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Archives for September 2013

How to get your life back on track

September 28, 2013 by Neville

For a little now I’ve been “stuck” in my life. Things were great, then I got too comfortable, then things started to stagnate.

It happens to everyone.
It can be caused by things being too good, or too bad.

And lately I’ve been trying desperately to get OUT of it and back to my PRODUCTIVE life.

Well I did a lot of soul-searching kind of stuff and talked to a lot of people….and that helped to an extent, but dammit….there’s nothing like taking some good-old ACTION STEPS to get out of it!!

SO here’s my Guide to getting your life back on track:

I feel like if you do some/all of these, things will slowly start to spin around for you again.  The underlying concept is getting momentum.  I’ll try to back up each example with my own actions:

 

HEALTH WEALTH LOVE (3 minutes)

Quickly evaluate three main areas of your life and rank them from 1-to-5.
Health: Your health situation.
Wealth: Your money situation.
Love: Your relationships with family/friends/spouse/partner.  

Before I was:
Health: 3
Wealth: 5
Love: 5

Then it became:
Health: 5  (+2)
Wealth: 2  (-3)
Love: 2  (-3)

So I can obviously see where I need to concentrate on.

Try doing this for your own life, and it’ll shine some clear idea on where you can get started improving.  Here’s more about this concept.

 

 

Your Top 5 Influences (10 minutes)
This is one of my favorite concepts:

“You are the composite average of the top 5 people you hang around.”

This doesn’t mean your favorite people to hang around, it means the people you LITERALLY SPEND THE MOST NUMBER OF MINUTES WITH PER DAY.

So if you live at home with your parents, just by the nature of that arrangement, your parents will be some of your top influencers. Or if you have a husband/wife….they will be one of your top influencers.

So take a look around, and write out who your top 5 influences are (aka who you are physically around the most):
1.) __________________
2.) __________________
3.) __________________
4.) __________________
5.) __________________

Now…..
Are those people the kind of people you wanna become?
Are they as successful as you wanna be??
Do they have the kind of attitudes about life that you want???
Are they going to places you want to go????

If you’re hanging around a bunch of losers with crappy attitudes…..it’s likely you’ll pick up those traits too.

If you’re hanging around a bunch of positive people with great attitudes and ideas……it’s likely you’ll pick up those traits too.

So check your list to see who is negatively influencing you, and try to cut down the time you spend with those people so they don’t take you down also.

I dare you to cut out at least ONE of those people. DARE YA!!
Here’s more about your top 5 influences.

 

 

To-Do Lists (5 minutes)

You KNOW I’m obsessive about to-do lists.  But I’ve been a little unfaithful to my dearest to-do lists lately, in that I haven’t been completing them everyday.

I have since returned, and the productivity has begun.  Here is my to-do list when I started writing this blog post:
Life back on track To Do List

I actually took some of my OWN advice to get back on track:

Watch that to-do list video for some inspiration on how to make your own to-do lists.
You can find out more about to-do lists here.

 

 

Stack your calendar (10 minutes)

Simply GOING to events that interest you will help get some momentum going.  I started to skip a lot of tech events and conferences….and this bad, because those usually motivate the hell out of me (meeting other people doing cool things always makes you work harder).

I still use a physical calendar to track all my stuff like this:
Life back on track - Calendar

I went to my bookmark bar of “Austin Events” and started adding things recently.

All good spots to start: Meetup.com, Yelp.com, Craigslist Community.

Wanna go to tech meet ups? Then search “tech meet ups Austin” (or wherever you are).
Nearby universities generally hold a lot of cool events.
I have a whole bookmarks tab of websites/museums/charities etc that hold cool events.

 

 

Re-connect with friends by giving to them

Next thing I did was throw a small party (not a typical party though). I only invited 1 or 2 other people.

It was called the “Early Morning Blog Post Writing Party From Nev’s Pool Party!”

The rules were:

  • We start at 8am
  • We go to the shallow end of the pool at my apt
  • You bring your laptop
  • You write a blog post from inside the pool

I wanted it to be like “having your own writing island.”

So me and Billy (Forever Jobless) hit up the pool at my apartment at 8am with laptops for a “Blog Post Writing Party”! It may have been the nerdiest party in the WORLD at that moment!

Blog Post Writing Party

Billy Forever Jobless Blog Post Writing Pool

I’m literally writing this post from the pool right now!!

It was actually damn fun, and Billy even said:

“I got more writing done today than I have in 4 months!”

If there’s any Austinite’s out there interested in joining me for this every once in a while, lemme know.

 

 

Changing your living space

I think changing your living space often signifies changing your life in some way.

I bought a super-kick-ass “Float” desk from HumanScale a few weeks ago, and it just arrived.

