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I am going to talk about the little bit of Christmas walk I did today. No, It's not in the heart of London. No, it's not done under the glistening light decorations and Christmas trees. It was an ordinary walk. It has been a wonderful Christmas. I had 48 hours at work. And I did not know public transport was not available, on my side! And I decided to walk. Walk all the way the 8-mile home, that I routinely travel on bus, to feel what I haven't felt, on the fast-moving bus. Time was on my side, So, I did not mind. Occasionally stopping to write about a tree. A gloomy day. Typical English weather. I'm walking the 8mile back home. (Literally) In company with the mind of my own Silence and peace are my best friends. When the trees cry still on loss of them. It's the winter I have to face. They left me such a disgrace. I kept my hopes up this time. Trust is broken yet I'm fine. (The Oak told me) Maybe another spring will come. Oak is strong proud a legend on its own. We sang a song since spring, through summer into autumn A song of color green to brown Our deed is done its time to rest on the ground. (Leaves told me- don't tell him) Will climb back in next spring. The dead Fox The first thing I saw this morning, noticeable was a dead fox. on the road. Still fresh but dead as a fox. Unfortunately, I did not have courage to photograph a dead fox. Your father will come home, don't cry dear darlings. A rat or a mouse or a hare will he bring this morning. I know it's cold, and you are hungry, hold on hoping. Its Christmas, God is kind to everyone, I don't know why, I feel a little chilling, a shivering. (Mother fox told her children) Eight Miles. Eight miles I am travelling every day. How boring it could be to travel on a bus? A tree with A cancer. I saw this giant with a cancer, on its trunk, He was fine in his prime maybe Maybe it was all benign. Though the capture is dark, You will find its bark expanded, with the bulge In his tummy The final bit I took through the park. Captured the dead giant just at the exit. More like what remained of the service He has done to the society still stood Taller than me. Thank you for reading A Christmas walk- 8 mile.

Have you seen a magic show? Maybe you have watched the latest Talent show, where magicians play their tricks, maybe you have been to a show in real atmosphere in real smell and feel. Essentially, they illude us Infront of hundreds of others, and both of us know we are fooled. Magicians when they bring out things, disappear things and change things in front of us, they often use the trick of distraction. How do they distract us? No, it's not by making us look at the celling until he changes his hands, they do this by making us focus on the things that he wants us to focus. Then with speed complete his trick! Ta da... These days there are a lot of YouTube videos which will teach us how to do magic. Look at a few and you will be able to do your own tricks. However, I suggest before you, your mind, the greatest magician of all knew this all along. He focuses our attention while the life plays tricks on us. Magicians trick us by focusing our attention on things he wants. I will give an example how our mind tricks us and do the same. Imagine you are building a house. Whenever you talk, with someone, whenever you walk on the road, you will notice houses. Whenever you look at the news, you will hear and remember things about houses. Which were there all those years, now only you are seeing them. As it is only relevant now. Mind influences what we see. As different people want different things, looking at the same house things they notice are different. Some will see the plants, some will notice the walls, some will notice the art on the walls, some will see the kitchen, or the television. But nobody can see it all. Too much information. It has to be selective and relevant. Maybe a defense mechanism of mind for information overloading. Do you know who else use this phenomenon? Our Social media algorithms. They monitor us, using our past choices, guess what we want, and present it to us, uniquely individually adjusted material, so we are hooked. So, what is the advantage of knowing this? Think about it, our mind fools us daily, in front of our own eyes, by selectively showing us only what we want, shaped by our will. So, the truth, if it is there is always hidden from us, and we applaud to the magician. Maybe it won't help you today to build your house. But there is a big difference, between knowing you are fooled and not knowing, when we applaud to the magicians' tricks. Thank you for reading A magician's trick - focused attention as a distraction - mindfulness. You may also like to read: Train of thoughts and of silence The science of nature ( Poem)

