Typing vs. Writing

“According to a British survey of 2,000 people, one in three respondents had not written anything by hand in the previous six months. On average they had not put pen to paper in the previous 41 days.”

That’s an excerpt from an article I recently read on The Guardian which detailed the hard truth about the ever-growing tech addiction among people around the world. Take a moment and think really hard, when was the last time you actually write something on a piece of paper?

To be honest, even I can’t remember the last time I picked up a pen. And I feel ashamed of myself for that. Because I used to love writing. Back when I was in high-school, I used to write short stories and really long essays. Now, I can’t bear to write down a few words on a paper.

Sure, some people thinks that switching to digital-mode is a good thing. And yes, typing can save a lot of time and effort than writing stuff down, but at what cost?

In Write It Down, Make It Happen, author Henriette Anne Klauser says that “Writing triggers the RAS, which in turn sends a signal to the cerebral cortex: ‘Wake up! Pay attention! Don’t miss this detail!’ Once you write down a goal, your brain will be working overtime to see you get it, and will alert you to the signs and signals that […] were there all along.” via Lifehacker

According to many studies, it has found that jotting down things on a notepad can actually help us remember things better, clear out our mind, relieve stress and also help learn more efficiently than just typing or copy + pasting excerpts. Actually, I myself found this to be effective. I used to write down notes when taking online courses and it’s been very helpful to remember what I learned and also to go back refresh my memory about what I learned.

Next time, before you launch your To-Do list manager or digital note-taking app on your phone, try writing it down on a paper instead. Give it two weeks and see what happens. I’m going to do the same. I will try to at least write two paragraphs on a piece of paper every day.

Importance of Responsive Web Design – Infographic

Coding your website to look pretty on a desktop computer is not good enough. These days, most people prefer to browse the web via mobile devices. This is why it’s very important to make websites look great across smartphones and tablets with different sizes. That process is called Responsive Web Design.

This neat infographic designed by Verve sums up everything you need to know about Responsive website design and gives a short intro to how it helps improve web usability across multiple platforms.

A Few Changes

Blabbering about my boring life got a little bit boring. So, I decided to change my personal blog a little bit to make writing more fun and productive. From now on, I will be writing things about Twitter Bootstrap, Web development, UX Design, as well as things from my silly old life.

I love Bootstrap and web design, as I’m in the process of further learning to master the incredible framework. I’m also learning a lot about User Experience Design and Web Usability to make awesome websites. Starting today, I will share some of the stuff I learn with you guys, right here on this blog.

And for non-techy folks, I also plan to write about social media, entrepreneurship, startup and other stuff related to daily life. Looks like I’ve got everyone covered. Keep an eye out for updates and follow the blog.

Change is Good 

Money as a Motivator

If you ask any business owner how they became so successful, they will immediately respond with a long statement showing how they have a goal to serve people and provide a useful service. Sure, for a handful of wealthy businessmen who’s got no trouble earning money, it sounds like a great plan. But, it’s not really a great motivator for someone who’s desperate to earn their living. With dozens of bills to pay every month and managing your daily expenses, you can hardly find energy to stop and serve people. This is what I’ve been struggling with for months. How can I focus on creating something useful and great, while having to deal with my personal problems? That’s where the MONEY comes along.

A lot of people say that money is not a good motivator, but I disagree. Everything’s better when money’s involved. Think about it, why do people keep working for boring 9-5 jobs, even when they hate it? Because the need for a sum of money keeps them going on no matter what. Give them a raise and see what they’re actually capable of.

In the last couple of years, I learned that without motivation, you can’t survive life. You can live for Love, live for your family, or live for do good for the world, but honestly they never worked for me. I found Money to be the best motivator for me. Since I’m so hungry for it, I found myself launching my own business, coming up with ideas for new projects and ventures. I felt more energetic than ever.

The key here is to not lose your focus, because if you go too far and focus just on earning money, you will go no where. Instead, keep a balance of earning some cash and doing something you love. Blend them together, and Viola! you have the perfect money maker. Let me give you an example. Recently I started crafting website templates. Why? Because I love web design. Coding and designing websites actually became a hobby of mine. But I couldn’t afford to spend time having fun. So, I decided to turn this hobby into a business and sell my templates. I’m still working on my skills and crafting something awesome to sell, but I have a feeling that it’s gonna rake-in a lot of money so I’m really psyched with my work at the moment.

Sit back, relax and dig deep into your brain. Who knows, maybe you will come up with a great business idea as well.

Achieving More by Gamifying Life

Recently, I started to hear this word “Gamification” everywhere on the web and how some people use it to make their lives easier and accomplish heavy tasks in a fun way. This got me curious so I did a little digging and found out that this thing called Gamification could actually work to do more with my life. And you know what, it really did.  But, before we jump into that, let me explain how it works.

