10 Life Lessons to Excel in Your 30s - Mark Manson

A couple weeks ago I turned 30. Leading up to my birthday I wrote a post on what I learned in my 20s.

But I did something else. I sent an email out to my subscribers (subscribe here) and asked readers age 37 and older what advice they would give their 30-year-old selves. The idea was that I would crowdsource the life experience from my older readership and create another article based on their collective wisdom.
The result was spectacular. I received over 600 responses, many of which were over a page in length. It took me a solid three days to read through them all and I was floored by the quality of insight people sent.
So first of all, a hearty thank you to all who contributed and helped create this article.
While going through the emails what surprised me the most was just how consistent some of the advice was. The same 5-6 pieces of advice came up over and over and over again in different forms across literally 100s of emails. It seems that there really are a few core pieces of advice that are particularly relevant to this decade of your life.
Below are 10 of the most common themes appearing throughout all of the 600 emails. The majority of the article is comprised of dozens of quotes taken from readers. Some are left anonymous. Others have their age listed.

1. Start Saving for Retirement Now, Not Later

“I spent my 20s recklessly, but your 30s should be when you make a big financial push. Retirement planning is not something to put off. Understanding boring things like insurance, 401ks & mortgages is important since its all on your shoulders now. Educate yourself.” (Kash, 41)
The most common piece of advice — so common that almost every single email said at least something about it — was to start getting your financial house in order and to start saving for retirement… today.
There were a few categories this advice fell into:

• Make it your top priority to pay down all of your debt as soon as possible.
• Keep an “emergency fund” — there were tons of horror stories about people getting financially ruined by health issues, lawsuits, divorces, bad business deals, etc.
• Stash away a portion of every paycheck, preferably into a 401k, an IRA or at the least, a savings account.
• Don’t spend frivolously. Don’t buy a home unless you can afford to get a good mortgage with good rates.
• Don’t invest in anything you don’t understand. Don’t trust stockbrokers.

One reader said, “If you are in debt more than 10% of your gross annual salary this is a huge red flag. Quit spending, pay off your debt and start saving.” Another wrote, “I would have saved more money in an emergency fund because unexpected expenses really killed my budget. I would have been more diligent about a retirement fund, because now mine looks pretty small.”

Gee whiz! Saving is so easy and so fun!

And then there were the readers who were just completely screwed by their inability to save in their 30s. One reader named Jodi wishes she had started saving 10% of every paycheck when she was 30. Her career took a turn for the worst and now she’s stuck at 57, still living paycheck to paycheck. Another woman, age 62, didn’t save because her husband out-earned her. They later got divorced and she soon ran into health problems, draining all of the money she received in the divorce settlement. She, too, now lives paycheck to paycheck, slowly waiting for the day social security kicks in. Another man related a story of having to be supported by his son because he didn’t save and unexpectedly lost his job in the 2008 crash.
The point was clear: save early and save as much as possible. One woman emailed me saying that she had worked low-wage jobs with two kids in her 30s and still managed to sock away some money in a retirement fund each year. Because she started early and invested wisely, she is now in her 50s and financially stable for the first time in her life. Her point: it’s always possible. You just have to do it.

2. Start Taking Care of Your Health Now, Not Later

“Your mind’s acceptance of age is 10 to 15 years behind your body’s aging. Your health will go faster than you think but it will be very hard to notice, not the least because you don’t want it to happen.” (Tom, 55)
We all know to take care of our health. We all know to eat better and sleep better and exercise more and blah, blah, blah. But just as with the retirement savings, the response from the older readers was loud and unanimous: get healthy and stay healthy now.
So many people said it that I’m not even going to bother quoting anybody else. Their points were pretty much all the same: the way you treat your body has a cumulative effect; it’s not that your body suddenly breaks down one year, it’s been breaking down all along without you noticing. This is the decade to slow down that breakage.

The key to salad is to laugh while eating it.

And this wasn’t just your typical motherly advice to eat your veggies. These were emails from cancer survivors, heart attack survivors, stroke survivors, people with diabetes and blood pressure problems, joint issues and chronic pain. They all said the same thing: “If I could go back, I would start eating better and exercising and I would not stop. I made excuses then. But I had no idea.”

3. Don’t Spend Time with People Who Don’t Treat You Well

“Learn how to say “no” to people, activities and obligations that don’t bring value to your life.” (Hayley, 37)

Gently let go of those who are not making your life better.

After calls to take care of your health and your finances, the most common piece of advice from people looking back at their 30-year-old selves was an interesting one: they would go back and enforce stronger boundaries in their lives and dedicate their time to better people. “Setting healthy boundaries is one of the most loving things you can do for yourself or another person.” (Kristen, 43) What does that mean specifically?
“Don’t tolerate people who don’t treat you well. Period. Don’t tolerate them for financial reasons. Don’t tolerate them for emotional reasons. Don’t tolerate them for the children’s sake or for convenience sake.” (Jane, 52)
“Don’t settle for mediocre friends, jobs, love, relationships and life.” (Sean, 43)
“Stay away from miserable people… they will consume you, drain you.” (Gabriella, 43)
“Surround yourself and only date people that make you a better version of yourself, that bring out your best parts, love and accept you.” (Xochie)
People typically struggle with boundaries because they find it difficult to hurt someone else’s feelings, or they get caught up in the desire to change the other person or make them treat them the way they want to be treated. This never works. And in fact, it often makes it worse. As one reader wisely said, “Selfishness and self-interest are two different things. Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind.”
When we’re in our 20s, the world is so open to opportunity and we’re so short on experience that we cling to the people we meet, even if they’ve done nothing to earn our clingage. But by our 30s we’ve learned that good relationships are hard to come by, that there’s no shortage of people to meet and friends to be made, and that there’s no reason to waste our time with people who don’t help us on our life’s path.

4. Be Good to the People You Care About

“Show up with and for your friends. You matter, and your presence matters.” (Jessica, 40)
Conversely, while enforcing stricter boundaries on who we let into our lives, many readers advised to make the time for those friends and family that we do decide to keep close.
“I think sometimes I may have taken some relationships for granted, and when that person is gone, they’re gone. Unfortunately, the older you get, well, things start to happen, and it will affect those closest to you.” (Ed, 45)
“Appreciate those close to you. You can get money back and jobs back, but you can never get time back.” (Anne, 41)
“Tragedy happens in everyone’s life, everyone’s circle of family and friends. Be the person that others can count on when it does. I think that between 30 and 40 is the decade when a lot of shit finally starts to happen that you might have thought never would happen to you or those you love. Parents die, spouses die, babies are still-born, friends get divorced, spouses cheat… the list goes on and on. Helping someone through these times by simply being there, listening and not judging is an honor and will deepen your relationships in ways you probably can’t yet imagine.” (Rebecca, 40)

5. You can’t have everything; Focus On Doing a Few Things Really Well

“Everything in life is a trade-off. You give up one thing to get another and you can’t have it all. Accept that.” (Eldri, 60)
In our 20s we have a lot of dreams. We believe that we have all of the time in the world. I myself remember having illusions that my website would be my first career of many. Little did I know that it took the better part of a decade to even get competent at this. And now that I’m competent and have a major advantage and love what I do, why would I ever trade that in for another career?
“In a word: focus. You can simply get more done in life if you focus on one thing and do it really well. Focus more.” (Ericson, 49)
Another reader: “I would tell myself to focus on one or two goals/aspirations/dreams and really work towards them. Don’t get distracted.” And another: “You have to accept that you cannot do everything. It takes a lot of sacrifice to achieve anything special in life.”
A few readers noted that most people arbitrarily choose their careers in their late teens or early 20s, and as with many of our choices at those ages, they are often wrong choices. It takes years to figure out what we’re good at and what we enjoy doing. But it’s better to focus on our primary strengths and maximize them over the course of lifetime than to half-ass something else.
“I’d tell my 30 year old self to set aside what other people think and identify my natural strengths and what I’m passionate about, and then build a life around those.” (Sara, 58)
For some people, this will mean taking big risks, even in their 30s and beyond. It may mean ditching a career they spent a decade building and giving up money they worked hard for and became accustomed to. Which brings us to…