Have you ever thought about this? Who is the greatest teacher of them all? I will give you a quick answer and elaborate more on the topic. The greatest teacher of them all is the one who teaches you how to fish for yourself, not the ones who fish for you. Greatest teacher of them all is the one who teaches you the skills of learning it for yourself, not the one who gives you the knowledge. Imagine you are a student, what is the most important skill you should have? Doing mathematics, learning science theorems, or is it history? It is how to learn it for ourselves. Imagine if you know how to self-learn, that you have mastered the skill of self-learning. It has the potential to make you not only excellent in your own studies but help you to carry you through a lifelong journey. In modern days adult learning is all about self-learning. How often we have heard dropouts from universities and colleges doing great things with their lives. The secret is they have mastered the self-learning, easy way or hard way. Nowadays when information is at our fingertips, we only need a strategy and motivation to build our path into the future. Even motivation and habits can be learned. From time to time in my blog, I have and will be giving you tips to build yourself to a self-sustainable learner. I have done it in the past, whenever someone wants me to teach something, I tend to teach them how I learned it myself in the first place. Over the years my strategies have changed, and I am still learning. Maybe you are also. It seems there is no one universal answer. Following list will get enlarged over time when I add more strategies I have used in the past. These are introductions. As I have mentioned, I assume you are a lifelong learner and do your own part of learning them by yourself. Blooms taxonomy - pyramids or mighty pyramids Collections composition and encapsulation - programming for life Pomodoro and growing trees, how to hack smartphones for studying. Focused and Diffuse modes of thinking in studying But the constant thirst for improvement have led me into places I have never thought of going. When I see why sometimes strategies do not work, after some time they lose their charm and the mind seem to be dropping back into some dips of the life. Which is natural and it is because all those equations and strategies forget we are just humans (fundamental problem in scientific method). We are not machines where we can program ourselves into be successful each and every time. This problem, until we understand we will be living in an illusion. One of my teachers told me what it really means, Metacognition. Metacognition by definition means an awareness of one's thought processes and an understanding of the patterns behind them. If you want to read beyond just learning and truths about your own life. Following are good place to start reading about. carpe-diem seize the day Question is a missed opportunity to question itself Thank you for reading Who is the greatest Teacher? - Self learning metacognition.

This is successive article to the "Understanding time in a novel way" chapter in my book. If you haven't read it please follow above link, read it first and only then the following article going to make sense. First of all, I will give a short background and then explain the term time benders and next comparison made with my own previous article. Trust me I am no philosopher, I am just like you an ordinary human being, so you should be able to understand. Background As you know I have written a book about time recently (about time) and I have published one chapter introducing novel way to look at time, from the things I have learned and observed from my life. However, one of the readers pointed out to me that I should have ended up talking about time benders. So, as I did a little research on my own and following is an introduction to time benders. Time benders- French philosopher Henri Bergson (1859-1941) He describes time as having two faces. Objective time - time on faces of clocks, Calanders and timetables Subjective time- time as we experience it, live it and feel it. He argues that we feel differences in same period of objective time can be because there are differences in time to each other subjectively. (e.g.: pandemic slow down) If you read my article above, I have discussed about subjective time. But in the book, I have also discussed two ways of defining time as outward in and inward out definition. Comparison: If we look at closely at the objective time, we can see these are tools which are used to quantify the subjective time. So, we all can agree in communication, documentation, commerce and functioning. (outward in definition of time) In reality the time is only subjective. As there are each individual live in their own time zones, trying to define time inward out is not successful, rather impossible. (there is no way we can quantify our feeling - universally) Hence the definition I have given about time still holds. Time is created in mind as a side effect of comparing two events in mind, in now. You may wonder why thinking about all these. May be its just because we are curious, maybe it's because we want to know the truth about life. Let it be an answered question. If you are curious about mental objects, follow the link. Thank you for reading - time benders understanding time in a novel way.

