Exactly 10 since my last post, here’s the food for your web surfing soul
Off late I’ve been thinking and reading(a bit) on how to be more productive and efficient while working. Information/Web Workers that we are, run a great risk of diverging from the tasks in hand to doing something completely random(and useless mostly).
It often happens with me that I start working on something(say a presentation) and get a notification on my Tweetdeck or BlackBerry and before I realize I am going through somebody’s twitter profile or reading a blog post somebody shared.
Here are some of the things that I’ve tried and have managed to save some time/productivity loss. To ensure that the post doesn’t stretch long enough I’ve divided into two parts and this is the first part.
1) Not Logging on IM’s: It’s been a few months since I logged into any of the Instant Messengers while working and it’s definitely a time saver. Though I have accounts on almost all the popular IMs I use them sparingly that too only when I need to have a predecided conversation with someone. If you find it tough being offline on IM’s, being invisible is the next best thing
2) Not Checking Emails Every 2/5 Minutes: Certain professions, job roles and situations expect that you read and reply all incoming mail as soon as possible but for most of us that’s not the case. Therefore clicking refresh button or clicking on that open gmail tab is neither needed nor useful. I am also practicing this habit of not checking mails every 5 minutes and trying to do it at least after an hour.
3) Disabling Notifications: Whether you realize it or not, if you are active on Facebook and use a desktop too for Twitter among other things, your chances of getting a comment/invite/tagging/update notification are really high and you’ll end up loosing focus and time quite often. Therefore it’s a good idea to disable email notifications for your Facebook and other tools/services.
Got a productivity tip to share? Post it as a comment and I’ll try to include it in the next post on this topic.
I did a small(or not so) 10 multiple choice question survey to get an idea about people’s book buying habits and here’s what came out of the survey which was taken by 100 people from across India. I didn’t seek too much demographic information other than the respondant’s city.
Of the 48 people who shared their cities 22 were from Delhi/NCR, 6 from Mumbai and Bangalore each and one, two from Udaipur, Lucknow, Hyderabad, Pune, Thane, Kochi etc
Survey Findings:
1) 43% of the respondants buy a book a month or so and 34% people buy a book every few months.
2) A good 50.5 % of respondants buy books from bookstores only and 7.1% buy online only.
3) 14.3% of the people who buy books online get about 10-15% discount and 11.2 % people get 5-10% and 15-20% discount each.
4) A little more than one fourth of people who buy books from bookstores get ‘No Discount’ and on the other hand about one fourth people get more than 15% discount.
5) More than 88 % people feel the delivery time for books is important and about 5% people are ok with waiting for more days as long as they get good discount.
6) Flipkart and Indiaplaza are the popular sites for buying books with 19.6% and 11.3% people respectively.
7) About 40% of people that buy books online get them delivered within a week or so
What has been your experience when it comes to buying books in India ? Anything you feel is missing ?
A little while back my younger brother handed over my phone to me and said, there’s a missed call. I looked the number and it wasn’t from someone I knew, curious I called back. Here’s a transcript of what followed
Guy(on phone): Hanji Bhaiya (Hello)
Me: Kaun bol raha hai (whose this?)
Guy(on phone): Bhaiya aaj se 10-11 saal pehle Gujrat mein jo bhukamp aaya tha na, wahan mein khudayi karta tha aur wahan mujhe zameen ke 6ft neeche 4 sone ke biscuit mile hain jo mein apne gaun le aaya hun rajasthan mein. Inko bech do, aadhe aadhe paise mein.( While digging the place in Gujarat where there was an earthquake about 10-11 years back I found four gold biscuits. I have brought them along to my village in Rajasthan, sell them for half price)
Me(Clueless): aapko mera number kaise mila? (How did you get my number?)
Guy(on phone): Bhaiya Billu naam ka driver hai Dilli mein, usne aapka number diya hai. Mein aapse paise nahi maang raha hai, aap mujhse mil lo aur yeh sona bech do.(I got your number from a driver named “Billu” from Delhi, I am not asking for money, I just want you to meet me and sell this gold)
Me: Theek hai main aapse kal baat karta hun(I’ll talk to you tomorrow)
Did I just experience world’s first phone phishing attempt ?