I had a conversation with a few people earlier today about the Internet blackout scheduled for today. I've changed the names but it went a little something like this:

Jake: You guys hear about this blackout that's happening tomorrow on the Internet?

Me: Yeah, it's huge...everyone will know about it tomorrow...

Evelyn: Wait, what?

Jake: A lot of sites will be down for the day tomorrow...

Evelyn: Oh that doesn't matter - they're coming back up, right? If they're only down for a little bit, we can live with it...

Jake: Yeah, but they're going down to make the point that this new SOPA legislation will censor the Internet and change the way it fundamentally operates. The people want a free and open Internet.

Mike: Yeah, but it's going to go through. Have you seen the list of companies supporting SOPA? There's tons of big names backing it, and that means lots of lawyers. I don't think the blackout is going to make much of a difference.

Jake: That's exactly the point. We need more people to know about this censorship that is about to happen. 

I would say I'm a netizen - a citizen of the Internet. I identify with the culture and thoughts of the Internet first, before those of any nation. I could live anywhere on the planet, given access to this same Internet; it's the one thing that can unify us all. And when that is attacked by irresponsible bureaucreacy, I feel it's my duty to fight back. And so when I first heard about PROTECT-IP, PIPA, and SOPA, I immediately contacted my representatives in Congress via phone, fax, and email to let them know how I felt. 

Being a netizen, since that point about 2 months ago, I think I have been overwhelmed with news and information regarding SOPA and its progress. I was watching the Vergecast from CES and they were saying the same thing. Anyone who spends a significant amount of time on the web has grown tired of hearing about SOPA. We almost assume that everyone else must know about it by now.

But then I hear about people like Jon Stewart not knowing about SOPA. And I have conversations with friends like the one above. And I hear what members of Congress think this bill is and what they think it does. And I come to realize that we are the few that actually know, and it's our responsibility today to make sure everyone else is aware too.

What is SOPA?

SOPA stands for Stop Online Piracy Act. It's the result of the MPAA and RIAA throwing money at Congress in hopes their problems will go away. Piracy is the real root of this bill but the ends do not justify the means in this instance.

If passed, it would allow government oversight into all content on websites. It would allow record labels and their representatives like the RIAA to file takedown notices (above and beyond what the DMCA already allows). Once a website shows a pattern of infringement, the government can decide it isn't doing enough to monitor what's being posted and censor the website. 

Once censored, the DNS records that help resolve the URL would be deleted from your ISP's DNS servers. So basically, if Google was blacklisted and you typed www.google.com in your browser, your ISP would say "sorry, we don't know where to go with that address." You'd have to remember that Google's real IP is http://74.125.159.136 and type that instead.

There are already plans for an alternative Internet structure that would gain traction immediately if SOPA was passed, but all of these would be illegal ways to circumvent the censorship and eventually would be taken down. It would be a neverending battle to keep up this secondary structure.

Instead, I think the real solution is for the entertainment industry to GROW UP! They need a better business model. The music industry is catching up - their technological advancements have made music piracy negligible now. But the movie and TV sectors still have a LONG ways to go. Instead of figuring out the hard solutions, they're throwing money at Congress to cut corners and find an easy solution by attacking the means of distribution. I think Mathew Inman said it well - it's like dealing with a lion that has escaped from the zoo by blasting some kittens with a flamethrower.

What Did the Internet Ever Do to You?

The Internet is a place where information is free. If you change the way it operates, it ceases to be such a cornerstone of our culture and our lives. 

This is why we will fight the Internet Service Providers tooth and nail about Net Neutrality. 

Like I said, I'm a netizen. This is my home. Wherever I am, it doesn't really matter, because I'm just one click away from home. I've never seen war. I've never even been compelled to fight for anything actually. I could never relate to all those people who fought wars for their "homeland". I really wish the Tea Party movement hadn't already claimed the Boston Tea Party because they're an embarrassment to this nation, but today, I can't help but feel like it's 1773 and this is us throwing the damn tea into the Boston Harbor, saying "you can't shut down our sites without due process because we all know how badly you screw things up!"

What Can I Do?

The honest truth is, if we don't educate people and the people don't contact their representatives in Congress, when sessions resume in February, SOPA WILL PASS.Congress just has to wait for the hype to die down, and they are good at waiting for the most opportunistic moments to pass legislation (Patriot Act, anyone?). 

1. Educate yourself and as many people as you can convince to spend 5 minutes reading up on SOPA. Read up on the right talking points so you don't come across as a madman.
    
2. Contact your representatives

3. Tell us what you think about SOPA in the comments below - hearing others' perspectives on how it would impact them keeps the fight alive...

What else could you possibly have to do today? The Internet is on strike, remember? :)

In this modern era of the instant, we have become the most disloyal customer base ever to exist. 

