Personal Development

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Personal Development

Taking Stock

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Boy, has it been a while since I posted here! Think it’s time to revisit my personal development aspirations.

Looking Back on Years of Blogging

It seems I posted most of the Personal Development blog content got posted in just three years: 2006, 2007 and 2008.

Looking back, I realise these were the years of both searching and tremendous growth for me. I made a big career jump, my daughter was born in 2006 and average sleep time I’ve been getting was consisently under 5h per night. Did wonders to my blogging productivity, not just here but also on my technical blogs – Solaris Blog, Unix Tutorial , Perfect Blogger and Desktop Virtualization.

Having found my next career challenge in mid 2010, I’ve been so busy that the habit of daily (or even monthly!) blogging went away. Planned like a brief pause in my blogging routine, this became a break of almost 10 years!

Progress Update

A lot has happened since 2010! I lived and worked in Zurich, Switzerland for a couple of years and this changed my approach to work and life balance in a big way. It’s amazing how people manage to stay with just one or two employes for most of their working life in Switzerland – taking month-long (unpaid!) holidays and living very active lives.

I came back to Dublin in 2014 and started my own technical consultancy – Tech Stack Solutions. I mostly work as a technical consultant these days. In 2015 my son was born and this has taken things to a whole new level, consistently keeping my beloved wife and myself busy, sleelpess and entertained by his energy and curiosity.

Since 2018 I’ve been focusing on my Unix Tutorial blog – I even started Unix Tutorial group on Facebook and it’s slowly but steadly growing. Think I want to spend more time and energy sharing basics and teaching beginners, consulting and coaching.

Discovering Blogging Again

Busy as I am these days, I miss writing my thoughts down. That’s why I’ve been slowly getting back to blogging in the past year.

I have spent 2018 reviewing technical blogs and centralising focus on the Unix Tutorial blog. I’d like to begin 2019 by reviewing this blog. It’s a very strange feeling – reading so much of the views and thoughts of my younger self, almost feels like meeting an old friend and catching up! So glad I took the time and energy to write back then!

As you may know, I started another website in 2017: www.GlebReys.com. Rather than starting blogs on my hobbies like running, climbing, photography and reading, I decided to share thoughts on them on just one website – so that’s how the Gleb Reys website was born.

Will 2019 be action packed? I’m sure. Is this going to be immediately reflected in blogging across all websites? I don’t know. Unix Tutorial will be the primary focus and so far it’s been fun – I even enjoy posting daily.

Just wanted to take the time and start taking stock. It’s fun!

Nozbe 3

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logo_normalIt seems Nozbe 3 has really come a long way since I’ve spent some time evaluating it back in 2013.

From the Nozbe 3 announcement blog post and video, it seems prime for another round of testing when I get time. Wonder if quick entry is improved as it was one of the biggest show stoppers for me.

I couldn’t care less about the new and shiny logo, but think better project orientation and business plans are something that could be quite nice.

Really cool things in Nozbe 3

  • projects can have roles now (Admin, User and Guest) – seems like a great idea!
  • business plan (10+ accounts) – should help with collaboration
  • LOTS of supported platforms. Web and Mac would be most important to me, with iPhone/iPad close second.  But it’s nice to see Linux downloads as well. BTW: Mac download is 5MB, Linux is 95MB! :)
  • revised (in a non-dramatic way) design
  • new templates for projects

Overall, a very solid update for an already great product! Will be fun to give it a try sometime later in 2016.

3 Powerful Self Improvement Tips: Never Stop Growing

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You’ve probably heard all the cliches about being able to do anything you put your mind to.  But is that really true?  Can you really do anything you want if you want it badly enough?  The truth is that while you can’t do everything in the world, you can probably do more than you realize.

There are many things in life that may seem out of reach now, but it must be realized that you never have to stop growing.  You must ask yourself what you want most in life.  Then set out to get it.

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The One Surefire Secret That Can Help You Succeed

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Hi everyone, it’s been a while since I posted on this blog, but now that plan to spend more time on this I would like to start by sharing a guest post with you. This post was written by M.Farouk Radwan, the founder of http://www.2knowmyself.com website. Farouk has one of the most popular and content-rich websites in the personal development field, and almost everyone is sure to find at least a few articles there  which will be truly useful.

The One Surefire Secret That Can Help You Succeed

Everyone wants to be successful in life but only a small percentage of people manage to become successful, why is that?

Is it because people don’t work hard? No, some people work really hard and they never reach what they want

Is it because they didn’t try?
No, lots of people tried to succeed and failed

So what is the secret to success?
And how can you become successful even if you face lots of obstacles in your daily life?

Ask any successful person about the secret of his success and he will tell you the same thing. Success is all about trying enough number of times until you manage to find out the right way that works

Need a proof?

