What did you learn in your 20s?

1. Don't isolate yourself. I did this mistake. I was angry to world, to people, to my life. I was sitting in my room all day. Watching movies, playing Championship Manager 03-04 etc. And then i realized that there are some people outside, who can share some interest with you, who can be with you. Never Ignore Social Skills.
2. You are alone. It means that you are responsible for all the things. There is no one except you, to help you, to motivate you. Alone.
3. Don't get fat. Please go to gym. ( I learned this very hard way. WOMEN WILL IGNORE YOU. So, start today and be fit! )
4. Add : For those "I am fit but no girlfriend" sayers, read "No More Mr. Nice Guy". Having a good product Nothing without Selling.
5. Leave the parents' house as soon as possible. Learn washing dishes, paying bills. Learn Life.
6. Travel. I did this, I am so glad now. If you don't have a big budget use Workaway and WWOOF. Workaway.info the site for free work exchange. Gap year volunteer for food and accommodation whilst travelling abroad.
7. Talk with that girl. Just go, smile and say "Hello, I am X. What about drinking coffee this weekend?". At worse, she will say "No!" and you will feel bad only 2-3 days. Better than regret.
8. About shyness. Read this : Deniz Murat's answer to Why I am so Shy?

source: http://www.quora.com/What-did-you-learn-in-your-20s

Money: Its purpose

source: http://www.ashrafiya.com/2015/04/15/money-its-purpose/


A seeker living abroad for his medical training wrote,

The travelling expenses for visiting home will be around three thousand dollars (a substantial amount for a foreign trainee in mid 1990’s). Would it be appropriate to spend so much money on myself?

Sayyidi wa sanadi Mufti Mohammad Taqi Usmani (Allah protect him) replied,

‘Assess your financial capacity (for spending). If no major necessity is affected and you do not have to draw loan then (be aware that) money is for providing happiness and comfort to one’s self and family. Moreover, making parents happy (by visiting them) is a reward-able action.’

Islahi khatoot  

Letting others be

source: http://zenhabits.net/frustrate/

Trying to change others, wanting them to be the way we want them to be, just doesn’t work. The alternative, though, is unthinkable to most of us: to just let others be however they want to be. Even when that annoys you.

Here’s the way of being that I’m trying to cultivate:

To remind myself that I don’t control others.
To remind myself that other people can live their lives however they want.
To see the good in them.
To let go of an ideal that I have that’s causing the frustration.
To see that when others are being difficult, they are having a hard time coping. And to empathize with this.
To remember when I’ve had a hard time, when I struggled with change, when I’ve been frustrated.
To do what I can to help them: to be of service, to listen, to make them feel heard, to make them feel accepted.

Voices in your head

Here’s the key: Be strategic and intentional about who (the author was talking about the voices in our head, Joey, the one that's too hard on us, and Vicky, that's emphatic and reassuring) you listen to, especially if the voices are inside your head. Those can be the sneakiest. It’s pretty easy to call Joey a jerk and ignore him; it’s much harder to dismiss the voice in your head because, well, it’s you.

Try this tactic: when you hear the voices, give them names and personalities. Imagine a Joey on one side, a Vicky on the other.

The summary. Hear the voice which helps you Improve. Not the one which makes you feel comfortable. Be it the comfort of misery, or the comfort of reassurance.

source: https://hbr.org/2015/04/managing-the-critical-voices-inside-your-head

Things to Invest time in

source: http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-highest-leverage-activities-that-are-best-for-ensuring-that-you-have-a-good-life/answer/Visakan-Veerasamy

TL;DR:
1: Reading
2: Exercise
3: Investing in Relationships
4: Sleep
5: Mindfulness/Conversation

Time Management

source: Quote of Marius Ursache's answer to What are the best day-to-day time-saving hacks? on Quora

I've been testing and adjusting various productivity techniques for the past five years, read lots of books (most of them repeating) and here's some of my findings:

It's not about time. It's about energy.

We try to squeeze as many hours in one work day, to be "productive", but in the end everything depends less on time, and more on your focus, motivation and overall well-being (all of them linked directly with energy levels).

