On Taking a Bank Loan

Are you not getting a lot of phone calls from almost every Bank out there offering you different sort of loans? Have you ever thought why?

You think taking a Bank Loan is an opportunity for you but in reality, opposite is true.

You’re an opportunity to the Bank offering you the loan. It’s their business, baby!

Every day, you’ve invested in yourself and made some choices. Your choices are reflected in the Bank accounts you have or the credit cards you use. You’re the product of your choices, active or passive.

Does the Bank offering you the loan deserve that product?

When you take the loan from a Bank, you don’t get money as gift. You commit to pay them more money eventually than you have bought. In installments with compound interest applied, isn’t it?

It’s easy to feel happy when you get a loan. But it is wiser to understand that when you take a loan, you commit an important part of your life in doing things that you may or may not like to do, just to repay the loan.

Now this applies to you only if you intend to pay the loan back icon smile On Taking a Bank Loan .

Don’t get me wrong. Taking a Bank Loan can actually be good; especially when you have a definite goal that you want to achieve by doing whatever it takes. Regardless whether you like the means.

Weekend Trip to Diu

Why do people from Gujarat often love to visit Diu?

So they can enjoy the hard drinks that they officially cannot in the dry state, right?

Wrong.

That’s not the only reason.

People go to Diu to find a beautiful blend of sea, sand and sun with an interesting history. Now a Union Territory, separated from Goa in 1987, it was a Portuguese colony until 1961. Find more info here.

Last week, three friends and I went for a weekend trip to Diu to spend some quality time together.

Three of them came directly from Rajkot. I reached directly from Ahmedabad. We reached early morning. Our booking at Sugati Beach Resort was already taken care by a friend who runs a travel agency.

I visited Diu after 6 years. Earlier, when I used to serve domestic clients, I used to visit Diu every now and then. I must have visited Diu for about 30 times during 2003 to 2007.

When I hear the word “Diu”, I always see images of good hearted, loving people who are always ready to help you selflessly.

We spend some good time together. Sugati Beach Resort was good as it offers a kind of private beach, which is not crowded by people as Nagoa Beach that most people visit because of its popularity.

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Our weekend was filled with witnessing the sunrise besides the Arabian Sea and capturing its different shades, having good breakfast and lunch at the hotel, spending quality time with friends and visiting nearby places, taking some snacks, drinking chilled beers in hot weather and sitting on the cold sand of Ghoghla beach in moonlight.

During the past year, my camera has missed me a lot. Less number of trips, other priorities, new changes and challenges…there are many things that are causing me to keep not so close with it.

So playing with camera also felt like an event!

“You realize the importance of someone when they are not accessible to you as they were; otherwise it is routine,” My camera said to me.

When I was returning back, it left me thinking:

My camera was same; I was the same but the experiences were different.

Most of the time we react to what happens to us and just “feel” what is obvious according to our default ‘act’.

The other way, apparently the difficult one, is to first feel what we want to and then turn the situations around.

Something for me to get better at…

Satirical Illustrations by Pawel Kuczynski

Such as:

satirical art pawel kuczynski 3 Satirical Illustrations by Pawel Kuczynski

and more here.

 

Scrap That Beautiful Design

Got an email from a friend that took me to visit his web site. Got surprised to see the same old site that was developed in 2005.

That site was pretty beautiful but the design was outdated.

Eight years and no change. It was not responsive. Not looking good in iPad and mobile devices. Some text content was written as images.

Its user experience was less than average at its best.

So, I couldn’t resist calling him.

“I can’t change that design!” He objected

He said it was a great design. It was. He said he personally invested several months to develop it. He did. But in 2013 his visitors would certainly not be happy about it.

After me persuading him for half an hour he agreed to “think” about it as finally he got convinced what my point was.

Business that doesn’t care about their client’s need doesn’t work well over the long run. Website is just an example but it is suggestive of a mindset.

