Step 0 : Sleep early

Retire to bed on schedule even if you are not sleepy. You can’t arm twist your body into waking up early if you do not give it enough sleep. I call this the 0^th step, because all others are worthless without it.

This rule has another payoff; Since you already know that you do not have the luxury of waking up till late, you tend to focus on finishing up your tasks instead of stupid Facebook updates and senseless cat videos.

Step 1 : Moms are bad alarms

During my high school days, my mother used to wake me up for school somewhat like this: She would stand in the kitchen (busy preparing lunches for dad and us children), and yell my name, telling me that it’s 8 o’ clock and I should get my lazy bum out of the bed. This did not work, ever. Instead of doing her bidding, I would curl into a ball, shielding my ear with my pillow, more determined to stay in my bed. My dad, on the contrary, would walk up to my bed, sit by my side and just keep his warm hand on my forehead. This used to work like magic. 

And hence the lesson: Never use harsh or very loud alarm tones. Unpleasant triggers invoke instant negative response; You would simply shut the alarm off even before giving it a thought. Your alarm should be soothing to ear and low in volume. Personally, I rely on a playlist of my favorite slow and melodious songs that my Mac is programmed to play when I want to wake up. Most of the times I let the music play long after I have left my bed.

In the same rhyme, don’t place your alarm within your arms length. Make sure that you have to move out of your bed to reach the alarm. Keeping the alarm too close is a recipe for an incurable disease called chronic snoozing, and this brings us to the next step.

Step 2 : Death to the snooze button

I hereby declare the snooze button as the most evil invention of our times and a threat to humanity. I believe it was invented to lead us all into a state of procrastination and denial. Snooze button represents a false assurance that next time the alarm rings you would actually feel inclined to wake up and not hit the snooze button again. And the more you do this, the more powerful this false belief grows. I have spent countless mornings snoozing and sleeping, ending up in bed for longer after the alarm went up first time than before.

If you can’t make it out of the bed, just stop the alarm. Follow this rule strictly, burn your bridges, even if this screws up your schedule a few times. The fear of not having a backup to rely upon will help you jolt out of your bed. But wait, not so fast..

Step 3 : You don’t have to get out to get up

Don’t bog your mind down with the mammoth task of getting out of your warm, cozy and irresistible blanket the moment you wake up. Take small manageable steps towards being fully awake and aware. Open your eyes. Check what the time is. Take a long, leisurely, I-feel-oh-so-awesome kind of a stretch, making every muscle in your body realize it is time to get going. Message your loved ones, wishing them a beautiful day. Visualize what you plan to do this morning. And, then, finally, get out. Ah, the getting out..

Step 4 : Getting out to more comfort

This is important, because this is where we fail more often. Getting out of bed is almost like a punishment, no wait, it is a punishment. Take steps to make the world outside suck less. One of the tricks is to have a warmer room, using lets say a programmable thermostat. The alternate is a warmer you. Make sure you wear enough clothes so that the room doesn’t feel frozen as compared to your bed. Socks do wonders here.

You could add some more incentives to getting out of bed. Program the coffee machine to start brewing at the time you want to wake up. Or keep those cozy furry slippers by your bedside. You could even program your system to boot up and play your favorite songs.

Step 5 : Winning the war

Doing all this helps, but, there is one thing which is critical: Winning the war within, empowering ourselves to win the argument about waking up or sleeping off. You could take some cues from the very talented David McRaney. His blog and book discuss at length about the human tendency to put off what it otherwise seems important. Few excerpts from his excellent article on procrastination:

…the problem isn’t you are a bad manager of your time – you are a bad tactician in the war inside your brain… The trick is to accept the now-you will not be the person facing those choices, it will be the future-you – a person who can’t be trusted. Future-you will give in, and then you’ll go back to being now-you and feel weak and ashamed. Now-you must trick future-you into doing what is right for both parties…

All the best and happy mornings!!

Tag cloud for Trinamool Congress’s Manifesto.

Ok, so, who ALL are you best friends?
Well,  Rahul, Vijay, Inder and.. umm.. Rajat and yaa.. Amit!!

What do you like about them?
They are the best.. they love me for what I am, they themselves don’t pretend, they care for me, fight for me, and umm.. every second spent with them is awesome-ly full of fun.. that’s about it!!

So, in case you were given the chance to room with anyone you could choose, will you pick them?
Of course!! It will be awesome.. we’ll have loads of fun.

I got bad news for you pal, you’ll lose them in 10 days.
What?

Yes!!

Crazy as it may sound, rooming with your friends could damage your friendship forever. However close and understanding your friends are, they don’t have to constantly put up with the person in you who wakes up and sleeps at random hours, is a border line fanatic about keeping the washroom dry and snores their living daylights off. Yes, they do put up with all that at times, like on a rare night-over, but think about the pain of dealing with it every single day.

I am not saying that a stranger or a non-friend roomie will appreciate you being a pain. In all possibility, they will mind it equally (if not more) irritating. But the fact is, they’ll never expect you to behave in the first place. The bigger issue while rooming with your friends is the adjustment and understanding you (and they) expect. The argument that goes here is, you always used to love me as I am, what’s wrong now? So while you might love your friends a lot, as a roomie you’ll be less reasonable with them than with a total stranger.

But wait, the worst part is yet to come. Everybody has issues with their roomie. This is because God made us perfect, and everyone else was destined to be a douche-bag. And although God betrayed us by making us put up with all this crap, he decided to give us some relief and invented bitching. There is no experience more delightfully satisfying than bitching sessions with your best friends. Bitching not only de-stresses and rejuvenates you, it is also completely free and natural. But who do you bitch with when your friends themselves are your roomies? Do you see the trouble now? Stay away. And ask you friends to find another roommate.

System: I have a wordpress blog with K2 Theme (Fixed – Two Columns)

Requirement: I wanted to increase the column width so that blog covers a larger area in the browser window.

Solution (which I could not find after hours of googling ): Edit the style.css file.

Caveat: May not work well if you have flexible columns

Here are the steps:

1. Go to the Editor section under Appearance
2. Select the style.css file
3. Scroll to locate “columns-one #page”
4. Edit the value mentioned for width for columns-one, columns-two and columns-three as per your requirement.
5. Scroll further below to locate #primary
6. Edit the value mentioned for width for primary as per your requirement.
7. Save the file

Step 4 will change the width of the three columns of your blog. Step 6 will change the width of the text displayed in the first column. I increased the value of all 4 width variables by 200. Take a look at my blog to judge the result. I am sure similar changes can be applied to other themes on wordpress to increase the width of your blog. Happy Blogging!!

Step 4

Step 6

But after all this. Stay calm. Surrender.

a. “Rich educated family’s only daughter killed”

b. “Rich, educated parents kill their only daughter”

May I go so far as to plead a blanket ban on all 24 hours new channels?! At least we’ll be spared the consistent crap that gets thrown around!!