You can't deny it's the era of the instant either. Everything that was previously asynchronous communication is slowly losing ground to more instant forms. Want to get a hold of someone? Call them. Voicemail. Oh who leaves voicemails anymore? Just text them. No response? Get online; I'm sure they're logged into some instant messaging app - GTalk/AIM/Facebook Chat/Skype/the list goes on. It's almost rude not to respond to a wall post or tweet addressed to you within a few hours. I remember when you could respond to a voicemail within 24 hours and be considered polite. 

This constant demand for our instant attention has changed us. I saw so many New Year's resolutions this year to go on an "information diet". This is the result of people realizing that in our quest to be always-on and instantly connected, we have lost a bit of our collective sanity.

I'll be writing more about this in blog posts to come because it fascinates me (and because my New Year's resolution was to write more regularly!). In this post I wanted to write about how this has affected our loyalty to media sources.

We Landed on the Moon!

Half a decade ago, the names of TV news anchors were household names. In fact, I was just reading reddit yesterday when I saw this post on the moon landing. Walter Cronkite every night on CBS was the news back then. Not in a celebrity-gossip—Jersey-Shore-cast-is-the-news way, but more like a families-would-get—together-each—evening-and-tune in-because-he—was-their-sole-source-of-news way. He was part of the family if you grew up back then.

Flash forward to 9/11 - you have to admit it has been the biggest news story on that scale to occur recently. I can remember where I was and what I was doing, but I can't remember what channel I was watching or who the anchor was. It must have been CNN or some other national news network, but I can't be sure. And forget about having even a foggy idea of who the anchor was.

Where do we get our news from today?

There are so many sources bombarding us with news that we've become disloyal news readers. This may be a good thing - taking in many different opinions rather than just one is always a plus. And it may be a bad thing - for the news industry of course, and for our attention spans.

I was speaking to some friends and told them if I was the same way with news as a child as I am right now, I would probably have been diagnosed with ADD. I think I went through a phase in college where my sole source of news (more like comedy than news!) was The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. That's probably been the most loyal I've ever been to a single source of news since then. Now if you check my Twitter feed, you'll see I follow and re-tweet so many different sources of news on a regular basis that I don't even know what to read anymore sometimes.

I think this is indicative of the current generation. Most people who have BBC or CNN in their bookmarks toolbar, or download their apps for their mobile devices are part of the last generation. These news organizations are going to need to adapt to fit this societal ADD we have developed over time because the previous generation won't be around forever.

Information aggregators are where it's at now. This is how I use Twitter. I'll do a detailed post on it later, but the point is we're never really vested in media companies.

It doesn't matter who gives us the news as long as we get it. This is the beauty of a Twitter stream with many sources - news repeats through the sphere and whenever you tune in, you can pick out the news from whatever source was "on" at the same time you were. People ask me why I like Twitter so much - this is why. This is what social media means for many of us - it's a twist on the normal usage of connecting with friends. Social media is more of a twist on an old form of news media for me and many others.

And I'll be the first to admit it has spoiled me and made me disloyal to traditional news companies and I'm glad.

I've been using the Kindle Fire for a few days now and I love it because it's exactly what I needed.

The techie part of me always gets riled up when I see good deals on better hardware specs out there. But that was the reason I took so long to settle with any tablet to begin with. I read so many reviews and looked at so many deal sites with an itchy trigger finger on the buy it now button that anyone could see I was a commitment-phobe. And so this post is not really one to convince you to get the Kindle Fire, or to convince myself the Kindle Fire was the right purchase for me (to avoid buyer's remorse).

I simply want to share a little backstory as to how I finally chose a tablet, which may help someone else figure out how to pick one for themselves.

If you look through my eBay selling history, you'll see in the past couple of months, I've sold off every brand of tablet there is. And so let's start at the beginning.

Honeycomb Android on the Acer Iconia Tab

This was the first inexpensive tablet I played with. The Honeycomb experience was still new and novel so I kept trying to like it. The Google integration is the reason my phone is Android as well and so I thought, of course I need an Android tablet. But after the first 3-4 hours of using it, the novelty wore off.

After I had it all set up with the apps that I thought I needed, and I tried to actually use it, I realized I left it sitting around most of the time, not even touching it. 

The first thing you have to do when you want to choose a tablet is to really analyze your workflow and find the gap that you want the device to fill. If there isn't a gap, you're not going to use the device. I'd say most people don't use tablets once they buy them. They end up giving them to their kids to play games on or just leave them laying around (the tablets, not the kids).

Since typing out long emails or replies on these tablets is really never an option, that's the first thing to think about - what will I use it for? Or buy the accessories that make typing an option. Because the on-screen keyboards for such oversized devices are really dissatisfying, no matter what case and what angle and what position you have it in.

