Cosmos for Carl Sagan

I commenced the reading of the book "Cosmos" for Carl Sagan.
The book is really representing a wonderful metal journey in a garden full of knowledge.
Reading this book is within the context of my previous resolution about reading sequentially and deeply a book successively and keeping book in hand to the rest of my life.
This reflective and deep reading is really constructive and enjoyment for the mind and effectively building up the body of knowledge and skills.
I bought this book since more than 7 years ago but I've never read it in such an effective way.

End of Oil Age - Part 5 (CO2 sequestration)

Fossil fuels are causing carbon emissions which contribute considerably in the global warming. Environmentalists and conversationalists are damming the oil and coal industries because of that.
They perceive the oil and coal industry as the great evil which endanger the whole planet.
There are emerging solutions to address this problem and Carbon capture and sequestration is one of these promising solutions.
Emitted CO2 can be captured and re-injected into the depleted reservoirs.
This will have two great values;
1) recovering the production from the depleted and aging reservoirs.
2) Reducing the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere and storing it in the subsurface.

Research is going on and there is huge pilot project ongoing in Australia.

Caron Capture and Storgae (CCS) is a promising industry and promising solution which could transform the oil and coal industry to be more greener and sustain the environment.

Life as a mental game

Can I convert my life to a chess board?
Can I convert the daily tasks to mental game?
Can I convert the technical troubleshooting in my work to problem solving skills and games?
Can I convert the daily tasks management to neat organization skills?
Can I convert the subjects of the master to mental enjoyment and passion of scientific discovery?

If I managed to achieve that, I will find gold mine of enjoyment and not only commitments for living.

Education Quality Index (Egypt as Failure Story) - 1

Egypt is ranked as one of the worst 10 countries in th education quality index.
I'm not surprised about this ranking. Education in Egypt is really deteriorating.
No serious will from the government to address the problem seriously.
What to expect from bunch of half-educated and power savvy. Education needs some one to believe in because is many times the rewards are indirect and it will come after long time.
When I recall back my schooling experience, I find it miserable experience.
The teachers were dumb and out of touch. The education process was very routinely provided and very mechanical.
The all elements were in bad condition starting from the teachers, materials, ambiance, ...etc. So what the one could expect out of that.

End of Oil Age - Part 4 (Oil Shale)

One of the unconventional hydrocarbon which is under research is oil shale.
It is know that hydrocarbon to be generated and accumulated in the reservoir requires to go through a certain cycle of stages. The first stage is the hydrocarbon generation into the source rock. Source rock is mainly shale. The next stage is the expulsion of this hydrocarbon from shale and migrating toward the reservoir trap.
Oil shale simply didn't continue this process and it was trapped inside the shale as hydrocarbon or it didn't even go through the full maturation process it is still the raw material of hydrocarbon which is called Kyrogen.
There are very ambitious research in rock mountains in the states to cook the kyrogen in-situ and produce the cooked oil.
The another way is to mine the shale and extracting the oil through series of processes.
It will be similar to the oil sand in West Canada.
Many countries in the world have huge reserves of oil shale even the non major oil producing countries like Egypt and Jordan.
It is still far from the commercial usage but research is ongoing and dreams and ambitions are there.
Shale recently acquired exclusive access to extensive concession in Jordan to do the research about the oil shale and its value.

End of Oil Age - Part 3

The security of the Persian gulf meeting held between the secretary of state Hillary Clinton and the Gulf states heads have shown clearly the American strategic support for these countries.
The only reason for supporting these tribal systems is the securing of the hydrocarbon supply from the biggest potential hydrocarbon reserves located in the world.
On the other hand these mini-states fill threatened from the major regional power in the area - Iran - that it may dominate them if they don't have the security shielding provided by the states as it has done before in the Gulf War 1 and 2.
All signals and indicating to Gulf war 3 and ..n as long as the dependency on hydrocarbon and the American interference is intersecting together and the Israeli - Iranian poles are tensing their muscles.

End of Oil Age - Part 2

Oil was supposed to be a bless for the producing countries but it has shown the ugly side of the human being and the the past colonial countries of Europe and the current ones as the united states contributed in converting this bless to a curse.
It is like the curse of the gold when it has shown the greed in people.
I'm not advocate for blaming the others for the local problems or judging the history with the narratives and predefined judgements.
But no doubts that the colonial policy and the greed mentality is still alive in current time and the alliance between the corrupted or at least the undemocratic government with the western countries to secure the hydrocarbon supply is obvious demonstration of that.
There is a hidden agreement that the western countries will not disturb these corrupted governments and the undemocratic ones as long as the hydrocarbon is securely supplied.
This ugly alliance can be obviously noticed between eh Persian gulf states as it is noticed with the Caspian sea and west Africa.
Europe and the united states want to secure the hydrocarbon supply and the price is simply turn a blind eye on the corrupted government and undemocratic ones.
IT is an ugly alliance and the one who pays the price is the people.
I remember there was a resolution from UN to ban the importing of diamonds and the precious gemstones from the conflicted zones to stop funding the civil wars.
Same resolution should be expanded to the hydrocarbon as a sanction of importation of it from the totalitarian countries.
Yes, the both sides will suffer but free world will emerge and things will turn to the better on the long run and for the whole humanity.

End of Oil Age - Part 1

I've just finished reading a very interesting book for Colin J. Campbell titled "End of Oil Age".
He tried to describe the expected crisis due to to the shortage of hydrocarbon supply to meet the growing demand.
The subject is very complicated and it is beyond the simple demand - supply lows. That 's why different perspective may emerge around the subject.
The author has stated nicely the hydrocarbon expected crisis, the roots of it and the probable scenarios and the outlook of the solutions.
It was a very interesting journey for my mind and addition to the indirect value for my career by giving the very wide perspective about the history of the hydrocarbon industry and future of this industry.

Daily reading resolution still on

I'm still abide to my previous resolution that I will always keep reading a book from cover to cover sequentially as essential part of my life. I already finished before the hour game for David Balldacci, Robot City's Issac Azimov, and finally Enf of Oil Age for Colin J. Campbell.
It i deep reading evolving to be fully engaged, critique and reflective and stimulating thoughts and insights.
This type of reading and this type only has given me the sense of appreciating the reading and the spent time wasn't wasted and the accumulation of knowledge, thoughts, perspectives.

End of Oil Age

I've just finished reading "The End of Oil" for J. Campbell.
That book is very rich in following the history of the age of oil and in the prediction of the upcoming crisis. It has triggered my mind to think about so many associated topics which I'm planning to introduce in my blog space.
- The main scientific foundation of the book is based on a sort of scientific observation that the hydrocarbon profile of the oil is following in general a normal distribution function (bell shape) and consequently the peak of this production will mark the beginning of the end, or the beginning of the decline and world will not be able to meet the growing demand.
- The book is striking strongly on the bell to urge the decision makers, the intellectuals and the scientists to address this coming crisis and take the mitigation measures.

Using intensively my mind to manage my life

Am I utilizing fully my mind and my intelligence in my life. Definitely no. I'm still trying to fully utilize my mind in whatever I'm doing in my life to optimize the outcome value of it.
My mind is still dummy and frozen in some situations and
I've to stop that.
I should exhaust my mind and push to the limit in whatever I'm doing.
Today I've done a very silly mistake in paying an invoice and I paid about extra 100 USD because of my dummy mind where I wasn't thinking at all at this time. I was just rushing idiotically to pay!!!.
I've an ambitious objective to increase my level of intelligence in my life and utilize fully my mind and to be smarter and to act more smartly.
I'm still the stupid and dumb person.
I don't want to be that person. I hate this dumb personality and I want to be the smart one.

I want to create value for my life with my mind. Converting the gifted intelligence to value and to leave prosperous life by investing the gifted intelligence is worthy every effort.
Intelligence and smart mind is the most valuable asset once could have and it is a petty if the one has some of it and he is not using it as it should be to leave better life.

Health, time, money and intelligence are valuable assets and should be invested for having better life.

I want to excel my life and to understand each single aspect.

My friend is living example for that. Whatever he is doing he is mastering it.
If he is booking a flight ticket he knows every single detail about the flight booking like the transit benefits and the terms and conditions, rates.
He is so knowledgeable about "life matters".
He is empowering himself with knowledge about whatever he is doing.
It is the very practical knowledge about how to live better and how to optimize the value of each single practice in your life.
He is a literal example of what I want to be regarding this point.

He has amazing planning skills because of that.
He has very logical and analytical mind which is capable to analyze situations and optimize the value of it.

He has also very developed problem solving skills.

I like this profile and I want to be like him in these aspects.

Scientific Passion 1

Since more than two years, I started a very constructive and useful practice by journaling my technical and scientific thoughts. This has empowered me with different perspective toward scientific matters and subjects. It has deepen as well my level digestions of the scientific subjects and my understanding and increased my technical competency in my career.