In today’s world, people use smartphones, tablets and laptops with ratina display. Presenting them same old 800 px x 600 px resolution website that is not responsive and not mobile friendly is worse than not having a website.

If you can’t make it useful for people who will use it, it doesn’t matter how beautiful the design is, it has got to go.

Stop Calling Yourself an Innovative Company

Do you call your company an innovative company?

Like most companies, you too want to claim to be innovative, isn’t it?

The truth is: most companies are, well, not at all innovative.

And, that’s okay.

If you develop an average product or provide an average service consistently, chances are, you will make good profits. Those profits might be in millions and still you may not be an innovative company.

If you really are, don’t say it. Let people take a note of it. Prove it with the output you produce.

Best kind of innovation is: when people make a note of it because it is VISIBLE to them. That’s why perhaps it is said, ”Your Work Speaks Louder Than Your Words!”

So, ask yourself this: Will calling yourself an innovative company address that problem or you need to go back to the whiteboard?

And, going back to the whiteboard is also okay icon smile Stop Calling Yourself an Innovative Company .

Stop calling yourself an innovative company, be it. [Click to Tweet]

When you keep insanely high expectations

…then most results are poor results. That’s because results are real, not aspirations, and the results can’t possibly be as beautiful as the aspiration was.

The problem with keeping insanely unrealistic expectation is this: it is inevitably disappointing, more often than not, given any results that you produce.

Does this mean that you should not work hard, distort the reality and create something that doesn’t exist?

Certainly you should but don’t get disappointed when things don’t work as expected the first time.

Wiser is to keep the intensity of the fire in your belly much higher than effect of disappointment on you.

…or else what’s the point of keeping insanely higher expectations?

On More: Knowledge…Analysis…Options…Regrets Too!

The more knowledge, more analysis, the more analysis, more options, the more options, difficult it is to make a decision.

When you operate an iPhone, there is only one option. Only one button. Pretty easy choice for everyone.

When you operate any other smartphone, options are many.

When running a business, at any given point of time, of course there are many options. It is almost never binary…It may be 0, 1 or anything in-between.

If you understand it and still choose an option, you you know that you are choosing just a way out of many possibilities.

That way may not work. Unforeseen challenges may come. One day, suddenly things that otherwise looked good would turn haywire.

If you think you will regret doing it if it doesn’t work, it’s probably worth not doing it.

Worth doing businesses or projects for that matter are the ones that you choose to do despite other possibilities. It may work, it may not. That’s not the point.

Point is: Knowing all these, is it still worth doing it?

March 2013 Redux

As 2013 progresses, months are getting bussier and with newer set of challenges.  March 2013 was one such month. Many new things on the plate leaving less and less time for writing.

Still, here is some of the articles I wrote:

From My Thought Stream

On Project Management

On Scrum

On Personal Development and Self-Help

Total 19 articles. Not a big number but some of the topics I really enjoyed researching and writing about.

When Your Hair Is Gray

 

When your hair turns gray, or you get to know about some things in your life such as failures, successes and everything in-between, your way of looking at the things changes.

In that process, you discover more of yourself and what matters to you.

Michael Wade has written a very insightful post that talks about it.

  • When your hair is gray, you will take time to enjoy – if you are wise – small pleasures…
  • The weather will be of more interest. So too will be the flight of the birds.
  • …and some more interesting stuff on Execupundit.

 

Wandering Mind 7

Seven thoughts from wandering mind…unedited…plain…random…thoughts:

  1. Continuous execution will get me what I want. Eventually.
  2. I learn by observing what successful people do, not what they say.
  3. To decide I need to get serious about regular exercise, I have to accept that I am not in the best of my health.
  4. I will spend some quality time with myself.
  5. I’ll switch off my mobile, TV (and internet too) more often than not.
  6. I love to create and I create what I love.
  7. I understand that any true thing is ever changing including my love towards my most beloved person and that’s natural.