6. Don’t Be Afraid of Taking Risks, You Can Still Change

“While by age 30 most feel they should have their career dialed in, it is never too late to reset. The individuals that I have seen with the biggest regrets during this decade are those that stay in something that they know is not right. It is such an easy decade to have the days turn to weeks to years, only to wake up at 40 with a mid-life crisis for not taking action on a problem they were aware of 10 years prior but failed to act.” (Richard, 41)
“Biggest regrets I have are almost exclusively things I did *not* do.” (Sam, 47)
Many readers commented on how society tells us that by 30 we should have things “figured out” — our career situation, our dating/marriage situation, our financial situation and so on. But this isn’t true. And, in fact, dozens and dozens of readers implored to not let these social expectations of “being an adult” deter you from taking some major risks and starting over. As someone on my Facebook page responded: “All adults are winging it.”
“I am about to turn 41 and would tell my 30 year old self that you do not have conform you life to an ideal that you do not believe in. Live your life, don’t let it live you. Don’t be afraid of tearing it all down if you have to, you have the power to build it all back up again.” (Lisa, 41)
Multiple readers related making major career changes in their 30s and being better off for doing so. One left a lucrative job as a military engineer to become a teacher. Twenty years later, he called it one of the best decisions of his life. When I asked my mom this question, her answer was, “I wish I had been willing to think outside the box a bit more. Your dad and I kind of figured we had to do thing A, thing B, thing C, but looking back I realize we didn’t have to at all; we were very narrow in our thinking and our lifestyles and I kind of regret that.”

“Less fear. Less fear. Less fear. I am about to turn 50 next year, and I am just getting that lesson. Fear was such a detrimental driving force in my life at 30. It impacted my marriage, my career, my self-image in a fiercely negative manner. I was guilty of: Assuming conversations that others might be having about me. Thinking that I might fail. Wondering what the outcome might be. If I could do it again, I would have risked more.” (Aida, 49)

7. You Must Continue to Grow and Develop Yourself

“You have two assets that you can never get back once you’ve lost them: your body and your mind. Most people stop growing and working on themselves in their 20s. Most people in their 30s are too busy to worry about self-improvement. But if you’re one of the few who continues to educate themselves, evolve their thinking and take care of their mental and physical health, you will be light-years ahead of the pack by 40.” (Stan, 48)
It follows that if one can still change in their 30s — and should continue to change in their 30s — then one must continue to work to improve and grow. Many readers related the choice of going back to school and getting their degrees in their 30s as one of the most useful things they had ever done. Others talked of taking extra seminars and courses to get a leg up. Others started their first businesses or moved to new countries. Others checked themselves into therapy or began a meditation practice.
A friend of mine stated that at 29, he decided that his mind was his most valuable asset, and he decided to invest in it. He spent thousands on his own education, on seminars, on various therapies. And at 54, he insists that it was one of the best decisions he ever made.
“The number one goal should be to try to become a better person, partner, parent, friend, colleague etc. — in other words to grow as an individual.” (Aimilia, 39)

8. Nobody (Still) Knows What They’re Doing, Get Used to It

“Unless you are already dead — mentally, emotionally, and socially — you cannot anticipate your life 5 years into the future. It will not develop as you expect. So just stop it. Stop assuming you can plan far ahead, stop obsessing about what is happening right now because it will change anyway, and get over the control issue about your life’s direction. Fortunately, because this is true, you can take even more chances and not lose anything; you cannot lose what you never had. Besides, most feelings of loss are in your mind anyway – few matter in the long term.” (Thomas, 56)
In my article about what I learned in my 20s, one of my lessons was “Nobody Knows What They’re Doing,” and that this was good news. Well, according to the 40+ crowd, this continues to be true in one’s 30s and, well, forever it seems; and it continues to be good news forever as well.
“Most of what you think is important now will seem unimportant in 10 or 20 years and that’s OK. That’s called growth. Just try to remember to not take yourself so seriously all the time and be open to it.” (Simon, 57)
“Despite feeling somewhat invincible for the last decade, you really don’t know what’s going to happen and neither does anyone else, no matter how confidently they talk. While this is disturbing to those who cling to permanence or security, it’s truly liberating once you grasp the truth that things are always changing. To finish, there might be times that are really sad. Don’t dull the pain or avoid it. Sorrow is part of everyone’s lifetime and the consequence of an open and passionate heart. Honor that. Above all, be kind to yourself and others, it’s such a brilliant and beautiful ride and keeps on getting better.” (Prue, 38)
“I’m 44. I would remind my 30 year old self that at 40, my 30s would be equally filled with dumb stuff, different stuff, but still dumb stuff… So, 30 year old self, don’t go getting on your high horse. You STILL don’t know it all. And that’s a good thing.” (Shirley, 44)

9. Invest in Your Family; It’s Worth It

“Spend more time with your folks. It’s a different relationship when you’re an adult and it’s up to you how you redefine your interactions. They are always going to see you as their kid until the moment you can make them see you as your own man. Everyone gets old. Everyone dies. Take advantage of the time you have left to set things right and enjoy your family.” (Kash, 41)
I was overwhelmed with amount of responses about family and the power of those responses. Family is the big new relevant topic for this decade for me, because you get it on both ends. Your parents are old and you need to start considering how your relationship with them is going to function as a self-sufficient adult. And then you also need to contemplate creating a family of your own.
Pretty much everybody agreed to get over whatever problems you have with your parents and find a way to make it work with them. One reader wrote, “You’re too old to blame your parents for any of your own short-comings now. At 20 you could get away with it, you’d just left the house. At 30, you’re a grown-up. Seriously. Move on.”
But then there’s the question that plagues every single 30-year-old: to baby or not to baby?
“You don’t have the time. You don’t have the money. You need to perfect your career first. They’ll end your life as you know it. Oh shut up…
Kids are great. They make you better in every way. They push you to your limits. They make you happy. You should not defer having kids. If you are 30, now is the time to get real about this. You will never regret it.” (Kevin, 38)
“It’s never the ‘right time’ for children because you have no idea what you’re getting into until you have one. If you have a good marriage and environment to raise them, err on having them earlier rather than later, you’ll get to enjoy more of them.” (Cindy, 45)
“All my preconceived notions about what a married life is like were wrong. Unless you’ve already been married, everyone’s are. Especially once you have kids. Try to stay open to the experience and fluid as a person; your marriage is worth it, and your happiness seems as much tied to your ability to change and adapt as anything else. I wasn’t planning on having kids. From a purely selfish perspective, this was the dumbest thing of all. Children are the most fulfilling, challenging, and exhausting endeavor anyone can ever undertake. Ever.” (Rich, 44)

What do you want kid?

The consensus about marriage seemed to be that it was worth it, assuming you had a healthy relationship with the right person. If not, you should run the other way (See #3).
But interestingly, I got a number of emails like the following:
“What I know now vs 10-13 years ago is simply this… bars, woman, beaches, drink after drink, clubs, bottle service, trips to different cities because I had no responsibility other than work, etc… I would trade every memory of that life for a good woman that was actually in love with me… and maybe a family. I would add, don’t forgot to actually grow up and start a family and take on responsibilities other than success at work. I am still having a little bit of fun… but sometimes when I go out, I feel like the guy that kept coming back to high school after he graduated (think Matthew McConaughey’s character in Dazed and Confused). I see people in love and on dates everywhere. “Everyone” my age is in their first or second marriage by now! Being perpetually single sounds amazing to all of my married friends but it is not the way one should choose to live their life.” (Anonymous, 43)
“I would have told myself to stop constantly searching for the next best thing and I would have appreciated the relationships that I had with some of the good, genuine guys that truly cared for me. Now I’m always alone and it feels too late.” (Fara, 38)
On the flip side, there were a small handful of emails that took the other side of the coin:
“Don’t feel pressured to get married or have kids if you don’t want to. What makes one person happy doesn’t make everyone happy. I’ve chosen to stay single and childless and I still live a happy and fulfilled life. Do what feels right for you.” (Anonymous, 40)
Conclusion: It seems that while family is not absolutely necessary to have a happy and fulfilling life, the majority of people have found that family is always worth the investment, assuming the relationships are healthy and not toxic and/or abusive.

