I love the quotes of Mark Twain

His quotes are humorous, bitter, but contain wisdom.

One of my favourite quotes is, “Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.”

I have found his advice most liberating and truly worth following.

We often make our lives miserable our life is due to our hyperactive conscience.

I have seen people getting so much upset about what is happening in their nation and around the world. For example,

• Many people are upset that the Taliban has captured power in Afghanistan
• Many people are upset since a political leader that they hate is ruling their nation
• Many people are so unhappy because there are so much injustice and inequality in the world

We can find a million reasons to feel unhappy if we allow our conscience to be highly active because there are a billion wrong things happening in the world at every time.

We must rather ask ourselves:

• Are we responsible for all these problems?
• Are we willing to do something concrete to solve these problems?

If we are not going to do anything to solve these problems, there is no point worrying about these problems.

Instead, we must try to use our energy to solve those problems which are due to us, or which we are capable of solving and allow the other problems to be solved by the people who are actually facing them.

If we choose to carry the burden of the world on our shoulders, we might be crushed under its weight and make our life miserable, without being able to solve these problems.

Hence, it is better to allow your conscience to relax on all such issues which are beyond your zone of influence.

Mark Twain’s advice to have good friends and good books are also great.

When we have good friends, we can share our joys, sorrows and thoughts with them.

Good books help us navigate the world and understand the thoughts of the greatest minds of the world sitting in the comfort of our homes.

Good books are like good friends which can help us enjoy our life and also learn about life.

I find the advice of Mark Twain quite liberating and extremely helpful in leading a great life.

-Awdhesh Singh

Awareness

“I worked really hard and yet I failed”

This is one of the most common line I have ever heard from people.

Most people assume that one cannot achieve success despite putting in the hard work and success really depends on luck.

However the real problem is that most people cannot distinguish between manual labor and actual hard work.

Most people are stuck doing manual labor which fetches them no result.

Success on the other hand highly depends on what I call “High Impact Activities”.

A majority of people ignore these “High Impact Activities” because they are “Hard”.

Now don’t get me wrong, here hard activities does not mean they take effort, its just that they are least pleasant to do.

Hence people try avoiding these activities and focus all their energy and effort on low impact activities.

Lets take an example for both HIA and LIA:

In business context:

HIA: Cold calling customers, selling them products on the phone or reaching out to new customers, following up new leads.

LIA: Designing logo for your website, spending time to learn so called “productivity tips” from YouTube after wasting hours on designing the logo which you could have outsourced on fiver for $5.

In a student context:

HIA: Focusing on the most important yet hard topics and understanding them thoroughly.

LIA: Spending more time on easier topics, topics which you already know well.

In a newbie programmers context:

HIA: Working on a personal project which involves building something.

LIA: Reading and searching for answers on sites, deciding which code editor to use, debating on which programming language is better.

I hope this gives a clear idea of how High Impact Activities are different from Low Impact Activities.

If you compare them both, you will find that both of them take the same amount of effort to do.

However if you take a look at HIA, they are not very comfortable or pleasing to do.

Designing a logo for your business seems like a nice idea while cold calling a client sounds rough and hence people tend to deviate towards things that are of less importance just because they find pleasure doing them.

High performers on the other end know what activities would create the most impact for them and hence they are willing to do them irrespective of how un-pleasurable they are to do.

Doing hard work does not mean working like a donkey on some simple things.

Here is what hard work looks like:

1. Deciding and doing something which you know is not pleasurable but can give you the maximum results.
2. Taking risks in all walks of your life, switching careers if the current one does not pay you well.
3. Taking hard decisions, making a complete shift in the way you operate and think.
4. Taking responsibility, hiring people, or learning some new skill which can change the course of your career.
5. Being able to manage and make the most efficient use of your time.
6. Being consistent for years doing anything, be it at a business, learning new skills, or working out.
7. Doing something which you have never done before, or doing something where you are uncertain about the outcome.

These are the actual activities which can be termed as hard work.

The day you understand the difference between manual labor and real hard work is the day when your life would change completely.

-Saurav Sharma

Firstly, stop creating false beliefs in your mind

Freelancing

 If you are serious about Freelancing then grab a pen and paper before you continue reading the rest of the answer.

