Sep 28, 2007
Posted by arif in GTD and Productivity | 3 comments
What a book. It’s motivating, sparks a great number of ideas and it’s worth a buy simply for the list of resource of websites, books and companies that it has. Warning this Blog Post has spoilers of what the book has ahead, but it’s still a damn good read (the book I mean).
The book is divided into four sections, with the help of the acronym DEAL:
Definition:
The cover of the book states, “Escape 9-5, Live anywhere, and Join the New Rich”. Who are the New Rich? The New Rich, don’t only take money to be their currency, but two other essential ingredients that are necessary to be actually living the life of the wealthy, rather than merely collecting for it. i.e. Time and mobility. Without which you may have all the money you will ever need, but if you’re unable to create that time/mobility for yourself, that money may as well be in a chest buried in the jungles of Congo.
In this section, Tim goes in depth and helps you chart out your Dreamline, TMI (Target Monthly Income) and your Worth per Hour. All tools that help you join the leagues of the New Rich.
Elimination:
Now comes the challenge, how do you free up your time? Just like exercising regularly, You’ve heard it before, you know it’s good for you, do you do it? It’s the Pareto principle (commonly referred to as the 80/20 rule) and Parkinson’s Law (you know that the more time you have to do a task that much longer it will take). Tim explains with personal examples how he’s personally implemented these. Honestly speaking, these insights were not so great to make permanent habit changes, but am working at it.
Automation:
Here’s the meat. Go ahead, sink your teeth in and savour every last juicy drop. Is it really possible to automate income so much that one would need to put only 4 hours in a week? You can bet your last paycheck that it is. How do you do it? I’m not sure if I’d be giving too much away in posting this, but in summary he provides a methodology that by using the combined power of outsourcing, the internet and the intellectual knowledge that you already have, to design products that can you give steady & regular streams of income. The detail and examples for which Tim goes into is exemplary.
Liberation:
After having Eliminated unnecessary time-gobbling activities and Automating income so that you don’t have to work all day, what do you do for the remaining 6.9 days of the week, every week, for the rest of your life? How about taking a 3 month Mini-Retirement to Thailand? Or take a class in ltaly how to make chocolate truffles? I know you can’t because you’ve got responsibilities, you’ve got kids and it’s just way too expensive. Taking long vacations is not a personal goal of mine, but if it’s yours, here Tim gives loads of websites resources that can help you make that journey and also case-studies of people who have liberated themselves to achieve mobility while attending to their responsibilities.
In conclusion, sure I admit to achieve a 4-Hour work week, may be a bit of an exaggeration. Maybe some of the ideas may not be immediately implementable. But as Tim puts it even if you can reduce your working time to 5 days a week or even 4 days a week, that would still add up to years to your life to pursue that one excitement that you always wanted to do but never had the time.
To get more of a flavour of the 4 Hour Work Week without buying the book, download an hour long presentation delivered by Tim by clicking here or what’s even better is this You Tube video of another talk he gave at Google. Well, that’s about it. Once you’ve successfully implemented the 4 Hour Work Week, I’ll see you at the Bahamahs :-) .
Sep 16, 2007
Posted by arif in General | 2 comments
Do you feel a novelist in you scraping to come out? Want to start a blog but don’t think you’re writing is good enough? Are you going through the draft of your email again and again before hitting Send? Always dreamt of starting a Journal, but still haven’t?
Here are 6 little ammunition packs, in which I have found inspiration, motivation, guidance, tips & tricks that has got me banging away on my keyboard like never before:
1. Copyblogger.com
This is one terrific blog. Why?
- It’s vast. Covers a wide range of writing topics be it making headlines, opening statements or creative writing or how to find writing time.
- The blog is updated regularly. There’s a new resource to look forward to everyday.
- The posts are so simplified, it’s a matter just following the steps presented in a, b c, format which make your writing better instantaneously.
Here are a few posts that got me hooked:
- 5 simple ways to open your blog post with a bang.
- How to write Magnetic Headlines
- The David Ogilvy Playbook for Business Blogging
- How to write remarkably creative content
2. Writing Well by William Zinsser
Writing Well, a guide for non-fiction writing, boldly states on it’s cover, “More than one million copies sold”. One doesn’t need to turn too many pages to see why.
Zinsser implies that once you take his four articles of faith: clarity, simplicity, brevity and humanity to the extreme, you’ll have a piece of writing that will pack a wallop! Key word here is extreme. Hence your writing has to be extremely clear, extremely simple, extremely brief while being human. Truly, if your writing is so easy to understand and it just cannot be made more clear, cannot be made more simple, having no verbiage and using words that bring amount a warm fuzzy human touch, you will certainly have a knockout article every time.
This philosophy is explained nicely, in depth, with many examples of good as well as poor writing throughout the book. And similar to Copyblogger, the ideas are presented so simply that not only is it quick and easy to implement, but they provide instant gratification too when you experience your writing improve immediately.
3. Bird by Bird, Anne Lamont
This is a lovely read. With unrestrained wit Anne journeys through her life; what made her a novelist and what does it take to become a writer. Although a specific guide for fiction writers, the chapters titled, Shitty First Drafts (in her words not mine), Perfectionism, Writer’s Block inspire and motivate greatly to make this a worthy buy for all writers.