If this sounds weird or if you want a hard proof that reaching success is all about trying enough number of times then read the following real life examples:

  • Thomas Edison failed nine hundred ninety nine times before he succeeded in inventing the lamp On the 1000th trial!!!, right after doing that people asked him, how did you manage to bear all that criticism and keep going? He answered each time it didn’t work I never said “I failed” but I only said I discovered a new way how to not invent the lamp
  • Henry Ford lost all of his fortune 6 times and each time he bounced back and rebuilt his empire.
  • Walt Disney’s idea of creating a cartoon character called “Mickey Mouse” was rejected more than 5 times until he managed to find someone who supported the idea and then Mickey came to life.
  • English novelist John Creasy got 753 rejection slips before he published 564 books and became a famous writer!
  • Most people know that Warren buffet the richest man in the world made his money from investments but what the majority of people don’t about Buffet is that his tutor recommended that he chooses another career other than finance because he believed that it doesn’t suit him!

Maybe those people were exceptions?

Do you think that those people were exceptions and that you can’t be as persistent as them?

No they weren’t, because you did that too long ago! Remember when you were learning how to walk? How many times did you fall? Why did you keep going? Because it this point you believed that its possible and that’s why you never stopped trying

I want you to watch any child trying to hold a door knob for the first time, you will find that the child will hold the objects incorrectly many times before it manages to find out the right way.

That’s how the learning process works, we learn through negative feedback which means that we have to do wrong things in order to learn how to avoid our mistakes the next time

So why do people fail to succeed?

Those who fail aren’t the ones who don’t try hard enough
They aren’t the ones who are pessimistic
They aren’t the ones who don’t try

But they are the ones who give up after few failures because they don’t understand that reaching success is only a matter of trying and tying until something works for them.

If Walt destiny lost hope long ago Mickey, Disney land and the Walt Disney corporation wouldn’t have came to life and I wont have even mentioned his name in this post

Now imagine the kind of things that would never exist in this world if you gave up too soon!!

Success is all about the number of tires!
And if you need any more proofs just ask any successful person

Written by M.Farouk Radwan
The founder of http://www.2knowmyself.com, The Ultimate source for self understanding

Happy For No Reason course review

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Happy For No Reason
Happy For No Reason

I’d like to offer you an review of a course I’ve recently gone through – the Happy For No Reason course by Marci Shimoff. As you know, being happy and motivated are some of the strongest features of my nature, and so it gives me a pleasure to suggest something you might really use to be happier.

What Happy For No Reason is about

The name of the course kind of gives the idea away – you can and should be happy, and there shouldn’t be a certain reason for that.

For some people this is more obvious than for others, but happiness is one of the basic things you have been given in this life. You don’t have to earn it (however it’s a popular belief that you do), it doesn’t need much effort to be truly happy (again, many people just refuse to accept how simple being happy really is), and making someone else happy doesn’t mean you’re giving your own happiness away – instead, you gain back just by seeing how your smile and attention can make somebody’s day.

Marci had done a great job of analyzing the most common reasons people feel unhappy, and results of her research are presented in a simple to follow guide. All the material is presented on audio CDs, but you need to work with the guidebook to record your thoughts and track your progress as you get used to being a happier person.

Seven Steps to Being Happier

Without giving too much away, I’d like to touch briefly on how Marci can help you.

All the material is organized into seven major steps to your happiness. These steps combine a few lessons each, helping you to take care of your mind, heart, body and soul and achieve a true transformation. There are happiness habits offered along the way, 3 for each of the seven steps. To help you gain an even better understanding of the material, Marci has taken interviews with her friends and colleagues on topics relevant to each of the seven steps. Some of the names you can easily recognize, while others may not mean much to you if it’s going to be one of your first courses – but either way the interviews are great because each one of them is an inspiration on its own.

If you had been reading books on personal development and had taken steps towards improving yourself and changing your views on life, you will probably recognize a quite familiar pattern of a complex, organized approach to becoming a happier person. Like all the other aspects of your well-being, happiness requires changes in everything you think and do, even though some of the changes may not follow the desired direction right away.

What to expect from the course

Marci’s work had been the best course I’ve taken so far (and the first one from Learning Strategies I’ve looked into), and I’m pleased to be able to recommend it.

I’m quite a happy person myself, so going through the course didn’t help me change overnight (especially since its’ advised that you take plenty of time, about a week for each step) into the happiest person on the planet. Still, it was great to learn a few new habits and to simply take the time to think more about being happy and making it possible for my family to feel happier too.

Even though the course focuses on all the improvements and positive changes, it invariably helps you address the negativity which prevents you from enjoying life as it is.  It is very important to firstly recognize the things which make you unhappy, and then to reassure yourself that hardly any of these things can prevent you from being happy in the long run. If you choose to be happy and agree with yourself to maintain your happiness, it will quickly stop being a task and turn into one of your most natural states.

So here’s what to expect from the Happy For No Reason course:

  • if you’re unhappy or even plan miserable, you’ll feel better and learn the ways to gradually rediscover the joy and happiness once again.
  • if you’re doing okay but lack the happiness spark in your life, you’ll certainly get an idea or two to go from feeling not-too-bad to a really-good kind of experience
  • finally, if you’re mostly happy already – you’ll draw new inspiration from the interviews and get ideas on how to make happier someone who means a lot to you

I had spent a few weeks working on this course and definitely enjoyed it, especially the interviews. I’m not sure if it’s going to change your life and I can’t promise it will make you a happy person, but if you’re ready to take a few steps in this direction – who knows how far you will get? Good luck!