10. Be kind to yourself, respect yourself

“Be a little selfish and do something for yourself every day, something different once a month and something spectacular every year.” (Nancy, 60)
This one was rarely the central focus of any email, but it was present in some capacity in almost all of them: treat yourself better. Almost everybody said this in one form or another. “There is no one who cares about or thinks about your life a fraction of what you do,” one reader began, and, “life is hard, so learn to love yourself now, it’s harder to learn later,” another reader finished.
Or as Renee, 40, succinctly put it: “Be kind to yourself.”
Many readers included the old cliche: “Don’t sweat the small stuff; and it’s almost all small stuff.” Eldri, 60, wisely said, “When confronted with a perceived problem, ask yourself, ‘Is this going to matter in five years, ten years?’ If not, dwell on it for a few minutes, then let it go.” It seems many readers have focused on the subtle life lesson of simply accepting life as is, warts and all.
Which brings me to the last quote from Martin, age 58:
“When I turned forty my father told me that I’d enjoy my forties because in your twenties you think you know what’s going on, in your thirties you realize you probably don’t, and in your forties you can relax and just accept things. I’m 58 and he was right.”
Thank you to everyone who contributed.

The Daily Routines of Geniuses by Sarah Green

Juan Ponce de León spent his life searching for the fountain of youth. I have spent mine searching for the ideal daily routine. But as years of color-coded paper calendars have given way to cloud-based scheduling apps, routine has continued to elude me; each day is a new day, as unpredictable as a ride on a rodeo bull and over seemingly as quickly.

Naturally, I was fascinated by the recent book, Daily Rituals: How Artists Work. Author Mason Curry examines the schedules of 161 painters, writers, and composers, as well as philosophers, scientists, and other exceptional thinkers.

As I read, I became convinced that for these geniuses, a routine was more than a luxury — it was essential to their work. As Currey puts it, “A solid routine fosters a well-worn groove for one’s mental energies and helps stave off the tyranny of moods.” And although the book itself is a delightful hodgepodge of trivia, not a how-to manual, I began to notice several common elements in the lives of the healthier geniuses (the ones who relied more on discipline than on, say, booze and Benzedrine) that allowed them to pursue the luxury of a productivity-enhancing routine:

A workspace with minimal distractions. Jane Austen asked that a certain squeaky hinge never be oiled, so that she always had a warning when someone was approaching the room where she wrote. William Faulkner, lacking a lock on his study door, just detached the doorknob and brought it into the room with him — something of which today’s cubicle worker can only dream.  Mark Twain’s family knew better than to breach his study door — if they needed him, they’d blow a horn to draw him out. Graham Greene went even further, renting a secret office; only his wife knew the address or telephone number. Distracted more by the view out his window than interruptions, if N.C. Wyeth was having trouble focusing, he’d tape a piece of cardboard to his glasses as a sort of blinder.

A daily walk. For many, a regular daily walk was essential to brain functioning. Soren Kierkegaard found his constitutionals so inspiring that he would often rush back to his desk and resume writing, still wearing his hat and carrying his walking stick or umbrella. Charles Dickens famously took three-hour walks every afternoon — and what he observed on them fed directly into his writing. Tchaikovsky made do with a two-hour walk, but wouldn’t return a moment early, convinced that cheating himself of the full 120 minutes would make him ill. Beethoven took lengthy strolls after lunch, carrying a pencil and paper with him in case inspiration struck. Erik Satie did the same on his long strolls from Paris to the working class suburb where he lived, stopping under streetlamps to jot down notions that arose on his journey; it’s rumored that when those lamps were turned off during the war years, his productivity declined too.

Accountability metrics. Anthony Trollope only wrote for three hours a day, but he required of himself a rate of 250 words per 15 minutes, and if he finished the novel he was working on before his three hours were up, he’d immediately start a new book as soon as the previous one was finished. Ernest Hemingway also tracked his daily word output on a chart “so as not to kid myself.” BF Skinner started and stopped his writing sessions by setting a timer, “and he carefully plotted the number of hours he wrote and the words he produced on a graph.”

A clear dividing line between important work and busywork. Before there was email, there were letters. It amazed (and humbled) me to see the amount of time each person allocated simply to answering letters. Many would divide the day into real work (such as composing or painting in the morning) and busywork (answering letters in the afternoon). Others would turn to the busywork when the real work wasn’t going well. But if the amount of correspondence was similar to today’s, these historical geniuses did have one advantage: the post would arrive at regular intervals, not constantly as email does.

A habit of stopping when they’re on a roll, not when they’re stuck. Hemingway puts it thus: “You write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and know what will happen next and you stop and try to live through until the next day when you hit it again.” Arthur Miller said, “I don’t believe in draining the reservoir, do you see? I believe in getting up from the typewriter, away from it, while I still have things to say.” With the exception of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart — who rose at 6, spent the day in a flurry of music lessons, concerts, and social engagements and often didn’t get to bed until 1 am — many would write in the morning, stop for lunch and a stroll, spend an hour or two answering letters, and knock off work by 2 or 3. “I’ve realized that somebody who’s tired and needs a rest, and goes on working all the same is a fool,” wrote Carl Jung. Or, well, a Mozart.

A supportive partner. Martha Freud, wife of Sigmund, “laid out his clothes, chose his handkerchiefs, and even put toothpaste on his toothbrush,” notes Currey. Gertrude Stein preferred to write outdoors, looking at rocks and cows — and so on their trips to the French countryside, Gertrude would find a place to sit while Alice B. Toklas would shoo a few cows into the writer’s line of vision. Gustav Mahler’s wife bribed the neighbors with opera tickets to keep their dogs quiet while he was composing — even though she was bitterly disappointed when he forced her to give up her own promising musical career. The unmarried artists had help, too: Jane Austen’s sister, Cassandra, took over most of the domestic duties so that Jane had time to write — “Composition seems impossible to me with a head full of joints of mutton & doses of rhubarb,” as Jane once wrote. And Andy Warhol called friend and collaborator Pat Hackett every morning, recounting the previous day’s activities in detail. “Doing the diary,” as they called it, could last two full hours — with Hackett dutifully jotting down notes and typing them up, every weekday morning from 1976 until Warhol’s death in 1987.

Limited social lives. One of Simone de Beauvoir’s lovers put it this way: “there were no parties, no receptions, no bourgeois values… it was an uncluttered kind of life, a simplicity deliberately constructed so that she could do her work.” Marcel Proust “made a conscious decision in 1910 to withdraw from society,” writes Currey. Pablo Picasso and his girlfriend Fernande Olivier borrowed the idea of Sunday as an “at-home day” from Stein and Toklas — so that they could “dispose of the obligations of friendship in a single afternoon.”

