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Showing posts from January, 2016

Getting Organized

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I found a need to come up with a system to help me remember. Over the years, the process has changed but the goal remains the same. Since moving to an Android phone I have been using GTask.  GTask GTask is a third party app build using Google Task (since Google did not provide an app). It works well to help me track my task, to do list and provide reminders for follow up. Calendars are useful to track your schedule but it is not convenient for task that require follow up or use as reference. I can easily create a task from my GMail. GTask is simple and easy to use but provides text only fields. I decided to explore Google Keep. Keep Initially I used keep as an enhanced version of gTask so I do not need GTask anymore. A few things I like about Keep are: I can now attach a photo to the entry. It provides a convenient way to use certain cards like Starbucks, Domino’s privilege card. Entries are available without network. I do not subscribe to mobile data

Focus and Distractions

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What occupies our thought most is what our mind will focus on and get good at. Recently I realized that I have allowed myself to get distracted and am no longer focusing on my goals. I used to ask myself the following question, “Is what you are doing useful?” I have allowed too many distractions into my life - movies and comic/manga, computer games which do not benefit me in any way. Some distractions may be good to help us relax but I just realized that many of these activities seem to occupy more and more of my waking hours. None of them help me achieve my goals. These are the goals myself back in 1999 but somehow along the way I got sidetracked. Faith in God Physical and Mental Health Financial Security Self Improvement Now that I have come to this realization, it is time to take charge of my life again and redirect my focus and control the things that occupy my mind most. 

Share Investment

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Over the years I have been evaluating and evolving my approach to equity investment. Mutual Fund I started off by investing in mutual fund but closed out all my funds after following articles in www.fool.com . I was lucky because most of the funds I invested in made money. That is not true for everybody, the funds my wife invested in never made any money even though it is more than ten years. Most fund managers would like you to believe that if you invest in mutual fund for at least five years, you will at least be in the black but that is not always the case. It helps if you get help from someone who are familiar with the funds and are not just pushing the funds to earn commission from the sale. Capital Gain My parents approach to investment was to focus on capital gain and not on dividend. To them, capital loss and gain is a lot more significant compared to dividend. Consequently, they feel that dividend is not significant. I tried this approach for a while. I had some successe