It’s awesome in several ways:
1.) It can quickly adjust to any height with a small lever.
2.) The work area is clean, all-white, and HUUUGGEE.
3.) The engineering behind it is awesome (it uses a counter-balance system that uses the weight of the stuff on your desk to move it up and down)….yet it’s all hidden inside the desk and you’d never know it. Basically it’s like a desk Apple would make!

It’s super-neat to go from standing to sitting in less than 2 seconds with this desk.  Sometimes I prefer moving around and standing, but sometimes sitting down is necessary and more comfortable.

Screw all those “Standing” desks…..this one can do both!

life-on-track-desk

The large size of the desk isn’t really conveyed in that picture.  I’ve had it for a while now….and I can honestly say it’s been an awesome investment and really helped with productivity!

Also in the “changing your living space” department…….I needed some art for the loonngggest time but couldn’t find any. So I sat down and ordered two of the BIGGEST pieces of art from Ikea I could possibly find.  I stuck one of them over a boring white wall above my bed:

bed

It doesn’t look that big in the picture, but that picture is HUGE.  It’s like 6.5 feet across.

I’m also making sure I make the bed every morning.  I learned this trick from Gary Halbert:

Make your bed as SOON as you wake up in the morning, and you will already start the day off with a small win!

“Messy bed, Messy head.”

 

 

WELL…..
Those are a few things I’m doing to “get my mojo back”.  Most of these things are more to mentally-psych myself into being productive once again.

Perhaps if you’re going through a period of time where you need this, you could take some inspiration from any of these tips.

 

Sincerely,
Neville Medhora

P.S. From my last Superpowers post, these people won NevBox’s: Dave, Dave H, Allen T, Jacqueline P, Robin W.
Thanks Sithana for helping me decide. I’m sending YOU one too for that!

 

P.P.S. Comment on this post with actions that helped your snap out of a sluggish phase in your life….I’ll physically ship 5 commenters NevBox’s (worth $97 each…and you can’t even buy them if you wanted to). Not only that, but your comment might give some poor soul trying to “figure things out” an idea that could change their life!

 

P.P.P.S. Please share/send this to anyone who could use a little “jump-start” in their life.

Keeping Kreative with a 3D printer

September 11, 2013 by Neville

So get this, a few weeks ago I took a 3D printing class!!

I haven’t learned any new skill in a while, so I thought this would be a fun nerd-activity.

I’ve been fascinated by 3D printing since around 2007, but only now are 3D printers become semi-reliable enough for home use.

Anywhoozle…..I Googled “3D Printing Class Austin” and found a place called TechShop that holds them:3d-print-test5

This TechShop was connected to a Lowe’s hardware store, and you can pay a monthly membership to use all the high end machine and manufacturing tools there like this:3d-print-test4

The class I enrolled in would teach you how to use a MakerBot Replicator 3D Printer.  You can see the Replicator1 (left), and Replicator2 (right):
3d-print-test3

Our instructor mainly showed how to use the cool-looking Replicator2:
3d-print-test6

The first step was to learn the software, so we all downloaded pre-existing .stl files from the internet and loaded them into the 3D printing software.  Here’s the little toy octopus gettin ready to print:
3d-print-test9

Once the file is sent to the printer, it starts printing out small layers of PLA plastic less than 1 millimeter thick.  Once it’s done with that first layer, it moves up and prints another layer.  It does this hundreds of times until a full object is printed out!

Here’s the printer in action using orange plastic:
3d-print-test7

After about 15 minutes of printing a REAL OBJECT WE DOWNLOADED FROM THE INTERNET CAME INTO EXISTENCE!!!
3d-print-test1

Now I’d been wanting a 3D printer for a long time, and after taking the class I was dead-set on getting one….so I made a quick internet order for a MakerBot Replicator2.

I ordered a couple of spools of plastic filament and the MakerCare Insurance (because there’s like a 99% chance something WILL go wrong with the machine in less than a year).

I’ve also started downloading the printing software and experimenting/downloading objects from the internet.

The first thing I want to print are these 3D shot glasses which would be impossible to create with a lathe or laser cutter:
Screen Shot 2013-09-11 at 7.15.49 PM

I also just for fun wanna print a gun….now keep in mind it’s just a mold of a gun made out of shitty plastic with no moving parts….but the CRAZY thing is the file I’m printing from actually includes all the parts to make a gun (assuming you had a high-precision metal-printing 3D printer you could possibly make one):Screen Shot 2013-09-11 at 7.17.11 PM

I also downloaded a bunch of other random cool stuff from Thingiverse for free.

I dunno exactly where 3D printing will go…..but the ability to create and print out highly complex objects from your home is going open up a WHOLE new plane of creativity like Apps did to smartphones.

It’s so cool to imagine that from my apartment I can manufacture things.  I mean….crappy things for now, but the technology will soon get better-and-better to the point where we’ll all be able to print out highly complex objects, machines, and circuitry.  SOOOO FREAKIN COOL!

