L.I.F.E

Your life is completely under your control simply because you can choose to do something phenomenally worth your time, which will automatically cancel out all the noise (read problems/inefficiencies/circumstances) that came in without your 'permission'. 

Water for Birds

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Siddhartha

I read the insightful story (fictional) of a man who lived during the Buddha's time and dared to go in search of life, wisdom and purpose on his own despite meeting the Buddha. It is the story of a man who walks his own path to enlightenment. The author of the story does a compelling job of conveying his own insights about life through the man's story. The man is named after the Buddha, as Siddhartha. The book is also called 'Siddhartha' and the author is Hermann Hesse. Now, you know.  

Source: Wikipedia

1) Siddhartha learns his own lessons by doing things in his own unique way and not by following anyone else's teachings or thoughts


2)He realizes that someone who is obsessed with the act of searching for something may actually not find what he is looking for because he may be so lost in the search itself that he cannot see what is in front of him (he misses the thing that he is looking for even when it is in front of him because he is still looking!) > This one is profound! 


3)He concludes that wisdom cannot be shared. Only knowledge can be shared.  


4)Only towards the end of his life does he understand the bliss of flowing along with life, like a river. He understands that he must be a part of everything that life brings to him. He must be the same through ups and downs, and twists and turns though there may be no such thing as good or bad. He sees that the river is what it is throughout its course irrespective of obstacles. It gets past rocks because of its flexibility and acceptance. 


5)He also learns from the river that listening is one of the most essential skills for leading a blissful life, because listening means learning


6)He realizes that life allowed him to learn things on his own and he had to accept that for his son as well. The special lesson for parents is that they cannot and should not try to control or determine their children's destinies. Every child will have to chart his or her own path and should be allowed to experience his/her destiny without unwarranted interruptions


7)An almost direct recommendation that the author makes is that of the "Om" meditation. During many instances in the story, Siddhartha recovers from inappropriate moments including a suicidal one by repeating the term "Om" until he magically begins to see the 'light'

The SN Story

PeopleBrowsr Presents A Brief Cartoon History of Social Networking 1930-2011

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Cute representation of the social networking story! The world is definitely changing.

The Passion Thread

If there is no passion, there is no ownership.
If there is no ownership, there is no long-term thinking.
If there is no long-term thinking, there is no persistence.
If there is no persistence, there is no achievement.
Constant: Values, Intentions.

The Creative Personality

• The Creative Personality: Ten paradoxical traits
  
  
  10 paradoxical traits of the creative personality http://bit.ly/gXoGGw  by the Creativity Genius - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi  via @gautamghosh
  
  
  
• Extracts:
  • Of all human activities, creativity comes closest to providing thefulfillment we all hope to get in our lives. Call it full-blast living.

    
    
  • Despite the carefree air that many creative people affect, most of themwork late into the night and persist when less driven individuals wouldnot.

    
    
  • Creativeindividuals, on the other hand, seem to exhibit both traits simultaneously. (Extrovertedness and Introvertedness)
    

    
    
  • When tests of masculinity/femininity are given to young people, over andover one finds that creative and talented girls are more dominant andtough than other girls, and creative boys are more sensitive and lessaggressive than their male peers.

    
    
  • Inventors have a low threshold ofpain. Things bother them

    
    
  • Perhaps the most difficult thing for creative individuals to bear isthe sense of loss and emptiness they experience when, for some reason,they cannot work. This is especially painful when a person feels his orher creativity drying out.
    
    Yet when a person is working in the area of his of her expertise,worries and cares fall away, replaced by a sense of bliss.

    
    
  • Perhapsthe most important quality, the one that is most consistently presentin all creative individuals, is the ability to enjoy the process ofcreation for its own sake.

Criteria for your idea

This is a great post on finding out if your idea will make it to the league of FB, Twitter etc.

Quotes:

Innovate on Purpose: Criteria for your idea

• Does it solve a problem that is relevant and important to a customer? 
• Does it cut costs, remove a significant barrier or create a significantly different capability? 
• Will the idea be easy to adopt for the target customer, with low switching costs? 
• Is the offer and benefit easy to understand, and easy to communicate? 
• Is your idea protectable or defensible?  Is there any intellectual property? 
• Do you have concepts beyond product innovation?  Can you extend your idea to service innovation, business model innovation or customer experience? 
• Can you offer your idea at a price point where you make money? 
• Can you scale your concept quickly? (Comment from me: Imagine the ecosystems that FB, Twitter and iPhone have created!)