I have seen a lot of freelancers from India struggle to get their first job and that is not because freelancing is hard, its just because they don’t know the process of how to get started as a freelancer.

In this answer I will provide which anyone with decent skills can take and start their journey to become a freelancer.

Here are the steps:

1. List down your skills: On a piece of paper, list out the skills which you have currently. You don’t have to be an expert at it but you should be decent at those skills. It would be better if you list your skills in descending order of your expertise. Example: Skills include: Python, Django, Java.
2. Visit a freelancing site: Once you are done with the list, just visit any site like Upwork and search for projects which match your skills listed above.

Now comes the most important step, usually people start applying for jobs right here and they fail miserably. Here is what you should do instead.

3. Check your skills: Once you search for projects matching your skills, you will need to go ahead and pick any random project. Read the project description and figure out if you can really take-on this project. Analyse for yourselves if you have proper skills to handle the project. The most important thing here is to be honest yourselves. This step is to identify what skills you lack. List down the skills you lack on a piece of paper. Example: You may know Java but the project is Android based and you might lack Android application development skills.

4. Lets fill the gaps: Once you have identified which skills you lack, its better to master them first before you proceed ahead working on projects. You will need to learn those skills from scratch but it will boost your confidence. Learn online, buy books, refer to tutorials on YouTube or get courses from Udemy.com. There are plenty of resources to learn the skills and fill the gaps.

Step no. 3 & 4 are extremely important because as a beginner freelance developer it is impossible that one has each and every skill required as a freelancer, hence it is important to analyse ourselves before we apply for jobs.

Most people skip these steps and when they apply for jobs they are rejected because the client senses a lack of knowledge and confidence during the interview.

5. Working on a dummy project: Go back to the project you have selected, instead of placing a bid, try to implement the same project on your own. Test yourselves to see if you have really filled the skill gap which existed before. This will make you confident and also add a project in your portfolio. The significance of this step is to make yourselves confident when you apply for next projects.

6. Apply on your first project: The final step is to apply on projects, once you have the skills and confidence, applying on projects would be quite easy and your chances of acquiring a project would be much higher. Don’t get discouraged though, keep applying on projects.

7. Set a schedule: An aspiring/ beginner freelancer should devote his entire workday to three things. 1. Applying on jobs. 2. Improving your skills 3. Interviewing.

In case you have applied on jobs and yet to receive response from clients, don’t just keep waiting. Instead utilise those hours to further analyse yourselves and enhance your skills.

-Saurav Sharma

Make your life interesting & here is how to do it

If you enjoy watching other people’s lives on YouTube and are entertained by it then that probably means that you don’t have enough zing in your own life. People like Bill Gates and Musk ain’t watching XYZ vlogs on YouTube, their life is a lot more interesting than that. If your life ain’t interesting then you are doing it the wrong way. And no, you don’t need to live in a mansion and have fancy cars to live an interesting life, you can be a struggling poor person who gives everything he’s/she’s got to make his/her dreams come true. That is also a way to live an interesting life. To live an interesting life, you must have a long-term goal and must be obsessed about it. Watching TV and YouTube vlogs is for regular people who want to stay all the same for their entire life. If you want to be on the path of constant improvement, you do need to make your own life interesting.

-Saurav Sharma

Hear me out

Firstly, stop creating false beliefs in your mind

Firstly, stop creating false beliefs in your mind.

There is no written rule anywhere which says that if you are a student from a tier 3 or tier 4 college means you cannot make it big in life.

The only people who fail are the ones which impose themselves with false beliefs like a being from a particular college limits you from achieving your full potential.

Why IITians are successful:

Talking about percentage, there are a lot more successful people from IITs who work at top companies.

On the contrary, the percentage of successful people from tier-3 and tier-4 colleges is very less.

However, the students from IITs and NITs are not successful because they belong to IITs or NITs but because they are extremely hard working people.

If you had prepared for JEE in the past, you would know how much work it takes to crack JEE.

If you did not crack JEE does not mean you were lazy, you might have worked hard but the truth is that the ones who cracked JEE had outworked you.