I've recently talked about my productivity techniques obsessions in an internal presentation at Grapefruit, and the resulting presentation is on Slideshare:
Productivity porn

Some of the key findings:

1. Decide what's important because in 5 years, 80% of what you do today will not turn into anything. It's just busywork, no useful outcome.
2. Sleep, food and exercise can help you triple your outcome, because they increase focus, motivation and energy levels.
3. The 2-minute rule: if you can do something (like replying to an email, or a house chore) in 2 minutes, do it now. Planning it for later, remembering it, doing it in the future will take 5 minutes or more.
4. The 5-minute rule: the biggest cure against procrastination is to set your goal not to finish a scary big hairy task, but to just work 5 minutes on it. You'll find out that most times it continues well beyond the 5 minutes, as you enter a flow state.
5. Seinfeld's productivity chain: if you want to be good at something, do it every day. Including on Christmas, Easter and Judgement Day. No exceptions.
6. Tiny habits (Tiny Habits w/ Dr. BJ Fogg), highly linked with the 5-minute rule, helps you create good habits quickly. It works, I tested it.
7. Your memory sucks. Get everything out of your head, even if you're a genius. Write it down in a notebook, put it in your todo-list app, on your phone, talk to Siri, I don't care.
8. As few tools as possible. I've tested most of the todo managers and finally stayed with Cultured Code's Things app and Google Calendar (iCal is ok, but Google Calendar integrates well with Gmail, my default client). It doesn't matter what you use (pen & paper are fine) if you understand the next rule.
9. Routine beats tools. You need discipline, and this means for me two things: I plan my day first thing in the morning, and I write a short daily log every day. This helps me stay sane, prioritize well, scrap useless tasks, and do what matters. This saves me hours.
10. Pomodoros. That's timeboxing—for 30 minutes do only the task at hand. Nothing else: no phones, email, talking to people, Facebook, running out of the building in case of fire. Nothing else.
11. Always wear your headphones. You don't have to listen to music, but it will discourage people to approach you.
12. Email scheduling and inbox zero. Don't read your email first thing in the day, don't read it in the evening (it ruined many evenings for me), and try to do it only 3 times a day: at 11am, 2pm and 5pm. And your email inbox is not a todo list. Clear it: every message should be an actionable task (link it from the todo app), a reference document (send to Evernote or archive), or should be deleted now.
13. Same thing for phone calls. Don't be always available. I always keep my phone on silent, and return calls in batches.
14. Batch small tasks. Like mail, phones, Facebook etc.
15. MI3. Most important three tasks (or the alternative 1 must - 3 should - 5 could). Start with the most important first thing in the morning.
16. Willpower is limited. Don't think that willpower will help you when you get in trouble. Make important decisions in the morning and automate everything possible (delegate, batch etc.). US presidents don't have to choose their menu or suit color everyday—otherwise their willpower will be depleted at that late hour when they should push (or not push) the red button).
17. The most powerful thing. Always ask yourself what is the most powerful thing you can do right now. Then apply rule #4.
18. Ship often. Don't polish it too much—as they say in the startup world, "if you're not ashamed of your product, you've launched too late'!
19. Pressure can do wonders. Use rewards or social commitment. We've recently done this with the new Grapefruit website. The previous one took 2.5 years to launch. The new one took 2.5 days and we did it over one hackathon weekend (+Monday).
20. Scheduled procrastination. Your brain needs some rest, and sometimes that new episode from Arrow can do wonders that the smartest TED talk won't.
21. Delete. Say No. Ignore. Don't commit to schedules. I love the last one, it's from Marc Andreessen, because it allows him to meet whomever he wants on the spot. A lot of people will hate you for this, but you'll have time to do relevant stuff. Do you think you'll regret that in 20 years, or doing something for someone you don't really care about, just to be superficially appreciated.
22. Fake incompetence. It's a diplomatic way to apply the previous rule.

That's it for now. My procrastination break is over, I'm going back to work.

Raabta

Never think that you have angered or annoyed the shaykh by telling him your spiritual condition and faults, or that you have lowered yourself in his eyes. You have only raised your status in this faqīr’s
heart by being open and truthful. It may be that the devil (shaytān) tries to delude you into only writing good points about yourself from now on, but know that this would be fatal for your spiritual progress. I am hopeful that you will not be a hypocrite to yourself in this matter. There is no better judge in this world than one’s own conscience. I am hopeful that you will keep me informed of your condition from time to time. It is foolish to conceal one’s illness from one’s doctor.

source: http://www.tasawwuf.org/writings/wisdom_seeker/

© 2001 - 2010 Tasawwuf.org.  This material may be used for non-commercial use, provided it is unaltered and this copyright information and a link to our home page is included.

