would otherwise be lying around.
Compliment a work colleague for their excellence.
Recommend a competitor to a potential client.
Give another driver your parking spot.
Give a piece of fruit to a delivery person.
Help an elderly neighbour carry the rubbish out.
Tell all your family members how much your appreciate them.
Leave a copy of an interesting book on a train / bus.
Buy an inspirational book for a friend.
Send a thank you note to a person who has helped you in the past.
Smile a lot.
What goes around is sure to come around - happy helping
Please apply these ideas in your life from today - and share your own ideas and how you get on with spreading kindness in the world in the comments. That way I won’t have to think up idea number 30 myself!
Why Your Plans Fail
Business plans, diet plans, plans to get a degree and your plan to get rich. Life is full of planning. You’d think that all your practice planning would make you at least somewhat good at it. Then why do so few things go “according to plan?”
Your business can’t make money the way you intended. You quit your diet on day three and start eating the chocolate cake. You realize that you hate the subject you’re studying. The map rarely matches the territory. “Okay,” you might say, “I’ll admit some of my plans didn’t work out perfectly, but it can’t be that bad, can it?”
The Planning Fallacy
People are notoriously bad at planning. The worst part is, we don’t even know it. One psychological study conducted asked students to predict when they expected to complete an assignment, almost none gave enough time. Other looks into financial analysts show that few can consistently beat the market.
The real problem is that these planning failures aren’t recognized. People make wildly overconfident projections but fail to notice their abysmal track record in predicting. The question is, what can you do about this?
New Planning Techniques Aren’t the Solution
The problem isn’t a better planning method. We’ve all had a great deal of practice planning. Different planning styles can help, but they can’t solve the core problem of uncertainty. That is, you have no idea what the future holds.
The planning fallacy creates two major problems – the inability to plan and being blind to that incompetence. The real solution is to keep a careful eye on your track record and learn to stomach uncertainty.
Watching Your Track Record
The way to tackle overconfidence is to be aware of your success rate. Whenever you make plans, keep a record of occasions you were forced to deviate from them. I’ve done this, and the differences between your map and reality can be surprising.
How does humility help you? We’ve all been told to have faith and certainty in our efforts, otherwise it is too easy to give up. I’d argue the opposite. When you are motivated to do something, being humbled about your ability to predict forces you to be highly flexible.
Stomaching Uncertainty
Does risk make you queasy? Stomaching uncertainty is the next problem. Once you become aware of your inability to plan, you need to find a way to make the unknown tolerable. There are a couple ways you can do this: worst-case planning and flexible planning.
Planning for the Worst
One way to mitigate the actual risk is to plan for the worst cases possible. The point of this is to make you aware of the negative outcomes, and knowing you can handle it. The worst-case rarely materializes, or if it does, it usually happens in a way you didn’t expect. Worst-case planning can’t give you a look at everything that could go wrong, just a bit more confidence in knowing you can handle it.
The other benefit of worst-case planning is it balances the built in optimism plans have. Most people can’t distinguish between their best-case plans and expected plans. In other words, when predicting the future they imagine the most optimistic scenario possible.
A common rule I heard in software development was to figure out how long it should take. Then double that time and add six months. For your best-case. This adjustment was another method to offset the natural optimism in predicting.
Flexible Planning
The second option is simply not to plan. This may seem crazy, but I’ve found using what I’ll call a “flexible planning” model to be ideal for areas where there is a heavy amount of uncertainty.
Flexible planning isn’t planning in the traditional sense. Traditional planning involves looking at your outcome and devising a route to reach there. Flexible planning defies this entirely by not focusing on an end result. Instead, the emphasis is placed on doing actions that will place you in more favorable positions.
Flexible Planning VS Traditional Planning
Traditional planning starts with your objective and works backwards from that. Let’s say you were planning out what career choice you wanted. A traditional approach would be to work out your career choice, possible firms to work with, education you’ll need, classes you’ll need to take and how to fund your education. Each step determining the one before it.
The problem with this method is it cleanly erases uncertainty along the way. What if changes happen in the industry and firms you want to work for start downsizing? What if your school of choice doesn’t accept you? What if you don’t like the classes or eventual career? What if you can’t fund tuition?
Flexible planning starts where you are and works forward. So your current position might be limited post-secondary schooling and funds. Flexible planning suggests that many outcomes are favorable and that the paths to get there are almost infinite. Instead your job becomes to put yourself in increasingly more favorable positions.
The next step might be to get some schooling, apply to different Universities and scholarship programs or work to earn money for tuition. The best step is the one that has the most favorable options flowing from it.
In a business context this would mean planning your business so that it would have the largest amount of opportunities available. This way if one of your original plans fails, you can easily switch to another.
Your business can’t make money the way you intended. You quit your diet on day three and start eating the chocolate cake. You realize that you hate the subject you’re studying. The map rarely matches the territory. “Okay,” you might say, “I’ll admit some of my plans didn’t work out perfectly, but it can’t be that bad, can it?”
The Planning Fallacy
People are notoriously bad at planning. The worst part is, we don’t even know it. One psychological study conducted asked students to predict when they expected to complete an assignment, almost none gave enough time. Other looks into financial analysts show that few can consistently beat the market.