My previous interaction with the scientific subjects was very shallow. I didn't go any deeper and I was superficially familiarizing myself with the subjects.
It was never digestion level but superficial familiarity.

Now I'm directing a microscopic investigation of the scientific details till I reach to reliable understanding about the fundamental components of the scientific matter.

The continuous journaling has developed a very interesting curiosity about the scientific puzzles and mysteries which are related to my career and has grew passion toward the technical and scientific knowledge.

Day by day this passion and excitation are growing.
My career ambitions are growing as well because my self confidence is increasing.

My growing interest is transforming by time to be motivation and driver to develop certain part which I believe that it is under-developed and it has considerable value to be developed and probably I can contribute in that or certain innovative idea can be matured to a full commercial product.

Or a certain scientific subject which I want to know more about and want to digest and comprehend more because it is very interesting to me to know.

It is totally different feeling and mode when you read a certain paper because the subject is really interesting to you.

science and innovation and technology are amazing domains and they have the power to change the life and the persons.

Reading achievement

I'm very close to finish my next full book. I'm so proud again with this achievement. Another thoughtful and deep reading. As I decided before, this way of reading it really enriching my knowledge and maximize the value of reading.
I even decided what is my next book and probably the one after.
I thin they may consume the coming 2-3 months but that's really fine as a realistic plan of my reading.
I will never cease this habit.
My next book will be The coming Oil Crisis for J. Campbell. Using my current reading pace I can barely finish it by the end of the year.
I read many chapters of it before but I've never read the whole book and I know it requires huge attention and concentration to understand the scientific facts within it which I'm planning to fully digest.
Most probably after this heavy book I will the Red Phoenix techno-thriller novel and after that Rich Dad Poor Dad and after that Carl Sagan's Cosmos. These bunch of few books will probably fill the first half of 2011.
It looks that I've tentative plan of reading list.
I strongly believe that my comprehension skills will improve by time and all my reading skills will improve as well. The gained knowledge is really valuable and accumulating by this continuous reading since I've determination to get something out of what I read.
My stock of vocabulary and expressions are increasing by time and that speeds up my reading and comprehending.
My immersing in what I'm reading and my concentration are becoming more focused.
All these skills are under focused attention and improvement what I read since my reading is not only for recreational purposes by basically for educational and development purposes.
It is very nice to have the full matching between the recreational and development purposes in the same activities.

My reading habit

As per my previous resolution, I decided to maintain regularly a reading habit and to improve the quality of my reading. I strongly believe that the deep reading and the improvement of the quality of my reading will be reflected positively on the whole of my life either in the personal or the professional domains.
Now I'm about to finish my second novel since I decided this resolution. I managed till now to stick to my resolution to regularly keep the reading as a regular daily habit in addition to the quality of the reading. I stopped since a long time now my poor reading which was nothing but scanning rapidly the words and superficially go through the words with very poor comprehension.
I read now very deeply and in a full engagement and concentration. I give more care to comprehend what I'm reading and reflect my thoughts and project it to my life as well.
I found more enjoyment and benefits in this type of reading.
I stopped this ill thinking about the quantity of thinking and accumulating the read books and I transformed that totally to the quality of reading and retaining values and benefits of the read materials.
When I stopped my worries about the time and considered the time as infinite when I start reading, I enjoyed the reading and sensed the value of it.
I gain every time new insights, thoughts, knowledge, expressions.
Each day I read few paragraphs, and new bit of the book. I don't rush them but I reflectively read them.
I interact more with the words, expression and thoughts. I thoughtfully read the subjects.
If I couldn't understand a certain line or paragraph, I reread it and I think a bit about to conclude the missed part and to connect the dots and the gaps of my understanding. Something I've never did before. Whenever I went through unclear section, I was simply skipping it.
I'm developing during my reading now, a useful reading techniques to make my reading more efficient like developing my conclusive power, comprehension skills, insights, deep thinking, imagination.
Each book now may consume two months or even three, meaning I may finish only 5 to 6 books per year.
I totally accept this fact now where I'm fully convinced about the value.
I'm not just keen about filling my mental stomach but I taste the words and enjoy the mental taste of them.
Meanwhile, I know that my comprehension skills will ultimately improve and this will increase the pace of my reading.
though I know that a stack of 6 or 7 books on the shelf in my library will consume the coming one year and half to two years, I totally accept that. I only need to be a bit selective about my readings, but whatever is still good materials for my mind.
this contributes effectively to my personal development and the growing of my intelligence and my personal knowledge and experiences in life.

Measuring success based on the chances given

Each day is a gift. Each minute even is a gift. That what we are saying whatever we mean or not. When I see someone who is classified as a successful person I would think directly about what are the chances and resources he was given to be successful.
Each gift we are blessed to receive it in the life, it was given for a reason. This reason is simply using it as best in making better life and better world.
Use it or you will loose it.
I 'm inclined to measure the success in the context of the given gifts and chances.
To assess properly the success, we need to quantify the number of given chances and available resources against the achieved success.
It is like the investment against the achieved revenue.
As it is not accepted to achieve 1 million dollar in revenue if your capital is 1 billion, it is not accepted also to gain only your high school degree if you have "resources" could escalate you to PHD.
These resources could be time, intelligence, money, supporting environment, etc.
That's how I'm setting my way of thinking now about any additional resources that it is a supporting tool for my progress in life.
I've to utilize it in accelerating my achievement and my performance.

The success assessment formula in more quantitative terms could be;
How may chances and resources you were given?
How many of them you have used in developing yourself and you career and your life.

In other words, if I received a much fewer chances and I managed to achieve considerable achievement equally to another person who was luckier than by having the more chances and better living standards and better supporting environment, then I would conclude that I'm more successful than him.

I managed to use the few chances I was given and turning them to fruitful returns.

My definitions of success is evolving. Success in my opinion is not we already achieved but what we could achieve and we didn't.
It is about the extra miles which we didn't step because of our laziness or whatsoever..
The closeness to our maximum capacity is the measure of real success.

This way of thinking urges the one to think about his hidden potential. I consider them the real hidden treasures which require exploring and harnessing. It is the inert energy.

I represented it before like the one who is living in huge palace but he is utilizing only tiny room because he never explored the huge palace he is living in.

Our palace is this hidden potential which could take us to a lot of unexplored territories in life.

A lot of wonderful things in life could be done in my life time and lot of frontiers can be invaded. I strongly believe that I've potential to conquer the world.

I'm always thinking now about converting any additional resources to value. If I've a new gadget it should boost my performance and if I've additional tool it should be reflected on my work competency or time saving or success.

The most important, I ;m setting myself free from any virtual ceiling or cap of my progress and evolution.
The cap is the horizon of my sight and vision.

Each little window of opportunity is a vehicle to go to the extra mile.

Self perception and people perception

- Along my life I was always perceived by the surrounding people in a certain perception.
- From their perspective, Adel was incapable person, who is not trust-able to deliver and who has modest IQ and limited mental and even physical power and talents.
- I was always located at the edge of the picture frame if not outside totally the frame.
- This lack of confidence in my skills started early between the first surrounding inner circle which is the parents and continued to the close relatives till the surrounding community.
- No doubts, it has severely impacted my personality and my evolution.
- I was in continuous mode to prove to the "others" that I'm capable.
- When I think about my course of actions I can find only the proving to the others my capabilities as the only driver and motive of my actions and achievements.
- Failure meant the surrendering to their assessment and perception and the approving of their perception.
- I was determined to prove to them that they are wrong about me. I'm not that modest person who has thin mind or has lack of orientation in life or is not pursuing any major interest in his life.
- I learnt so much from these experiences.
- People are easily rushing to the judgement. Their assessments are rarely reliable and they depend on the very superficial appearance without exhausting their mind to explore the real potential of the persons.
- They tend to label the others with the easy to reach conclusions without thorough assessment and analysis of the hidden potential.
- I was totally surrounded by the all negative perceptions either from my parents, relatives, teachers and even the close friends.
- The one who has mean feelings was sarcastic and ironic and the one who was sincerely advising me was trying to convince me to accept my limited capabilities as a solid fact and leave with it and within its boundaries.
- Being ambitious about something beyond this apparent capabilities were not my right and were considered as a foolish act.
- Everybody was always questioning my skills and my intelligence.
- I've proven to them and importantly to myself that I can deliver.
- I'm a capable.
- I can deliver.
- I'm dependable.
- I will never question or doubt my capabilities any more whatever happened.
- Each failure was directly translated that I was not capable to do it.
- Now I'm more successful than the all other people who were in my jury and judging if I deserve to live or to "virtually" die by abandoning my dreams and self ambitions.
- I was always believing in my inner soul and deep inside me that this can't be my life path and this shitty disoriented life can't be my life. I was imagining myself in different world which is much better than the existing one.
- When I joined the faculty and my major they questioned my capabilities.
- When I failed they told me you were stubborn and we told you that you are not capable to go through this major and you have to change it to something within your skills.
- when I changed it they told me the whole faculty is beyond your skills. Go for more affordable faculty.
- I knew by this time that I've to go to a real battle with myself to prove to them and to myself that I'm capable to do it using the whatever means available.
- Each word of "advise" pushed me to be more determined and stubborn to continue in the path I've chosen.
- I continued and now after 10 years of finishing my major I 'm collecting my rewards of determination and self-confidence and enjoy the fruits of believing in my self.
- I wonder now how many talents have been killed because of this "assessors" or "assassins".