This last habit — relative isolation — sounds much less appealing to me than some of the others. And yet I still find the routines of these thinkers strangely compelling, perhaps they are so unattainable, so extreme. Even the very idea that you can organize your time as you like is out of reach for most of us — so I’ll close with a toast to all those who did their best work within the constraints of someone else’s routine. Like Francine Prose, who began writing when the school bus picked up her children and stopped when it brought them back; or T.S. Eliot, who found it much easier to write once he had a day job in a bank than as a starving poet; and even F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose early writing was crammed in around the strict schedule he followed as a young military officer. Those days were not as fabled as the gin-soaked nights in Paris that came later, but they were much more productive — and no doubt easier on his liver. Being forced to follow the ruts of someone else’s routine may grate, but they do make it easier to stay on the path.

And that of course is what a routine really is — the path we take through our day. Whether we break that trail yourself or follow the path blazed by our constraints, perhaps what’s most important is that we keep walking.

The secret to happiness-Teja Lele Desai

Mumbai Mirror | Apr 19, 2014, 12.40 PM IST

The secret to khushi

It's not destiny that decides you'll be a sour face. Happy people work towards being that. Here's how to do it

If you're happy and you know it...goes an old children's ditty. But are you? The pursuit of happiness isn't easy — materialistic goodies do not guarantee a good life; close relationships, work satisfaction and working towards greater good do.

Studies have shown that the tendency to be happy is an inherited trait. Not everyone has a sunny disposition, but experts say we can all learn to bring more joy into our lives.

Sophie Keller, author of the How Happy series, says the secret to happiness is knowing you are already happy. "We're human 'beings', not human 'doings' or 'havings', so happiness needs to be a 'being state," she says.

Here's a simple break-up offered by writer Sonja Lyubomirsky in The How of Happiness: 50 per cent of our happiness levels are genetically determined, 10 per cent are affected by circumstances while the remaining 40 per cent is subject to self-control.

So how do you get happy? Here's a don't-do list to set you on the path to happiness.

Don't look outwards: Seeking external sources of happiness can sabotage your peace. San Francisco-based sustainable happiness expert Dr Aymee Coget suggests, "Focus on controlling your emotional state by choosing happiness and adopting positive psychology principles, build your resilience, follow your heart and meditate into the greatest states of bliss."

Don't hold a grudge: American writer Rita Mae Brown said it right when she wrote, "One of the keys to happiness is a bad memory." Forgiveness doesn't come easy, but is key; anger, antagonism and resentment are detrimental to your self. Dr Vandana Tara, a Delhi-based clinical psychologist, says, "In all probability, the person concerned will go on with life while you nurture ill-will. This bitterness could leave you physically and mentally ill."

Don't mistreat yourself: Happy people know the importance of looking after themselves — they eat healthy, exercise regularly and get enough sleep. Exercise keeps you fit, lets you relax, boosts brain power and improves your body image. Sound sleep lets you focus and increases productivity. Sleep-deprived people fail to recall pleasant memories, but are good at recalling glum moments.

Don't neglect family and pals: Studies have consistently proven that spending time with close ones impacts our happiness quotient. Harvard happiness expert and author of Stumbling on Happiness, Daniel Gilbert sums up: "We are happy when we have family, we are happy when we have friends and almost all the other things we think make us happy are actually just ways of getting more family and friends." Also, make time only for those who matter; superficial relationships sap mirth.

Don't compare: Keeping up with the Joneses doesn't help the happiness cause. Constant comparisons with people who are smarter, more attractive or successful leads to resentment. "Comparing is a battle, a fight. If you were to look back on your life, you don't want to think you've wasted your time on it," Keller says. Tara says the way out is to compete with yourself. "Easier said than done, but every individual is unique. Another person's weakness might be your asset."

Don't be self-centred: Doing good makes us feel good. Research indicates that helping others ups our sense of self-esteem, setting us on the path to real and rewarding happiness. University of Pennsylvania professor Martin Seligman, in Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-being, says, scientists "have found that doing a kindness produces the single most reliable momentary increase in wellbeing of any exercise we have tested". When the recipient of your gesture expresses joy, it acts as a reward, says Dr Samir Parikh, director of the department of mental health and behavioural sciences at Fortis Healthcare. Tutoring your house help's kids or volunteering at a care centre yields the same result: A happy you.

Don't fail to live in the moment: "It is our nature to dwell on past events, especially negatives. We need six positives for our brain to overcome what happened in the past. Training our mind to live in the moment — a sink-or-swim skill — is the way to happiness," Coget says. Learn from past mistakes, but live in the present.

Don't be ungrateful: Being grateful increases satisfaction. Think of three good things that happened to you in a day or keep a journal of what you are grateful for.
The Journal of Happiness study revealed that writing letters of gratitude increased happiness and life satisfaction while decreasing depressive symptoms. "We all don't have things that we want, so it's easy to be negative. Soon, this emotion seeps into our subconscious and takes over our minds," Keller says.

Don't be afraid: Fears of what may or may not happen will persist, but happy people take the first step towards turning their dreams into reality. "Whatever you've dreamed of, get started. Don't wait for that one fateful day when everything will fall into place," Desai says.  