Develop Your Creative Genius with Tony Buzan’s Advice

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Last month I had a pleasure of attending the lecture on Age Proofing your Mind by Tony Buzan himself – the author of countless books on mind mapping and a passionate discoverer of new abilities of human mind and new frontiers of its power.

It was a great lecture, and I enjoyed it a lot. I have heard about Tony before, and did read quite a few articles and posts on mind mapping. Finally, I really like the approach and use a software version of it for some of the creative processes of mine. But I’ve yet to read a single book by Tony, so it was great to hear all his most known sayings in person with vivid examples and explanations.

On creativity

Studies prove that babies and kids up to 3-5 years are the most creative individuals among most of us, they are 95% creative in solutions and reactions to life. As we grow, our creativity somehow drops. By the time we are students graduating from a college, we’re only 25% creative on average, and most of the adult life we’re only 10% creative.

Now, this is what many people say is normal. But I really liked Tony’s point of view when he said: normal is not natural.

Naturally, human creativity only grows with age. It is true! If we look at our history and culture, there are countless examples of people who created most important and influential works of their lives in their last, not first, years. Da Vinci, Verde, many others- they all spent their lives perfecting their art and their mind, only feeling ready for their masterpieces by the age which most people consider to be a hard rock bottom of their creativity.

On human brain and our activity

A revelation for the audience was that on average we use less than 1% of our brain’s abilities. Tony asked everyone to guess the percentage and we all had a quick discussion about it. I was the most pessimistic of my group with 3-5% activity range. I must say, less than 1% was a shock even to me!

So why not spend a bit more? Why not use this amazing tool available to us – our mind?

We take for granted the common limitations like the degrading memory or inability to constantly come up with creative solutions to our challenges. But once again, this normal situation shouldn’t be considered natural: if we only spend some time developing our mind’s abilities, consciously concentrate on getting better at creative thinking and writing, our mind will flourish and keep amaze ourselves and everyone around us with incredible results.

What it takes to be a genius

Not much, really! We all are quite equal when it comes to out potential for becoming the next world-famous genius.

Here are the two distinctive ways to tell geniuses apart from everyone else:

1. A genius has great and big daydreams.

Think and plan to make it big, don’t limit your future achievements by agreeing with yourself what’s possible and what’s not in your current situation. Your brain follows the images it sees or gets through self-affirmations, so unless you have big daydreams and plan to produce something incredibly powerful and useful for as many people as possible, you won’t achieve much.

Humble thoughts will get you even more humble results, so prepare yourself for achievements of your lifetime by daydreaming something massively good.

Example: Thomas Alva Edison  didn’t just dream of inventing a light bulb, instead he put all his knowledge and persistence together to invent a whole system of electric lighting to be used by all the mankind: light bulbs, electricity generators, electrical wiring and a range of sockets, plus much more. His vision of providing the light to everyone at any given time helped him make it through thousands of failed experiments before he finally made a breakthrough.

2. Genius works to make daydreams come true, to make them real

This is another thing not many of us pay attention to – it’s not enough to just have a vision, an idea which can potentially be useful. You have to be prepared to work on this idea, to make mistakes and face failures, to resist opinions of others and to persistently make progress towards your ultimate goal.

When you think about it, it does take a lot to be curious and unstoppable in a genius-like way – quite possibly, this is what makes some people successful and others unsuccessful – just their being faithful to their own daydreams!

Your brain needs a diet to stay active and healthy

If you want to make sure your brain stays active throughout all the years and increases its activity and potential instead of slowly degrading as you age, here’s some of the things you should include in your daily life:

  1. Plenty of oxygen – this essentially means regular exercise

  2. Sensory stimulation – be creative and re-discover your own senses – touch, smell, taste and see things as if you suddenly became a different, much more curious person

  3. Lifelong learning – never stop discovering new subjects and expanding your knowledge – even if something is not directly related to your career, pick a topic every year to read a book about or watch an educational TV series on

  4. Take plenty of rest – enough sleep, regular showers and relaxing physical activity when your mind gets distracted from its everyday worries – running is a great activity for this.

  5. Friendship and love – be friendly and kind to people; make new friends regularly and try to stay connected with all the generations and not only your own age group; fall in love and enjoy this wonderful experience

  6. Eat healthy food – nutrition is very important for your body and brain in particular

That’s it. Tony spoke of many more things which fascinated me, and I’m sure I’ll learn more as I read his works in the future (I’ve brought a book in mind-mapping which he signed for me during one of the breaks!), but these notes above is what I’ve taken home from that evening. Hope you enjoyed the article and will use some of the advice, I can see how even some of it can really make a long-lasting positive change in our lives.