Gamification is the use of game thinking and game mechanics to improve productivity and engagement, according to Wikipedia. You can use it to complete jobs, projects and even drive your business to success with simple planning. For example, let’s say your boss just gave you a really hard project about the company growth and you must finish within a week. Let’s face it, this is just going to ruin your entire week.

Using gamification you can not only have fun doing it but you can also make the process really easy. It’s like this, you just divide the project into sections and make list of all the tasks. Then you add a little achievement reward for each, like completing a level in a video game. For instance, you can set up your first task to – Find bank account details of the company, and put down 100 points as a reward for yourself for completing this level. As you complete each task you will be nearing to finishing all levels and engage in the boss battle, just like in a video game except this time the boss will be real it’s probably best not to literally beat him. Well, I think you get my point.

It’s as easy as that. It may sounds pretty weird and funny, but it actually works. I’ve tried it to manage my work at my blog and to reach 5000 posts mark before the end of this month. And I did it. I published the 5000th post on my website yesterday, using gamification. I would have been much lazier to do it without Gamification and I believe it helped me achieve this goal faster and easier.

Now, I’m planing to use Gamification to also improve my business. I already made a list of accomplishments I need to make before hitting the boss level. It’s a  2-year game but I think I can make it, with help from Gamification of course.  So, I’m going to give it a shot.

What I’m trying to explain here is that if you’re having a hard time trying to manage work and complete reports or projects or even do school homework, you could use this method to make it a little fun and actually complete them without a hassle. Just try it for once, I’m 99% sure you’ll enjoy it as much as I did.

If you need to learn more about this thing called Gamification, try reading this article on LifeHacker and this one from folks at Buffer.

Life, Success, Relationships and Society

Even though our lives are unpredictable,  we all live keeping one certain outcome in mind – Death. No matter what we do, how famous we are, how wealthy we are, death is inevitable. So why do we struggle everyday to be alive? Why are we so miserable most of the time? Why do we hate our lives? Blame the society.

It’s the society that pushes us into doing things that we don’t want to do. Think about it. If you’re happy living alone, why do you feel the need to find a girlfriend/boyfriend and get married? If you’re happy managing your own small business and make enough money to pay the bills, why do you feel the need to get a corporate job? If you already have enough knowledge to make your dreams come true, why would you waste years mastering a subject that you’ll never use?  It’s because there’s always a risk involved. First reason being, low self-esteem. You are afraid of what others think. You are afraid of being humiliated. You want to be NORMAL, like everyone else and blend in. It’s the SOCIETY that pushes us into this circle of a comfort zone where it needs to be assured that everything’s gonna be OK.

So what if your parents don’t want you to be a writer or follow a career in art. Should you do as they say and get a “real” job, get married, have children and act like you’re happy, while you think about  your faded dreams, every day. Is this life really worth giving up your dreams? You do have a choice in this, because when it comes to making the decision, the question you need to ask is what are you – Are you a FOLLOWER? Or are you a LEADER?

I used to follow this social code. I tried to blend in. I found myself falling in love with a girl and spent a long time doing nothing but imagining how my life would be in the future. My productivity level went so low, I even began to forget about my life long dreams and goals because I was slowly getting into that comfort zone. Until she forced me to end things after I caught her cheating. This lead me in to another few weeks of desperation and sorrow. Then when I finally snapped out of it, I realized how stupid I was to give up on my dreams for this thing called “love” which is often over exaggerated these days and the mirage of a life “happily ever after”.

Sure, at some point in our lives, we have to settle down and start a family.  Otherwise, we will be missing the whole point of “life”. It’s one of the challenges a person has to face in life. But, we shouldn’t let others (SOCIETY) make this decision for us. First, we should give priority to our own life, dreams, goals and happiness, everything else can be deal with later, when time comes.

 

A New Beginning

I’ve been so busy with work lately, I couldn’t even find time to update the blog. But, I’m not going to apologize for leaving this blog left out because it has been a very productive time for me. I finally put my ideas to work and launched a teeny, tiny startup. My dream come true 🙂

Sometimes You Need to Take a Break

“A dream doesn’t become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination and hard work.”

~ Colin Powell

It’s true. Sitting on your ass all day, doing nothing is not going to make you a millionaire. You need to work hard to achieve your goals. Although, it’s not always the solution to everything. For example, if you’re trying really hard but still couldn’t go anywhere in your career, something has to be wrong there. And it’s clearly not about the amount of effort you put into work. Sometimes, you just need to take a break.