The same is likely to happen in careers as well, there is a high chance that when it comes to career opportunities these people will outwork you as well.

The earlier you accept this fact the better it would be for you.

IITs are definitely better at providing education which also makes them better engineers but that’s not the crucial factor. I have some senior friends who were at IITs and yet they are not as successful in their careers just because they stoped working as hard after a while.

If IIT was the only determining factor, then everyone at IITs would have been a huge success in their careers which is not true.

How can tier-3 tier-4 students get on par with students from IITs:

1. First and foremost, get rid of the belief that being from IITs would limit your potential it does not.
2. Outwork them, this is the best way you can get ahead of them, compensate your lack of good education with a solid amount of hard work.
3. With the internet, you have access to lectures from top universities like Harvard for free on YouTube , so with that you no longer have the excuse to say you don’t have access to good education.
4. Time is your most important asset, using it wisely can make a lot of difference in what you can achieve.

Being from a tier 3 or tier 4 college wont stop you from achieving success, but the mentality that makes you believe that tier-3 or tier-4 college has the power to decide your fate will definitely do so.

-Saurav Sharma

Completely ignore what others think of you ?

Logic Improvement in Coding

Freelancing

Before you even know how to start working as a freelancer, you need to get rid of the most common myths across freelancing.

The term freelancer is widely misunderstood

Lets bust a few myths first!

Myth #1: Freelancing is all about software development.

Freelancing does not have to just be about programming, there are a lot of other domains as well.

Here are a few freelancing roles:

1. Content writer.
2. Digital marketer.
3. Logo designer.
4. Graphic designer.
5. Web developer.
6. Software developer.
7. Ghost writer.
8. Business consultant.
9. Copyrighter.
10. Social media manager.

and a lot more roles come under freelancing.

Freelancer just means you are an independent contractor, who works independently on projects. You may be a content writer at a company and be a full time employee there or you can be a freelancer content writer who may work for the same company but on a project basis rather than being fully employed over there.

Myth #2: A freelancer just has to work online.

While it is true that it is much easier to find freelance jobs online, that is not the only way to find work as a freelancer.

You may also network with potential businesses and find clients offline as well.

Although finding a gig offline might sound a bit difficult but for a beginner it is much easier to find work offline as there is a lot less competition.

You may reach out to businesses, local shops and see if you can help them with their expertise.

If you are a graphic designer you can help them design brochures.

If you are a logo designer you can help design a great logo for their business.

If you are a digital marketer you can help them establish an online presence.

If you are a web developer you can help them setup an e-commerce site.

Whatever it be, just think in terms of how your skillset can help the other party.

Myth #3: Freelancing pays loads of money.

Just as with any job as some people get paid less while some get paid more, freelancing is no different.

If you are average at what you do you will be paid average, if you are highly skilled at what you do you will be paid highly.

While it is true that online jobs pay you in dollars which translates to a larger amount in developing countries, however if you work for clients from developed countries you also need to deliver a product of equal quality.

If you are under the false impression that freelancing pays a ton for a lot less amount of work then please get out of that bubble.

Myth #4: You need tons of experience to be a freelancer.

Everyone starts from scratch and you are no different.

Freelancers who are experts now are the ones who were in exactly the same place as you are now. They just eventually built their expertise by working on more projects and learning along the way, continually upgrading their skills.

It is true that you wont get expert level projects as a beginner and even if you get one you should simply not take it. Start with simpler projects at first which you think you can handle and gradually move ahead.

Yes you do need to have experience to work on decent projects but how else are you going to get experience if you don’t get started at some point?

While starting off as a beginner all your focus should be on learning, work on projects but work for the knowledge and experience you get. Money is simply the byproduct. This same knowledge and experience in coming years will make you 10X of what you are making right now.

Myth #5: Freelancing marketplaces are full of competition.

When people start off as a freelancer and bid on a project, they see that about 20 more people have already placed a bid on the same project.

Assume 20 people bid on a project, all of the 20 are not your competition.

Your only competition are the people who are better than you and not the ones who are worse than you.

For example, if out of these 20 people, you are ranked 5th as per your skillset then you barely need to worry about the 15 people below you.

The only people you should be worry about are the ones who are better than you.