લોકશાહી, મેઈડ ઈન ઈન્ડિયા- ચંદ્રકાંત બક્ષી

લોકશાહી, મેઈડ ઈન ઈન્ડિયા: વિશિષ્ટતાઓ, વિશેષતાઓ, વિચિત્રતાઓ

આપણી ત્રીજા વિશ્ર્વની લોકશાહીની વિશેષતા છે: કાળા હાથનો અંગૂઠો સ્ટેમ્પ-પેડ પર દબાવીને કાગળ પર છાપ લેવી! હિંદુસ્તાનમાં તો આપણે ભણેલાગણેલા માણસો પણ અંગૂઠાનું નિશાન લગાવીએ એ જ બરાબર છે બક્ષી સદાબહાર - ચંદ્રકાંત બક્ષી હિંદુસ્તાનમાં લોકશાહી છે અને અમેરિકા, જાપાન, ઈઝરાયલ, યુરોપીય દેશો અને અન્યત્ર ઘણા દેશોમાં લોકશાહી છે. લોકશાહી એટલે પ્રજાતંત્ર, પ્રજાના સગીર વયના નાગરિકોની પસંદગી પ્રમાણે ચૂંટાયેલી સંસદ અને સરકાર. ચૂંટણી કે નિર્વાચન હવે લોકશાહીમાં જ નહીં પણ સેનાશાહીમાં પણ આવી ગયા છે. તાનાશાહો પણ હવે ચૂંટણીઓ કરાવે છે. હિંદુસ્તાનને જે એક વાતનો ગર્વ છે એ છે ચૂંટણીની પરંપરા. ૧૯૫૨ થી ૧૯૮૪ સુધી આપણે આખા દેશમાં આઠ નિર્વાચનો કરાવ્યાં, ૧૯૮૯માં લોકસભા માટે નવમું નિર્વાચન થશે. ૧૯૫૨ના નિર્વાચનમાં હિંદુસ્તાનમાં ૧૭ કરોડ ૩૨ લાખથી વધારે મતદાતાઓ હતા. ૧૯૭૧ના પાંચમા નિર્વાચનમાં મતદાતાઓની સંખ્યા ૨૭ કરોડ ૪૧ લાખ જેટલી પહોંચી હતી. ૧૯૮૪ના આઠમા નિર્વાચનમાં મતદાતાઓ ૩૮ કરોડ ૯૩ લાખ થઈ ગયા હતા. (જમ્મુ-કાશ્મીર અને આસામ સિવાય). આ વખતે ૧૯૮૯માં ૪૯ કરોડ ૮૫ લાખ મતદારો છે (આસામ સિવાય). મતદાતા વૃદ્ધિનું એક કારણ છે ૧૮થી ૨૧ વર્ષ સુધીના નવા મતદાતાઓ, જે પ્રથમ વાર મતદાન અધિકાર પ્રાપ્ત કરે છે. એ વયકૌંસમાં આ વખતે ૩ કરોડ ૫૬ લાખ ૭૭ હજાર જેટલા મતદાતાઓ છે. જગતભરમાં ક્યાંય આટલા બધા મતદાતાઓ એક સાથે મતદાન કરતા નથી. વિશ્ર્વમાં ક્યાંય મતદાન આપીને લોકોએ ૪૦-૪૧ વર્ષો સુધી એક જ કુટુંબના ત્રણ નબીરાઓને પ્રધાનમંત્રી બનાવ્યા નથી. આ આપણી મેઈડ ઈન ઈન્ડિયા લોકશાહીની વિશેષતા છે. આપણી લોકશાહીમાં દરેકને મતાધિકાર છે, ૧૮ વર્ષ ઉપરના દરેકને. એ માત્ર ગાંડો ન હોવો જોઈએ, અભણ હોય તો ચાલે. ૧૯૮૧ના ભારતવર્ષમાં દર પાંચ સ્ત્રીઓમાંથી ચાર સ્ત્રીઓ અભણ હતી અને દર ત્રણ પુુરુષોમાંથી બે અભણ હતા. એટલે ભારતમાં લોકશાહી શિક્ષિત કરતાં અશિક્ષિતની વિશેષ છે. ‘શિક્ષિત’નો અર્થ પણ આપણે ત્યાં જુદો છે. અન્ય દેશોમાં શિક્ષિત એટલે જેણે પ્રાથમિક અને માધ્યમિક શિક્ષણ લીધું છે એવી વ્યક્તિ. સામાન્ય રીતે પાંચ-સાત-દસ વર્ષ સ્કૂલે તો ગયો જ હોવો જોઈએ. અમેરિકા અને અન્ય વિકસિત દેશોમાં તદ્દન અભણને મતનો હક આપવામાં આવ્યો નથી, ભારતમાં ફૂટપાથ પર ભૂખે મરતા બેઘર ભિખારીને પણ મતાધિકાર છે. અમેરિકામાં શિક્ષણ જોઈએ, એડ્રેસ જોઈએ, તો મતાધિકાર પ્રાપ્ત થાય છે. એક વસતિ ગણતરી સમયે આપણે શિક્ષિતની વ્યાખ્યા મૂકી હતી: જે પોતાની સહી કરી શકે એ મનુષ્ય શિક્ષિત છે! એટલે ગડબડિયા અક્ષરોમાં તમે તમારું નામ લખી શકો તો શિક્ષિત કહેવાઓ. ૧૯૭૮માં શિક્ષિત માટેની સરકારી વ્યાખ્યા હતી: જે વ્યક્તિ એક મિનિટમાં ૫૦ શબ્દો ચૂપચાપ (અર્થાત્ મોટેથી નહીં) અને સમજીને વાંચી શકે અને એક મિનિટમાં સાત શબ્દો લખાવ્યા હોય તો લખી શકે એ શિક્ષિત હતો. ૧૯૮૭માં પ્રૌઢ શિક્ષણ વિભાગે નવી વ્યાખ્યા મૂકી આપી: જે વ્યક્તિ એક મિનિટમાં ૩૦ શબ્દો ઊંચા અવાજે અથવા ૩૫ શબ્દો ચૂપચાપ વાંચી શકે અને એક મિનિટમાં પાંચ લખાવેલા શબ્દો લખી શકે એ શિક્ષિત હતો. હા, આપણે આપણી લોકશાહીની વિશિષ્ટતાઓ, વિશેષતાઓ અને વિચિત્રતાઓની વાત કરતા હતા. કદાચ અશિક્ષણને કારણે આપણે ત્યાં ઈનવેલિડ અથવા રદ વોટોનું પ્રમાણ ઘણું વધારે છે, કદાચ વિશ્ર્વની કોઈ સ્થિર લોકશાહીમાં આટલા બધા વોટ નકામા જતા નથી. એક કારણ એ હોઈ શકે કે લોકો સ્વયં પોતાનો મત રદ કરે છે, જે અતિશિક્ષિત કે બૌદ્ધિક માણસ જ કરી શકે. સામાન્ય જનસમુદાયને કદાચ મતપત્ર પર સ્ટેમ્પ મારતાં આવડતો નથી એટલે મત કૅન્સલ થઈ જાય છે. અહીં તો સંસદસભ્યોના વોટ (રાષ્ટ્રપતિ ચુનાવ વખતે) પણ રદ થઈ ગયાના પ્રમાણો છે! લોકસભાના નિર્વાચનોમાં ૨ થી ૪ ટકા જેટલા વોટ ઘણી વાર નકામા જાય છે. ૧૯૮૪માં કર્ણાટકના કોપ્પલ મતવિસ્તારમાં લોકસભા ચુનાવમાં ૪,૮૨,૭૧૮ મત નખાયા હતા, જેમાંથી ૨૩,૧૪૫ ઈનવેલિડ કે નકામા હતા, એટલે કે ૪.