Self help is..

So we have completed the first half of the year 2012, and have just reached the second half of it. Mid-year resolutions anyone? I am not much into the new year resolutions. Except for the resolutions I made in the year 2004 and 2010, no new year resolution went as I planned. But I rather prefer resolutions to be made on a random day!

Spending time effectively with computer has always been in the top among my resolutions. 

1) Contributing more to the open source, during free time.

This will mostly be open source development, but also will include blogging, community interaction, and evangelization. I will surely be more aggressive with this.

If you are into software development, open source projects give you a second life. I would encourage you to contribute. Blogging or creating a positive online presence would suit for everyone. One can be completely or partially anonymous online, will contributing positively to the world knowledge.

2) Spending time effectively online.

I am fine with reading new stuff which are totally unrelated, or listening to some music of an artist that I didn't heard of, before. However, my focus is to limit wasting time idling.

3) Learning something new.

I recently started learning Chinese from the Internet. Guess that was a failed attempt. Why? I didn't have a proper reason to back my motivation to learn Chinese up. I will focus to learn Portuguese instead. Anyway with my failed attempt to learn Chinese, I still have learned a few interesting facts of Chinese.

"Chinese doesn't have a gender or a number. The verbs are unchageable with all subjects and all tenses." - easycoursesportal.com/Chinese/Curso/…
— Pradeeban (@pradeeban) June 24, 2012

4) No L4 activities for any reason

As discussed by Stephen Covey, the L4 activities are the tasks that are neither important nor urgent. Spending time on them is a waste of time. Let's use the time for some L2 activities instead (not urgent, but important tasks)!

Facing the problem and trying to solve it instead of finding distractions to run away from it might be the ideal solution for this. If that is something difficult to achieve, and if there is a real need to keep you distracted from the issue, I recommend getting involved in other healthy activities instead. When we get even a mild fever, we seek the assistance of medicine and the doctors. We always tend to underestimate the health of the mind. We always take leaves for physical illness, whilst silently ignoring the wounds of the heart. If you ask me, taking a leave for being depressed is perfectly fine. As I might have mentioned somewhere before too, it is an ill-condition of the mind. Mental health is equally or even more important than that of physical.

5) Mixing the stuff up!

I often have felt sorry for the people who do routine tasks as jobs, which doesn't involve creative thinking or some change from a predefined agenda. Though this relates to the clerical jobs, call centers, or the jobs where bulk of employees are considered a cheap labour carrying forward the order of a big-guy. In late years with the rise of IT, many concerns were risen considering the fact that programmers are considered the same. Human nature is to avoid repetition of uninteresting tasks, with the exception of something that is addictive. An addict may find something interesting, which may not be for others. Someone often gets addicted to something, when he wants to be distracted from his mainstream life. The addiction can be the excessive use of alcohol, drugs, porn, or whatever. Addiction provides a short-term relief from the pain and the pressure of the real life (let's call it the first life). It leads to a feeling of guilty, inefficiency, and low self esteem. This vicious cycle continues. However, mild-addictions such as addiction to music or movies may not be harmful at all. 

A random improvement or attending to a random L2 event is always fun.

6) Listening to myself

I am going to be a good listener of myself. :D