Personal Knowledge Management in my Life - 7

Yesterday, I went to my client to show them the current progress in the project and to get their feedback about two issues and to take their pulse regarding the project.

The day before, I was working on the project till 2:00 AM and in the morning I found that the process has already finished so I saved the project normally.
Power outage happened but luckily I saved my work in the project before that happened.

I went to the client as per the agreement, and opened the project. Guess what, the project didn't open and popping up error message about unknown crash out.
I was totally shocked. I spent 20 minutes in front of the client trying to solve the problem but I couldn't.

I apologized and asked them to give me some to figure out how I'm going to solve this problem.
Time has gone and I couldn't solve the problem and we canceled the meeting.
It was deeply embarrassing. I went back to the office and I've done all the tricks and tips to solve the problem. Nightmare was amounting to think about reproducing the whole work for the last 5 days for a 15 working days project!!.

At 16:45 I've done something else to recover the project and I has fixed it. I was so cheerful to recover it back.

This was another painful experience about the value of proper data management.
Information management is an integral part of the project management. I undervalued that when I was postponing the data management task required for the project and prioritize the mainstream tasks to boost the productivity and to meet the deadlines.

The lesson learned was clear that data management is a time saving and key factor in reducing the Non productive time (NPT).
Time invested in the data management is not time wasted but invested.
I directly archived the project and put better disciplined procedures for managing the data management aspect of the project including the files organizations and the structured and unstructured data management.
I will be more aware and pay more attention to the project database setup, data management, file organizations, archiving, and the all data management duties required in the project management.

Sense of achievement

I can say declare proudly that I've just finished the reading of the whole novel in my hand. It was "Hour Game" for David Baldacci. I was strongly determined to enjoy it and to finish to the last line.
I was always discourage myself from going into reading just for the purpose of enjoyment. My internal worries about time wasting was discouraging me. In addition to the family commitments or family demands.
This time I decided to challenge that strongly with full determination to enjoy my personal rights to immerse myself in another world which is the fictitious world of the novel.
I stopped worrying about bunch of things which were killing the enjoyment.
One of them was questioning the value of reading fictional materials. This sense of feeling guilty was discouraging me from reading any novels.
Family was another major hindering factor to discourage me where they were giving me the sense always that whatever left time after work should be dedicated and assigned to them.
I succeeded to shield myself from the surrounding environment and fully immerse myself in what I was reading.
I improved also the quality of my reading.
In the past, if I was reading this novel, I would be just eager to finish it, just o reach to the final page and claim that I finished it.
I was just scanning the words superficially. If I faced any unclear or challenging part which requires more effort to be understood, I was simply skipping it and only seeking the easy and clear parts.
My comprehension was very poor.

I drastically improved the quality of my reading. I'm not concerned about speeding up my reading or skipping the challenging parts but comprehending them.
If I didn't understand a certain part, I pause and reread and think about it.
I'm tasting also the good expressions, and the giving sort of thinking about the different situations. I'm utilizing my imagination to realize the scene description.

I can realize fully how this quality of reading is increasing the enjoyment of the reading and increase the value of the spent time.

I'm developing by the time this thoughtful reading to eradicate totally the superficial reading.
It will be continuous effort to deepen further and further my reading.

The value was rapidly sensed when I found myself everyday transfered to different world through the pages of the novel and living different experiences with different people and characters.

It was curing me from the daily stresses and pressures and commitments by occupying my mind for awhile and distant me from the daily stresses.
This was curing effect.

In the past, I was negatively looking at the fictional materials as full of crap and wasting of time. I changed my perspective toward them. I was judging something I didn't really fully experience so my judgement was shallow and baseless.

Lot of positive values can be scored for the fictional materials as long as the content is rich in the ideas the intellectual level is good.
To list some of them, I would suggest the improvement of the self-expression.
This is very valuable ability which can impact the one's life. whenever and wherever we are, we need to express ourselves and the mostly used communication way is the language. In the work environment we needs around the clock to express powerfully ourselves either in a meeting, or lunch chatting or presentation, ..
Even at certain positions in the work like the management positions, communication represents a major part of their job.
Each novel represents a full experience of life captured in the form of novel.
It is full of knowledge and life's drama and experiences and subjects to be thought about.
Reading novel and comprehending it like living another life and third life and multiple lives.
The quality of the reading was a key factor for me to conclude that otherwise I wouldn't go that way of thinking.
My determination to stop the internal worries and to enter this fascinating fictional world without my burdens of load, has let me to enjoy each reading moment.
Reading a novel was like an oasis in the middle of desert. Mental oasis in the life' desert.

Whenever there are stresses, it is very useful and healthy and curative to occupy your mind with something.
Watching a sports game can do the same curative action but you may gain nothing but on the contrary reading will feed the mind with more ammunitions and the imagination with more material. It is not only recreational time but useful quality time.
This has increased my enjoyment that it was totally constructive time.

The value can be tracked easily where the straightforward improvement of the ability to express and the verbal communication can be sensed directly and that's what I will build up in the next stage through these novels reading.

I will start my next novel which is "Robot City: Odyssey".
Since now, my life will be continuous journey from novel to another.

Financial Dashboard

During my course to improve my financial discipline and financial quotient, I developed a group of Excel spreadsheets to track my personal finances. All these spreadsheets are linked to a master spreadsheet which is the main financial dashboard.
It is a single spreadsheet which is summarizing my assets, net worth, debits, ..etc.
It is linked - not fully automatically yet - to another spreadsheet capturing the bank statements. I've another spreadsheet for the budget and third one for the business claims. These group of spreadsheets where developed and substantially improved along the previous 5 months by the continuous improvement of them and utilizing them.

Now I only need to spend few minutes everyday to track my personal finances because of these integrated and interlinked Excel spreadsheets.

Ambitions and Aspirations Vs the Environment

I have a growing ambitions and aspirations like promoting my career or my academic postgraduate studies or developing my skills or increasing my enjoyment with life or touring the world or ...etc..
Some of these ambitions and aspirations are well received by the family or the surrounding friends or it may be competed with the other pressing responsibilities.
This is one of the major challenges I'm facing right now and I'm still working on how I'm going to protect my ambitions and major life goals and objectives against the opposing factors.
I'm preparing myself to the fact that sometimes the close circle is not going to be the expected supporters to my legitimate dreams. The inner circle might be even the first line of enemy to be confronted.
Meaning the family could be one of the key enemies for many career ambitions and life ambitions. This inner circle oppositions may have their own justifications by perceiving some of these ambitions as threatening to their limited needs and they are trying to protect their cottage from threatening "mysterious" and adventurous goals.

I'm trying to figure out now the best way to manage these challenges and to shield my developing activities to achieve my ambitious goals from the inner circle.

Wives sometimes are giving sense of guilty to the husbands when they feel work commitments are competing with them.
I need to protect my legitimate dreams and protect them from any negative influence.
I will never let my dreams die and fade away. I will care about them and protect them like a growing baby.

How can I'be burden-free and constraint-free in my goals achievement.

The another challenges are coming from work commitments in terms of time and engagements.
Sometimes they are working as distractions in time wasting and meaningless activities.

I want to keep myself on the track to the goals and oppose these deviations and distractions.

I 'm already accustoming myself to have more thicker skin about the complaints from the inner circle due to the time engagement or effort.

I'm killing the sense of guilty due to the competition between the family needs and the ambitions needs.

I'm not blaming the inner circle where their level of understanding is constrained by their short sighted vision and their pressing needs.

Personal Knowledge Management in my Life - 6

(Self Regulation)

PKM requires a set of essential tools to be fully implemented. It requires powerful search engine so I'm using on my laptop windows Instant Search where I can search easily for any document or any keyword.
It requires also a well disciplined and structured organization of the digital and physical file system.
I'm improving the organization of my files and folders to be based on sound heirarchial organization.
Some of my digital files are still a mess and I'm working gradually on moving them to the right compartments.
Definitely the one which will more challenging will be my physical materials where I need the appropriate space and organization to make them more accessible.