૭૯ વોટ વ્યર્થ ગયા! ૧૯૮૪માં દાર્જિલિંગ મતવિસ્તારમાં કમ્યુનિસ્ટ આનંદ પ્રસાદ પાઠકને ૨,૨૮,૬૭૯ વોટ મળ્યા અને બીજા કૉંગ્રેસી ઉમેદવાર દાવા નર્બુલાને ૨,૨૭,૨૯૦ વોટ મળ્યા એટલે કે ફરક માત્ર ૧૩૮૯ મતોનો હતો. અને એ વિસ્તારમાં કેટલા મત રદ થયા હતા? ૧૬૭૬૧ મત દિલ્હીથી પ્રધાનમંત્રીના મંત્રાલયે પણ આ વિશે તપાસ કરાવી હતી કે આટલા બધા મતો નકામા કેવી રીતે થઈ ગયા? ૧૯૮૪માં તામિલનાડુમાં લોકસભા અને વિધાનસભાની ચૂંટણીઓ એક સાથે જ રાખવામાં આવી હતી. એ વખતે મતદાતાઓને બે જુદા જુદા મતપત્રો એક પછી એક આપવામાં આવ્યા હતા કે જેથી ગોટાળો ન થાય. પણ જબરો ગોટાળો થઈ ગયો. થાંજાવુર ડિસ્ટ્રિક્ટમાં તો લગભગ ચાર ટકા વોટ નકામા ગયા હતા! અને આ સ્વતંત્ર હિંદુસ્તાનનું આઠમું નિર્વાચન હતું પણ લોકોને મલ્ટિપલ વોટિંગ કે બહુ મતદાન અથવા દ્વિમતદાનમાં સમજ પડી નહીં. આમાં તામિલનાડુ કે કર્ણાટક કે દાર્જિલિંગની ગ્રામીણ જનતાનો દોષ કાઢવાનો અર્થ નથી. ૧૯૮૪માં ન્યુ દિલ્હી મતદાન કેન્દ્રમાં ૨૦૨૨ મતો નકામા ગયા હતા, દક્ષિણ દિલ્હીમાં ૩૯૪૯, બાહ્ય દિલ્હીમાં ૮૬૯૧ અને પૂર્વ દિલ્હીમાં ૮૮૨૧ મતો ઈનવેલિડ થયા હતા! પાટનગર દિલ્હીની આ સ્થિતિ આઠમા લોકસભા ચુનાવમાં હતી. દક્ષિણ મદ્રાસમાં ૧૯૮૪ના લોકસભા ચુનાવમાં ૨૨૬૦૯ મતો ઈનવેલિડ અથવા વ્યર્થ ગયા હતા. મુંબઈ ઉત્તર-પશ્ર્ચિમમાં ૮૦૧૬, મુંબઈ ઉત્તરમાં ૧૦૪૭૨ મતો વ્યર્થ હતા. અમદાવાદમાં ૯૭૮૯, વડોદરામાં ૧૪૦૨૪, સુરતમાં ૧૨૬૪૮, રાજકોટમાં ૧૩૨૦૨ મતો નકામા ગણાયા હતા. આ રાજકીય રીતે જાગ્રત ગુજરાતના ચાર મુખ્ય નગરોની સ્થિતિ હતી! કલકત્તાના દક્ષિણમાં ૧૧૮૮૩ વોટ નકામા ગયા હતા અને કલકત્તા ઉત્તર-પશ્ર્ચિમમાં ૮૯૨૫ વોટ નકામા ગયા હતા. એટલે મતદાન કરતાં ન આવડવાની બાબતમાં પૂર્વ-પશ્ર્ચિમ - ઉત્તર - દક્ષિણ અને નૈઋત્ય, વાયવ્ય, ઈશાન, અગ્નિ અને ઉપર અને નીચે એમ દશે દિશાઓ અને ખૂણાઓનું ભારત વર્ષ એક હતું! વિશ્ર્વમાં અન્યત્ર વિકસિત દેશોની લોકશાહીમાં મતપત્ર પર હથેળી કે ચક્ર કે સાઈકલ કે ઘોડો કે ગધેડો કે દીપક કે કમળ બે બળદની છાપ હોતી નથી, ઉમેદવારોનાં નામો લખ્યાં હોય છે. મતદાતા નામ વાંચીને એની સામે નિશાન કે મોહર લગાવે છે. આ ચિત્રો અને ચિહ્નો અભણ દેશો માટે છે, જે વાંચી શકતા નથી કે કમથી કમ ઘોડા કે આખલા કે ઊંટના ચિત્ર કે ફાનસ કે હોડી કે હળના ચિહ્ન પર થપ્પો મારી શકે છે. આપણી ત્રીજા વિશ્ર્વની લોકશાહીની વિશેષતા છે: કાળા હાથનો અંગૂઠો સ્ટેમ્પ-પેડ પર દબાવીને કાગળ પર છાપ લેવી! હિંદુસ્તાનમાં તો આપણે ભણેલાગણેલા માણસો પણ અંગૂઠાનું નિશાન લગાવીએ એ જ બરાબર છે. હિંદુસ્તાની લોકશાહીની બીજી એક વિચિત્રતા છે: અપક્ષ ઉમેદવાર! અન્યત્ર આટલા બધા અપક્ષ ચુનાવ સમયે ફૂટી નીકળતા નથી. અલાહાબાદમાં વી. પી. સિંહ વિરુદ્ધ હરિ શાસ્ત્રીની પેટાચૂંટણી હતી જેના પર આખા હિંદુસ્તાનનું ધ્યાન કેન્દ્રિત હતું. એ ચુનાવમાં ૬૮ ઉમેદવારો ઊભા હતા જેમાંથી ૬૫ ઉમેદવારો અપક્ષ હતા! એ વખતે એક અપક્ષ રામ નિજહવાન પર કોઈએ હુમલો કર્યો અને એ સખત ઘાયલ થયો. જો રામ નિજહવાન મરીબરી ગયો હોત તો આખી પેટાચૂંટણી મુલતવી રાખવી પડત! સદ્ભાગ્યે એ મર્યો નહીં અને પેટાચૂંટણી થઈ. કાયદો એવો છે કે જો કોઈ ઉમેદવાર મરી જાય તો એ પૂરી ચૂંટણી મોકૂફ રાખવી પડે. પંજાબમાં ૧૯૮૫ની વિધાનસભા ચૂંટણીમાં સરકારે ખાસ અધ્યાદેશ જારી કર્યો હતો કે જો કોઈ અપક્ષ ઉમેદવાર ચૂંટણી પહેલાં મરી જશે તો ચૂંટણી મોકૂફ નહીં રહે. પંજાબ માટે આ જરૂરી હતું, પણ આજે એ આખા હિંદુસ્તાન માટે જરૂરી બની ગયું છે. આ અપક્ષો લોકશાહીમાં સખત બાધારૂપ છે. ૧૯૫૨ના પ્રથમ લોકસભા નિર્વાચનમાં ૫૩૩ અપક્ષ અથવા સ્વતંત્ર ઉમેદવારો ઊભા હતા અને ૩૮ ચૂંટાયા હતા, કુલ મતદાનના ૧૩.૯ ટકા એ ખેંચી ગયા હતા. ૧૯૮૪માં ૩૮૭૮ અપક્ષ ઉમેદવારો ઊભા રહ્યા હતા અને ફક્ત પાંચ જ સીટો પર જીત્યા હતા, પણ પૂરા નિર્વાચનમાં દેશભરના વોટના ૮.૧ ટકા વોટ અપક્ષો બગાડી ગયા હતા. ગુજરાતમાં ૧૯૮૦માં ૯૬ અપક્ષો લગભગ ત્રીજા ભાગનું મતદાન કરી ગયા હતા. ૧૯૮૪માં ગુજરાતમાં લોકસભા ચુનાવ વખતે ૧૫૧ અપક્ષ ઉમેદવારો ૮.૨૨ ટકા મતદાન લઈ ગયા હતા. હમણા ભાજપના લાલ કિશન અડવાણીએ ‘ઓર્ગેનાઈઝર’માં અપક્ષ ઉમેદવારી વિશે એક સરસ માહિતીપ્રદ લેખ લખ્યો હતો. એમના કથન મુજબ ઈટાલીમાં અપક્ષ ઉમેદવારો પર પ્રતિબંધ છે. ઈંગ્લૅન્ડના હાઉસ ઑફ કોમન્સમાં એક પણ અપક્ષ ઉમેદવાર નથી, ફક્ત સ્પીકરના અપવાદ સિવાય, કારણ કે સાંસદ એકવાર સ્પીકર તરીકે ચૂંટાઈ જાય પછી એ કોઈ પણ પક્ષનો રહેતો નથી. આ અપક્ષો ગઠિયાઓને રોકવા માટે ચૂંટણી આયોગે કંઈક કરવું પડશે, આજે નહીં તો ભવિષ્યમાં.આપણી લોકશાહી અદ્ભુત છે. તમારા ઘરની દીવાલ ચૂંટણીના દિવસોમાં તમારી નથી, હું ગમે તે ચીતરી શકું છું અને તમે કંઈ કરી શકતા નથી અને ચૂંટણી પછી પણ મારી એ સાફ કરવાની જવાબદારી હોય એમ હું માનતો નથી. સ્કૂલના યુનિફોર્મ પહેરેલા છોકરા એ સફાઈ કરશે અને છાપામાં એમના ફોટા આવશે. બસ, આ દેશવ્યાપી નિર્વાચન છે. અહીં તમારી દીવાલ તો શું મત કેન્દ્ર કબજે કરી લેવામાં આવે છે. એક વિદેશીએ પૂછ્યું હતું: આ બૂથ કેપ્ચરિંગ (મત કેન્દ્ર કબજે કરવું) એટલું શું? એક દેશીએ ઉત્તર આપ્યો: ઈટ્સ ડિમોક્રસી મેઈડ ઈઝી! (લોકશાહી... જરા સરળ બનાવી દેવાની). આપણે લોકશાહીને આધ્યાત્મિક કક્ષાએ લઈ ગયા છીએ. ક્લોઝ અપ પોપ્યુલર વુલ્ટ ડેસીપી. અર્ગો ડેસીપી એટર (કાર્ડિનલ કરાફાએ કહેલું લેટિન વાક્ય) અર્થ: પબ્લિક બેવકૂફ બનવા માગે જ છે તો એને બેવકૂફ બનવા દો.

