Cool Down: Getting Further by Going Slower by Steve Prentice

Refreshing book for today's sped up world.

You got to slow down to go faster. No brainer. Right? If so, why on the earth people are getting sped up more and more. Are they achieving more and more? Hell no. Any increase in so called productivity is a total sham. People like anything else can not violate the laws of nature. Being sped up constantly may give an impression of activity but activity is not accomplishment.

Do you feel guilty when you take time off or work at a more sustainable pace? Please do not. That's your natural rhythm and keep to it. Of course, by all means, find ways to better your life by doing things more effectively. But, do not give into the fact that you need to work 10-12-16 hour days to be successful. Let alone successful, you will burn out and die (literally) if you keep such a lifestyle for too long.

This is a great book for all of us who tend to caught up with event-to-event living mind set. Take time to break that robotic lifestyle. Wake up, smell the coffee and stare at the blue-sky. In fact blue-skying is a technique advocated in this book to slow down and enjoy the life.

Also attaching some of the notes I made (as mind maps) while reading this book.

Cheers!

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Mind map

Mind mapping is a technique to collect, record and organize ideas. It's a very powerful tool. Now with the availability of several free and commercial software to do mind mapping, it's much easier to put this very effective technique into practice.

Mind mapping is a very simple technique. Central idea is to build around the core. For example, let's say you start reading a book. You glance through the book and record the theme of the book at the center. Then secondary ideas are recorded all around the center and connected by lines which can denote relationship.

Beauty of mind mapping is that it first lets to you collect as many ideas as possible and then lets you organize them as appropriate. 'To get the best idea, first you have to get a lot of ideas' - this is at the heart of brainstorming. Linear way of recording ideas impedes the brain because brain does not think linearly. It builds connections between ideas. When we start recording ideas linearly, we actually impede the free flow of ideas. By starting to mind map, we give the freedom that brain craves for over the artificial order that we want to follow. Once we dump all ideas randomly on a paper and look that random zig zag picture, sometimes great insights come into picture.

I always used to find that despite spending a lot of time reading on variety of subjects I did not get the return back on the time spent. When I had to refer back to something, I had to remember the book on that topic, go back, look through the contents and then refresh my knowledge and understanding. That was a good start but I still wanted better return on investment. So, I started making high level notes in the form of a mind map and I am astonished to say the least about how effective it is in terms of getting the big picture. These day I fire up 'Free mind', an open source free program, on my laptop as I read something making one or two notes about each paragraph I read. It takes little longer but I can always go back to refer to them. That's where the maximum return on investment is.

Since I learnt that liner note taking or jotting down points impedes free flow of ideas, I use mind maps to come up with presentations, long e-mails, plans etc. Once I have a mind map on any topic, I can expand or reduce it to the level I want.

You can read more about mind mapping at - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_map

You can also search on YouTube for some excellent videos on mind mapping. Also, look for excellent books by Tony Buzan. He systematized the art of mind mapping and his books are really good.

You can download 'Free Mind' software from sourceforge.net. It's a great tool.

Below is a mind map of few chapters from the book 'The secret language of business: How to read people....". Just to illustrate that it does not take much time, I read about 80% of the book quickly in probably 4-5 hours over 3-4 sessions. Made the mind map as went along. Beauty was every time I picked up the book, I could scan the mind map for a few seconds and remember very well about the past reading and dive into the next part with complete understanding.

Free mind tool lets you export into variety of formats. You can export into a PDF and share your mind maps with people who may not have free mind.

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The Man Who Sold the World: Ronald Reagan and the Betrayal of Main Street America by William Kleinknecht

Interesting book about former president Late Ronald Regan and his legacy.

Since American society is now going through a mega transformation, no wonder it is of interest to many people to look at what brought us to this state. It is not necessarily a bad state but one that is making people really wonder if all the prosperity and wealth that we enjoyed over last 20 years was real. Whether it was real or not, how did we get here? What we lost in the process? Were the gains worth it compared to societal decline that we fail to see? Who sowed the seeds of the gradual decay? How did their choices and decision started off the decaying process?

A lot of questions. Witch hunting has to begin somewhere.

This book takes a critical look at Regan and his policies. It tries to make a case for how his policies started the process of general rot in the society. How his policies favored the rich and screwed the poor. How Regan and his cronies manipulated American population. Regan is regarded as the person who deregulated many things and gave more free hand to private enterprises. In that process how he let them make tonnes of money at the expense of common people. How he and his cronies engineered the systematic transfer of wealth from tax payers to some favored rich. It goes on and on.

Makes an interesting read. Regan was the president almost 20 years back. It is hard pin all the blame on him but one thing is sure the era of excesses began during that time. When going was good, everyone was happy. When things turned sour in 2008, no wonder we were left asking how we ever got into this stage. So, from that perspective, it does not hurt to ask tough questions of ourselves and our leaders.

Very well written book. Reads fast. Simple and lucid narration. Good book if you are interested in socio-political history over last 30 years.

