Life in Balance: Amit Chaudhary’s Blog
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We all probably had moments when we desired\mentioned a need and it was fulfilled in unexpected way. You tell a friend you are looking for a gym and the friend finds out something in a few days and you have a reference.

This is typically filed under “Coincidence” category. The key question, “Can this be made to happen on request\demand\desire?”
Here are a few real life examples just from the last year:

-Somebody I know decides to deepen her meditation practice and thinks maybe she should considers trying out a group or center. Mentions it to a friend and the friend in the same week runs into someone who goes to a Tibetan Buddhist center close by.

-I was considering which martial art to pick up. I was waivering between BJJ(Brazilian Jiu Jitsu) and Akido and reading a bit, but could not make up my mind. Literally the next day evening, I had one of those solictors on our door. He was from Sierra club of which I am a member and so we spoke for a few minutes. Soon, he mentioned he was a Akido student and I had first hand information on what it involves and so on. I have not yet picked up any, but that is another story.

Steve Pavlina, one of my favorite blogger puts a bold theory about this in his article, Musings on Reality, the Scientific Method, and the Cure for Dandruff and that it can be controlled. See under what kind of universe do you think we live in?

If reality is indeed created by our thoughts (at least partially), then therein lies the potential for enormous strides in the development of humanity if we can understand how this works and put it to good use.

Furthermore, I suspect there is in fact only one consciousness, and we all share it. We have separate minds and bodies, and therefore our own individual thoughts, but consciousness itself is an underlying field that we’re all connected to. One of the freaky things I did a few months ago was to shift my identification of self away from my own body-mind and into this field. Imagine regarding your self identity not as an individual person with a body and a mind but rather as all of consciousness itself.

Then from that vantage point, you regard your body and your mind merely as parts of you but not the whole you. Your body and mind are merely limbs in a larger body. But then in this larger identity, you also have access to other limbs, like the ability to manifest synchronicities out of thin air or to manipulate reality through intention. I’ve been spending the past few months trying to identify and to learn to move these other limbs.

As an example, instead of asking for a reference to a gym, hike or a meditation center, he and a group are asking for a million dollars for each of them.

From Nipun: On Lee and Laundry basket
Lee is quite a guy. He’ll buy basketballs for inner-city kids, he’ll write cards to cheer people up, he’ll give his neighbors honey from the bees that he nurtures in his basement (Lee loves bees!). He’ll even go stay with the homeless. One time, when he was living in a ghetto for some time, someone stole his laundry basket at a local laundromat. So he goes and buys another one, but when that gets stolen too, he went out and bought a dozen of them and would leave one in the laundromat everyday! After about a week, the baskets stopped getting stolen, people loosened their fears about guarding their laundry basket, and that little corner of the world was restored with trust.

and
I told him a story of how I was once fed by a homeless man. “You see, Lee, I have this strange suspicion that no one is really poor. If you have kindness in your heart, if you offer whatever you have, you have won the world,” I said.

Ten Great Books

#1)The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master by Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas.

#2) Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code by Martin Fowler.

#3) Design Patterns, by Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, John Vlissides (also known as the “Gang of Four” or just GoF).

#4) Concurrent Programming in Java(TM): Design Principles and Pattern (2nd Edition) by Doug Lea.

#5) Mastering Regular Expressions, 2nd Edition, by Jeffrey Friedl.

#6) The Algorithm Design Manual, by Steven Skiena.

#7) The C Programming Language, Second Edition, by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie.

#8) The Little Schemer, by Daniel P. Friedman and Matthias Felleisen

#9) Compilers, by Aho, Sethi and Ullman

#10) WikiWikiWeb, by Ward Cunningham and thousands of others. (Not a book)

Notes from Entrepreneurial Proverbs on OReilly Radar

Momentum builds on itself — just start. Do whatever you can. Draw a user interface. Write a spec. Make something, anything, that people can see and touch and try

Pay attention to the idea that won’t leave you alone — this is taken from Paul Hawken’s Growing a Business. Sometimes an idea catches hold of you and you find you can’t put it down. Pay attention to that! Just start working on it. Can’t get yourself to do anything on it? Move on.

Build what you know — this is the most basic advice of idea generation: scratch an itch you have yourself. To make a great company, stop and ensure that your need is broadly felt, and that your solution is broadly applicable — not everyone spends their life in front of a computer, remember.