How to Scale Yourself and Get More Done Than You Thought Possible -Danny Schreiber

"Don't worry, just drop the ball."
This counterintuitive advice is one of a dozen-plus productivity practices preached by Scott Hanselman, a program manager at Microsoft, author and avid blogger and speaker.
"Dropping the ball is sometimes the right answer," Hanselman says. "Let a ball drop. Tell people, 'I'm just not going to do that.'"
Hanselman's not the person you'd to expect to hear encourage dropping the ball and discourage burning the midnight oil. On top of his day job, he balances a full load: he blogs, records a podcast, engages on Twitter and attends and speaks at conferences regularly. In the past six years, he's co-authored more than a half-dozen books, and at home, he has a wife and two childen. In short, he's one productive individual.
How does he do it? Why does he do it? If you're asking yourself those questions, you're not alone.
"A lot of people say, 'Well, Scott, you're doing all this stuff. Why do you do it? Are you not sleeping?" Hanselman says. "It's because, I must dance. I can't stop. Whenever I think about stopping, I think about this little boy and how excited he is about doing what he's doing."

"It turns out," he continues, "the less that you do, the more of it that you can do. This is the standard law of scale."

Scale Yourself

In a 40-minute talk Hanselman originally delivered in 2012, and has since presented several times—most recently at South by Southwest Interactive earlier this month—he shares his productivity practices. From his "one email rule" to follow to his reasoning for reading Robert Scoble's blog, all his tips are immediately actionable.
The productivity practices he shares, he says, have been adopted from folks like David Allen (Getting Things Done), Dr. Stephen Covey (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People), J.D. Meier (Getting Results the Agile Way), Francesco Cirillo (The Pomodoro Technique) and Kathy Sierra.
The following is a recap of his popular talk, featuring quotes from his October 2012 presentation at GOTO Conference and his original talk at Webstock earlier that year.

Look for Danger Signs

Staying focused hasn't always been a challenge—there hasn't always been hundreds of pages of new content to consume daily or a constant stream of new information interrupting you. Instead, Hanselman says, when he wanted to learn programming, he needed to know everything in just two books.
"Then the Internet happened and suddenly there's Exabytes of information being created, and half of it is garbage and a third of my day is wasted by interruptions," he says.

"I'm completely overwhelmed, and we tell ourselves that we're going to be able to pull it off if 'we just work late tonight.'" Stop. This is a danger sign.
"If you find yourself saying, 'I need to work late to catch up,' then that's a problem, that's a big problem," he says, admitting he's guilty of using this phrase himself. The remedy isn't as easy as "hoping" you'll catch up with your to-do list.
"Hope is not a plan," Hanselman says. "Hope is nothing but waiting and letting life happen to you."
So what do you do when you see danger signs? Hanselman has an antidote, but before he unveils it, he sets the record straight on what it means to be effective versus what is means to be efficient.

Understand Effectiveness Versus Efficiency

"Effectiveness is goal orientation. This is picking something to do. This is doing right things—picking a goal and doing that goal," Hanselman says. "Efficiency is doing things in an economical way, process-oriented.
"So phrased differently: Effectiveness is doing the right things, but efficiency is doing things right. That means effectiveness is picking a direction and efficiency is running really fast in that direction," he says.

Effectiveness is doing the right things.
Efficiency is doing things right.

"When you realize those two things are different, it becomes an extremely powerful tool that you can use."

Define "Work"

With effectiveness in mind, Hanselman stresses the importance of understanding David Allen's threefold nature of work, which is:

• Pre-Defined Work - Work you've set up ahead of time
• Work As It Appears - Work that interrupts you
• Defining Work - You sit down and think about what work you need to be doing

More time needs to be spent on the last bullet point, Hanselman says.
"How often have you actually put on your calendar one-hour of time to say, 'I'm going to sit down and think about what work I need to be doing.'" he says. "No, we panic and we look at our (to-do list) and we sort it. Then we just kind of freak out for a while and then the (to-do list) gets larger."
Instead of this haphazard approach, take time to define your work. Allen says it'll take an average of one hour per day for the typical professional.

Do It, Drop It, Delegate It and Defer It

Hanselman points to another David Allen's practices from his popular Getting Things Done manual, that of the "Four Ds":

• Do It
• Drop it
• Delegate it
• Defer it

Applying this to your inbox, Hanselman says, is a useful tool.
"Only do it if it's going to take a minute and it's been scheduled. Otherwise, it's really just drop it, delegate it and defer it, that means I'm not going to do it, someone else is going to do it (or I'll do it later )," he says.

Drop the Ball

Allen's "drop it" point leads Hanselman to encourage the practice of "dropping the ball." Though this sounds irresponsible, this will lead you to feel better about yourself as you'll be better able to focus in on your work rather that juggle responsibilities.
"Saying 'no' is difficult, but the guilt associated with saying 'yes' is often worse than the guilt associated with saying 'no'," Hanselman says. He points out that all systems that work, including the Internet, have flow control, which includes dropped packets of data.
"Communication by its nature is fault tolerant," he says. "If you've ever had communication with someone over a cell phone and a couple words drop out, you could still understand what they were saying."
To decide what to drop, Hanselman recommends using Stephen Covey's four quadrants:

"When something is both urgent and important, like a pregnant wife or an appendix being burst, you should probably do that now," Hanselman says. "If it is neither urgent nor important you should dump it. But unfortunately what happens is that we spend our time on things that feel urgent but are not important at all, but the urgency is an addiction."

Resolve Inbox Issues

One of the most common areas to add effectiveness to your work is your email inbox. Hanselman, who receives hundreds of emails daily, shares five tips for inbox management.

Follow This One Email Rule

Changing how emails are displayed in your inbox, Hanselman says, will "fundamentally change how you think about email." The change: set up a folder for emails that you're Cc'd on and a folder for emails that come directly to you. The emails automatically filtered to the "CC" folder, Hanselman says, are not important.

"Next time your boss sends you a to-do and Cc's you on it, don't do it," he says. "Then when he says, 'Why didn't you do it?' (Say,) 'Oh well, you Cc'd me, I thought you were just informing me.' He'll never do that again."
In his community management role at Microsoft, Hanselman uses one more folder in his inbox. "Notice how the inbox 'External'—my community, people who don't work for my company, they're important to me—I've answered all of their emails," he says.

Don't Check Email in the Morning (or at Night)

It's simple: if you reply to email in the morning, the sender will reply right back. What you thought was going to be less than an hour chore, quickly consumes half your day.

What happens is if you check email in the morning, you time travel. You wake at 9, you check email. Boom, it's lunch, and then you go to lunch. Boom, it's 2:30. Then it's like, 'OK, it's 2:30, I'm going to start working now.' That all happened because you checked email in the morning.

"Don't put more energy into things you don't want to," Hanselman says, paraphrasing David Allen.
Moreover, replying to email in the morning teaches people that they should expect future replies from you at that time. The same goes for answering email late at night.
"Remember, if you're the person who answers email at 2 in the morning, you just taught you're boss that you're the person who answers email at 2 in the morning," Hanselman says. You've also taught them that you're addicted to urgency.
Instead, check email at noon, and put it on your calendar. "You'll be surprised at how much work you get done," he says.

Find Your Robert Scoble

You shouldn't be constantly checking your email for fear of keeping up, Hanselman says. "I've got probably 500 emails—I usually have zero but I'm on vacation (in Sweden)," he says.
At the conference he was giving this talk, he observed other speakers give their talk and then rush back to their laptop to check their email, or as he puts it, delete their email.
"Has my job really come to this?" Hanselman says. "Is this my job: deleting email?"
To fend that habit off, Hanselman uses what he calls "trusted aggregators," colleagues who can be asked, "What's going on?" Or, they're people like Robert Scoble.

I used to have 1,000 blogs that I would read. And then who's the greatest blog reader in the world? It's Robert Scoble, he's always talking about how many blogs that he reads. So I finally decided, 'I'm not Robert Scoble.' He's a freak, and it's not healthy to keep up on that many blogs. So you know what I do? I read his blog. So I took the thousand blogs that I read and I pick five link blogs. I found my Scobles. And I read those five blogs and they give me an aggregated news. It's like why we listen to the BBC news on the hour, because it tells us what's going on so I don't have to watch all the other news. Find your aggregator inside of the company.