How to keep yourself motivated

This article is was originally found here:
http://www.theeffectiveengineer.com/blog/frame-your-goal-to-increase-motivation


In 2009, Dr. Heidi Grant Halvorson made a surprising discovery in the science of motivation. She conducted a series of studies where she asked participants to solve a set of puzzles and problems. In one group — the “be-good” group — participants were told that their score reflected their “conceptual and analytical abilities.” They should try to solve as many problems as possible and aim for a high score to demonstrate how good they were. In another group — the “get-better” group — participants were told that each problem was a “training tool” and that they ought to “take advantage of this valuable learning opportunity” to improve their problem-solving skills. [1]

For some participants in each group, Halvorson also increased the difficulty level by introducing a few challenges. She interrupted participants to use up some of their allotted time. She threw in extra, unsolvable problems to frustrate them, without telling participants that the problems were unsolvable.

What surprised Halvorson was how the two groups dealt with the challenges. The ones in the “get-better” group remained unfazed and solved as many as problems in the challenging conditions as the easy ones. They stayed motivated and kept trying to learn. The ones in the “be-good” group, however, were so demoralized when they faced the challenges and obstacles that they solved substantially fewer problems than those who didn’t have to face them.

And those differences happened just because of how the initial goal was framed.

Define Mastery Goals, Not Performance Ones, For Difficult Problems

Halvorson’s experiments illustrate the difference between a mastery goal, where you aim to learn and get better at some skill, and a performance goal, where you aim to be good, either to demonstrate you’re talented or to outperform other people.

Your objective for a given problem can often be framed in either way:

Are you studying for tests to learn and to grow or to demonstrate your intelligence?
Are you spending years on a PhD to innovate in your research area or to because you think it’ll be a good stepping stone for your career?
Are you training for a 10K race to improve your own time or to beat the competition?
Are you working on side projects and brushing up your coding skills to become a better software engineer or to simply get a better-paying job?

The actions you perform to accomplish a mastery goal or a performance goal might be the same, but your motivation and your mindset will be quite different. When you’re focused on improving your own skills, rather than on demonstrating them, you’re less likely to get discouraged by obstacles, time pressure, or other unexpected challenges. You’ll believe that you can still improve and do better next time. You’ll have a growth mindset.

That’s not to say performance goals don’t have their place. Professor Dan Ariely conducted a series of experiments at MIT, the University of Chicago, and in rural Madurai, India. Subjects were asked to participate in a number of games and offered either a small, moderate, or large financial incentive for performing well on each particular game — a clear example of performance goals in action. For memory games, creativity games, or motor skill games, those offered a large financial incentive actually performed worse than those offered smaller ones. The only task where participants actually performed better when offered a large financial incentive was when they were performing the mechanical task of alternating keypresses on a keyboard as quickly as possible. [2]

Daniel Pink reinforces this idea in his book Drive, explaining that when there is a clear goal and when the problem can be solved by brute force, performance-based goals — especially those incentivized by a reward — work extremely well. It’s when the problems require some ingenuity or some mental effort, that performance-based goals and rewards start to backfire and reduce performance. [3]

Making This Research Useful

Set the right type of goal for the task at hand to get better results.

You’re better off setting a performance goal when you can brute force through the problem, particularly if there’s a reward at stake. For example, performance goals work well if you’re:

Triaging through a long bug or feature list.
Responding to a long backlog of personal emails or customer support emails.
Finishing a laundry list of chores around the apartment.
Mechanically grinding through any number of mindless tasks.

It can be helpful for each of these short-term tasks, where there isn’t much opportunity to master a new skill, to instead tie a reward to the completion of the task. If you get everything done, then you’ll treat yourself (or your team) to something nice. The performance incentive can help you get things done faster.

But for our long-term goals, we’ll stay much more motivated in the long run if we adopt a mindset where we’re aiming to master our skills rather than to hit a performance goal. For example,

Rather than focusing on getting promoted to a staff engineering position at your company, focus on improving your engineering skills and your ability to create meaningful impact.
Rather than training to win at some sport — whether it’s running, a tennis match, ultimate frisbee, etc. — train to become a better player or athlete.
Rather than joining at a startup to get rich, join because you’re passionate about the problem space and excited to learn from the journey.