Here’s an excerpt:
“Very few writers know what they’re doing until they’ve done it. Nor do they go about their business feeling dewy and thrilled. They do not type a few stiff warm-up sentences and find themselves bounding along like huskies in the snow. One writer I know tells me that he sits down every morning and tells himself nicely, “It’s not like you don’t have choice, because you do – you can either type or kill yourself.” We all feel like we are pulling teeth, even those writers whose prose end up most natural and fluid.” ☺
4. Gotham Writers Workshop
There’s only so much guidance that a book can give. Sometimes it’s sufficient and other times you need someone to hold your hand gently guide you all the way through. Gotham Writers Workshop offers classes on all types of writing from Poetry, to novel writing, to screen writing for movies. Although these classes are conducted in New York there’s an online version of this class too. What’s also great is that Gotham limits the number of participants to each online class too, hence making it easier for the teacher to focus on individual students.
Just like in regular classes, you will get out from it, how much you put in. I have taken a couple of courses from Gotham Writers Workshop. The material is good, but it’s the discipline training and tough-attitude building what was really valuable. When presented with a deadline, I let go of all excuses, I’m no longer tired, to hell with the muse, I have to finish this piece and somehow scrape the time and do it.
5. A Collins thesaurus
A Thesaurus is a writer’s best friend. I’ve tried Rogets, Oxfords, Mac OS X’s inbuilt Thesaurus and the online www.thesaurus.com too. None of them have the depth and breadth that Collins does. It has come to my rescue many a times to help me say just the thing I wanted to, when other Thesaurus’s have failed me.
6. Scrivener
Despite of having all the wonderful resources above, I don’t think I’d be writing regularly if it weren’t for this magical writing software. Sadly only available for the Macintosh. It’s as if the through the keyboard this software connects to your writing soul and knows just the feature that you would want. Merlin Mann from 43 folders has done a terrific review of it. Here are the key features that have me in love with this software:
- It’s so much easier to keep my writing organised:
Unlike traditional word processing softwares, like MS Word (yeech!), A single file is not a single word document, which you have to keep organised within folders. Each Scrivener document is a project, within which you can have multiple folders and again within which multiple documents. Therefore I have opened a Scrivener project called Blog posts and here I’ve created 3 folders 1. Drafts, 2. Posted on Blog, 3. Archive and with which I have created separate documents for each. And now it’s so easy for me to navigate from one document to another. While writing this blog post, suppose if I feel the need to see something I wrote in a earlier draft I just click on to that document in the binder and I’m there.
- There’s a shortcut for everything.
Anything I want to do is only a couple of keystrokes away. If I want to move to another document in the same binder, I don’t really need to use the mouse to do it. I hit Crtl+Option+Cmd+B to go to the binder. Use the arrow key to move to the document and ta da, I’m there! And it’s not just moving between documents, there’s truly a shortcut for almost everything as you can see from the screenshot below. If you really spend as much time on the keyboard as I do, that’s a huge time saving. And for what’s there’s no shortcut there’s Quicksilver Menu command.
- The full screen option has to be tried to be savoured. This one option, really make you feel like wanting to write. It just screams, “Nobody bother me, can’t you see I’m writing!”
There’s the corkboard view, outline view, snapshot feature, it goes on and on, like I said…it’s just magical.
Well, that’s about it. In conclusion, here’s the single one post that has had the greatest impact from Copyblogger on my writing.
Sep 12, 2007
Posted by arif in Personal | 2 comments
It started with a newsletter that I fondly called “Your weekly dose of inspiration.” Which over time metamorphisized into the Vakil Housing Blog. And now say hello to the Arif & Ali Blog. Why this change? You see, whenever we would want to post on the Vakil Housing blog, it would rarely be on Vakil Housing itself. So one lazy Sunday, our fingers were getting itchy and what started as a chat over breakfast on “what would be the best way to stay in touch with friends” led to the total redecoration of our Blog, complete with the change of the name too. Well, what do you think? You like?
Besides staying in touch there’s a tremendous amount of terrific material out there that me and Ali come across and look forward to share. Hence this blog became the perfect platform to do that. So, once a month, we shall dutifully ensure that all subscribed to our blog, shall receive the best of our posts packaged in nice little email with a pretty pink ribbon tied around it. :-)
Update on our life since my last newsletter: Generally we have been busy with work; God and life have been very kind to us. As most of you know we did go for Hajj last year but haven’t done any traveling since then and nothing really that new to report. We’d love to hear from you though, it’s been ages since we’ve even said hello. Please do drop a line or an email.
Take care, warm wishes and keep smiling,
Arif & Ali
Sep 11, 2007
Posted by arif in Reviews | 1 comment
You’ve got to hear it to believe it. I might say that it’s the best audio entertainment I have heard. Listen to the enchanting stories of Mary Shelley, Edgar Allen Poe, Oscar Wilde and others in The Classic Tales Podcast. Although some fables have been written over a hundred years ago they still carry hard-hitting lessons and be not surprised if you see yourself in some of these stories.
The production quality is excellent. The voices that B J Harrison performs with is life-like. Be it a fair Italian damsel or a Scottish middle-aged gentleman or a bratty American kid, BJ carries these performances with impeccable class.
I’ve heard quite a few tales from the podcast, my favourites have been: The Tell Tale Heart, The Mortal Immortal and Ransom of Red Chief. I secretly hope that B J soon performs The Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde.
Ps. If you feel you’ll enjoy this, Have a look at other podcasts that I recommend too.