Ask yourself: Who is the person who can tell me what's going on and keep me up to date? That person is your aggregator.

Remain in Your Flow

"Remember that anything important that happens in the world, in the news, in you life, in your work , will come your (way) many times," Hanselman says. "If there's another 9-11, somebody will tell you. You probably didn't learn it by hitting refresh on your favorite news site."
His advice: remain in your flow. "Be wrapped up like a child in the thing that captures your attention," he says, quoting Stowe Boyd. "Get that excitement back, and that excitement does not involve Alt-Tabbing over to Gmail."

Conserve Your Keystrokes

Pulling a page from author and software developer Jon Udell, Hanselman encourages you to "conserve your keystrokes." What does this mean? He explains by example:

If Brian emails me a really interesting question about ASP.net … and I send him back an exciting and long, five-paragraph with a code sample email that solves his problem, I just gave him the gift of 10,000 of my keystrokes. But there is a finite number of keystrokes left in my hands before I die, and I am never going to get those keystrokes back and I've just gifted them to Brian. And I don't even know if he reads that email. So what should I do to multiply these keystrokes given that there is a finite number of those keystrokes left in my hands? I write a blog post and I mail him the link. Then after I'm dead, my keystrokes multiple—every time I get a page view that's 5,000 keystrokes that I did not have to type.

Keep your emails to 3-4 sentences, Hanselman says. Anything longer should be on a blog or wiki or on your product's documentation, FAQ or knowledge base. "Anywhere in the world except email because email is where you keystrokes go to die," he says.

Triage the Inbox of Your Life

On top of email, you have a constant stream new information coming into the "inbox of your life," which includes everything form your social media activity, to new episodes to watch on Netflix to snail mail. The items in this inbox of your life, Hanselman says, need to be triaged.

Triage - from the French verb trier, meaning to separate, sort, sift or select.

He offers a gruesome analogy: if you're in a parking lot full of injured people, you must act. It's your job to put a toe tag on each individual—are they dead or alive, how should they be treated?
"We don't ruthlessly (go through the) inboxes of our lives and do that," Hanselman says. "We get wrapped up in the little details and then we're putting bandaids on cancer while someone else is loosing an arm."
He instructs you to identify the data streams in your life—Twitter, Facebook, email, SMS and chat, for example—and sort them by signal versus noise. What provides you value and what doesn't? Which ones can be dropped? Drop them.
Here's how Hanselman defines his data streams:

Get Rid of Psychic Weight

You've just signed up for Netflix, giving you access to all episodes of House of Cards. Finally, you think, now you can watch the full second season whenever you want. But this isn't as freeing as it seems.
"I realized that this was psychic weight that was pressing me down," Hanselman says, recounting the time when he gained access to all episodes of Law & Order on TiVo.
"'OK, we got like seven Law & Orders on the thing," he says as if he were talking to his wife. "We'll put the kids to bed early tonight, and we're going to bang through Law & Order and then we're going to get this thing under control and we're going to handle it. And then we'll be back on track."
TiVo, it turned out, wasn't a "gift from God" as Hanselman originally thought. This "glorious productivity thing," he says, became the primary source of psychic weight in his life.
Whatever is "pending" in your life, drop it, Hanselman suggests on his blog.

Reserve Fridays for Reflection

"(When) I think about the things that I want to get done, I want to think about: what are the three things I can get done today? What are the three things I want to get done this week, this year?" Hanselman says.
This practice, called the "Rule of 3", comes from fellow Microsoft program manager J.D. Meier.

Write down three outcomes for the day.
… for the week.
… for the year.

"When you're going through your week, you need to have a vision on Monday of what your week looks like, and on Friday you need to stop and look back on your week and think about the reflection," Hanselman says.
Ask yourself: Was that a successful week? What could I have done differently? What could I change?
"The point is to end the day without guilt, to end the day without psychic weight," he says. "Maybe I'm just talking to myself here, but I truly believe that we have had that feeling at the end of the day where, 'I didn't do a damn thing today.'"

Try the Pomodoro Technique

The Pomodoro Technique, invented by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s, has you focus on one task for 25 minutes. Between each of these task sprints, you get a break.

Try this approach, Hanselman encourages, and when you do track the interruptions that impede the 25 minutes. Put a tick on a piece of paper each time an internal—one triggered yourself—or external—one by a co-worker, for example—interruption occurs.
First, you'll record six interruptions in that 25-minute sprint. Then one. Then none at all.
"Then you'll start thinking about productivity in your life as how many Pomodoros that you got done in a day," Hanselman says. "You'll say, 'Man, that was a four Pomodoro day, I got a lot of work done.'"

Realize that Being Busy is a form of Laziness

Being busy is a form of laziness—lazy thinking and indiscriminate action. - Timothy Ferriss

"Being busy is not thinking about what you should be doing so that you're not so busy," Hanselman says. "We find ourselves just being busy. It turns out, that 'being creative and making something is the opposite of hanging out.'

Hanselman takes notice when someone he sees tweet a lot suddenly stops tweeting and then a month later comes back with a new creation.
"Wow, that person just made a list of the things they needed to get done and Twitter wasn't one of them," he says. "They went off and they created and they came back and they shared it with us.

Face the Fact: Multitasking is a Myth

"Multitasking does not work," says Hanselman. "The optimal number of threads in any system is one thread. That is a computer science fact and if you think you can multitask, you're wrong."
When you do multitask you're really doing what Hanselman refers to as "task-switching," which requires context switching. To explain, he offers this example:

You ever been working on something and working on something and then the phone rings and you're mean, to like, your dad? Why was I so mean to my dad? Well, he called you at work at 3 in the afternoon and you were totally focused on something. Then afterwards (you were) like, 'I'm sorry, I was really working on something.' … Then I'm sad for like 10 or 15 minute. That's the context switch, as I get back from that phone call that I screwed up, back to the work. 'OK what was I thinking about?' Context switching doesn't work.

But Here's What You Can Multitask

There are some things, Hanselman notes, that you can multitask. For example, walking and chewing gum. Or for him, listening to podcasts or watching TV when he's working out.

There's also idle and waiting time to take advantage of in your day. Hanselman unabashedly shares how he makes the most of his visits to the bathroom.
"The iPhone has completely changed the way that I poop," he says. "I have no idea what we were doing in there before. Weren't you thinking, 'This is completely unproductive time.' And then the iPhone came along, and Instapaper, and now poop time is good time."

Clean Out Mental Clutter

Near the end of his talk, Hanselman offers the following quote to boil down a decision process to pinpoint what's important in your life.

If it's not helping me to make money, if it's not improving my life in some way, it's mental clutter and it's out." - Christopher Hawkins

Get rid of the "make money" part, he says. Instead, ask yourself: "If it's not helping me to—what is your goal? Spend time with your kids? Pay off your house? Grow your business?
"In any decision, if you're going to do something, is that helping you with that blank—whatever that blank is for you.
For Hanselman, that blank is his family.
"I stopped caring about my career when I had kids," he says. "Everything that I do, every decision that I make, is how I can get home to my four-year-old and six-year-old faster."

Homework

Hanselman ends his talk with a five-part assignment:

1. Audit and sort your sources
2. Schedule work sprint
3. Turn off distractions
4. How are you triaging your inbox? Are you effective? Are you efficient?
5. Consider your personal toolbox

"Notice that I didn't talk about Evernote or any of these fancy systems," he says. "You can spend more time reading productivity books and making productivity systems when maybe all you need is a (to-do list).
"Maybe what you really need is the will to do it and the recognition in your mind that there is a difference between being busy and doing the work that you want to do," he says.
Credits: Hanselman photo courtesy Webstock conference. Robert Scoble photo courtesy JD Lasica.