PERSONAL SPECIAL..... COOL IN A CRISIS

COOL IN A CRISIS





Venus Williams was stuck in a controversy when she was playing at Wimbledon, but she kept her focus. Check out how these pointers can help you too

When it comes to work, we all have to leave our per sonal problems at the door and get on with the job. But during a private crisis, while we may be at work physically, mentally we're reliving the issue and this could distract us from the task at hand. While it may not be such a problem on a usual day, what if you have an important presentation or contract to consider?
Disaster. Here's how to be productive even when you're going through a rollercoaster of emotions.

Self-compassion

Stop beating yourself up about something that has already happened .You're not going to be able to change the situation, but learning to deal with it can help. The first step is to put yourself in the shoes of your loved ones. What advice would you give them?
Would you tell them to let the incident eat away at them or would you advise them to put it out of their mind?
Practice some care on yourself as well. Look at the situation from the eyes of someone who loves you.

Share your worries

If you can't get negative or worrying feelings out of your mind, talk to a loved one about it. Just sharing your feelings will help you get things in perspective. I f you feel you're not acting like yourself at work, speak to a trusted colleague or your immediate senior. Explain the situation to them (you can limit the details ­ if it's too personal, it's best to be vague) so that they are on the same page as you, can give you some space and help ease your load.

Live in the moment

Will worrying and thinking about what happened make it better? Probably not. But neither will bottling it up and pretending nothing happened. So, live in the moment and do one task at a time. And if you must, give yourself emotional breaks, where you ponder on the issue for a few minutes before tackling your real job again. Stay away from social media or the person who has caused you the stress during those breaks as those can be triggers to relive the drama all over again.

Escape route

While we're not on board with running away from your problems, a break will do wonders for your mood. Look at your working hours as an escape from your situation, when you are focussed only on your job. Work usually isn't personal or too emotional. Use your office as your calm in the storm.

Get positive

When going through a personal crisis, most of us resort to not-so-healthy means of distracting ourselves. Whether it's with fast food, alcohol, other substances or even people, using negative ways to change the channel in your mind is not the best way to deal with the problem. However, using positive ways to distract yourself can help when going through a difficult time. Exercise, throw yourself into a new project or start a new hobby. It can also help you put things in perspective.

glynda alves

ET21JUL17 

HEALTH SPECIAL ......The Facts And Fads Of Healthy Eating

The Facts And Fads Of Healthy Eating

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New research suggests that doctors may needlessly vilify cholesterol and demonise fat

Each time I come across an interesting bit of news about food and health, I write about it. If you’ve been following my health articles, you will know that they follow two basic trajectories. One: foods that may not necessarily be very good for you, such as milk or gluten. And two: the links between heart disease and the food we eat.

It’s the second strand that intrigues me this week. Ever since the turn of the century when The New York Times

Magazine ran a now famous cover story, we have all been grappling with the idea that decades of medical orthodoxy may be founded on a misconception – that fat is a villain and the enemy of good health.

The survey that The Times quoted in that influential article suggested that fats may not cause heart disease or even be bad for you. Such was the impact of the story that protein and fat-rich diets such as Atkins began to soar in popularity. A second finding of the research – that carbohydrates caused obesity – became nearly as influential. In much of the West, people gave up on bread and rice, preferring such newly-rediscovered grains as quinoa. (Actually quinoa is not really a grain in the traditional sense, it is a protein that people use as a rice substitute.)

Over the years, both of those conclusions have been reinforced by more and more research. In America, they now trace the epidemic of obesity back to a notorious government recommendation that urged people to eat less meat and more grain. You don’t need to be a scientist to work out that the fattest Americans tend to be those at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder who eat lots of wheat-rich (hamburgers, pizza, sandwiches, etc.) foods.

(It always intrigues me that, in body-size terms, America is the opposite of the Third World. Here, if somebody is very thin, it often means they are poor and can’t afford enough food. In America, the rich stay thin while 2 the poor get fat.) Another US government recommendation kicked off the global craze for olive oil. Americans were told that saturated fats (basically, any fat that turns solid when cool) like butter were the enemy and that olive oil was good for you. Till that point, olive oil had been preferred for its taste. Now, people spend three or four times the amount they would spend on normal oil to buy olive oil in the belief that it would keep their hearts healthy.