This was well realized finding through the hard way. Having a plenty of materials and huge amount without the effective accessibility is reduce the value of them.
The accessible part only is the utilized value of my knowledge base and this accessible part was very shallow.
This is my objective now to utilize frequently this knowledge base and increase the ease of accessibility of it and make it working for me.

I want to see the tangible results increasing out of it.
The coming project will be the first real practice area to utilize fully my knowledge base and gain some values and rewards of it.
Maximizing the return of my personal knowledge base and the corporate knowledge base.

There is an essential behavior component here where knowledge management required basically disciplined behavior.
The Information technology and the information systems are trying simply to discipline this behavior to follow the organizational rules.

I'm working on improving the categorization and classification to be more scientific. Sort of Information systems concepts to be implemented in organizing my files.

I'm determined to store and organized all my career life documents. They will be the emails, project reports, technical write-ups to the clients, proposals, clarifications, ..etc.., structured data, projects.

Fortunately the storage disks are becoming very affordable.

This is another drastic transition in my digital personality where my files and folders were a real mess and now I'm developing by the time better sense of organization and even boosting it to the level of PKM.

Personal Knowledge Management in my Life - 5

Recently I was assigned to produce proposal for one of the client about a suggested technical study.
There were basically 5 persons included in the discussions and meetings with the clients before me in this process. They held several meetings and went through several email correspondences with the client about the same subject.
When I received the assignment to conclude all that in well defined proposal and scope the whole subject in more precise form, I requested to have what the client received from us. It was one page of basic information which can be act as professional base for any study. It was not considered by any mean as professional proposal.
I was wondering bluntly to the person in charge, are you telling them that 5 persons involved in this process and that what they have come up.
anyway, I utilized my document stock and knowledge repository and I managed to create comprehensive and informative proposal. It has covered the different sections of the professional proposal like the scope of work, budgeting, project scheduling and planning, manpower, so on.

The point here, If I will start constructing this proposal from the scratch I would spend very exhausting time and effort till I manage to produce something accepted in the professional standard.

Using my personal document repository and knowledge base which includes valuable lessons learned and documents similar to the case in hand, I managed to scope the study and generate the proposal in only two days after one meeting with the client.

Client has received after two days from our meeting a complete professional proposal.

This was clearly demonstrable case has emphasized for me the value of retaining and organizing my personal documents, lessons learned, knowledge base, and the value of utilizing it whenever there is a chance.

It demonstrates as well how PKM increases the productivity, efficiency and professionalism of the employees and it is valuable knowledge asset to be retained, organized and utilized.

This domain is fully undervalued by the organizations. I've never received a single course about PKM or even any information about how I can properly retain my own knowledge to utilize it in the business.

Personal Knowledge Management in my Life - 4

My personal documents and folders were the real example of implementing effectively PKM in my personal career life.
I'm producing in my daily work different types of documents ranging from presentation to the clients or proposals or technical write-ups or product description or even email to the client.

In the overwhelming majority of the situation, the new task was more or less similar to one of already done task before.

Now I'm referring to this stock of documents and knowledge base and get the lessons learned from them to reproduce the other documents and to avoid the previous mistakes.
By this way I shortened the productivity time and benefited from the lessons learned and I improved the quality of the new products.

Proposals and project reports were taking very long time to be generated in accepted level of quality and they needed longer time of review and quality check.
Now I've reliable references.

I don't need simply to reinvent the wheels.
I appreciated my experience and knowledge and I'm retaining them and utilize them frequently.

Personal Knowledge Management in my Life - 3

At the organization levels, tens, hundreds or thousands of workers are using their own expertise to do sometimes the same tasks are similar tasks.
If PKM managed to capture this massive volume of expertise in organized fashion and regularly utilized it will be very effective know-how capturing for the organization.

The organization in proper structure is a key point to facilitate the utilization of this knowledge.

In the personal level, I was organizing all my own documents in well defined structure of folders. This structure is improving by the time and the basis of categorization and classification is improving by the time.

Now I've folder for each client and I've major folder for the technical consultancies and another one for each software and third one for the proposals.

The another line of organizing them and accessibility to them was the instant search indexing.

Using Windows XP IS indexing was vital process to ease the search and accessibility in this ever growing and massive knowledge base.
Now I can retrieve easily any document.
This is continuous process where I aggregate my documents and continuously folder and organize them.

Personal Knowledge Management in my Life - 2

Each one of us has huge and massive experiences. The accumulation of these experiences together in organized structure and establishing knowledge base from them can create wealth of experiences which can boost drastically the productivity and the know-how of any organization.

The key qualification of any one is the skills set, know-hows, and the expertise, and the accumulated experience of x number of years.

If we managed to figure out the methodology to capture as much as we can these x number of years we will produce a valuable wealth of knowledge.

Organizations are paying more attention to the retention of the data and basic levels of information and knowledge rather than the valuable know-hows knowledges.

The valuable knowledges include the methodologies and the know-hows and the expertises and the workflows.

Saving in Gold

The financial crisis and the inflation rate which is eating rapidly the wealth have convinced me to consider the investment in the gold. As said always, gold is the safe heaven for the conservative investors to protect their capitals.
I stated that as a previous investment resolution to be executed in the first chance to do so.
Currency value and the inflation rate are eating the wealth.
I decided to use the occasions like birthday to buy the gold gifts and other gold assets like ounce or pound.
This will reduce the risk of the cost inflation and protect the value of the money.
I 'm satisfied that I realized ths resolution so when I traveled back to home I landed in Dubai as a transit station and I went directly to the gold city and implemented this resolution.
Now the gold prices are sky rocketing and another resolution implementation is rewarding.

Personal Knowledge Management in my Life - 1

I strongly believe in PKM as the most underutilized domain in our personal and career life.
If it is properly and efficiently utilized it will bring amazing values for our life.
Each single person needs in his life intensively PKM what so ever his interests and his careers.

PKM starts with the capturing of our experiences and that's what I did.
I was capturing my knowledge by retaining carefully and storing in organized folders any documents I produced.

Because of my work nature I produce different types of documents like presentation for a client or proposal or technical write-up or technical paper or business emails.

When I realized the value of these produced documents and the immense effort and time to produce them I decided to store them and organize them in organized structure of folders based on basis.
So I've folder of each client and of each subject or study gathering the all relevant materials.
By the time, I was getting familiar with the organization system of these documents and I was referring to them if I need to reproduce another documents to another clients.

These stored and organized materials have helped me to as a valuable reference for generating any other documents.

Islamophobia - 1

This heated controversy about granting the permission to construct a mosque in New York which will be close to Ground Zero has shown a lot of issues which should be addressed and tackled.

I was following the CNN interview with Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf.

The following are my "Observations" about the whole matter;
1) The gap and misunderstanding between the western culture and the Islamic world is huge.

2) People in the both sides like more to listen to the war savvy and whoever is striking on the war drums.

3) Extremists in both sides are equally dangerous for our world. They could Ben Laden, Dick Chenny, Al-Zawahry, or W. Bush but whoever has the extremism mentality he will justify all the evil acts in the world for whatever he believes that is worthy to do so.

4) Electioneers unfortunately like the sense of power given by the war savvy and war drum strikers where that gives them the sense of security which is essential need for the human being. Voices of wisdom will equal to weakness within this atmosphere.
This is the human nature in the middle of the crisis times and that's how people will react when they feel threatened.

5) Considerable proportion of the western communities now are perceiving Muslims - in general - as barbaric enemies who are blood thirsty to beheading the western atheists or Christians. This perception is fueled by the media day and night which is devastating for any bridging efforts.

6) Stereotyping Muslims in this image is becoming main narratives in the media.

7) Understanding will require a lot of effort and both sides should know that.

8) We should recognize that 9/11 and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will cast their shadow in any attempt.

9) When I've seen the resistance to the construction of the Islamic cultural center I had two contradicting impression. The first one, what the Islamic center has to do with 9/11.
The another impression was that we should give slack to the Americans where 10 years are not enough to heal their grieving and awakening the wounds by proposing this challenging idea might be not the wise movement considering the time factor though in principle it might not be wrong but timing is an important factor.

10) Attacks and retaliations are spiraling and growing between the both camps and the wise treatment should release this mounting pressure by doing wise action and not only the strong and powerful actions.

11) Both sides should create friends more than creating enemies.

12) It is easy to label whoever is resisting for his nation or his cause as an Islamic terrorist because it is much easier to convince the American public opinion and the European public opinion to support the effort to fight them and fund their counter wars.

Life as a Battlefield

When soldiers go to the battlefield they stretch their courage and fighting spirit to combat the enemy. they can do and commit things they never thought about doing them in the normal civil life. They can fight and even put themselves in the middle of the danger which could be fatal to their lives for the seek of their country, their peers, or just to occupy a spot of land which might be considered a strategic spot.