You’ll notice that long-term goals framed in terms of performance tend to rely on external factors outside of your control (whether your manager promotes you, whether you’re better than your opponent, or whether your startup succeeds). When you let environmental circumstances play such a large role in your success, it’s much harder to stay motivated when you encounter obstacles, just like the puzzle-solving participants in Halvorson’s experiments. If you instead focus on your own learning and on getting better, you’re much more likely to overcome pain points and actually succeed.

Notes:
Heidi Grant Halvorson, Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals, p64-68.
Dan Ariely, et. al., “Large Stakes and Big Mistakes”, https://www.bostonfed.org/econom....
Daniel Pink, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, p60.

Paralysis by Analysis

source: https://hbr.org/2013/11/stop-worrying-about-making-the-right-decision/

So while I support using available data to rank our options in some rough sense, ultimately we’re best served by avoiding paralysis-by-analysis and moving foward by:

1. Paying close attention to the feelings and emotions that accompany the decision we’re facing,
2. Assessing how motivated we are to work toward the success of any given option, and
3. Recognizing that no matter what option we choose, our efforts to support its success will be more important than the initial guesswork that led to our choice.

Give it some time and you’ll be amazed at how “I must respond!” will transform into “Eh, who cares?”

source: http://www.artofmanliness.com/2011/07/13/being-a-gentleman-in-the-age-of-the-internet-6-ways-to-bring-civility-online/

How to respond to rudeness

Read Quote of Marcus Geduld's answer to When you have a tattoo/tattoos and someone asks, "Don't you respect yourself?", how do you respond to it? on Quora

On my fifth trip to France I limited myself to the words and phrases that people actually use. From the dog owners I learned “Lie down.” “Shut up,” and “Who shit on this carpet?” The couple across the road taught me to ask questions correctly, and the grocer taught me to count. Things began to come together, and I went from speaking like an evil baby to speaking like a hillbilly. “Is thems the thoughts of cows?” I’d ask the butcher, pointing to the calves’ brains displayed in the front window. “I want me some lamb chop with handles on ’em.”

— David Sedaris. Me Talk Pretty One Day

Marcus on Writing

Some tips on writing from here


Write with your audience in your mind. Feel free to go as far as to imagine you're writing personally to one person. That person is your average-audience-person.

'One of the writer's main jobs is managing cognitive overload. If a reader has to keep more than three or four things in his head at once—or feels like he might have to—he's likely to shut down. Big walls of text often zonk readers before they even start reading. Really long paragraphs simply look daunting.'


You can use plot, characters or sensuality to entice the reader to carry one. Use verbs that entice imagery, that kind that you want your reader to feel while he/she's reading.

Another thing to keep in mind that humans think in terms of agents i.e. doers. So mention the agents where ever possible. In fact, tell a story, with a character. Humans like if there's a plot, more if there's a character, even more if the character is relatable. 

That Look!

She looked at me in rather a rummy way. It was a nasty look. It made me feel as if I were something the dog had brought in and intended to bury time.

— P.G.Wodehouse. My Man Jeeves.1919.

Remember, misery is comfortable. It's why so many people prefer it. Happiness takes effort.

Read more: http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-harsh-truths-that-will-make-you-better-person_p2/#ixzz2nsK5enza

Post Wake-up Ritual

I often spend time on Quora. And this is my favorite blog there http://thecuckoosnest.quora.com/ But this post isn't about that, it's about this bit I liked, and am sharing it here:

Read Quote of The 7 Bulletproof Secrets to Jump Out of Bed When the Alarm Clock Goes Off on Quora

Sunna prior to Fajr salah

 http://www.ashrafiya.com/2013/10/30/sunna-prior-to-fajr-salah/

In the discussion about offering the two rakah Sunna salah prior to Fajr once iqamah has been called, sayyidi wa sanadi Mufti Mohammad Taqi Usmani (Allah preserve him) said,

‘The authentic saying of Imam Abu Hanifa (Allah have mercy on him) and dhahir al rewaya is also that with two criteria being fulfilled it is permissible to offer this salah. Firstly, it is expected that one complete rakah (of the fardh salat al fajr) will be attainable. Secondly, that they must be offered out side the mosque.