Doctors even used olive oil to explain the so-called French paradox. If meat was so bad for you, people wondered, then why did the French – who eat lots of red meat – have relatively low rates of heart disease? Ah, easy to explain, said the nutritionists. They cook in olive oil and olive oil contains substances that sweep through the arteries clearing plaque and widening them.

This sounded miraculous till you realised that the parts of France with low rates of heart disease were located in the North where they prefer to cook in lard and butter and not in olive oil. (In any case, the evidence for the French paradox itself, now seems to be fading.)

Over the last decade, studies suggest that the basis for the medical establishment’s hatred of fats (and especially animal fats like butter) is fundamentally flawed. Last year, the US government conceded that there was no direct link between dietary cholesterol and cholesterol levels in the blood. Till then, doctors had believed that if we ate cholesterol-rich foods, this cholesterol would show up in our blood. Now, they accept that our bodies do not work in such a simplistic way.

The fat-is-poison orthodoxy suffered another blow two months ago when researchers from the US National Institutes of Health, the Mayo Clinic and the University of North Carolina published a paper suggesting that even in the 1970s, doctors should have known that the anti-fat orthodoxy was flawed. (There is an excellent article about this by Katherine Ellen Foley in Quartz, from where I’ve gleaned much of this information.)

Researchers looked at the raw data of a study that ran from 1968 to 1973, which followed the diets of 9,750 men and women. Some of those who were part of the study ate meals made with animal fats (butter, for instance) while others ate food cooked with olive oil or vegetable fats.

The research showed that those who used plant fats had 14 per cent lower cholesterol overall. But, surprisingly, the people with lower cholesterol had higher risks of death than those who ate animal fats! For every 30 points that cholesterol went down, the risk of death actually increased by 22 per cent. (This is a statistical study so it only tells you what happened, not why it happened.)

So does that mean that the received wisdom about cholesterol and the risk of death is wrong? Well, may be. Most of us have been brought up on a plumbing model of heart disease. According to this model, your heart is a big pump and the arteries are the pipes that lead out of it. If these pipes are clogged, it leads to heart disease. The problem with cholesterol or any fat in the blood, we are told, is that it functions like grease and clogs up the pipes, narrowing the flow of blood. And when the flow is restricted, you get a heart attack.

This model is not necessarily wrong. It is just oversimplistic. And the bit about grease blocking the pipe is particularly misleading. In April, researchers from the UK and the US reviewed all the existing studies about cholesterol and heart disease. Their conclusion was that these studies proved that “the conceptual model of dietary saturated fat clogging a pipe is just wrong”.

Heart disease is caused by inflammation. And various factors could cause that inflammation. Blood cholesterol is not entirely blameless. There can be tiny cholesterol bubbles inside the arteries and they could cause heart attacks when they burst. But what makes them burst is still not clear.

What we do know, however, is that another spoon of ghee will not cause the cholesterol bubbles to burst. The researchers found that in every study they looked at, the lowering of fat levels in diets did not reduce the incidence of heart attacks, strokes or coronary disease itself.

So, what should we, as Indians, take away from all this research? I am no doctor. But speaking as a layman who likes reading up on this stuff, here are some tentative conclusions:

Don’t waste money on expensive oils unless you actually like the taste. Olive oil is the subject of huge scams (which I wrote about here a few years ago) revolving around its origin and virginity. It is not clear that it helps greatly in reducing heart disease. And in any case, there are many cheaper oils with many of the same properties as olive oil.

Don’t get too bothered if doctors start telling you to give up red meat. This may make sense in America where beef has a high fat content but in India, chicken often has more fat than our goats. And you are better off eating goat meat (which is usually free range) than nasty industrial broiler chicken.

