Clear your mind

So, you just had a bad day at office, your boss shouted at you for nothing, the colleagues wouldn't shut up about their new car, bike, sofa blah blah blah and as if that wasn't enough, your latest assignment isn't going as well as planned. It was supposed to be an easy one, browse a couple of files, maybe write some emails and all done! But it isn't happening like that is it?

Your brain seems to have frozen in a loop, thoughts about all that frustration aren't going away and the text in front of your screens just isn't making sense. This is the time when you need to calm down. Take a few deep breaths, push those thoughts away from your brain and focus on the thing in front of you. In other words, simply ignore the things you can't change and work on those that you can. By simply focusing on these small things, the bigger problems will fall into perspective. But how do you calm down and push those thoughts away?

Here is a list of my favorite ways:

1) Listen to good music- Mozzart, Beethoven are the world renown greats. For Indian listens and fans of the flute, Pandit Ravi Prasad Chaurasia has some really peaceful melodies for the anguished soul.

2) Read some comic strips - They can be fun like XKCD, Cyanide and Happiness or inspirational ones like Zen Pencils (one of my personal favorites).

 3) Browse old family photographs - Another easy one. Remembering all the good times, makes you feel focused, sharp and rejuvenates you like little else.

 4) Watch some inspirational movie - Okay, you might not be able to do this while you're at office, but it can help you relax and sooth down if you have the time. You can check out the top inspirational movies on IMDB for reference.

5) Meditate - This is another one that works amazingly well. You don't need to live near the mountains or have the sea behind you for this to work. You can simply sit in your office chair, close your eyes and relax. Simply close your eyes and remind yourself that life is good, maybe think about some happy memories or some peaceful place. In less than ten minutes, you will find yourself relaxed and calmer than ever before.

The methods listed above are simply the ones I use to cool down. If you have any better method, do comment below! Ohh and the subscribe button is to the right :)

Learn a skill [part 1] - Firefox shortcuts

Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn

-Benjamin Franklin

All of us spent a lot of time working in front of our laptop screens or desktops. Personally speaking, I use my laptop for atleast 8 hours a day and most of this time is spent surfing and working on the internet. Given the amount of time I used to spend on my browser, using the mouse to click things soon became a very irritating task. It slowed me down and broke my thought flow. To avoid this, I learned some much needed Mozilla Firefox shortcuts that let me keep my hands on my keyboard and continue working with minimal distraction.