Imam Mohammad (Allah have mercy on him) said that even if not one complete rakah only the last sitting (qaida al akhira) is expected to be attainable than also it is permissible to offer these Sunna .

Imam Mohammad (Allah have mercy on him) added further to the first criteria but not to the second one (that is to offer it outside the mosque).

Imam Tahawi (Allah have mercy on him) added to the second criteria. He said offering them outside mosque it is permissible, however, inside the mosque is also permissible provided it is far away from the rows of the congregational salah and in an isolated spot.

From all this discussion it is clear that the prevalent practice of offering this salahimmediately behind the congregation or few rows away is not permissible according to any of the madhahib.

The predominant (viewpoint) is to follow the original way (madhab) of Imam Abu Hanifa (Allah have mercy on him). The Hanafi researches have given preference to this.  However, Allama Shami (Ibne Abideen) keeping in consideration the feeble Muslims has given fatwa according to Imam Tahawi (Allah have mercy on them).

Whereas, our Hanafi researchers, that include respected (Shaikh Anwar) Shah (Kashmiri, Allah have mercy on him) do not agree. They stick to the original madhab of Imam Abu Hanifa (Allah have mercy on him). That is, one rakat is expected to be attainable and it is offered outside the mosque.

Another issue to be acknowledged is that the permissibility Imam Tahawi (Allah have mercy on him) gave for offering this salah in mosque was during an era when loud speaker were nonexistent and there was no clash between the recitation of the Imam and one offering hissalah in an isolated corner. Nowadays when the recitation in (congregational) salah is being relayed on the loud speaker I have doubts about the permissibility of offering this (Sunna)salah in mosque. This is because there is clash of recitation in this situations. It is, therefore, best to offer it outside the mosque.’

Im’anul Bari, volume 3, page 416-7

Masajid

source: http://umeraahmed.weebly.com/hum-nay-masjid-kay-meenar-ka-karna-kiya-hai.html

Abyss

I am a Very talkative person by nature. As proved by the needlessness of stating what I just did in the former statement. So, to fill that need of talking, I have this blog, I have friends, and I facebook, and sometimes participate in forums. And in this one forum, someone asked, 'What's your favorite Quotation?' and I posted this:

“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.”

— Fredrick Nietzsche

As I has posted this one, I decided I would this another one on that blog as well. This one is by the same author, and it goes like this:

When you stare in the abyss long enough, the abyss stares back at you.

I have to confess, I can Never say I quite understand what it means, but the idea I get from it, fascinates me. Also, what fascinate me the ideas other people get from it when I ask them about it.

I see the 'abyss' as 'something incomprehensible, seemingly infinite, and obscured', and I see the 'staring long enough' as 'focusing' and I see the 'staring back' as 'revealing itself'. You know, how Iqbal also says, Aflaak se aata hai nalon ka jawad aakhir, Kartay hain khitab aakhir, uthtay hain hijab aakhir...

What is your favorite quotation? And what do you think about the ones I have shared here, especially Iqbal's?

Quora

These are some of my most favorite Quora questions. I am posting them here to have a record of them, because Quora doesn't let you bookmark a question. It lets you follow it, but that way you get a ridiculous number of notifications. We don't want that. So here it is.

You might also like that. If you want to know which of the answers I liked best, look for my votes (is it possible to look for my votes? meh...)

They're from different themes and genres, but I am dumping them all here. Will organize them if they grow too many. Sharing on facebook is an option, but having them in one place is a better one!

Note: This posts will mutate over time.

http://www.quora.com/What-is-it-like-to-be-incredibly-funny
The first answer here, I exactly feel the same. And I am not even considered funny by many. But I feel that way.

http://www.quora.com/Programming-Languages/In-laymans-terms-what-are-the-major-programming-languages-and-what-are-they-used-for
The one with the most votes!

http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-best-stories-about-people-randomly-meeting-Steve-Jobs
All answers are nice. That's how I felt with Ariz Zaman all the time :)

http://www.quora.com/PhD-Careers/If-a-PhD-doesnt-go-into-research-or-industry-in-his-or-her-chosen-field-or-specialty-what-is-he-or-she-actually-more-qualified-than-college-graduates-to-do