Statins are a controversial medical subject, so you should probably listen to your doctor and not to me. But here’s what I do know: the obsession with blood cholesterol levels is falling out of favour in modern medicine. The market for statins used to be $20 billion till recently. But after the American Heart Association put out guidelines suggesting to doctors that they prescribe them less, the market has dropped to $12.5 billion.

None of this is to suggest that you should give up eating rice or rotis and gorge on butter. If there is one thing I have learnt after years of seeing scientists change their minds, it is this: ignore the fads. The basic Indian diet was always okay with the possible exception of sugar (we may eat too much of it).

So pay no attention to the same people who once told us to use vanaspati (which is really bad for you) instead of ghee (which is fine), who try and control our red meat consumption and who shove too many expensive medicines down our throats.

Minimise your fast food intake and eat simply and eat well. That, and a little exercise, should be enough to keep you going.

Vir Sanghvi BR 23JUL17

STARTUP SPECIAL.... HOW I GOT MY STARTUP IDEA

HOW I GOT MY STARTUP IDEA





I REALISED SOCIAL MEDIA HAD A WEALTH OF DATA

The idea:

An AI-based customer intelligence platform for marketers

Eureka moment:

One of the things Amarpreet Kalkat discovered while working for companies like Nokia and Trilogy was that there was a lot of value in the data available on social media. “One could really understand the customers from what they talked about on these platforms.“ He started Frrole as a consumer news discovery model in 2012, but that didn't work, so two years later, he decided to look at enterprises, help companies get insights on their target customers.

Early days:

Getting access wasn't difficult.Indian companies were more than willing to work with him. He registered the company in the US to get global customers and for easier access to external funds. The company successfully raised funds from Times Internet and individual investors including Sharad Sharma and Rajan Anandan.

Now:

The company has around 20 customers including Flipkart, Ebay, Times Now, Zee News.It is planning to expand in the US.

I SAW BENGALI PRODUCTS WERE POPULAR IN DELHI

The idea:

E-commerce platform for ethnic products and food items

Eureka moment:

Promita Sengupta was a banker, but always wanted to be an entrepreneur. She first floated a social venture that built portable toilets for women in villages. But margins were low, so Sengupta wanted to start something with potentially better margins. She noticed the popularity of Bengali products. “People used to travel all across the city and be stuck in traffic for hours to reach CR Park in Delhi, the Mecca of Bengali food and products.“

Early days:

In 2015, she set up an e-commerce portal called Cre8comm, and she tied up with vendors selling just Bengali products, including sweets, raw and cooked food. She also created a Facebook page.

Now:

The platform has around ten vendors and serves customers in Delhi NCR and Jaipur.Cre8comm is planning to soon start selling products from other regions including Orissa, Bihar and Kerala. They have had around 10,000 customers and have sold 20,000 products so far.

Jul 24 2017 : The Times of India (Mumbai)





JOB SPECIAL.... Impact of tech on jobs: The future still needs humans, but of a different kind

Impact of tech on jobs: The future still needs humans, but of a different kind

Imagine a world where your car drives itself, your fridge does the grocery shopping, your coffee machine senses you nearby and automatically pours you your favorite brew and robots work alongside you. The times that we are living in are probably one of the most exciting and equally challenging to be alive in.

We are in the midst of a scientific and technological revolution. Space travel and robots working alongside humans are no longer termed as science fiction. Technology is driving most of the changes and is making the world smaller as we speak. Disruption has become a new normal. In the fast changing technology landscape, it is interesting to analyse what the future will holds when it comes to us, our jobs, the workplaces, industries at large, and finally, our planet.

The biggest development in recent times have been in the area of artificial intelligence. Everything is going to be able to move around the world autonomously as AI will help people make decisions and enhance lives. AI is a specialized technology that can help in making statistical guesses based on enormous data sets, but they have no real understanding or comprehension of the tasks they are performing. There are reams of paper being written about the impact of this technology on jobs across industries. So does that mean we still have a chance?

Yes, we do but will have to orient ourselves differently. The future will belong to a new breed of talent, the ones that are multi-dimensional and are able to navigate a constantly changing world with ease. Here are some attributes that will help you stay ahead of the game.