We read everyday about that as normal daily news about the war here and there and tens or hundreds die under as causalities because of that.

I was wondering all the time which this fighting spirit is shrinking and vanishing in the civil and normal life and shows up only in the battlefield.
If people can die for their countries or to save their peers or for a certain cause they may or may not believe it or even fully understand it, why they can not show the same fighting spirit for more clear causes like fighting the life challenges for their own selves.

What is more precious than one's life.

Life should be the main battlefield for each individual.
Even though the enemy is not well portrayed and realized like the clear enemy in the battlefield and the weapons are not that clear and things are taking totally different forms.

The person should face the life with this fighting spirit to achieve his goals.
He should replace the gun with his strengths and his capabilities.
Enemy should be replaced by the challenges and obstructions facing him.

If sounds even irrational and unreasonable behavior of the human being if they can kill themselves for a cause like saving their countries form the enemy or for religious purposes but they are lazy to save themselves from their own personal problems or they don't have the self-esteem to excel in their career or to achieve prosperous and decent life for their families.

We are somehow inclined more to fight for others than ourselves when it comes to the clear physical battlefield or when it is life threatening situation.

I would say life is full of implicit battles which the one has to fight as a real soldier in them.

The enemy is hidden or is taking more camouflaged forms though he is more dangerous because he in many times is our own selves or our friends or even families or our own problems.

Success in life shouldn't be an option but should be survival or life or death matter.
It should be a vital matter and failure should equal to death.

Taking each matter in life in highly serious approach will develop if the person acts a soldier in the life battlefield.

Nothing is more important than me.
I'm the most important and precious person in this world for myself.

I deserve all the fighting power for myself.

I will win this long fighting battle and I will go in a fierce way in each round.

Whatever the opposing enemy I will win.

I will not be that soft in life where the soldier who is fighting for himself should be aggressive.

Struggling and striving should be in the daily life. In the life front.

Resources consumption efficiency against the resources exploitation

Our ways of consuming energy are totally inefficient. Currently I'm residing in Jakarta and the type of the huge CC family cars and continuous traffic jam are burning unmercifully the hydrocarbon resources in this country.
I can realize at the personal level how the traffic jammed days are consuming considerably more fuels from my budget and my fuel consumption. Multiply that by the thousands and millions of vehicles running in the streets and you will realize the immense losses facing this country.
Serious efforts should be implemented to address this problem.
If we see the energy intensity factors which is estimating the energy consumption per each 1% of GDP we will see that the majority of the countries of the world including China and India are consuming more energy to sustain their GDP's which is clear indication of the inefficient utilization of the energy in their manufacturing facilities and their production plants.
Investors and countries are spending billions of dollars to explore and produce hydrocarbons. I strongly believe that each dollar allocated for the exploration and production of oil. has to have another dollar allocated for the energy saving and the improvement of the efficient energy consumption.
City like Jakarta should have urgent plans for more efficient and reliable mass transportation means in addition to the national plans for raising the petroleum production.
The all energy consumption sources starting from the household equipments, fertilizers, cement factories, transportation should be urgently and seriously addressed.
More intelligent controls on the energy should be innovated for the street lights and the household equipments, air conditioning, and so on.
Because of the nature of my job I've seen the energy policy in the majority of the world are semi blinded and focusing only on the increasing of the power and energy without equal attention to the efficient utilization of the energy.
World leaders have to give the good and applicable example by holding their conferences as video conferences instead of gathering hundreds of audience in their conferences.
Holding conference about the world climate and the energy through the traditional conference is a sort of hypocrisy.
Incentives should be set for the virtual offices and the tele-workers to encourage the virtual offices and the business management through the internet.
So may business activities can be run through the internet. We need to urge and encourage the people to go ahead and new business protocols can be established to manage and control the businesses.

Post-it notes on my mobile is really helpful

Since 4 years ago I was using the post-it notes on my mobile. Writing down notes on my mobile and previously on my Outlook notes was a routine practice for me where it helps me to remember all these scattered to-do tasks. I found that whenever I don't write down what I want to do I will simply forget totally to do it or I will remember it accidentally and usually very late.
One of the valuable benefits for recording the notes is the capturing of the new ideas.
Sometimes a new idea is popping in my head at certain time and I want to experiment it in my life, the instantly record it and later I will try it and see how it works.
The another value as I said is the reminding of chasing things in my life up to the highest details.
The another amazing value of this practice, it has managed to do a full transitioning of me by transforming me from a person who doesn't pay adequate attention to the details and the improper managing of the tasks in my life to a person who chase each single small tiny bit in his life and pay full attention to the microscopic details of what he is doing.
The impact on my life was totally positive where my life was improving continuously because of implementing my notes in timely basis and I reduced the missing of the deadlines and the consequences of forgetting the things which should be done.
Implementing the new ideas as well give me sense of creativity in my life and my life style was improving continuously and gradually.
This by itself was very valuable gain to see that my recorded notes are rewarding when I implemented them.
The conclusion I've definitely after these years is; the more notes to be recorded and the more ideas to be stored and the more micro-detailing and breaking down of my life to these small tasks as notes, and the more active and energetic approach to execute these notes, the more improvement I will gain.
I will increase the frequency of this practice and I will capture each idea. I've seen already how the good and sometimes innovative ideas and not wasted by this way by they are born to life by recording and executing them.
My only problem left to be solved now is putting these long lists of notes in a useful contexts. Meaning that I want to put them in space, time and classification contexts. If I will go somewhere where I can do couple of related to-do notes then I want to see that in my notes list. I want to schedule them also in my calendar and my task manager. I want to categorize the all shopping notes in a shopping list.
As I said I will more productive in my notes.
The another challenge I've notes scattered in many place. The most used ones are in my cell phone, but I've in my Gmail and My Yahoo and Outlook Notes.
How can I arrange this mess.
Some of these notes are staying for a long time without progress. I need to change my way of handling them by breaking down them to more affordable tasks.
I'm using basically the hand writing in my cell phone to quickly capture the notes.
whatever comes to my mind, has to be recorded in the notes. This practice has activated also my mind and turned me to person who care about solving his problems and improving his life. My mind was becoming more focused and sharp in addressing my life's staff.
The very small tasks and reminders have a place in this Notes like I want to buy this X on the way to home.
When I was revising from these notes to see what was already done to be deleted and what left to be done I was so satisfied to see that many of what I've done was the result of these ideas and the idea has come at one of these days and I recorded it and reviewing my notes reminded me with it and I've done and now I'm gaining its fruits.
How the creative ideas pushed to life and impacted positively the life was done through this practice.
I started also the voice recording of the notes. It's not yet quite effective but I will trying it also till it gives me its rewards.

Effective utilization of the technology in the business - 1

I strongly believe that technology can significantly ease our life and empower our businesses and boost them to unprecedented levels. Business intelligence is a huge domain and full of applications and resources to facilitate the business systems and processes.
The transition from the traditional business systems and processes to business intelligence is full of challenges should be properly addressed to effectively implement it in the quickest way and in the most efficient way without disrupting the business.
The weakest point in the implementation process is the people. People are resistive to the new technology by their nature and they always receive it as extra work or unnecessary effort.
Because of the nature of my business I dealt with different type of companies ranging from the small size to mega-cap corporate and from local to international.
The overwhelming majority of them were following traditional and bureaucratic methods in managing their business processes either fully or partially.
The room of improving their out-dated methods is huge.
The following short story of my last incident may explain further how the businesses in general still resistive and not fully adopted to embrace totally the technology
I was requested by my manager to travel to another remote location to replace temporarily the assigned person there.
As part of the process, there was two days of handover followed by the main assignment and there were two days-off in between.
I went there as planned and what I've found that there is not major subjects really to be covered in the handover period.
Meaning that what the information supposed to be passed during this period can be easily tele-communicated and the physical presence didn't add any value to this communication process.
So why that didn't happen? Definitely it is all about the people who are managing the process where they don't believe that technology can be efficient alternative of the traditional handover methods.
They still believe that technology is not fully reliable and counting on it in a sensitive subject my expose the business to unnecessary risk so their cost-benefit analysis justify the providing of the all logistics required for mobilizing a person to this remote location which include 4 hotel nights and flight tickets for two persons!!!.
This was just a single incident representing a small sample of what's going on continually in many organizations.
I know a certain company where each couple of months they were sending a complete team from north America to investigate a set of data. Was the technology not available for the remote accessibility? It was there for providing complete reliable remote accessibility to the data.
Technology was available also to save the cost spent on physically mobilizing the people in my case. Video conference and broad bandwidth are all what we need to run the handover process properly!!.

