You can Excel only on what comes to you naturally

Why so ?

Anything without the natural urge to do it would need a bit of concentration to do it well. So, your effort is wasted in concentrating which ultimately stops you from excelling on it.

Is going with natural behaviour enough to excel ? Obviously not. So what else ?

Excel need 1: Where you are applying your natural urge ?

Lets assume your natural behaviour is 'angriness', so how can this help any one ? Yes it can angrying for small/pitty things say fighting for TV remote at home or since someone don't satisfy your ego can do harm. Though, same angriness of Democratic rebellions has brought freedom to many countries

As David (Founder, FreakFactorSystem) says, when he was working at a company, his weakness was 'Not able to do teamwork'. He then looked for a role where teamwork is not much needed and became a Professor. Now the same weakness has turned to strength. So, weakness for sure has the sign of strength as well.


Excel need 2: How are you applying your natural urge ?  

• Do it the best possible way
• Do, only if you are able to do with complete and hard focus. If Done, be done.
• Constantly push the limit and move out of comfort zone & make sure you give time to renew

If so, how to find what comes to one naturally ?

Experiecing different things and observing our response to that would be the key. Here's a good talk by Bret (Interface Expert, Apple) on this topic.

Gist of above video:

1. How one can choose their principle

"Make many things, make many types of things. Study many things, experience many many things. And use all these experiences as a way of analyzing myself. Taking all these experiences and saying 'Does this resonate with me?' "

2. Bret's principle - "Creators need an immediate connection with what they're creating" and examples of works he did about it.

3. Necessity of a principle to make bigger impact your work

Transcripts of above talk

Happy Living !


Am missing something ? Will be more than happy to know with your Comment :) 

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Evernote Vs Catch

I have been experimenting with note taking applications for 6 months , this blog details pros and cons of couple of them.

Evernote:

Focus to create & edit Lengthy Note for long time

Pros:

• Managing large content is awesome due to formatting options
• Deleted notes still remains in Evernote Thrash
• Maintains history of a note ( pro users only )
• Folder & Tag are there to help when you need it.

Cons:

• Flow of note creation or Editing requires a number of clicks (Can't be done through shortcuts)
• Not so intutive interface ( as compared to Catch ) 

Catch:

Focus on fast addition of Short notes (not Long notes) instantly

Pros:

• Add new note on the Go
• Auto-Save on Editing
• Cool & Simple Drop on Click interface
• Creating new Note is like breeze

Cons:

• Unable to organise & Use long run data (absence of formatting options)
• Attachment of files never used since I would use Dropbox
• Sharing feature never used as Google Docs is much more effective

My Usage: I use Catch to add note on the go & Evernote to maintain long-time organised data.


Found useful or didn't ? Share with a Comment :)

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Javascript - Simple Adventure

Purpose of App: Page to test a person's Awareness based on simple math test

Demo Link 

Current Worked task:

1. adding history of test scores to the tests with Local Storage
2. Smoothing the general usage

Learnings:

HTML5

• localstorage in/outs
• inputbox placeholder

Core Javascript

• for..in Vs for iteration - the effect of prototype objects
• hasOwnProperty

CSS

• Tabular CSS properties

General

• modular approach to solve problem

Future Tasks:

• Aesthetics smoothness
• Best Usable Browser addition
• DB data fetching

The Old Age

An old man bought some eatables on a shop nearby my home, I noticed following characteristics

• He walked very slow nearly 4 times slower than an average person
• On the way his slipper got out of his leg, he struggled nearly 5 mins to get it to posistion
• He had a hand stick which he used to balance himself, though shaked his balance a lot of times

My learnings:

1. Well powered Youngness is limited, so use it well
2. surviving old age is quite hard, needs good preparation
3. These Old age people need all possible help from others

Use youngness well planned & be prepared for the old age :)

Java : final,Synchronisation,ConcurrentModification

Following are some of the Java's little surprising things (atleast to me),

1: final's operation by reference:

final which do not mean an object cannot be changed, actually objects reference cannot be changed.

final StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer("arun");
sb.replace(0, 2, "ab");                    // works !
sb = new StringBuffer("test");       //throws error: final can't be changed

final String s = new String("arun");
s.replace(0, 2, "ab");     // throws error
s = "test";                      // throws error

//do not work since String is immutable (same reference can't be modified)

Working things makes change on same reference, but others creates new reference which final can't allow.

This also means final != immutable


2 : Object lock of Synchronised methods on multiple threads

Synchronised method operates by establishing Object level Lock that calls the method.


3: ConcurrentModificationException

1) modification of an object while being iterated at other place
2) In certain violations, single thread can also cause the same issue


Github code on 2 & 3

"The Force" behind awesome creators

Recently had chance to watch Google I/O 2012 which is an annual Google developer conference, my inspired thoughts on them..

1. Improvements announced were simple , useful, unidirected towards their vision

• Nexsus Q - Centralised Local Controller to House-hold Objects
• Android Improvements - Platform Development kit to give more access to external hardware developers
• Google plus events - Sharing event photos with ease
• Project Glass - Capturing real world movements with 0 efforts
• Chrome efforts - to improve the web

2. Stunning explaination on stage

• Amazing confidence of presenters
• Stage seems nothing more than an sharing platform for their hardwork

Quote from the stage - "We should have Healthy disrespect to the IMPOSSIBLE"


The Force & its effects:

• Unvisible force driving them beyond towards a vision
• The force seems to be making them fearless, do amazing hard work
• Excitement to see the things reaching the users.

"The Force", Hope everyone of us gets it to make world better place :)

Readability Vs Instapaper

For some time have been looking for good Reading list product. Here are my experiences with the both.

Readability:

Pros:

•  Text View rendering is a bit simple to configure & advanced ( compared to Instapaper )
• Official Mobile App and Addons are cool
•  Amazing kindle support

Cons:

• Unavailability of lot of options in Extensions and Mobile Apps ( as Readability is relatively new service compared to Instapaper )
• Date added of articles is not available

Charge:

• Any amount ( Optional ) of which 70 % would go to ContentProviders

Instapaper:

Pros:

• Artistic Look and Feel
• Folder-wise organisation of articles
• Option to add summary to article

Cons:

• Though lot of Chrome Extensions are available, felt hard to find good some.
• Kindle support seem to need improvement

Charge:

• 1$ per Month ( Optional )

Extensions I found useful:

• Instapaper - Chrome Extension to send to Instapaper
• Chromapaper - Chrome App - provides offline support
• Instafetch - Instapaper Mobile app

My Usage : Apart from monetization differences, Instapaper can be seen as a place to organise Links compared to Readability which is more of makes Webpages readable.

Sounds Useful, lets join on Twitter or Google+

Extra links:

• Quora Thread
• HackerNews discussion Thread

(Thanks to twalling for help)