Learning is dynamic and on-going. Today, the most important skill organizations look for in their talent is learnability. According to the World Economic Forum, up to 65% of the jobs Generation Z will perform don't even exist yet and up to 45% of the activities people are paid to perform today could be automated using current technology. The need of the hour is people with completely different skillsets. With technology becoming obsolete at such a rapid pace, people are expected to learn, unlearn and relearn on a constant basis.

- Comfort with complexity

Here's something to mull over- the first Marketing Technology Landscape that famous marketer Scott Brinker put together showed 100 logos of companies offering Martech software. This was in 2011. Fast forward by 6 years and that number today has become 5381.

And this is only in the space of Martech. That shows you, the complexity of today's time caused by the proliferation of technology and tools. As more and more concepts come into play, the environment becomes cumbersome and complex to deal with. In a cluttered market, the only way to navigate is by decluttering. Concepts such as decoupled architecture and two-speed IT will show you how problems are being broken down into smaller pieces and being dealt with in the world of IT. Similarly, your ability to take a complex problem and break them down into more manageable pieces will help you succeed in today's environment.

- People sense

Today is the age of connectedness and collaboration. Most clients themselves are struggling to navigate change. They don't always know what they want, and seek partners that will collaborate and co-create with them. This requires breaking silos in organizations, working with people from completely different backgrounds and skillsets and breaking boundaries of our own minds.
While technology will play an important role in the transformation of the workforce, it is very important for people to be grounded and have a people sense. Remember, at the end of the day, all technology is ultimately driven by humans.

- Adaptability
The complexity of challenges faced by companies today are much bigger than those in the past. Specializations are no longer enough to solve these problems. People today will need to instead develop skills that allow them to navigate and find comfort in ambiguity. Your capability to apply concepts, ideas and problem-solving techniques across different sectors will determine whether or not you'll thrive in the future workplace.

Successful people today have disruptive ways of working. They believe in 'failing fast' and building on success. They subscribe to new ways of working and bring agility, knowledge and discipline to the table with a shorter learning cycle. All this is possible if you are able to embrace change rather than running away from it

As you think of your career today, spend time to learn on the job and keep up-skilling yourself. The only way you will continue to be relevant today is if you become multi-skilled and yet continue develop the softer I mentioned above.


(Rishi Bhatnagar is Capacity Lead at SapientRazorfish, APAC. Views expressed are those of the author alone.)

ET : Jul 22, 2017

DIGITAL SPECIAL .....The digital future of work What skills will be needed?

The digital future of work What skills will be needed?

Robots have long carried out routine physical activities, but increasingly machines can also take on more sophisticated tasks. Experts provide advice on the skills people will need going forward.

For an 18-year-old today, figuring out what kind of education and skills to acquire is an increasingly difficult undertaking. Machines are already conducting data mining for lawyers and writing basic press releases and news stories. In coming years and decades, the technology is sure to develop and encompass ever more human work activities.

Yet machines cannot do everything. To be as productive as it could be, this new automation age will also require a range of human skills in the workplace, from technological expertise to essential social and emotional capabilities.

Experts from academia and industry join McKinsey partners to discuss the skills likely to be in demand and how young people today can prepare for a world in which people will interact ever more closely with machines. The interviews were filmed in April at the Digital Future of Work Summit in New York, which was hosted by the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) and New York University’s Stern School of Business.

Interviewees include NYU provost Katherine Fleming and professors Arun Sundararajan and Vasant Dhar; Tom Siebel, founder, chairman, and CEO of C3 IoT; Anne-Marie Slaughter, president and CEO of New America; Jeff Wald, cofounder and president of WorkMarket; Allen Blue, cofounder of LinkedIn; Mike Rosenbaum, CEO of Arena; along with MGI chairman and director James Manyika and MGI partners Michael Chui and Susan Lund.