Tracking my personal finances is becoming my daily routine

I managed to convert the tracking of my personal finances to a daily routine. Everyday I'm improving the efficiency and the accuracy of my spreadsheets to be more reliable and everyday I'm gaining more knowledge and experience about the personal finances. It's becoming a daily habit to track my online banking accounts, my budget spreadsheet, and my asset spreadsheet and to know exactly my net worth after deducing my credit balance.
Time spent on it is decreasing day by day and everyday I learn new trick in Excel to automate the spreadsheets and to reduce the manual update.
It's not fully auto-piloted but everyday I find a way to fill one of the cells automatically instead of manually updating it.
I've found recently a way also to calculate my expenses for each category instead of doing that manually. All I need at this stage is just to type symbol representing the type of the item and one of Excel functions will automatically calculate the expense for each category.
I decided to focus more on the gross expenses at this stage and later the detailed budget spreadsheet will come by the gradual improving of my tracking.

Technical and scientific journaling

I've developed this routine in my career since two years. I'm journaling my technical and scientific notes. This work has developed my understanding about my technical domain and empowered my technical knowledge in my work domain. It has developed also curious spirit about the science behind my technical domain and to get in-depth understanding.
It has developed the deep thinking skills and the logical deduction of the fundamentals and the reasoning.
the value and quality of these notes are ranging from just recalling of the new technical information I gained through the day or the week to really creative and innovative ideas but whatever the level of my notes, I'm appreciating them where all are valuable for me.
This routine has triggered my mind to brainstorm always about the technical problems and to solve them and to collect the scientific facts about them piece by piece.
This trigger is ignited by the work tasks and the new information where these are my ammunition and materials for thinking.
I need to feed my mind with them to think.
This work has developed also a very precise investigation of my technical domain and the desire to understand the details and the fundamentals about it and the desire to digest these fundamentals.
This desire of the in-depth thinking is developing gradually avenues and desire of scientific research and curious mind to understand deeper the science behind these technical domains.
All these were totally drastic change on my way of working and full transition from the shallow engagement to the applied science domain and to the working researcher and working scientist attitude.
It has contributed significantly in my technical competency skills which was reflected positively on the others' evaluation of me.
all my effort in this technical journaling was directly rewarding.
I was becoming day after day smarter in my work and more accurate in my understanding about the smallest things in my technical domain.
I was becoming more and more experience to explore and to discover the scientific fundamentals and the technical fundamentals and the technological innovations.
I will intensify this routine by carrying handy block-note with me to increase and deepen this habit.
I was cease each chance to brainstorm my mind and to produce more and more notes and ideas.
I will expose more and more myself to technical events to feed my mind with the materials of thinking.
Each moment I was discovering new inch in the world of science and discovery and my understanding was getting a bit better and better toward the scientific truth.
Because of the other interests in my life this routine was affected by reducing the assigned time and the lack of ideas to trigger my mind to by active in the thinking of my technical domain.
I will recover again the previous levels of my technical journaling and restore my innovative thinking by the better managing of my time and more determination to assign time for that.
The brainstorming could happen in many occasions and even in the morning shower or the way to the parking lot!!.
I was discovering everyday new "territories" in the universe of science and knowledge.
Each exposure is a really golden chance for me to know more and to discover more and I will cease each chance to do that.
If I managed to keep this routine active in my life and empowered it it will escalate my technical understanding and it will be promote my career to unprecedented levels.
It will be the most rewarding act in my life.

The negative influence

Sometimes it's nice to share our dreams, goals and plans with other peers particularly if they can give constructive and useful feedbacks and use their minds, experience, and knowledge to strengthen ours.
In fact this is not always the case, where some of the people has totally negative influence where they are projecting their very personal life in "others" goals and try to mirror them.
I would like from whoever I share in my plans and goals to put it in my context and not his context and his life.
What I've seen from some of them, they are trying to mirror me to be exactly like them.
It's was obvious conclusion that sharing my life goals and plans with such kind of people is more harmful than useful and it is much better to exclude them from my circle of "advisors".
These people can forward negative influence about my goals and plans using their persuasive power though I 'm fully confident about my way of thinking since I claimed the reward of it but their persuasive part may shaken this confidence and reduce the momentum and the strength.
These category of the people who have de-motivation spirit and who perceive a lot of effort as pointless and who don't see potential in many people should be totally excluded from any seeking of advice.
They are injecting negative energy and shaking the self confidence and throwing uncertainty and lack of confidence in the future.
I've noticed also that they themselves are resistive to change since they don't see point or hope in the changes in addition to their lack of trust in the others' potentials.
They are following this concept consciously or subconsciously that if we can not run with the world pace then let the world freeze like us or slow down to be similar to their pace. Mirroring the people are the world to their internal image.
I've found that it is much better to not be out spoken about my plans to and keep them for myself instead of sharing them with these people.
I experienced this category in the past and I need to put extra effort and get rid from their negative influence and their negative "advises" where they were shaking strongly my self confidence and self perception about my abilities.
I would prefer to put this extra-effort in achieving my goals rather than persuading them or moving forward with wounded and shaken self-confidence.
Fortunately, I reversed their negative influence to be one of my driver to prove that the are wrong about me and I will continue in my way to prove to them and the whole world that I'm capable in what I was seeking for.
Negative spirit is infectious and I will do my best to contain it and to avoid it and to shield myself from it.

Tracking my financial quotient progress

I 'm increasing gradually my financial awarenss, knowledge and in general my financial quotient day by day.
Because of that and the executed financial resolutions I managaed to cut some considerable losses by implementing a package of financial resolutions in my life.
I’m fully satisfied to see the rewards and the impact of these resolutions and gained fruits.
I stopped being ignorant and illiterate about my banking status and statements and expenses and credits.. and stopped saying I’m not good in these stuff to be I’m working on being good on this stuff by following improvement plan. I turned it to area of improvement to be addressed and focused. As a consequence, My credit charges and the associated bank fees were reduced drastically.
In a first time since months ago I don't have defered billed charges and this skyrocketing credit debit interests.
I only had the late charge assessment fees which I will cut it from the next month totally by improving my payment due time and discipline.
I’m no regretting losing some money –which was a lot – in the past months because of these credit interests because I’ve gained the lesson learned from this experienc.
The lesson is really valuable and as I was saying to myself always if my mistake will be the last one and lessons will be fully comprehended and followed then this mistake is really worthy to be done to pass the lesson and it would be fair price to be paid for a valuable lesson in life.
Some people learn from other’s mistakes, others learn from their own mistakes, others don’t get the lesson at all. I will be at least form the ones who learn from their own mistakes and who are not repeating their mistakes for ever if I’m not from the one who learn from the other’s mistakes and lessons.
The second losses cutting resolution was avoid filling my local currency credit balance from my dollar account where the bank rate was far low beyond the market rate. I decided to withdraw cash from the bank and sell the dollar outside to get better price and deposit them back in the credit balance.
The difference really matters by using simple math I found it can reach up or more than 1000$ per year just because of that.
Thirdly I’m waiting till I find in the market the best likely price and sell my dollars using this price which again add some gains.
Fourthly no cash in advance from the credit.
Fifthly I will deposit in the beginning of each month our estimated monthly expenses to cover our expenses all over the month and avoid any possibility of exceeding the due time since I decided to cover the credit balance month by month.
My financial awareness is really rewarding and I can feel the positive impact and the self satisfaction.
It is totally different when I was receiving the statement and don’t understand what the hack these numbers are referring to then folding it again and throw it in the drawer and I ended up with a heavy credit debit.
Meanwhile I’m still working in improving my budgeting.
One of my friend noticed my growing interest in my personal finances and from his perspective it is like counting the peanuts which may spoil my enjoyment with the life by bothering myself with all these numbers.
In my perspective, it is the other way around, this awareness was a source of self satisfaction and reaching the financial freedom as a goal some day it really worthy to put some effort in doing that by following strictly your finances.
The purpose was never cutting the expenses or downscaling my life style but optimizing my expenses by cutting the non sensable expenses and directing them in more valuable channels.

Automating my finances

I'm still working on automating further my personal finances tracking system.
It's kind of challenging and it I'm learning from time to time some Excel tips and hints to reach this goal.
It will be step at a time and will require brainstorming, innovative and experimenting till I reach my goals and leave the financial auto-pilot drive by itself.

No wonder accounting is a lengthy task

I was working in closing my monthly balance. I confess that it was a time consuming and lengthy process but I still have the determination to continue it month after month because of its realized profound value to control my expenses and believing that I'm going to master and improve it which will eventually reduce the time and effort month after month.
They key important point that I will not stop it or get bored from doing it.
I will continuously think about improving it and automating it.
I read in one of the guide book for personal finances to automate the budget spreadsheet as an autopilot.
That's what I'm working on now.
My monthly budget was depending on adding up the different items which is definitely lengthy process if we are taking about family spendings between different countries and withdrawing from different bank accounts!!.
I decided to create new cell in my budget Excel spreadsheet and to insert the starting balance for each month which and the end balance including only the incomes added to the starting balance and the actual balance. This will give me indication about the total expenses. Though it will be gross but it will be informative about the total expenses each month.
I will subtract from this gross monthly expenses my spending items and the left will be the gap to be reduced gradually by improving the tracking of my budget.
Let' see if these ideas will work.
I really understood why my colleagues in the business process, accounting, and business analysis are spending long time at the last week of each month to close the balance sheet of our business unit.
I truly believe that the business intelligence and the strict following of best practices can reduce gradually the majority of this effort and time at the corporate and personal levels.

