What is common between Barack Obama, Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs ?

All three of them wear/wore basically the same thing every day: Obama a blue or gray suit, Zuckerberg a gray T-shirt and Jobs his signature turtle neck tee and Blue Jeans.

What is common between them?
What is common between them?

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What we can learn from Indian Railways

On the 16th of April 2016, the Indian Railways completed 163 years of service. I happened to see this accolade in Thane Railway station on a banner. Thane was the destination for the first ever railway train to run in India. From a rather small scale service running 30km from Mumbai (Bombay during those days) to Thane using a steam locomotive and 4 coaches, the Indian Railways has since evolved to become the biggest, busiest and the most used railway service in the world. What can we learn from the mega success story of the Indian Railways?

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Choosing your heroes

What does the term hero mean to me? For me, it represents a person I want to emulate. It is a person whose attributes I want to make a part of my life. It is a person whose life I want to study and learn lessons from, so that when I face a situation that he/she faced, I have an idea and an inspiration about what to do. There is generally an entire tribe of heroes that you follow as they inspire you at different ages, situations and fields. And since stories of heroes can directly affect your decisions in life, it is very important to choose your heroes based on who you want to be and the identity that you want to carve out for yourself.

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Temptation bundling: Something I learnt while we were cooking

We all have preferences in life. For me, cooking did not make the list. Since eating healthy homemade food every day is a choice my husband Hari and I have made, cooking is a  mandatory activity that needs to be done multiple times every day. While my culinary skills haven’t grown leaps and bounds, we have learnt a lot during the process of cooking, almost always outside the realm of food.

This simple activity has made our cooking enjoyable, driving pleasant and workouts fun. It gave us a lot of food for thought while we were cooking for our stomachs, and made us a little bit better every day in numerous ways.

Wondering our little hack is? Read on to know.

Temptataion Bundling
While we were Cooking !!

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How a calendar trumps a to-do list to boost productivity

Ask yourself the question, “What activities do I want to complete today?”. You will most likely whip out a pen and paper to start listing all the things you want to get done today.

Hmm, so should I write the blog post for this week? What about my bathroom with its white tiles no longer looking white? Oh, I am out of sugar and unless I buy it, I cannot have tea with sugar this evening. That reminds me, I am out of milk too. I have to get it if I want to avoid having last-minute black tea. Okay, so in summary, I must write the blog post, clean the bathroom and buy milk and sugar. Okay, my to-do list is nicely mapped with a list of things I want to achieve today. Good job! Okay, let’s check Facebook now for just 10 minutes. Then I will get to my to-do list.

Soon, I realise that my Facebook checking has gone on for a couple of hours, followed by a link in one of the posts which took me on an endless spiral of hyperlink-chasing until…… tea time!!! Oops, I want tea and I don’t have sugar and milk. Goddammit, not bitter black tea again!!! I knew it… I need something better than just a to-do list to keep me focused!

There is something better. A calendar.

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I learnt about: Cooling off in summer without an air-conditioner

Summer is taking its toll here in Mumbai and all over India. Sultry nights are keeping people awake and the flow from the ceiling fan is never enough to cool down the ambient temperature. If at all, the fan seems to circulate a warm flow at the peak of summer. I, for one, found my bed too warm to sleep on. Everyone was turning their attention towards keeping cool and investing a lot on air-conditioners, coolers and the like. But I and Priya, my wife, found a better and a less expensive way to keep our home cool this summer.

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