I will trade my Success. And my Wealth To be back again on a Tree To be on a tree Listening Can you hear it? The wind... Once upon a time there was a tree, a big giant tree with an unhuggable trunk, even by ten people. The tree lived on a top of a slope few feet in height. Nobody has ever climbed that tree. It was sacred to the villagers. Yes, it was once upon a time, yes, it is a story from the past. But this is the story of the Gentle Giant I have been with for ten years of my life. The immense size of the tree, especially when you are a five- or seven-year-old is unbelievable. I cannot remember I have seen a bigger tree than that in my life, when I think back. The tree had dark leaves in its hundreds of branches, thousands and thousands of them. Wind used to play soft songs when they dance, with leaves. Especially when the wind is high and low. when I close my eyes, it still ruminates their song and their dance. Daily we go there, play there, sit there, under the shade of the gentle giant. He made tiny fruits, thousands of them. Not edible for humans but birds loved them. Hundreds of birds attracted by the seeds dwell there on their way. Occasionally we saw colorful visitors we have never seen before. In the morning we used to go there and collect feathers, different kinds of them, shed by them. It brought us smiles to find an illuminous colored one, a tressure to a child's mind. We had proud collections. There were stories the Giant tree had a cave inside of it, and in it there was a big Cobra. People have seen, it is difficult to identify truth from myth, when it is entangled. Being a child, we believed our elders, I was always careful not to step on a snake, when I go closer to the tree. The branches broke out all around the trunk few feet above the ground actually there seems to be a cavity inside. Who knows maybe the cobra is still living there protecting the giant. Once a year when it is 'Vesak' celebrations, my father and siblings we go there at night to decorate it with lanterns. Some clay lamps were lit around the tree. Cold nights, it was a ritual made by us. We stayed singing songs of devotion, until candles burn out in lanterns. Nobody asked us, to do decorate lanterns. But now when I think about it, I have nothing but gratitude for the Gentle giant. It did not move when nobody cared, it did not move when it was decorated and worshipped. A true miracle of nature. We moved from our old home to other side of the village. Bigger house, bigger problems. After few years there was a big thundering Noice came from the side of the tree and everyone from the village went to see. We followed. I saw a huge branch of the tree fallen down broken, onto the nearby rock. It was a sad sight for me. That was the only time the Giant spoke for all those years. It still brings tears to my eyes today when I write about it. That broken branch, tears part of my heart. I haven't been to see the tree for a long time, life took us away from nature. I still don't know he is still there; I wish I could hug him one more time. Thank you for reading Story of a Gentle Giant - a tree You may also like to read Are we prisoners of our minds. Christmas walk - 8 mile

Well, actually it's not true. Both are good ways to enter into a new reality. However, either is not sustainable without the other. So, the real topic should be " Mindfulness without wisdom is a blind goose. " I know you have tried mindfulness at some point in your life. I have, and still I try. We are guided by internet, and our teachers (in whatever form) that mindfulness gives us huge advantages, to calm our mind, bring out peace and happiness, and Success! So, I have tried, sitting in one place, my eyes closed, trying to focus on my breath. And my stupid mind does the exact opposite. Am I the only one having this trouble? Maybe not. When I was little, I had a friend. A good friend (of course, children do not have bad friends). One day he came to me and asked, "Can you tell me how to concentrate on work?" I asked why? what is the problem? And he replied smiling "When I try to work, I start fine, after few lines reading my mind wonders, like yesterday I noticed that about half an hour later I have been tampering the melted candle liquid, and I haven't even read a page" I cannot remember how I answered that question. Even after so many years still I have the same problem. Maybe the mindfulness maybe not the answer to all our problems. Imagin we were successful at mindfulness. Let's imagine you had a wonderful focus on breath and after hours of focus you can wake up fresh. Does your problems go away? Maybe you can find better answers with better clarity. It is important to ask why we practice mindfulness before we sit down. If you are trying to solve your problems with mindfulness, I am not doing that anymore. There are two types of mindfulness. Eyes closed mindfulness and eyes open mindfulness. Eyes closed mindfulness is an altered reality, like Meta. But it helps, in eyes open mindfulness during rest of the day if you do it properly. The idea is to gain wisdom about true nature of our minds during eyes closed mindfulness, so we are more mindful when we are eyes open. So, can you see? If you want to practice mindfulness it never stops. Except when you sleep. It's a way of life. Wisdom is the outcome of your mindfulness. But in turn it helps mindfulness itself. Wisdom can be gained by mindfulness itself or from information from teachers, friends' books or Blogs! Imagine above scenario that I have learned myself the mind is always running away from attention. Instead of fighting it, I just have to acknowledge it. It brings peace to the mind when I do. Who knows over time it may calm down and I will be able to have a good sleep during meditation :-) I have piled up pieces of wisdom which can help us along the way (you will have to dig them in this blog). I am not claiming the authorship of them. Trust me I am still in my early years. Yet, it helps me to re-read my own articles. I have no doubt it will help you too. You may also like to read- Objects of mind mental representation. Waves of the sea- waves of life- lessons Thank you for reading, Don't start with Mindfulness - start with wisdom.