Since I left college I’d always been trying to learn something new at all times….and lately I haven’t, so getting this excited about something new is very refreshing :)

 

Keep Kreative!
Sincerely,
Neville Medhora

September 2013 Goals

September 8, 2013 by Neville

I usually like giving myself only a maximum of three goals, but there’s no particular time-frame for them (which personally helps me).

So this month I’ve divided the goals up into week-long chunks.  I’m testing how this will work:

september-2013-goals

WEEK 1: Apartment modifications
I’ve always been only semi-satisfied with my previous workspace at my current apartment.  It was small, my legs would always hit the desk…and for some reason I was just LAZY at this desk.

So I ended up buying an adjustable height Float table….it should be here in a couple of weeks:
https://www.dwr.com/product/float-height-adjustable-table.do

I was thinking this amount of money for a desk is INSANE since you can buy a nice desk for waaaayyyy cheaper….but this desk had unique engineering, simplistic elegance, and can easily go from a sitting-desk to a standing-desk in 2 seconds without moving stuff off the desk.

……oh yea, and I also bought a 3D printer!!! (a MakerBot Replicator 2).  More on that in a bit

 

WEEK 2: NevBlog store up and running
I’ve got so many different products and things I sell, but all in different places.  Need a place to consolidate that a bit.  Also need some semi-advanced functionality for some of these things, but I don’t want to build that myself.  So I’ve started using Shopify to build a NevBlog store.

For a few days I was just CONSTANTLY comparing Shopify, BicCommerce and Volusion to see which platform would suite me best.

BigCommerce actually had the functionality I wanted right out of the box, but was more bulky, hard to modify, and less intuitive to use (but it did have a lot of very good features I liked).

Shopify was lightweight, SUPER easy to use.  It didn’t have the same digital delivery capability as BigCommerce, but I’ve found some work-arounds.

 

WEEK 3: Products ported over.
I’ll have to go individually through each offering I have and make sure it works with this new store.

WEEK 4: Start life-changer NevBox.
To be announced :)

superpowers

September 1, 2013 by Neville

I wish I was a hacker.

Seriously.

I literally used to (and still do) day-dream about being a famous ethical hacker.

I sort of was one a long time ago.

In high school, I was able to gain access to the Novell security systems used by the school computers.  I was also in a special Cisco class where they taught us to create, modify, and break-in to computer networks.

So I was able to hack into routers, gain teacher access to school computers, and do this totally anonymously.

But I never used these nerdy superpowers to hurt anyone or be malicious.  In fact, I used to HELP school administrators clean up the servers from kids putting weird videos and such on the servers….or help with issues they would have.

When I day-dream, I think of telling people at a dinner party, “Me? I’m a hacker.  But an ETHICAL hacker! I go to big organizations like NASA, GE, Facebook, Google and try to hack into their systems.  Then when I find a vulnerability, I tell them, and they pay me to help fix it!”

I imagine myself making millions of dollars by ethically hacking into these systems.
“Oh yeah, I found a loophole that would give me access to any Gmail account on Google, and showed Google how to fix it….they paid me $900,000 for a one-day consultation”

I dunno….it just sounds so damn COOL to me.

But alas that’s not my skill anymore.  I can’t program anymore, and realized in college I was WAY behind the curve in the world of computer programmers (in fact I got kicked out of the computer science program at UT in my first year there because I was SO sucky compared to others)!

So my ambitions of being a super-hero hacker fell through because:
1.) I suck at it….
2.) I’m not willing to put forth the effort to become one….
3.) I don’t really enjoy programing all that much, I just like the “idea” of it.

But….something happened later in life around college where I discovered another super-power:

Writing stuff, doing experiments, and reporting about them in a weird enough way to keep people interested.

It sort of came naturally and by accident.

Like….it was super easy to know what would be more interesting to others….which was the exact opposite of programming which was hard an un-intuitive to me.

This was a Facebook post I saw from Michael Fishman which demonstrated this perfectly:


Wow!  Well said Michael!  :::gives standing ovation:::

When I made the KopywritingKourse, it just performed well, people learned, and subsequently lots of people made lots of money from what they learned in that course.

It was easy.  It flowed.  it was FUN.  It was natural.

My superpower had been exposed!

Sincerely,
Neville Medhora

P.S.  I ‘m physically sending out five NevBox’s for this post…..just leave a comment on the post letting me know if you have a “super power”….even if it’s kinda dumb, and I might be shipping you a NevBox in the mail!  Would love to hear your superpower.  I read every comment.  (btw, you can’t buy NevBox’s anymore, and if you could, they would cost $97 each…so leave a comment below to enter to win)!

P.P.S.  There’s a maid in my hotel room right now making the bed and cleaning stuff while I sit here and type….am I supposed to tip her??

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