Reading habits

I changed my reading habits. In the past I was very shallow reader who is scanning the words without bothering to comprehend or to understand between the lines or to think about the fundamentals behind what I was reading.
I was scanning with my eyes like a dummy machine the words and absorb what goes smoothly to my mind and the skip what challenges my mind without bothering to comprehend it.
I changed this habit since I started to think deeply about my work domain where it has developed the deep thinking and innovative and creative thinking. My mind has gained again how to deeply process the information and to deeply dive into it to understand the roots of it.
I accepted now as well that sometimes you can not understand simply the complicated information from the first time and I need to double the effort if I want to understand it. In the past, I didn't give myself this chance.
This was drastic change in my reading and digesting what I read instead of the shallow knowledge. Now my mind has to question, criticize, and comprehend and even create and innovate something out of it and consolidate opinion about it.

Financial tips already implemented or in progress

- I'm regularly logging to my online banking and copy the download the monthly bank statements for the saving accounts and for the credit accounts in certain folders to keep the full record.
- I'm copying also any new items in the credit to a master Excel spreadsheet where I can analyze and understand them and calculate the credit debit and classify them to the different shopping categories to understand my spendings.
- This process has helped me to control any new item in the credit and established the regular checking of my online banking as a routine habit.
- I'm planning to subscribe in the SMS alert to receive notification whenever there is any transaction in my accounts.
- I'm working on automating some of the steps to accelerate the process and to reduce my manual interference.
- The linking between the bank statements spreadsheet and the budget spreadsheet is done manually for the time being but I'm working on linking them automatically.
- I'm building more awareness about the currency conversion and how I can reverse it to my favor.
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Organizational skills

I strongly believe that the disciplined life and the organized persons are getting profound value from these positive habits. On the other side the undisciplined persons are paying daily heavy prices for this lack of organizing skills and their lack of well to be organized.
I read before an article saying that the personal discipline is improving the mental power and the intelligence. It was based on a simple and obvious conclusion that discipline is utilizing frequently the logical skills to locate items where they supposed to be and sorting and categorizing them. All these mental skills are exercised frequently in the disciplined environment.
Huge and considerable of time can be saved by following rigid discipline.
Money also can be saved where many time we are regenerating or re-buying items simply because we can find the old ones.
I decided before that I will never spend my time searching for any thing and I will avoid this frustrating time totally by improving drastically my discipline and my organizational skills.
Discipline is reflected also in the psychological mood of the persons where whenever your eyes go in your house you will find pleasant scene to look at instead of the chaotic random location which silently leaks unpleasant feelings to your soul.
Organizational skills and discipline are totally gained habits and can be gained and improved by the well and practicing.
Disciplined location is a source of fairness to the soul and source of self-satisfaction.
I 'm gradually increasing my discipline in my life.
When I received my current overseas assignment I was requested to provide so many papers and I couldn't find some of them due my lack of discipline. I decided since then that any effort in the discipline and organizing my life is worthy.
I'm still beyond perfect by I'm improving gradually till I reach to my goal of perfect discipline in the life.

Budgeting and credit and debit cards to capture it

As per my previous resolution to discipline more my budget monitoring, I'm trying to push further for using the credit and debit card in the majority of our family spendings. The online banking service and extracting the statement about the credit and debit spendings is really facilitating my effort to maintain regular and accurate as possible monthly budget.
I pay anyway the bank fees for these cards so it is better then to utilize them as operate the bank as my personal accountant!!.
Some people are regarding the plastic money as evil where they loose control on their expenditures and spending is very seducing using it.
In my perspective it is very convenient mean as long as I'm continuously extracting each new purchased item from the online banking and copying it in my Excel spreadsheet to update the all balances.
Following this manner has gave me the full control and show me the value of this bank records.
Debit cards definitely are much better where there is no risk of over-spending from the credit or any credit interests.
That's why I reactivated by debit card and I'm using it more than the credit since then to reduce the credit spending relative to the credit spendings.
The second resolution is the due payment time of the credit which I was missing always and credit interest charges were accumulating.
This was totally avoidable and unnecessary cost and I already implemented my previous resolution to pay before the due time and I will even deposit upfront in the beginning of each month our projected expenses to cover the expected credit.
By this way I will avoid totally the credit interests and this silly late charge assessments from HSBC!!!.

Real estate bubble

Egypt as a developing country is going through a real estate bubble. The investment in the properties is very high and the amount of the business in the compounds, land properties, coastal resorts, apartment complexes is representing huge volume of the current Egyptian economy. It is even attracting the foreign investors to invest in the real estate in Egypt.
It was well known in Egypt between the public that the best and the most secured business is in the real estate. People where buying either apartments or lands and utilizing them or mainly freezing them as frozen assets till they reach their target price due to the appreciation value of these properties.
I think it is the time for me as well to benefit from this bubble. I will avoid the freezing of the property since I've ethical concerns about that where it is freezing the wealth which is holding the value of the money from spreading mutually between the people.
It is still puzzling for me how this real estate sector is flourishing in Egypt although the weak purchase power. apparently the only interpretation that Egypt is one of the countries where there is a considerable class in Egypt where they have their own savings but because of the limited and modest living facilities they didn't have the channel to spend their money except accumulating them in the banks.
This real estate book has withdraw the liquidity and the savings of these people by attracting them to buy properties as liabilities for living or as assets for investments.
Though the governmental officials are claiming that the real estate sector is very healthy for the economy where it is activating about 18 other industries like steel, cement, ceramic, etc, but I believe that it is not the best way to utilize the savings of the people.
Dubai was a clear example for the uncontrolled expansion of the real estate bubble and building luxurious towers without balancing that with investing in productive and revenue generating sectors like trading, industry, IT, or agriculture or services.
Same risk is potential for Egypt.
Property investing is competing with other more vital sectors to the economy and it reduces the potential of the local investors to invest in other more vital sectors for the economy.
People are resorting to the real estate sector because the other sectors are less secured or not available which is clear indication of the poverty of the investments in Egypt.
The proportionality of the real estate investment to the industrial, agricultural, services, or IT investment could work as a health check of the investment and economy of any country.

No return to the objective-less person I was

I was living as a totally objective-less persons without any vision of my being or my life.
along the course of my life I suffered a lot because of this attitude till I decided to change it and even reverse it totally.
I decided to have a plan for my life and th evolution of this life planning was recorded in this blogging page. This life planning included my financial objectives and the key goals in my life including the career goals.
Before this planning I was like a dead fish going wherever the life stream goes.
I was a very passive person who is submissive to the life stream without spirit to change and control and to have the full ownership on his life.
I started to read about the life planning and the as said the first step is to write down the mission and vision and that something I'm drafting now.

Travel planning

As part of my taken resolution about increasing the planning in my personal life and improving the planning skill and practicing it heavily in my life, I started since couple of months the planning of my travels and trips.
I can sense the maturation of my cumulative experience and the improvement of my planning skills by practicing it in different situations and on different levels and scales in my life and I can sense the profound value of practicing it in my personal life.
Value which has convinced me truly that the spent time in the planning is totally invested time and it is worthy.
I will never return back to the random and chaotic person who I was. Planning has become essential component of my way of living.
It is increasing my life discipline. In addition to these valuable gains, planning is considered as a very effective mental exercise and several mental skills are included in the process.
Travel planning has given me the awareness about the proper scheduling and the good sense of the time slots against each task.
Booking the flight tickets and the online checking and reducing the spent time in that was one of the byproduct gained skills.
I have checklist now for each trip where it includes the logistics, shopping items, and any travel related tasks I would like to consider.
These check list is part of my cumulative knowledge also because the majority of the items are valid for the successive trips so it has organized my preparations to the travel in general.
The planning has guided me to arrange the budgeting as well which was another valuable skill. Having this skill enabled me to estimate the required budget for each trip and how can I allocate smartly this budget.
No doubts definitely that the planning is one of the most vital skill in the one's personal and professional life.
It is totally gained skill which can be improved by learning and practicing it.
The good planning can save time and money and can generate value. I experienced that before because of the currency value between the different countries and when should I get currency for the receiving destination. The good and precise planning has grabbed my attention to these points. My last trip was a good example for that where I planned it carefully including the transit time in the airport and scheduling the duty free shopping and the lounge and I managed to use given privilege to me because as a credit card holder to have free access to this lounge. This has emphasized the value of the planning in my life and how it can ease continuously my life in many situations.
I missed before my flights and I missed essential items to have during the travel because of poor planning and mental laziness and the careless attitude I had before. These have gone for every and the disciplined person born to stay and dominate by past character.
The more attention I pay in my planning process, the better plan to cover the all aspects.
It is really funny coincident that my friend was calling me during the writing of this blog post to arrange with me the trip back to home from the office and how we can avoid the traffic jam and the best sport to manage the back trip between the bus and the car. He is one of the most disciplined person I've ever seen and he has a strong self awareness and planning character.
The good planning and the following of it is reducing a lot of unnecessary pressure and stresses which I decided to eliminate. My previous resolution before was the elimination of any unnecessary stresses and pressure as long as there is a way for doing that which could be extra effort or time ..etc..
Applying this resolution has urged me to plan better my time to the airport and allocate enough time for the luggage arrangements.
I found that getting these unnecessary stresses is one of the most ridiculous things in my life and it is totally avoidable.
As I said the continuous practicing of the planning is wearing it up and maturing the skill and the all associated skills including the scheduling and the time management and the logistics and resources planning.