The quickest and the most direct way to not worry about competition is to outrank them, if you move up the skill ladder you hardly have to bother about the competition. Unless of course someone offers a cheaper price.

Now coming to the main question, how should you start off as a freelancer?

1. See what value you can provide to different people depending on your skillset.
2. Think freelancing as being an independent contractor, try to devote equal amount of time to working on projects and finding clients as well.
3. Finding clients is another skill you would need to learn apart from your core skillset, because no clients would mean no work.
4. Be creative, don’t just get stuck in finding jobs online. Try some creative techniques to land local clients as well.
5. Getting your first client is always the hardest, getting the second client is a bit easier and so on. Hence make sure to not give up too soon. I know people who didn’t get their first client for months and yet they now are doing great.
6. If you chose the path of being a freelancer you need to be a learner for life, because freelance marketplaces are highly competitive and not being up-to-date on skills will throw you out of the market.
7. Look at learning as the process of sharpening a saw, and freelancing as chopping down trees. The better you sharpen your saw on a regular basis the easier it would be for you to chop down trees.
8. Don’t do it for the sake of money. The most successful freelancers I know are the ones who love to do what they do, be them graphic designers or programmers. If you are in it for the money, you will be soon outworked and outperformed by people who are passionate for their work.
9. Don’t get stuck reading blog posts and articles about how to become a freelancer. Instead take action right away. Gathering information and reading blogpost is an endless loop and its easy to get sucked into it. The only people who should read such blogpost are the ones who have no idea about what freelancing is. But if you are someone who has been collecting information since months, you probably need to stop reading and get to the actual work instead.

A few tips on how to find and get work offline:

1. Ask for referrals from friends and families, ask if they know business owners or an individuals who would need your services.
2. Contact and keep in touch with local shops and businesses you personally know. Don’t pitch your services but instead show them how you can help them in their business.
3. Network with more people in your circle and make new connections, you never know who can be your next potential client.
4. Keep an intent of genuinely helping business, don’t simply pitch your services to make money off them, pitch only if you know that your service would be of value to the customer. If it doesn’t help the client, simply don’t sell them.
5. Offer money back guarantee. If you fail to deliver results simply return back their money. If you are so confident about your services you should also be willing to return back clients money if you don’t deliver. This not only makes your proposal solid but will also make your client’s experience stress free.

-Saurav Sharma

Karma's Role In Unemployment

Write a journal to document your progress

Write a journal to document your progress: You do have a passbook to keep track at transactions of your money at the bank. What would happen if the bank stops keeping a track of your money and expenses? Wont that be a terrible idea? So why not keep track of where you are in life right now, what are you doing to improve and how much have you improved over a period of time ? To actually improve yourself, you do need a tracking system in place to track your progress on a daily basis. This system does not need to be complex, you just need to maintain a journal which records things you have done today to improve yourself. For example, you may write things down like “1. Reduced social media usage by 2 hours”, “2. Started learning XYZ skill, completed 1 topic” “3. Walked for 1Km ”. At the end of every week or every month, you can now do a self-review to see how much you have accomplished for the entire month. You can calculate the total hours you have put into learning a new skill, total kilo meters you walked, or total time saved for the entire month which you would otherwise have spent on social media. You can use the same journal for comparing your month-to-month progress as well. For example, in the past month if you had walked 30km then in the next month walking even 35km would be considered as a good progress.

-Saurav Sharma

Be very stingy with your time and energy

Be very stingy with your time and energy

A simple question?

Would you pay INR 500(USD 8) per month to use the social media site which you browse regularly which provides no value but instead wastes your time?

Heck no, you would rather stop using it instead of wasting your money.

So why would you want to waste your time and energy on the same site which are worth a lot more than INR500 per month ?

If the site starts charging that subscription amount you would rather quit using it.

It’s funny how we panic when we loose some money, we are very wise with our money even though we know that it can be earned.

However, our time and energy is something which can never be earned back.

Hence be very cautious before spending energy on some dumb stuff, like watching that YouTube video which provides no value.

Stop spending time on social media which brings in no value, would you have paid a monthly fee for using the same social media site?

-Saurav Sharma

Optimize your energy

6 Games you play in life