10 Reasons You're Always Late

A wonderful article by Annie Gabillet on the psychology of being late.

Selfish. Inconsiderate. Irresponsible. If you're constantly late, people might associate you with these negative qualities. A lack of punctuality has more to say about your relationship with yourself than your feelings for friends, family, and co-workers, but they don't always see it that way. To add hours to your day and make everyone around you appreciate your newfound reliability, kick these bad habits now. No procrastinating!

• You think best-case scenario. Two out of five workday mornings the subway takes 20 minutes. But three out of five days? It takes 40 minutes. You need to plan for 40.
  
• You hate downtime. When you get to an appointment early, do you resent the "wasted" time you could have spent being productive at home or at the office? Embrace it. There are actually scientific benefits to daydreaming.
  
• Before leaving the house, you do just one more thing. If you need to catch the bus at 8:30 a.m., 8:29 a.m. is not the time to load your dishwasher.
  
• You rely on phones to buy you more time. Texting your friend or emailing your manager "I'm running five minutes behind!" does not excuse your tardiness.
  
• You neglect your calendar. Don't let meetings or appointments surprise you. Keep your calendar up to date and review it at the end of each workday and first thing in the morning so you can prepare.
  
• You wait for a crisis situation to motivate you. There's nothing like a hard deadline to spring you into action. But waiting for adrenaline to kick in means that you're constantly putting out fires and not planning ahead. You wouldn't have to rush to your friend's birthday drinks on Thursday if you thought ahead about finishing that important work task on Monday.
  
• You pack too much into your day. Be realistic about what you can do and when you can do it. Don't hesitate to say no. Underpromising and overdelivering is better than not keeping commitments.
  
• You snooze. That snooze button is sabotaging your chances of being on time. A better morning starts the night before. For a more restful night's sleep, when you crawl in bed trade your overstimulating and potentially stress-inducing smartphone for a regular old book.
  
• You overindulge. Alcohol can also lead to poor sleep and a sluggish morning. Whether you're trying to make it to a Friday morning meeting after happy hour or Sunday brunch with an old pal, skip that last glass of wine the night before and hydrate instead.
  
• You avoid the real issue. If you commute during a horrible rush hour, maybe you should shift your hours. Get more work done in the evening? Ask your boss to move your start time from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. and stay later. If you have a health issue that is keeping you up at night, visit the doctor.

Bloody great service

What kind of service does your customer want?
Bloody great service. Here is what Amazon does.

Monday blues: Take care

Take care of your problems, worries and issues. You don't need to just put bitterness off for a while and let it come back. You need to take care of it.

Nature's pace

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

All pics displayed here can be downloaded and used for free. Just give a link here. You can find more pics here: t3i photography.

Spare the rod

When the risk is high, you get to take things seriously. When the risk is not so compelling why should you? Now I know why Bible says about sparing the rod in Proverbs chapters 22, 23 and 29. The need to be firm on few things is often necessary even with adults. What makes you learn things in the childhood is the fear of failure. The fear that you would be an outcast, a left behind and a walkover is what pushes you to read and learn things in a certain way. Not that you need to learn everything but to learn it fast, quick and in such a way that you are ahead of you peers. Not that goes missing in your life when you reach a certain stage when everything is fine and you don't feel motivated rather compelled to do certain things. I have seen that to be motivated to do certain things in life, you need to realize the high risk associated with not doing. This is a case of high involvement and corresponding loyalty with the same.

To make consumers realize that they need your product, you need to tell them what they are risking. This gets more tough when the competition is high and especially when the need isn't realized. Picking up habits is even more tough after a certain age. Linking that to a loss might help. Especially if that is something substantially threatening. Vaccination advertisements use this to great success. Fuel price rise speculation ensures beeline to all the outlets. Think about it.

As a marketer I would make you see the need, if not I always can go back to the cane.

Built for hunting

Go right! Stop! You are going too fast! There is a bus ahead of you. Watch out!

Have you ever faced this from your pillion rider? My guess is you would have. If you have, then you would have explained that you have been driving for a long time and that you know all these things happen but the anxiety of the rider behind you is not relieved. You end up doing the same thing when some one else is driving and you are in the back seat. It is human tendency to comment and suggest. What is the solution? Is there an explanation for this?

Well here it is.

MEN are generally better than women on tests of spatial ability, such as mentally rotating an object through three dimensions or finding their way around in a new environment. But a new study suggests that under some circumstances a woman’s way of navigating is probably more efficient.

The theory is that the male strategy is the most useful for hunting prey; chasing an antelope, say, would mean running a long way over a winding route. But having killed his prey, the hunter would want to make a beeline for home rather than retrace his steps exactly. Women, by contrast, would be better off remembering landmarks and retracing the paths to the most productive patches of plants.

The research suggests that in certain circumstances women are better at navigating than men. Which might lend some comfort to a man desperately searching for an item in a supermarket while his exasperated wife methodically moves around the aisles filling the shopping trolley. He is simply not cut out for the job, evolutionarily speaking.

Want a simple explanation? Give him sometime and see how he drives. Either he would slow down(when you are riding with him) or you would get used to it. What say guys?

The 'giving' generation!

TOI: They've often been called the "me-first" generation and stereotyped as the lot that doesn't give a damn about the rest of the world so long as their lives are one long picnic. But, is that how young urban Indians see themselves? Not in the least, it turns out.

In an eight-city survey of youth's attitude to charity we found that 80% of those aged between 18 and 35 thought of themselves as charitable. Women were more likely to regard themselves as charitable (84%) than men (76%).

But the constantly pillorying by older people about being too self-centred by far does seem to have affected young people's perception of themselves. More than 60% of those surveyed felt they were less charitable than their parents or grandparents.

But there were some interesting variations in the answer to that question across the eight cities polled. In Hyderabad and Chennai, the majority saw themselves as more charitable than previous generations. More than 40% said so as well in yet another southern city, Bangalore.

The survey, done exclusively for TOI by Synovate, a leading market research agency, was conducted in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Lucknow and Jaipur. It covered respondents from socio-economic categories (SEC) A and B1.

About half the respondents were aged between 18 and 25 years and the other half were in the 26-35 year age group. The ratio of males to females was 60:40 and the total number of respondents 1,000. It asked questions about the kind of charity work that young Indians find most acceptable, how much of their own time and energy they devote to charitable work and how far they trust charitable institutions.

Blog?

Seth Godin calls persuading someone to start a blog is evolution marketing. Lots of people have been brainwashed that they have nothing to say, or can't say it, or aren't allowed to say it. And you rarely see someone become an overnight blogging success.

All you need to do is be patient and produce post after post of good quality, useful material that people want to read and know. And day after day someone some where would be directed to your blog and if they like it refer to others. Slowly your readership increases. Just imagine having 100 people who listen to what you say, day in and day out. My blog also started after listening to Prof. Ray. What are you waiting for?

Start blogging now.

Honesty pays? or...

See what I found online...

"A person should not be too honest. Straight trees are cut first and Honest people are victimized first."

Chanakya

I don't mind...

How r u sleeping?

Sleep less. This is one of the best investments you can make to make your life more productive and rewarding. Most people do not need more than 6 hours to maintain an excellent state of health. Try getting up one hour earlier for 21 days and it will develop into a powerful habit. Remember, it is the quality not the quantity of sleep that is important. And just imagine having an extra 30 hours a month to spend on the things that are important to you.