Interview transcript

Susan Lund: For young people today, what’s clear is that they’re going to need to continue to learn throughout their lifetime. The idea that you get an education when you’re young and then you stop and you go and work for 40 or 50 years with that educational training and that’s it—that’s over. All of us are going to have to continue to adapt, get new skills, and possibly go back for different types of training and credentials. What’s very clear is that what our kids need to do is learn how to learn and become very flexible and adaptable.

Arun Sundararajan: The future of work that a college graduate is looking at today is so different from the future of work that I looked at when I was a college graduate. There’s far less structure, there’s far less predictability. You don’t know that you can invest in a particular set of capabilities today and that will be valuable in 20 years. We used to be able to say, “This is the career I’m going to choose.” That’s a difficult bet to make today with so much change.

Vasant Dhar: More generally what I tell students is that it would help if you had the skills that are required to deal with information because those are the core skills that are necessary these days to help you learn new things. This ability to learn things on your own to some extent will be driven by the core skills you have and how you can handle and process information.

Tom Siebel: The most important message is you need to prepare for yourself. If people are sitting back, waiting to be candidly taken care of by a welfare state, I don’t think that’s a very good answer.

James Manyika: We found that, for example, in something like 60 percent of all occupations an average 30 percent of their work activities are automatable. What does that mean? We’re going to see more people working alongside machines, whether you call that artificial augmentation or augmented intelligence, but we’re going to see a lot more of that. That’s quite important because it raises our whole sense of imperatives. It means that more skill is going to be required to make the most of what the machines can do for the humans.

Advice for an 18-year-old today

Anne-Marie Slaughter: I’m the mother of two sons, 18 and 20, and I think about how to advise them all the time. What I tell them is: It matters far less what they choose to study than the skills they build. I advise them to hone creative skills. I’ve actually got an actor and a musician, so that’s not hard. But I tell them to think about analytic skills, creative skills, human skills, the kind of self-presentation, being able to connect to others, being able to sell in the sense of persuade.

Katherine Fleming: They’re going to need skills that they can only get by doing things. So every time they’re given the opportunity to do something, they should say yes to it, even if it doesn’t strike them initially as being exactly what they want to be doing.

Jeff Wald: What are you passionate about? Does that map to what skill sets are needed? Become a subject matter expert in a skill set that will have demand, and then be capable of marketing and monetizing that.

Allen Blue: Look for that first job to be one where you learn not the specifics, but where you learn the generalities about actually thriving in the world of work.

James Manyika: I think of my own son, who’s 16. On the one hand, I think he should study science and he should understand systems. But would I tell him to focus just on coding? I don’t think I would because machines are going to be very good at coding, by the way. Would I ask him to focus just on statistics? No, because I think machines can calculate statistics and analytical things incredibly well. But it’s important to understand how statistics works. Not that that’s what he’s going to be doing, but because he needs to understand that, and have a more system level view of those things, and be able to think in a computer science like way.

Mike Rosenbaum: The skills that I would recommend an 18-year-old think about, which may or may not fit in the traditional definition of skills, are to try stuff that you never thought about. If you try things that you never thought about, you may find that you have skills and talents that you never realized you had. Being able to challenge your own assumptions about what you’re good at and what you can do creates massive opportunities to put yourself on a path that’ll make you happy and successful.

July 2017

http://www.mckinsey.com/global-themes/future-of-organizations-and-work/the-digital-future-of-work-what-skills-will-be-needed?cid=other-eml-alt-mip-mgi-oth-1707&hlkid=9d1dbb7cc5dc4418866742bee952dbff&hctky=1627601&hdpid=f3889f06-b02f-4e3a-8a36-8d3c718408cf

TRAVEL SPECIAL....... THAILAND Isle Be There

THAILAND Isle Be There





Koh Kood, known as Thailand's last unspoilt island, offers not only pristine beaches, glistening rainforests and flying waiters but also lessons in environmental sustainability

Strapping on a seat belt to have breakfast is a first for us.

We are at Soneva Kiri, an eco-resort located on the re mote Thai island of Koh Kood, and are nicely en sconced in a steel and rattan basket to enjoy the day's first meal. As we buckle up, the contraption is gently hoisted by cables 16 feet off the ground and up our personal tree and into a leafy rainforest canopy. In front of us looms the Gulf of Siam where surf-tipped waves are rolling and crashing on the shoreline.

