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.