Alone

Being alone is the worst fear that one can have.

A part of my campus is cordoned for the general public after a particular time. To be specific, after 6:00PM. There is a sign board, no, a warning board. It said "No entry beyond this area from 6:00 PM to 6:00 AM. Panther is being sighted frequently in this area. Violation of this order shall be seriously viewed".

Let me tell you more about my campus. My campus is in the middle of one of the greatest cities of the world. Even though, it is in the midst of concrete jungle, it is one of the most greeny campus in the country. On one side of the campus there is a vast lake which in evenings has a unparalleled beauty. On the other side of the campus is a hillock and back to which there is another lake. This lake is hidden to the outside world. It is like a private treasure that only we like to enjoy to ourselves. On the other side of this lake is a national park. Don't ask me how this came here. And thats where the undomesticated lifes thrive. Sometimes they take a visit to our campus by crossing the lake.

The road is along the side of the lake. In wee hours it is a joggers' paradise. But as the ray's of sun slants away, people distance from it. Because Panthers visit there to remember their ancestor and the land they once ruled before we took it from them.

I was feeling very lonely to day. Unlike the daily routine, I didn't go back to lab after my evening jog. I took some random novel to read but I couldn't concentrate, my mind was everywhere except the lines in the book. It was already dark, around 10. I got out the room and started walking in a random direction. My next stop was in front of the lake side gate. I was staring at the warning board.

I looked around. It was too much dark to see beyond 6 feets and except for the squealing rickets, I thought there was nobody present. But I knew, behind that viel of pitch darkness, there was something lurking and watching me. Somewhere I had read that you are always running away from your fear and conquering them is the objective of your life. I was bit nervous. But I decided to conquer my fear.

I crossed the gate and started walking. Into the darkness. After a few steps, there was a rumbling fear echoing from my stomach. But still I walked on. The fear subsided. Then a flurry of memories started to hit me. I felt running away, not from darkness, but from these memories.

I had come a long way from the gate. I felt very lonely. I stopped walking and listened. I was waiting for the Panther to come. Nothing came.

I started to walk again. At that moment, I realised I was alone. This the state which my current life, if pursued, would lead me into. I started to run. Not from the Panther but from me.

Heights of Procrastination

Make a plan. The plan should include all the time that you can spend "awake". Of course what happens in dream stays there as the rest of it is just according to the plan. The plan you make should begin with the exact time your day starts, like for example, you get up at 5:00 AM (of course I meant hypothetically!) and at 5:30 AM, you actually gets up because that's the last possible snooze option that your alarm can give. Even though the next few sequences of your life coincide with 99% of the world population, barring some people who I consider to be on other side of the sane mortal world, you might feel like not planning for them at all. But trust me, according to (unofficial) statistics by planning commission of India, this is the time that slacks your daily chores and makes your day go haywire.

None of things that happen in your life is trivial. So you jot down everything, I meant everything, it may(should) even include when you walk into loo and when you get out. You must be wondering how this could be achieved. This area has been researched well by most of the ivy league universities and have come up with . Let me explain. Before making the actual daily plan, you run a trial period. You record the daily loo timings and then after the brief experimentation time, you take the average time spend in the loo. Based on this time, you can improvise your daily timings. A recent study has shown that even though there is no theoretical proof of an exact bound for this timing problem, a close approximation using an experiment of this kind, can save almost 36 seconds of your time which you could wisely and judiciously spend on playing Google's "angry birds".

The breakfast timing should fixed and should be not be varied frequently. The nature of human stomach is like local trains in Mumbai. If you are late, you are going to miss your train friend and this might upset somebody else as you might be standing in the position of somebody else's train friend! Hence, preferably, you must avoid messing around with this timing.

Ones the fixed things of the day are put in order, further plan of the day can be tweaked based on your daily needs. But, you must remember that others expect something from you daily and should never set upon any course that might disappoint them. So, if you decide to spend more time on Facebook rather than on Google reader, then you must have an alternative slack time devised well before lest your FB friends might get offended. This doesn't mean you should sacrifice your time spend on google reader. Writers of 100s of RSS feeders you have subscribed would be lost because of your inattentiveness. The only advise that can guarantee to provide an optimal solution is to rent a ghost writer of yourself to do these chores. This way you might end some time for newspaper reading over the coffee break.

The plan works only if it is visible to you all the time. So you keep it where your eyes can catch hold of it. For example, a plan on the stick-me-note on the side of refrigerator knob is a good choice. I prefer this place because every time I open my fridge after my 10 minute nap between my tiring 5 minutes working time, I get reminded about my plan. This has always helped in maintaining a health work life ( by not overdoing it).

Planning alone won't lead to the success of the endeavour that you have chalked out. It depends on the meticulous implementation. And the implementation is appreciated only if there are incentives attached on its successful completion. So after preparing a good plan of the day, you should receive the incentive for doing that. And the best possible incentive that you can bank on is good 10 minutes nap afterwards.

PS: just stuck my plan on to refrigerator knob.