It doesn't matter which field you are working in, but the problem of overthinking is something you may have come across in your field. It is a problem which has been there even in the past. Here I will give three small examples of analysis paralysis and next we will discuss applications of it. Story: Aesop's Fable - The fox and the cat Once upon a time there was a fox who was a friend with a cat. One day they met in the edge of the jungle, they were talking about hunters and dogs. The fox boasted that he knows about hundred ways of escaping from such an attack if that happens. The cat on the other hand agreed he knows only one way. That is to climb the tree. And indeed, they were attacked one such afternoon. While the cat quickly climbed a tree and safely above out of reach of hounds and hunters, the fox was paralyzed by thinking, he could not decide which way to run or hide. He was stuck in Analysis Paralysis! was hunted by hounds. Waterfall Vs Agile development In programming, above are two ways approaching a programming a complex program. In waterfall design, you plan everything from top to bottom, before starting any part the whole structure and parts were figured out, lot of design, analysis and planning. Which can lead to paralysis at some cases. Comparatively Agile development starts with a simple functioning unit and iterate over and over until it is refined with a good working part, complexity is added while development progresses. So, there is some functioning results in the early part of the process. Nervous nineties In cricket, a batsman's dream is to get a century. When they are in their nineties batsmen can often become very nervous and can become very paralyzed in their decision making which can give a chance to opposition to get you Out! This can be seen in any other sport when high demand can lead to unusual nervous decision making. What are the uses of knowing analysis paralysis? (I have linked some of previous articles which elaborate on each) Limited choices can make you happy, if used effectively by avoiding analysis paralysis. It gives us opportunity to master something. (like the cat mastered climbing the tree) Think about it if you want to master something it is likely you have to give up on trying to grab it all. But if you are listening to the same song, there can be some problems associated with it as well. So, we have to find the sweet balance between too many choices and too little. If you find yourself paralyzed by overthinking, it may be time to start small and tackle complexity as it approaches. Again, this is compared to the top-down approach like when we tend to identify the big picture. Having known both (top down and bottom up) you will be able to choose better option for the situation. Sometimes you may be able to combine both, in problem solving. Awareness is the key. Sometimes preplanning helps. If you know you are going into problems of overthinking, it is better to preplan and make rules for yourself. (Like making a list of items you are going to buy before going into supermarket) You are avoiding the problem altogether. Thank you for reading Analysis paralysis - Overthinking problem.

Rain rain go away Come again another day.. Truth is as a kid; I really loved the rain. Only when the life started to happen the rain became a problem in life. I will dig my memories and display them here. Once again to savor the moments. I never thought I would miss the monsoon. And the puddles it generated along the way to the school. Those dark big clouds and drops size of pearls. I miss you rain.. I miss you the most. We used to live in a small one storied house with three or four rooms. Obviously, we had a roof. A roof means lot of things when it rains. At the beginning there would be big drops of rain, size of grapes! slam on the roof makes noises, then it levels down when drops are smaller. Rain combined with wind is making symphonies of their own. When the rain is heavy small holes in the roof start to bring the rain into the home, so we had to check them and confine them with buckets before it makes puddles inside the home. Suddenly gutters on roof were filled with water, and they start to flow down on the dry ground, or into the drain if there is one, creating a little waterfall of its own. Luckily, we didn't have pipes bringing all the way down to the drains. It was a bliss to see gravity in action. That was the best part! when it was water brought to our home, without any effort, and created a waterfall, it's time to have shower! We didn't have waterpipes and showers inside the home those days. We as children were very happy. But I can remember we were not allowed to shower on the first rain of the season. Those were the happiest showers anyone could have. When we were very small, we jumped into a large pot which collects water under the waterfall. But when we were getting bigger when we were not fit enough to go in the pot, we directly took the shower from the waterfall. I still can remember the cold; thud it creates on the top of my head even after decades. Yet the best part of it is we had a free run in the playground when it rains. Heavy rains created temporary pool nearby playground which becomes slippery. It will be flooded in few inches by the rain. A perfect playground to do natural water sliding. Now I think I am scared of doing that again, at least not without fear of thundering. Luckily, we didn't know about risk of it those days. And it never did happen. When we grew, schooling happened and suddenly rains became less joyful. The balance later moved into it becoming a nuisance. But it was the same rain. Same puddles which we enjoyed stepping into. Became unavoidable aftermath and burdens after rain. As stepping on them would make socks wet from shoes, which were leaky. So, the charm of the rain was painted over by troubles of life. Now when I think about it, I realize, it's the same rain, same puddles, only things which has changed is my knowledge, and views about it. What can I trade to be back there on those free feet and free mind? What do the rain mean to you? Thank you for reading Puddles of life - rain rain go away You may also like to read Near death experience in an airplane Golden hours Rush (poem)

