Month: January 2019

How to manage Mobile Apps?

Mobile apps have a tendency to proliferate and get out of control. We are all guilty of downloading the apps if one of our friends or family says it is good. What we will not know is when they delete them. In addition, the app companies promote their apps through various channels like TV, YouTube etc., Somehow, these apps clutter our phones and get out of control. If we run out space, then we begin deleting them. In the past our only opportunity to clean up is when we upgraded the phone. For few years, we just started fresh and began adding the apps. This reduced the clutter to some extent but nowadays there is software to port all the apps to the new phone. Besides phone memory has become cheaper and there is no need for deleting the apps. Does this mean we just keep on hoarding the apps? No, all these apps track your activities, listen to your phone calls and sell your data. God knows what these providers do with that information. For an interesting perspective check out Jeffrey Deaver’s Novel Broken Window in which the villain uses the data aggregated by the data aggregation company to stalk his victims.

We can separate the apps into three categories:

  1. Must have – These are the banking apps, email apps, photo apps and productivity apps
  2. May be – social apps, I would keep one chat app like whatsapp, delete messenger, Instagram etc
  3. Not used anymore – game apps that may been used when popular e.g., Words with friends, Pokemon Go (trust me I found this few months ago)

These need to be checked on a monthly basis to see if there is a need for the app. It would take few minutes and will save your privacy. With that said, here are my top 10 apps.

  1. Flipboard – latest news
  2. Feedly – create your own feed of information
  3. Medium – tech articles
  4. Sticher – Only podcast app you need
  5. Google Keep – Reminder and notes app
  6. Bored Panda – potpourri of information
  7. Google arts & culture – interactively walk the museums in 3-D
  8. Simple Habit – Meditation app
  9. Be Focused – “Pomodaro” app, great for productivity
  10. Personal Capital – track your networth

My 2018 Book Recommendation

Every once in a while we come across an interesting book that questions your assumptions, derails your beliefs and yet in a profound way affects your thoughts. Last year I picked up this innocuous looking, although bold book “Courage to be Disliked – The Japanese Phenomenon that shows you How to change your life and achieve Real Happiness” by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Kaga. The title itself is quite a mouthful but the book is a light read of around 288 pages written in a conversational manner between a philosopher and a student. Whole book talks about Alfred Adler’s Teleology (study of the purpose of a given phenomenon rather than cause as believed by Freud)

The important thing is not what one is born with but what use one makes of that equipment – Adler

While the Freudean Idea believes that a person’s past psychic wounds (traumas) cause present unhappiness, Adler proposes that we don’t suffer from traumas but we make out of them whatever suits our purposes. We lack courage to change our lives and find excuses in our past. No matter what has occurred in your life up to this point, it should have no bearing at all on how you live from now on. Attributes all problems to interpersonal relationship problems.
Here are some other ideas:
  • It’s enough to move forward and no need to compare with others. Try to strive for your better self than trying to “keep up with the joneses”
  • Human beings are not the same but are equal. Concept of promoting horizontal hierarchies (equal) rather than vertical hierarchies (hierarchical)
  • One must not seek recognition which promotes vertical relationships. When one person praises another, the goal is to manipulate someone who has less ability than you not due to gratitude or respect. Encouragement enables one to complete their tasks.
  • Identify your tasks from others’ tasks and ensure you don’t trample on others’ tasks and don’t let others trample on yours
  • Happiness is a result of feeling of contribution to the society, i.e., by doing your job that indirectly helps others or doing social service or anything else
  • Life is always simple not something one needs to get too serious about
  • Greatest life-lie of all is not to live here and now
  • People are comrades, and the world is a wonderful place
  • Do not look at the past, and do not look at the future, live in the earnest
  • If “I” change, the world will change
  • and many others ….
I had to read twice to make sense out of this simple narrative. It certainly helped me put things in perspective and highly encourage you to read it.