The real problem is that these planning failures aren’t recognized. People make wildly overconfident projections but fail to notice their abysmal track record in predicting. The question is, what can you do about this?
New Planning Techniques Aren’t the Solution
The problem isn’t a better planning method. We’ve all had a great deal of practice planning. Different planning styles can help, but they can’t solve the core problem of uncertainty. That is, you have no idea what the future holds.
The planning fallacy creates two major problems – the inability to plan and being blind to that incompetence. The real solution is to keep a careful eye on your track record and learn to stomach uncertainty.
Watching Your Track Record
The way to tackle overconfidence is to be aware of your success rate. Whenever you make plans, keep a record of occasions you were forced to deviate from them. I’ve done this, and the differences between your map and reality can be surprising.
How does humility help you? We’ve all been told to have faith and certainty in our efforts, otherwise it is too easy to give up. I’d argue the opposite. When you are motivated to do something, being humbled about your ability to predict forces you to be highly flexible.
Stomaching Uncertainty
Does risk make you queasy? Stomaching uncertainty is the next problem. Once you become aware of your inability to plan, you need to find a way to make the unknown tolerable. There are a couple ways you can do this: worst-case planning and flexible planning.
Planning for the Worst
One way to mitigate the actual risk is to plan for the worst cases possible. The point of this is to make you aware of the negative outcomes, and knowing you can handle it. The worst-case rarely materializes, or if it does, it usually happens in a way you didn’t expect. Worst-case planning can’t give you a look at everything that could go wrong, just a bit more confidence in knowing you can handle it.
The other benefit of worst-case planning is it balances the built in optimism plans have. Most people can’t distinguish between their best-case plans and expected plans. In other words, when predicting the future they imagine the most optimistic scenario possible.
A common rule I heard in software development was to figure out how long it should take. Then double that time and add six months. For your best-case. This adjustment was another method to offset the natural optimism in predicting.
Flexible Planning
The second option is simply not to plan. This may seem crazy, but I’ve found using what I’ll call a “flexible planning” model to be ideal for areas where there is a heavy amount of uncertainty.
Flexible planning isn’t planning in the traditional sense. Traditional planning involves looking at your outcome and devising a route to reach there. Flexible planning defies this entirely by not focusing on an end result. Instead, the emphasis is placed on doing actions that will place you in more favorable positions.
Flexible Planning VS Traditional Planning
Traditional planning starts with your objective and works backwards from that. Let’s say you were planning out what career choice you wanted. A traditional approach would be to work out your career choice, possible firms to work with, education you’ll need, classes you’ll need to take and how to fund your education. Each step determining the one before it.
The problem with this method is it cleanly erases uncertainty along the way. What if changes happen in the industry and firms you want to work for start downsizing? What if your school of choice doesn’t accept you? What if you don’t like the classes or eventual career? What if you can’t fund tuition?
Flexible planning starts where you are and works forward. So your current position might be limited post-secondary schooling and funds. Flexible planning suggests that many outcomes are favorable and that the paths to get there are almost infinite. Instead your job becomes to put yourself in increasingly more favorable positions.
The next step might be to get some schooling, apply to different Universities and scholarship programs or work to earn money for tuition. The best step is the one that has the most favorable options flowing from it.
In a business context this would mean planning your business so that it would have the largest amount of opportunities available. This way if one of your original plans fails, you can easily switch to another.
When A Cuppa Will Do You Good: Brief Breaks & Productivity
There are points when the only thing you can do — despite desperately wanting to be productive — is to step back for a few minutes. And while conventional productivity wisdom seems to dictate that you should use those few minutes to get a small task done or get a bit ahead on a future project, there are often situations when the best thing you can do is to sit down for a nice cup of tea (or the relaxing activity of your choice). I picked up the habit a while back and taking those little breaks have actually increased my productivity. Try stopping for a few minutes when…
…You’re Frustrated
If a given project is about to drive you over the edge, you need to step back. Try to get some distance or some insight. But switching over to a new task when you’re already wound up and frustrated just means that your irritation is going to be transferred to your new task. Sure, you may get that little bit of work done and out of the way, but you’re going to continue to be frustrated through that task and on to the next one. Taking even a few minutes can help you decide just why you’re frustrated and what you can do about it — you may even get a side order of inspiration with your cup of tea and think up a new approach to your problem.
…You’re Feeling Poorly
Trying to push on through your daily tasks when you’re feeling sick can be worth less than you think. If you over exert yourself when you are already tired or sick, you may just wind up needing to redo tasks, rather than getting ahead on what you need to do. If you’re like me, though, the idea of taking a day off or going back to bed just doesn’t seem like an option. But slowing down can make sure that I actually do get things done on a day when I feel pretty bad. Sure, I may not get some smaller tasks done while I’m sipping on my tea, but I can probably work through my most important tasks.