Once we are settled among the native Massang trees, a “flying“ waiter, harnessed to a zipline, delivers us freshly prepared breakfast. Open sandwiches (salmon, egg, chicken, cheese-tomato), croissants, yoghurt, juices, fresh fruits, olives, nuts, cheeses and coffee showcase, quite literally, the height of gastronomy.As to how the waiter managed to not spill our beverages or food during his high-wire act still boggles our mind.

What also boggles the minds is Koh Kood's untamed beauty -glistening rainforests, coconut and rubber plantations, sleepy fishing hamlets and the Gulf of Siam in all its 50 shades of blue. To the west lie the jagged, emerald peaks of Koh Chang, while the Cardamom Mountains of Cambodia are to the east. Thick swathes of palm trees dot white beaches while mangrove-lined rivers brim with plump grouper fish. At night, the sky is full of stars; fireflies blink in the trees.

As if this ain't idyllic enough, even the island's resorts have dreamy names -Tinkerbell, Peter Pan, Fairy Isle. We loll about in deckchairs beneath the palm trees. We kayak across the clear blue sea to a small golden curve of beach.We read, we star gaze, we succumb to the gentle ministrations of our Thai masseur to the sound of birdsong. We stroll on beach sand so clean it squeaks underfoot. And, of course, we quaff the obligatory sunset cocktail!

Into the Wilderness

Dubbed “Thailand's last unspoilt island“, the 25-km-long and 12-km-wide Koh Kood (also known as Ko Kut or Ko Kud) is also one of the region's least developed. It remains a wilderness, its centre a mix of impenetrable jungle and rubber plantations.

Unsullied by the trappings of mass tourism, Koh Kood boasts no public transport, mega marts, beer bars or eateries swarming with tourists. There's little internet access and few cars. Electricity is minimal; homes and hotels rely on generators or solar power. Local bamboo doubles as building material for homes and commercial establishments simply because, as a local puts it, “it allows cool breeze to pass through“. There are no organised tours either; so travellers looking to explore the island's innards are pretty much on their own. Accommodation comprises mostly home stays in fishing communities and budget hotels as well as a few luxury resorts that promote a barefoot, relaxed approach.

The ocean remains Koh Kood's biggest lure, offering a welter of dive and snorkel sites as well as rock dives. It has a rich marine life -stingray, moray eels, small coral fish, catfish, goatfish, razor fish, stone fish, octopus, crabs, starfish. Also nudibranch, groupers, sweet lips, fusiliers, parrotfish and hordes of shrimp hiding in the rocks, sometimes even turtle.

“Koh Kood's original settlers lived in two fishing villages, Ao Salat and Ao Yai. They are also the start and end points of the island's road,“ says our guide Real as we tour the island, traversing semi-concrete pathways (there are no roads in Koh Kood), lined by butterfly pea, ginger, lemon grass, mangosteen, rose apple and papaya plants. “Most of Koh Kood's residents are fishermen or farmers who cultivate coconut palms and rubber trees,“ Real adds.

The island's main settlements -Ban Khlong Hin Dam and Ban Khlong Mat -nestle by a natural harbour-inlet a few kilometres north up the coast. The stilted fishing village of Ban Ao Salat lies on the northeast coast and the fishing community of Ban Ao Yai occupies the southeast coast.

Given the island's exquisite beauty and fragile ecosystem, its 4,000 residents keep a strict eye on environmental sustainability. This makes Koh Kood quite the antithesis to Thailand's other touristy getaways (Phuket, Koh Samui, Koh Chang) that have fallen prey to breathless construc tion and poor waste management. Koh Kood has es chewed untrammelled expansion. There's no stampede (as yet) of big hotel chains, plastic consumption remains mini mal, water is recycled to a large extent and local produce is lev eraged to whittle down carbon footprint.