Squeal!

From here via @sauravj - A special Penguin! :-)

Source of Pic: Provided in the link above

Libraries and KM

Some quick and immediate thoughts:

1. There is no substitute for a good - real, physical - library. Despite the Kindles and PDFs

2. Library professionals ought to adopt the latest technologies to make it easy for people to browse through catalogs and reading lists from their desktops. Sites like LibraryThing and Safari are good examples for sharing one's virtual bookshelf. This could be a part of the KM system

3. e-Formats of books are essential in certain situations and cannot be avoided

4. Library activities should be extended to allow people to have conversations, collaborate and engage in group-reading or thinking

5. With the onslaught of e-readers, I am not able to predict the impact it will have on physical libraries a decade from now. Environmental preservation may lead to people being encouraged to read books online rather than depend on print. 

The Science of Making Decisions - Newsweek

Quotes:

The Science of Making Decisions - Newsweek

• If emotions are shut out of the decision-making process, we're likely to overthink a decision, and that has been shown to produce worse outcomes on even the simplest tasks.
• trying to drink from a firehose of information has harmful cognitive effects. And nowhere are those effects clearer, and more worrying, than in our ability to make smart, creative, successful decisions.
• Creative decisions are more likely to bubble up from a brain that applies unconscious thought to a problem, rather than going at it in a full-frontal, analytical assault
• If you let things come at you all the time, you can't use additional information to make a creative leap or a wise judgment," says Cantor. "You need to pull back from the constant influx and take a break
• In contrast, a constant focus on the new makes it harder for information to percolate just below conscious awareness, where it can combine in ways that spark smart decisions.
• There is a powerful 'recency' effect in decision making. We pay a lot of attention to the most recent information, discounting what came earlier."
• We're fooled by immediacy and quantity and think it's quality
• The Art of Choosing
• It isn't only the quantity of information that knocks the brain for a loop; it's the rate. The ceaseless influx trains us to respond instantly, sacrificing accuracy and thoughtfulness to the false god of immediacy.
  • Whoa! Think! 
• First, when people see that there is a lot of complex information relevant to a decision, "they default to the conscious system,"
• Even experts become anxious and mentally exhausted. In fact, the more information they try to absorb, the fewer of the desired items they get and the more they overpay or make critical errors.
• Maybe you were this close to choosing a college, when suddenly older friends swamped your inbox with all the reasons to go somewhere else—which made you completely forget why you'd chosen the other school. 

• Experts advise dealing with emails and texts in batches, rather than in real time; that should let your unconscious decision-making system kick in. Avoid the trap of thinking that a decision requiring you to assess a lot of complex information is best made methodically and consciously; you will do better, and regret less, if you let your unconscious turn it over by removing yourself from the info influx. Set priorities: if a choice turns on only a few criteria, focus consciously on those. Some people are better than others at ignoring extra information. These "sufficers" are able to say enough: they channel-surf until they find an acceptable show and then stop, whereas "maximizers" never stop surfing, devouring information, and so struggle to make a decision and move on. 

Temples

The debate on the differences between Religion and Spirituality is an old one and perhaps one that does not actually satisfy either - debating - parties completely.  


Nevertheless, here is what occurred to me.


Religion is keeping track of the number (and type/popularity/specialty) of temples one visits. Spirituality is not having to keep track of the number of times one drives others to the temple (looking for peace of mind, that is). ;-) 

The Relationship Dilemma

The Relationship Dilemma: You can run away from those who are almost always bad to others, you can hang on to those who are almost always good to others but you are perplexed when you have to deal with those who are sometimes good and sometimes bad - which explains why most of the world is perplexed most of the time. ;-)

The T.R.E.E

Source: Google Images

The tree was one of its kind, big and sturdy
Its lovely branches & leaves made it shady
It was fully equipped to protect the needy
For its warmth, all the birds were greedy

On the tree, the squirrels wanted to play
The saints wanted to meditate and pray
Travelers wanted to rest on the way
Children wanted to be make merry all day

The tree had plenty of space to spare
It had the best of breezes to share
It had all the strength to dare
It had fruits sweet and rare
It could almost give a mother's care

The birds begged for a nest
The squirrels squealed with interest
While people were desperate to rest
The children's expressions said it the best

The tree, unfortunately, turned a deaf ear
And wasted itself without a tear
None of these, it thought, were dear
It understood only the rules of distrust and fear
Its purpose, sadly, was not clear