Financial lessons learned

Here are lessons learned from my gained financial discipline all over the previous couple of months.
- Reducing the cash withdrawing and keeping the bulk of money as long as possible in the bank. This by itself is helpful in knowing the financial situation and reduce the risk of possessing cash and utilizing the banking fees in a more efficient ways.
- Increasing the dependency on the debit and credit card and particularly the debit card to capture expenses data and to reduce the budgeting time.
- Ceiling my monthly expenses by firstly determining expenses threshold and the target savings within the whole capital investment plan.
- Analyze the monthly budget by charting the expenses vs savings vs investments.
- Adding the total asset in monthly bases in the budget to check how the budget is affecting the total wealth.
- Adjusting the starting balance in the beginning of the year in the budget.
- Linking directly the budget to the bank statement spreadsheet and the asset spreadsheet.
- Leverage the spendings in more valuable and profitable stuff which justifies the value for money.
- Setting objectives for the expenses vs savings vs investments.
- Increase the intellectual and productive content in the expenses items against the consumables like outings, and phone bills.
- Improve the intelligent and wise spendings on more profitable items and personal development items and products rather than the consumables like buying books instead of going to restaurant or cinema or buying useful gadget instead of some shopping items.
- Expenses optimization and smart spendings objectives.
- apply Lean 6 Sigma in achieving some tasks by the better resources planning as cost reduction method.



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A financial resolution: improving the data capture of my spendings

I need to put more effort and discipline in capturing the all budgetary data to know exactly my cash flow.
I strongly believe that knowing my my spendings cash flow and getting detailed as possible monthly budget data will bring valuable information about my spendings habits and the saving opportunity and the projection of the savings.
It is essential information about the one's life and it should be known.
Any life planning also has to considered this essential spendings data.
I will continue urge my wife to use the credit and debit cards to have the shopping record from the online banking.
I will continue collecting the receipts to track the spendings and record them in the budget spreadsheet.
My objective to reduce the gap in the monthly balance to be a very narrow margin.
I will add another column for the gap between the income and the expenses to measure the performance of my spendings data capture and recording.
So If I will earn 100 and I found that I spent 50 and 30 left in the bank that means I have 20 as an unrecorded in the budget which should be reduce gradually by improving the data capturing and recording.
Definitely the credit and debit payment and the online banking will totally ease and facilitate this task.
As usual my wife will need a little push to follow this requirement and to reduce the cash withdraw against the plastic money spendings.
Any investment planning should be based on this valuable expenses data. That's why the first step in the financial planning and in any proper investment planning or personal finances discipline is to have well documented budget records.
I know that iPhone apps has one of the application to track the expenses. I will think about utilizing more the cell phone to capture the spendings data.
The next stage will be the full analysis of these captured data and to convert it to meaningful information about our spendings habits and our life style and to take the appropriate actions and decisions to improve that.

The journey from the imperfect to the perfect

I developed since a considerable time a sort of procedure in achieving things.
It is depends mainly on the gradual improvement and development of the product or the process.
Whenever I want to initiate a new task or produce something or initiate a new process, I start it in the very rudimentary form.
This rudimentary form is usually very immature and is considered as a very early form of the desired product.
I use this early form as the alpha experimenting stage and the practice area.
It is very useful and important stage because this real life experiment will give me the lessons learned to improve the product or the process.
This version 1.0 is my learning and practice area and is heavily subjected to my observation and my experimenting.
I applied this evolutionary approach and continuous improvement process in my personal and professional life and it was very effective in encouraging me to initiate a lot of tasks and processes and produce a lot of products which I was totally ignorant about.
This has represented a drastic change in my perspective toward achieving the tasks where my previous perspective was either the perfect achievement or nothing.
Missing some elements required for the perfect achievement was hindering me from doing it. Eventually I was ending up was doing nothing.
I gradually changed my mind by the partial achievement of the task as long as it is divisible or can be partially done.
This approach was matured over time and I gained valuable experience in developing these prototypes to mature products.
The imperfect product or the process was continuously improved by the time and going through very productive and effective maturation process and my learning curve was gradually in the increasing trend.
The imperfect was in exciting transition stage to the perfect or near perfect product.

empowering my blogging and improving its quality

I want to improve the quality of my blogging and enrich it is expressive power by increasing the image content and drawings.
I was painting since a long time ago but when I was so busy with the life stream I didn't draw since then.
I want to recover back this hobby and associate it with the blogging where both will increase my power to expression.
I want to increase the value of my blogging by exploring the world using more active and thinking mind.

Life planning

On conjunction with the previous post about the planning, I started since one month ago to plan through this Excel spreadsheet for my life key milestones and objectives.
I categorized the objectives to the following groups:
-Career
-Academic
-Family
-Financial
-Health
-Intellectual Objectives.
Each set has a section in this spreadsheet.
For the time being, the key milestones are stated. I'm planning to extend them to include the rest of my expected life till the retirement and post the retirement.
This has helped me significantly to think about the mid-run and long-run objectives and planning for my life.
I will consolidate more defined plan for the coming three to five years followed by life time plan.
As any task or plan I'm doing, this plan and objectives will be matured and developed by time.
the planned period will be 1, 3, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 years till it include the whole life span.
Panning for the life is the most important task one can do it has the power to change the one's perspective to the whole life and the point of being in life and what the one wants to do in this given time span.
The long run vision is one of the key signal about the visionary persons and it will be great source of wisdom.
I was totally short sighted and stricken randomly and without any self determination by the fate events from event to another in an objective-less and plan-less life.
I was totally passive and reacting only to the urgent needs without long sighted vision.
This life planning has triggered and urged me to raise the big question in life about the mission and vision of being in life and what and where I want to be in the coming years to go.
Planning as a skill and its profound impact on the life is continually developed by going through all these real life exercises.
Now I've objectives and better understanding about these objectives. Previously, I didn't have objectives at all.
Now I'm developing continuously these objectives and categorizing them in relevant sets.
These objectives will include the desired career achievements, and academic degrees, financial objectives, investments, knowledge and intellectual objectives, and even innovations and patents as ultimate objectives.

Planning

There are different scales and levels of planning. I'm working in developing the planning in my personal life at different levels to be well disciplined and well planned person. Starting from the day to day planning by following task planner and calendar. I need to work more on this daily planning and to do task list to be smartly organized. It is a potential room of development. Notes are working as reminder and I want to associate them in my daily plan where this will micro-manage my daily plan and will fit the to do tasks and notes in time context within my daily responsibilities.
The another level of planning is addressing the key milestones on the mid-run and within the coming 3 to 5 years. For example I want to achieve the financial security in the coming 3 years and I want to initiate and finish my Master within the coming two years in addition to exploring the chance of initiating my own business in the upcoming year. All these objectives are planned in my life milestone spreadsheet where it arranges the mid run objectives and the planning for them.
It will be extended also to include the long run objectives like the near retirement stage and the career life and the educational plan for the kids and the above 50 stage and beyond.
Life insurance can provide useful lessons regarding this long run planning and life planning.

Resources management

I've a lot of concerns about how my company is managing the human resources. Sometimes their main objective is retaining the resources and taking decisions which are not healthy for the business needs to meet their resources retention objectives. Retention should be justified by optimizing and maximizing the return on head and the proportionality between the head count and the revenue and reducing the head count by leveraging the technology and the business intelligence.
Increasing the revenue per head should be one of the essential objective for any organization by following smarter business practices and de-bottlenecking the business processes.
Investing in the training and development and the professional task delegations should contribute directly also in the increase of the individual and team productivity and revenue per head.