Far from Madding Crowd

What has also worked to Koh Kood's advantage is its seclusion. It is so remote that just getting there seems like an ex pedition. After our flight from New Delhi to Bangkok, we hop into a 10-seater private Cessna plane which takes us over rivers, mountains and lakes to the tiny airport at Trat. From the airport, we board a speedboat to get to our resort.

As land disappears and the surf rides up behind the speedboat, the concrete jungle of Bangkok -and all signs of civilisation -recede. What surfaces instead is palm-fringed splendour teeming with flora and fauna. On most days, we have entire stretches of sand and sea to ourselves with no brazen crowds vying for elbow-to-elbow sun beds. Sparkling white sand and crystal clear turquoise water keep us company. Swathes of shoreline fringed by scrub and mangrove and virgin tropical rainforest fill us with wonder.

Tinkling waterfalls, the most famous of which is Nam Tok Khlong Chao, lying inland from Ao Khlong Chao, offer us salubrious day trips. We trek deep into the heart of the island, along a rainforest track to the three-tiered Khlong Chao waterfall; tonnes of milky foam crashing over a moss-covered cliff and into a large, inky pool. Story goes that when King Rama VI visited the spot in 1911, his staff marked the rocky platforms around the waterfall with royal graffiti. Vestiges of that graffiti are still faintly visible. We dip our toes in the icy shallows of the waterfall and watch the trek's tiredness instantly ebb away.

Heading north from Khlong Chao, we encounter a few more beaches, all quiet and isolated. The pretty Ao Noi beach bustles with commercial activity, with new resorts coming up. A temple, the island's administrative centre and hospital are all located here. The adjoining Bang Bao beach offers views over a horseshoe-shaped bay.

Also located nearby is Benz, a tiny gem of a restaurant that counts among its regulars Hollywood actor Tilda Swinton. The eatery (open only for dinner twice a week) offers no menu.Rather chef Khun Benz constructs authentic Thai meals around the freshest catch of the day and whatever she can forage from the local markets.

We feast on the delicate flavours of a banana blossom salad with shrimp, deep-fried, crispy sweet corn, sea bass soup with Thai herbs, wok-fried morning glory with oyster sauce, red curry pork with pineapple and tantalising bowls of tab tim grob, the signature Thai dessert (red rubies in coconut milk).Innards exploding, we beg chef Benz for mercy so she could stop sending us more food.

Post dinner, we amble on the beach under a glittering vault of stars, the oceanic roar in our ears and the cool sand between our toes filling our senses. At that moment, I recall Australian Marie Waynes, a local hotelier, whom we had met earlier in the day. Waynes said that when she came to Koh Kood in 2010, she felt as though she'd stumbled upon a paradise. “Business brought me here, but it's the lovely island that made me stay. Now I don't want to leave.“

It is a feeling we could totally relate to.

Neeta Lal

ETM23JUL17

PERSONAL/ TIME MANAGEMENT SPECIAL ...These Five Tricks Will Help You Finally Complete Your To-Do List

These Five Tricks Will Help You Finally Complete Your To-Do List

If your long list of projects and tasks is leaving you overwhelmed, these methods will help you finally get things done.

Ah, to-do lists. The bane of our existence, the source of our stress and occasionally the symbol of our triumph. OK, I’m being a little dramatic–but those of us who’ve abided by this method of task-organization have probably felt that sinking feeling when we realize we’ve barely made a dent in our list, and it’s the end of the work day. And on rare days where we do manage to complete everything, we feel like we’re on fire.

If your list has got you feeling more stressed than triumphant lately, it might be time to modify your approach. Here are some ideas how:

1. LIMIT IT TO SIX THINGS A DAY

I remember hearing about this 100 year old “Ivy Lee” method back in college, and I’ve adopted it ever since. As James Clear previously wrote, the idea isn’t that six is some sort of magic number, it’s that by imposing a limit on the amount of tasks on your to-do list, you’re forced to make tough decisions about what’s important and what’s not. Also, the idea of tackling a to-do list of six is a lot less overwhelming than a to-do list of 20–which means you’ll be less likely to procrastinate.