It is a painful subject to talk about it, the pain. However, it is essential and practical to know because a life without pain is only an unrealistic dream. Here I am trying to talk about mental pain, and in its worst form. It is totally from my experience as I am not referencing any books or articles. So, there can be a subjective bias to it. Hence your comments are always welcome. What is the worst kind of pain? The worst kind of pain is when you care about someone, and you cannot share it. That is too general a statement, and I can show you it applies to variety of situations. We are a social species. We have sense of ownership and relationship to all others around us. That's why we are worried about someone else being killed in a battle in somewhere distant in the world. Even these feelings are spread across other animal species as well. However, when we feel attachment to someone and if we cannot show it to them, we feel pain. It may be very subtle or if your sense of attachment is larger, pain will be greater. And trust me it can be overwhelming in some cases. Loss of a loved one - you cannot ever meet them to show, how much you care. Relationship breakups- especially if you are still caring it can be more painful to one than the other. It may be fine if you can express it some way. But sometimes situations do not allow us to express our grief. Following analogy helps to understand. Imagine yourself diving off a ship with a cannon ball on your hand, you will start to descend so fast into the sea, as the cannon will drag you faster. What would be the outcome, inevitably after a certain depth, there will be no chance of coming back ever into the water. Only way to survive is to release the cannon first. Then hopefully you can swim back to the surface. However sadly, you are the only one who can do that as you are the one who is holding the cannon. Now I have given you the answer to how to overcome such a pain. It's not a matter of guilt. It's a matter of survival. Only way is let it go. Easier said than done when you do not know how deeply you are in love with the cannon. But wisdom will help one day if you are aware of it. Remember it, Loose the cannon, before it is too late. Because after some depth you will never make it to the top alive even if you lose it. Thank you for reading worst kind of mental pain and how to overcome it. You may also like to read Are we prisoners of our mind. What I have learned from listening to the same song.

Let us discuss immortality. To make it interesting let's imagine you are already immortal. We will go through simple scenarios to understand this. First of all, it is clear that nothing we have seen so far around us seem to last forever, everything seems to be changing at least over billions of years, although difficult to see in our eyes or during our lifetime. Even the mighty Sun and moon. If we are immortal, we will have to live through the lifetime of earth and beyond. When the earth is destroyed, we will be swung into the atmosphere. There is no need to eat, as even if we do not, we wouldn't die. There would be no need of water or oxygen to sustain the life, as immortal life is sustained by itself. We can drift in the atmosphere until eventually the sun also at the end of its life and collapse into a black hole. If the sun collapses, we will be in a complete darkness. After some billions of years in darkness we will forget we have seen light. There would be no difference of living and not living as there is no change. Both living and non-living will overlap each other if there are no conscious thoughts. It is not difficult to understand as our thoughts are always linked to the stimulations that we get, when there are no stimulations, thoughts will cease. Now, let's imagine you are not sucked into the black hole. You stay on earth doing ordinary things. Would you? There would be no need to do a job. There would be no need to create more and more immortal people (birth) as nobody is going to die. There would be no need to do anything. Even you don't have to travel. At least there is no rush. You have time. When you are immortal outcome for you is fixed. So, whatever you are going to do is not going to change the outcome for you. There would be no need to measure the time as even time would be valueless, when it is present in abundance. Really speaking there is no value in anything in such a world. As nothing is going to change your outcome. In such a world what would you do? When there is no death, there would be no need of thinking about it. So, nobody would think about it. You would no longer depend on physical laws, gravity and magnetic forces cannot have effect on you, otherwise you would not be immortal. Let's stop our thought process in here, for a while and discuss why we should discuss about immortality. You may have different ideas about immortality. Kindly let me know if you do. Yet if above is true you would understand that immortality when taken as itself reduces the boundary between life and death. Immortality is not itself aversion of death. Immortality is aversion of life as well. Immortality is not itself aversion of pain. Immortality is aversion of happiness. There is no immortality without sacrificing what we are already attached to, either pain or sadness, thoughts or silence. Thank you for reading. What will happen if I am immortal? (Immortality) - A life in a black hole. You may also like to read Story of a gentle giant - A tree A talking tree thought experiment.

