Yes, it’s the button anyone hate to press because everybody is afraid of missing anything good in their rss reader. IF all your item in rss reader is more than 1000+ do you really think you can spare your limited time to read all? Remember this to ease “the pain” you must have to press the “Mark all as Read” button.

1. It’s not that important. Even if it’s important for you, you can always google that post. It’s just bugging your head because it becomes unread item in your reader.
2. Make room for new one that could be important. Okay, it’s a bit paradox, but maybe if you’re mark all as read and there’s a good new post arrived, you can see that right? Tt’s easier to find jewel if the rocks are not abundant.
3. You can use your time to do something else. You cannot read all items because you do something else that more important, right? Well, then, keep doing that something else!

Don’t forget to press that “mark all as read” button!

No, i’m not going to discuss this Ubuntu, but rather what is the philosophy of Ubuntu. And forgive my laziness, because my search come only from wikipedia. Archbishop Desmond Tutu defined ubuntu as :

A person with Ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed.

It’s the opposite of envy and jealousy. Chris Abani said in his video :

It’s ubuntu, the only way for me to be human is for you to reflect my humanity back at me.

So, Ubuntu is basically how you can improve the humanity of your community and other people. Nelson Mandela said it best :

A traveller through a country would stop at a village and he didn’t have to ask for food or for water. Once he stops, the people give him food, entertain him. That is one aspect of Ubuntu but it will have various aspects. Ubuntu does not mean that people should not address themselves. The question therefore is: Are you going to do so in order to enable the community around you to be able to improve?

Examples? Well, a simple act of kindness to other people really covers it all.

So you’ve read all the self-help books that will guide you to success. You read one and forget the last book you read. Here’s a summary of what you’ve read from all self-help books, some including :

They look for and find opportunities where others see nothing.

They find a lesson while others only see a problem.

They are solution focused.

They consciously and methodically create their own success, while others hope success will find them.

They are fearful like everyone else, but they are not controlled or limited by fear.

They ask the right questions - the ones which put them in a productive, creative, positive mindset and emotional state.

They rarely complain (waste of energy). All complaining does is put the complainer in a negative and unproductive state.

Now, if only i can apply some of their qualities to my life.

Fifty Habits [via Lifehack]

Modern people need more time. If you are one of those people, then you should try this practical tips for saving your time. Some of them including

Plan Your Day. Do this religiously and you’ll be far more productive. Plan only as much as you can actually accomplish. Be realistic about time frames and do the most difficult and most important stuff first. Make a habit of doing this first thing when you wake up or at the end of the day.

Get Things Ready the Night Before. Prepare as much as you can to make mornings stress free. Set out clothes. Have bags packed and by the door. Make your lunch and have your breakfast chosen and partially prepared. Have a travel coffee mug ready. Put the coffee in the coffee maker.

Before you know it, you are saving more time everyday.

Spectacular and Practical Time Saving Tips [via DumbLittleMan]

So yesterday, I watched Iron Man starring Robert Downey Jr and Gywneth Paltrow. It’s a standard hollywood movie with a cool effects and exhilarating combat scenes. Still, you can have some life philosophy from the story.

1. When life give you a lot of weapons from your own company, build a mini reactor and a full body armed suit. With all available resources, just do the best you can and blast your way to success.
2. A trial and error always win against no trial at all. Because iron man know that if he reach certain heights, ice will stick on your armor, while the Iron Monger haven’t tried it yet, he have an advantage against Iron Monger.
3. You can always count on your trusted friends.

Iron Man is a superhero that combines brain, brawn, and bazillion dollar worth of equipment. Welcome to our movies life, Tony Stark.

Picture taken from here

RTFM? Yeah, RTFM. Before you asked any moronic question to technical support, before you accidentally use the delete button instead of submit button, and before you wonder why the screen goes blue and give a biiiiip sound, just Read The Fancy Manual.

Yeah, sometimes it’s a boring job and strenuous exercises for your eyes, but it’s an important one. Why? Because technical support will have that oh-you-so-stupid look in their face or that i-have-to-hear-this-complain-again voice when you call. Here’s some tips to conquer your manual books for everything.

1. If you’re a beginner, find a beginner or even a dummies version.
2. Hands on. You cannot read your manual like you read your novel. Read the lines carefully and do every steps.
3. Repeat your steps so you cannot miss one step and remember the whole thing.
4. Search the internet for help or maybe the ebook version of the manual. Ebook is easier to keep.
5. Mark the important steps and if the manual is in form of description or narration, do bullet and numbering version of that manual.

One benefit when you read your manual is you can be your own technical support and even everyone around you. So, start to RTFM.

Dumbox is my portmanteau version of television. It composed originally from two words, dumb and box. The meaning is not a box that’s dumb, but a box that will make you dumb. No, it probably not going to produce enough waves that will actively damages your brain, but it come close to paralyze your brain. You must lessen your time and your kids’ time using these dumbox. Here’s some of the reason.

1. In my opinion, your brain is more active when you watch a blank wall than a television. Why, because your brain really works best when nothing happened around you. So, if you watched television five hours a day, your brain become less active than a prisoner that staring at four blank wall in the cell.
2. There’s dumbox and there’s smart box. Yes, there’s some good tv shows out there that deserve a mentions. But the rest is a complete junk. Trust me. Choose wisely your selections.
3. Your activity can vary immediately if you have enough will to touch the remote control and turn off the dumbox. You can read a book, do sports, write blog, talk to your family and join language class. All is more important than wanting to know what happened to that poor girl who being abused by her mother-in-law but in fact she’s a long lost daughter of a wealthy businessman.
4. Your opinion always based on information you watch on television and you become too lazy to find out more. It’s like a tiger who get meat everyday in the zoo and when he’s released to the jungle, he dies of hunger. You judged people, places and situations easily without enough information.
5. Ads on the dumbox will make you want things that you never really needed. You got this perfection imaging flashed every ten second and of course stuff that will make you reached that image.
6. You become agitated when your kids exposed by these too much violence on dumbox and blame the dumbox station and not your kids and yourself. All you need is really a windows to throw your television outside and interact more with your kids. Do not writing letter to newspaper telling everybody that you’re not smart enough to throw the television and attack the media instead.

Really, we should know better than staring helplessly to the dumbox. Especially with current indonesian show like the S word.

Picture taken from here

I have many, many attempts to change my habits. I try to make a habit of wake up early, exercise regularly and even eating healthy food. There’s a lot of failure and many self loathing, but on every failure there’s always a lesson to learned. Zenhabit collect 13 things you should avoid when you try to change your habit, including my favorite :

Changing focus too soon. Often we’ll start a habit change, and within a week or two change our focus to something else. Well, the habit probably isn’t firmly ingrained by then, and so we’ve wasted all that time trying to form a new habit and then abandoning it before it’s on autopilot. Instead, stick to this habit for at least 30 days, and be consistent as possible.

In order to become a habit, someone must do at least 21 30 days of those repetitive tasks. If not, there’s a big chances that you will become the old you again. If you know what to avoid, the chances of failing hopefully become smaller.

13 Things to Avoid [via Zenhabit]