Founders: Three is fine; two, divine — having too many co-founders makes decisions hard to reach; if you’re on your own, you have to bear all of the stress and worry about the success of the company. In my judgment, three people can do well together, but having two founders is best.

Work only with people you like and believe in — I once heard Eric Schmidt say something along the lines of, “The older I get, the more I think all that matters is working with people you like.”

Great things are made by people who share a passion, not by those who have been talked into one — a corollary of the last; you can spark a passion in someone, but you can’t do it without some fuel to catch.

Build the simplest thing possible – engineers have the hardest time with this, with not overdesigning for the need they’re addressing. Make the simplest possible product that makes a significant dent in that need, and you’ll do far better than you would addressing two or three needs at once. Simplicity leads to clarity in everything you do.

Money: Start with nothing, and have nothing for as long as possible -

No means maybe and yes means maybe – you should never take a “no” from someone you want to work with. Accept the no, ask for feedback, and then just keep sending them updates on how much butt you’re kicking in the market.

For investors, the product is nothing — the classic engineer’s VC pitch has ten slides about the product and two about the academic achievements of the founders. That’s a terrible pitch. One slide should be about the product, while the rest cover the market, competitors, financials, funding history, and the relevant experience of the team. The product matters far less to most investors than the reactions of customers, the properties of the market, and the credibility of the team. Obsess about the product on your own time; present your business in all of its parts.

Marissa Mayer (VP Search Products & User Experience, Google)

Google’ 9 Notions of Innovation

1. Ideas come from everywhere

Google expects everyone to innovate, even the finance team

2. Share everything you can

Every idea, every project, every deadline — it’s all accessible to everyone on the intranet

3. You’re brilliant, we’re hiring

Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin approve hires. They favor intelligence over experience

4. A license to pursue dreams

Employees get a “free” day a week. Half of new launches come from this “20% time”

5. Innovation, not instant perfection

Google launches early and often in small beta tests, before releasing new features widely

6. Don’t politic, use data

Mayer discourages the use of “I like” in meetings, pushing staffers to use metrics

7. Creativity loves restraint

Give people a vision, rules about how to get there, and deadlines

8. Worry about usage and users, not money

Provide something simple to use and easy to love. The money will follow.

9. Don’t kill projects — morph them

There’s always a kernel of something good that can be salvaged

Her daily schedule

8:00 a.m. Wake-up, get ready for work

9:00 a.m. Arrive at work, take conference call about a new technology

10:00 a.m. Meeting with Udi Manber, VP of engineering to discuss search, engineering staffing, etc.

10:30 a.m. Meet with Associate Product Managers to brief and prepare for upcoming international business trip

12:00 noon Product review with Larry and Sergey; review product direction and strategy and potential future collaborations

1:00 p.m. UI (User Interface) review to review/approve user interface designs/changes for multiple products

3:00 p.m. Meet with a new member of my team to welcome him and discuss career goals/trajectory

3:30 p.m. Meeting with Google Video product manager

4:00 p.m. Google Product Strategy meeting with Eric, Larry, Sergey, and other executives to go over weekly site traffic and a few special topics

5:00 p.m. Executive strategy meeting on Google China

6:00 p.m. Office Hours

8:30 p.m. Catch up on the day’s e-mail

11:15 p.m. Visit to the Google Gym to run

12:00 p.m. Go home

12:30 a.m. Watch TV, do e-mail

3:00 a.m. Go to bed

From Businessweek article: Marissa Mayer: The Talent Scout

Erin Pavlina on How To Raise Your Vibration

1. Purify your body. Toxins lower your energy and your vibration, so if you can, remove cigarettes, alcohol, animal products, refined foods, pesticides, and smog/pollution from your life. Instead, eat fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, legumes, nuts, seeds, and try to buy organic wherever possible. Live where the air is fresh and people aren’t blowing smoke at you.

2. Take a social inventory. I read in a book once that whichever 6 people you spend the most time with you are most likely to emulate. So who are you hanging around with? Who do you spend the most time with? What are they like? Are they honest, hard working, highly aware people who are peaceful, loving, kind and compassionate? Or are they pessimistic, argumentative, greedy, selfish louts who lie, cheat, and steal their way through life? If you’re around people who vibrate at a low frequency, you’ll be hard pressed to keep your energy high.

3. Meditate.
4. Practice compassion.
5. Journal.

Listening to music, exercising, and volunteering your time will work too. Anything you do that taps into your heart and your joy will raise your vibration.