2. DIVIDE IT INTO SECTIONS

There are certain tasks that are just easy to do one after another, and others require a complete switch in thinking. If we’re interrupted by a phone call when we’re heads down writing a report, it’ll probably take us awhile to get back “in the zone” after that phone call, and as a result we take much longer to complete our task because we need to allow time for brain transition. This is why lumping similar tasks together make sense; you’ll get more done in less time that way.

Fast Company writer Michael Grothaus recently tried this method. He divided his tasks between “digital quickies” (like emailing someone or making dinner reservations), “work” (writing, reporting, and pitching stories) and “real world” (personal errands like laundry or grocery shopping). Before trying this approach, Grothaus struggled to complete his to-do list. After dividing his to-do lists, he found himself crossing off every single task.

3. TRY TIME BLOCKING

Maybe you’re just not a list person, or you find it difficult to break down “making progress on that big project” to smaller to-dos. You could try abandoning lists altogether, and instead dedicate chunks of time for certain work instead.

That’s what writer Gwen Moran tried when she wanted to understand why she wasn’t getting everything done. She tracked how she was spending her time, saw interesting patterns and began to devote time slots to certain work rather than make her way down a long list. Kevin Kruse, management expert and author of 15 Secrets Successful People Know About Time Management told Moran that not only does time blocking force you to work with discipline and order, it also has major psychological benefits.

According to Kruse, when we have the expectation of completing a task and we don’t, we tend to stress about them. “However, when we have all of our tasks placed into a specific date, time, and duration, we sleep more soundly knowing everything that needs to get done is in its place.”

4. DISTINGUISH WHICH TASKS ARE TRULY IMPORTANT, AND WHICH TASKS ARE NOT

If you’re the type of person who just needs to write down everything you need to get done–regardless of how important or urgent they are–you can at least make assessments on their importance. If you don’t get everything done, you would have at least made headway on the things that are important.

Business coach and author Brian Tracy provides some guidance on how you can make this assessment. In his book, Master Your Time, Master Your Life, Tracy recommends we mark our tasks A, B, C, D, or E, depending on the consequences of not getting them done.

“A” tasks, according to Tracy, is something that we must do–if we don’t, there will be “serious consequences.” Things like meeting a deadline or preparing for an important meeting fall into this category.

“B” and “C” tasks are items we should do, but not doing them will only have minor (or no consequences).

“D” are tasks that we can delegate, and “E” are tasks that aren’t that necessary and we can therefore eliminate from our list. And speaking of elimination….

5. MAKE SURE IT INCLUDES THINGS WE WANT TO DO

We’re more likely to be motivated to tackle our to-do list when it contains tasks that we’re excited to work on. Yes, there are certain “shoulds” that we just need to bite the bullet and do, but there are probably many “shoulds” that aren’t going to affect our quality of life or career if we don’t do them. By getting rid of those from our list, we create room to do more things that actually makes us happy. In the long term that is.

Psychologist Art Markman previously wrote for Fast Company, “If you confront yourself each day with reminders of only the least enjoyable parts of your job, it’ll probably wind up sapping your motivation to come to work.”

It’s important to note that Markman isn’t saying that we should all stop doing part of our jobs that we hate; rather, he’s encouraging us to allocate some time each week to big-picture projects that contribute to our long-term career or life goals. Perhaps it’s learning a new skill that can get you on the promotion track faster or spending more time getting coffee with colleagues in your workplace in order to deepen your industry knowledge.

Markman ends by saying that we might start feeling better about our to-do list–even when it has plenty of tedious tasks–when it includes the things we want to do. These tasks “help put the more boring tasks into perspective” and remind us that our job “is more than just a sequence of small, boring, urgent duties to execute–because [we’ve] planned it to be.”

BY ANISA PURBASARI HORTON

https://www.fastcompany.com/40440153/these-five-tricks-will-help-you-finally-complete-your-to-do-list?utm_source=mailchimp&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=fcdaily-top&position=7&partner=newsletter&campaign_date=07192017a