In an earlier article I have shown that how we are tricked by phone apps into a continuous loop of stimulation and response cycle. They have hacked our own data to reinforce our habits. If you would like to read about it the article is listed down. However, I will give a summary of the main ideas to elaborate how we can hack this into our study programs. In summary hooked is a method used by programmers to develop a habit-forming product (app) Main steps are as following with example for each step. Cue -> notification Routine-> click on it. Reward-> new information, photos Saved value->our interactions which are saved, likes, photos, tweets etc. It is really effective. However, we can use same smartphone app to create a habit cycle for studying. As an example, there are already apps like Pomodoro (time management schedule to break 25min work with short or long breaks) and habit trackers. Although they lack last step of saving data, it can be useful for someone who is really enthusiastic. For a lazy guy like me, it loses the interest after some time. So, for my last exam I used a different app to regulate my study schedule. The app is Forest app. It is simply an app which grows a tree for duration of your pre-defined study period. (No they didn't pay me for writing this :) ) Following are the steps I used to plan my study day. My study periods are either 20min or 30min. I start growing a tree at the beginning of each session. I rotate my topics after each study period and take a short break. And I noticed the efficacy has markedly improved when I used the app. As objectively I see there is a forest growing each day, I really wanted to make a better forest than yesterday after each day. And more importantly it uses all the steps in a hooked method. And it can be used offline. Studying became a game! I noticed they even have a chrome extension. Hmm.. that should work fine. I will stop the article here and I can assure you I have tried many other fast learning tricks and habit-forming tricks in the past. (trust me I have read many self-help books) As you are I am exhausted. As we are not machines, what operates in my machine may not be best for you. So, give it a go. If you are getting results get hooked. Otherwise, feel free to let it go. Thank you for reading. Pomodoro and Growing Trees- How to hack smartphones for study. you may also like to read - Who is the greatest teacher- metacognition- self learning. Phone addiction - how we get hooked.

Reading a textbook is an essential skill anyone who is trying to master in academics should have. It may be any of the fields. Textbooks will provide a comprehensive understanding about a subject. In this article I will discuss how to use blooms taxonomy to read a textbook. However, first I will discuss fundamental differences of a textbook and a novel. And some interesting facts. Next, I will introduce you a technique not mine, but with some links. If the methods, you are using now are more productive you can skip the whole article. Also, it won't harm a little bit of experimenting. Textbooks are different from a novel from following features. But not limited. Usually, they are bigger. Covers a subject comprehensively, with technical terms diagrams examples. More difficult to read and to comprehend. Dull and boring unless you are having some kind of a disease (otherwise you are normal) Yet you know the value of reading a textbook. If you can read and understand a textbook on your own. There is no need to go to lectures ! Having said that, it is difficult. Lectures help. You will know why. Simply because repetition is the key and learning the big picture helps. Let's go to the technique. For that you need to know something about blooms taxonomy. If you don't know anything about blooms taxonomy read this article. You can skip the first part about pyramids. Following diagram is the summary of blooms taxonomy. Following is the summary of the textbook reading technique.- a chapter turn pages. read chapters headings. anything catches your eyes. turn to the end, study some questions, read summary. turn pages again, read bold prints. turn pages again, read anything you understand. Now, you can make notes re read or engage in whatever way you like. You can combine this with time management with forest-app. More articles about study techniques found here. Remember, reading a textbook is like marriage. Once you are committed, you will have a relationship with it. Like in a good relationship, way to make it work is by keep reading it again and again. You will become wiser by the day. So, don't forget to touch it daily. Thank you for reading, how to read a textbook- blooms taxonomy in action.