Cheers!

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50th year anniversary of Sri Eknath Easwaran's arrival in the US

Recently Blue Mountain Center of Meditation (BMCM) (www.easwaran.org) celebrated 50th anniversary of Easwaran's arrival in the US. It was a very simple program. 150 or so close friends of BMCM gathered at the beautiful 'ashram' of BMCM in Tomales, CA to commemorate the event. Very nice event. I was lucky and fortunate to be considered as one of the friends of BMCM. So, I got to attend. Anyone who chooses to get close those great people at BMCM, is welcomed with open arms. There is nothing more to it. All you need is a friendly attitude and some sort of commitment to Easwaran and his teachings. Rest all follows. Good things.

Sri Easwaran was an accomplished English professor at the university of Nagpur. He was a successful writer, teacher and a radio personality. He was an excellent teacher of English literature. His interests were varied. He read widely and wrote widely.

He had a chance to come to the US in 1959 as Fulbright scholar. He was first allotted University of Minnesota. He dazzled academics there. Since he had come to study about Emerson, people at University of Minnesota recommended him to get transferred to University of California at Berkeley after seeing his prowess in the area of Emerson and his works. So, Easwaran landed at UC, Berkeley. What followed is history.

He was already pretty deep into spirituality. He practiced it very diligently. It did not take much time for people to notice something marvelous in him. A set of very devoted and dedicated people started hanging out with him. He was also looking for similar people. He started teaching them about spirituality and how he saw life. Having excellent command over English helped a lot to convey rich Indian spiritualism to western audience. Thus was born Blue Mountain Center for Meditation.

BMCM, which started in an apartment in Berkeley, later moved to a 250 acre ranch in Tomales where it stands now. Easwaran spent 40 odd years writing several best seller books. He wrote excellent books on Hindu classics such as Bhagvadgita, Upanishads, Dhammapada etc. He did not box himself to one school or the other. He read widely and assimilated best from anywhere and everywhere. So, he went on to write about Christian and Islamic mystics also. He also wrote about people like Gandhi and Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan who had impressed him a lot by their activities during Indian freedom struggle.

BMCM put together a very nice program of selected videos which chronicle the master and his accomplishments after he came to the US. You can view them at http://www.easwaran.org/hope. I hope you will enjoy watching them.

If you are interested, you can pick up a book or two of Easwaran and see if he appeals to you. If you like, you can then attend retreats that BMCM conducts all over the US. Retreats are a great place to get started seriously with your 'sadhana'.

Cheers!

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50th year anniversary of Sri Eknath Easwaran's arrival in the US

Recently Blue Mountain Center of Meditation (BMCM) (www.easwaran.org) celebrated 50th anniversary of Easwaran's arrival in the US. It was a very simple program. 150 or so close friends of BMCM gathered at the beautiful 'ashram' of BMCM in Tomales, CA to commemorate the event. Very nice event. I was lucky and fortunate to be considered as one of the friends of BMCM. So, I got to attend. Anyone who chooses to get close those great people at BMCM, is welcomed with open arms. There is nothing more to it. All you need is a friendly attitude and some sort of commitment to Easwaran and his teachings. Rest all follows. Good things.

Sri Easwaran was an accomplished English professor at the university of Nagpur. He was a successful writer, teacher and a radio personality. He was an excellent teacher of English literature. His interests were varied. He read widely and wrote widely.

He had a chance to come to the US in 1959 as Fulbright scholar. He was first allotted University of Minnesota. He dazzled academics there. Since he had come to study about Emerson, people at University of Minnesota recommended him to get transferred to University of California at Berkeley after seeing his prowess in the area of Emerson and his works. So, Easwaran landed at UC, Berkeley. What followed is history.

He was already pretty deep into spirituality. He practiced it very diligently. It did not take much time for people to notice something marvelous in him. A set of very devoted and dedicated people started hanging out with him. He was also looking for similar people. He started teaching them about spirituality and how he saw life. Having excellent command over English helped a lot to convey rich Indian spiritualism to western audience. Thus was born Blue Mountain Center for Meditation.

BMCM, which started in an apartment in Berkeley, later moved to a 250 acre ranch in Tomales where it stands now. Easwaran spent 40 odd years writing several best seller books. He wrote excellent books on Hindu classics such as Bhagvadgita, Upanishads, Dhammapada etc. He did not box himself to one school or the other. He read widely and assimilated best from anywhere and everywhere. So, he went on to write about Christian and Islamic mystics also. He also wrote about people like Gandhi and Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan who had impressed him a lot by their activities during Indian freedom struggle.

BMCM put together a very nice program of selected videos which chronicle the master and his accomplishments after he came to the US. You can view them at http://www.easwaran.com/hope. I hope you will enjoy watching them.

If you are interested, you can pick up a book or two of Easwaran and see if he appeals to you. If you like, you can then attend retreats that BMCM conducts all over the US. Retreats are a great place to get started seriously with your 'sadhana'.

Cheers!

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