…You’ve Been At It Too Long
We all have different breaking points, but each of us have that point where, if we don’t go and do something different, we’ll go a bit nutty. I learned during the good old days in college that if I wanted to pull an all-nighter, I had to plan to get up and take a walk every hour or so, or I’d get so flat out bored and tired of my project that I would fall asleep on my keyboard. Getting up to make a cup of tea, get a drink or take a quick walk around the office not only gives your brain a chance to refresh itself; it also gives you a chance to stretch and maybe avoid that case of carpal tunnel you’ve been working towards.
…You Have A Short Wait
In any given project, odds are pretty good that you’ll have a short wait here and there: waiting for a graphic to render or an email to arrive or whatever. As a general rule, if I expect that wait to be under five minutes, I refuse to start anything new. Sure, I might need a short break away from the project, but I don’t necessarily want to derail my train of thought to the point that working on something entirely different would entail. Getting up to get a cuppa will keep me from getting overly distracted during those five minutes, but won’t cause me to lose the focus I need to keep working on a project.
…You Reach A Set Interval
After you’ve been working for long enough, you just have to get up and move around a bit. I actually set a timer to go off every twenty minutes to remind me to just stretch. While I don’t think that getting up every twenty minutes just for a cup of tea — or getting up at all that often — is ideal, getting up out of your chair on a regular basis is a good idea. You might set a timer for once every few hours or so. Of course, this sort of break is easy to ignore when you hit your stride. I often work through my timer when I’m on a roll. But after working through that timer a time or two, I find that I absolutely have to get up and move. It’s up to you to find an interval that works, as well as a reason to get up — after all, there are only so many cups of tea a person can drink in a given day. But there are plenty of options: exercise, snacks, even set activities like walking down to pick up your mail can be enough to provide you with a short break.
…You’re Thirsty
Even if you’re almost done with a project, it can be worth it to take care of those nagging bodily needs. You may think you can ignore it just a little bit longer, but any distraction can be enough to decrease the quality of work. It’s rare that you’re so close to done and so close to deadline that you can’t afford a few minutes to get a drink or whatever else needs doing. While I’m all for suffering for one’s art, I don’t think being thirsty quite qualifies.
Copyright:lifehack.org
…You’re Frustrated
If a given project is about to drive you over the edge, you need to step back. Try to get some distance or some insight. But switching over to a new task when you’re already wound up and frustrated just means that your irritation is going to be transferred to your new task. Sure, you may get that little bit of work done and out of the way, but you’re going to continue to be frustrated through that task and on to the next one. Taking even a few minutes can help you decide just why you’re frustrated and what you can do about it — you may even get a side order of inspiration with your cup of tea and think up a new approach to your problem.
…You’re Feeling Poorly
Trying to push on through your daily tasks when you’re feeling sick can be worth less than you think. If you over exert yourself when you are already tired or sick, you may just wind up needing to redo tasks, rather than getting ahead on what you need to do. If you’re like me, though, the idea of taking a day off or going back to bed just doesn’t seem like an option. But slowing down can make sure that I actually do get things done on a day when I feel pretty bad. Sure, I may not get some smaller tasks done while I’m sipping on my tea, but I can probably work through my most important tasks.
…You’ve Been At It Too Long
We all have different breaking points, but each of us have that point where, if we don’t go and do something different, we’ll go a bit nutty. I learned during the good old days in college that if I wanted to pull an all-nighter, I had to plan to get up and take a walk every hour or so, or I’d get so flat out bored and tired of my project that I would fall asleep on my keyboard. Getting up to make a cup of tea, get a drink or take a quick walk around the office not only gives your brain a chance to refresh itself; it also gives you a chance to stretch and maybe avoid that case of carpal tunnel you’ve been working towards.
…You Have A Short Wait
In any given project, odds are pretty good that you’ll have a short wait here and there: waiting for a graphic to render or an email to arrive or whatever. As a general rule, if I expect that wait to be under five minutes, I refuse to start anything new. Sure, I might need a short break away from the project, but I don’t necessarily want to derail my train of thought to the point that working on something entirely different would entail. Getting up to get a cuppa will keep me from getting overly distracted during those five minutes, but won’t cause me to lose the focus I need to keep working on a project.
…You Reach A Set Interval
After you’ve been working for long enough, you just have to get up and move around a bit. I actually set a timer to go off every twenty minutes to remind me to just stretch. While I don’t think that getting up every twenty minutes just for a cup of tea — or getting up at all that often — is ideal, getting up out of your chair on a regular basis is a good idea. You might set a timer for once every few hours or so. Of course, this sort of break is easy to ignore when you hit your stride. I often work through my timer when I’m on a roll. But after working through that timer a time or two, I find that I absolutely have to get up and move. It’s up to you to find an interval that works, as well as a reason to get up — after all, there are only so many cups of tea a person can drink in a given day. But there are plenty of options: exercise, snacks, even set activities like walking down to pick up your mail can be enough to provide you with a short break.
…You’re Thirsty
Even if you’re almost done with a project, it can be worth it to take care of those nagging bodily needs. You may think you can ignore it just a little bit longer, but any distraction can be enough to decrease the quality of work. It’s rare that you’re so close to done and so close to deadline that you can’t afford a few minutes to get a drink or whatever else needs doing. While I’m all for suffering for one’s art, I don’t think being thirsty quite qualifies.
Copyright:lifehack.org
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
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