Every time I'd launch the Kindle app to read something, I would hate having to hold up such a heavy device (1.69 lbs) and so I'd immediately put it down and that means, I'd move on to doing something else. I didn't immediately realize it, but this should have been the sign that led me to a smaller device.

WebOS on the HP TouchPad

Who could resist the $99 TouchPad firesale? When I found out, I immediately ordered one. I had heard great things about WebOS (in its defense, it is extremely intuitive and I was sad to see HP killed it off since it's probably the best user experience out there - hopefully the open source community develops it).

Even though the OS was often sluggish given the hardware could not match its needs, the lack of any developer support for common apps really killed this option for me. I could overlook the lag since the experience was so enjoyable. But not having apps for common Internet services I use, or having to use a zoomed in version of the phone app for WebOS was a real turn off for me. Evernote was the biggest one I use that didn't have a good enough app. I use it for all my notes and thoughts and I can't have a subpar experience for that and Kindle. 

Again, when I picked it up to read on, it was far too heavy (1.63 lbs).

It was here I began to realize which apps and uses really mattered to me and which I could live without: Evernote, the Kindle reading experience, reading emails/documents, and some light video-watching/games when bored. Beyond that, I never use a tablet. I have a laptop or desktop for everything else.

iOS on the Apple iPad

Everyone thinks I hate Apple and iOS. I don't really. I co-exist every day owning a Macbook Pro and a Windows desktop and Android phone. I figured if there is such a rave about the iPad, there must be something I'm missing.

The experience was a bit better on the iPad, but there were still apps I had to use the phone version of and zoom in (GroupMe for one). I don't mind if an app doesn't exist, but if I have to use the phone version of it, the designer in me dies a little inside when all the pixels show up in 2x mode.

I admit, I don't like how locked down iOS is on customizations. I'm all about making my devices my own - and it has to be more than just changing a wallpaper. Though, I tried to put that to the side when using the iPad.

It all came down to the size of the screen and the weight (1.3 lbs). I couldn't use it as a reading device nor could I type on it again, regardless of the positioning of the case. And so, it was here I realized even though everything else had been fine on all these tablets, I needed something smaller.

Weighing, quite literally, all my options

For the next few days, I Googled every possible article and review on how to choose the right tablet size for you. Nobody really had any idea. They only commented on the hardware and how the resolution of the screen was.

I suspect you could make a quick questionnaire to help people figure out the gap in their lives that a tablet needs to fill and then tell them the best tablet size accordingly. You'd get tons of hits.

As I looked for smaller devices, I looked at the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7, Samsung Galaxy Tab 7 Plus, and rumored to exist Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7. All of them run Android Honeycomb and have differences in processing power mainly. And I threw the Kindle Fire in as part of the comparison for fun. The prices of these other devices was absurdly high. If I was going to spend that much money, I dreamt of instead buying an Asus Transformer Prime (quad-core + 1 extra core) with keyboard dock instead. The prices on those devices needs to come down because their hardware is antiquated now. I suspect it will soon. Spending that kind of money on a device is a huge commitment, and that drove the commitment-phobe in me toward the Kindle Fire. I had looked it up on Craigslist and a guy was selling it for $140 in my area! For that amount, I had no issues whatsoever committing to a smaller device whose main purpose was to help me do what I had wanted to do all along: read. To be fair, I looked into the eInk displays as well but my eyes don't hurt when reading LCD screens (some people's do), and I wanted to have the flexibility to do a little more than just read books (articles, tweets, Evernote, etc. too), so I went with the Kindle Fire and I must say, I'm happy with my decision.

Kindle Fire impressions

The Kindle Fire experience is definitely locked down to what they want you to see - Amazon products. People probably don't know this but I am an Amazon fanboy. I have Amazon Prime, Amazon Cloud Player where all my katha and bhajans are uploaded, and even some small music purchases from the Amazon MP3 store. I order EVERYTHING off Amazon now that I have free shipping, and the instant videos are actually pretty good.

And so, this ecosystem is amazing for me. I suppose this is how people who are Apple fanboys feel when all their music is in iTunes (how you people like that software is beyond me, though iTunes match may make me convert!), etc. 

I didn't know how much of a difference the full-fledged Kindle experience made to just having the Kindle app on a tablet by another provider. I have already emailed so many satsang book PDFs to my Kindle and having them there at the touch of a fingertip makes reading them so much easier. I have my Vachanamrut, my Swamini Vato, etc. all ready for regular reading. 

I have already read 40% of a new book I'm reading just because the Kindle Fire is that lightweight and portable, that I take it everywhere and I leave it propped open whenever I'm working at the computer so I can take small breaks and read whenever I get tired of doing whatever I'm doing.

7" is the absolute perfect size for a tablet. You can hold it in portrait and type on the keyboard and in landscape, you can get an alternative keyboard called Thumb Keyboard on there and it's perfect too. 

Amazon Instant videos and Netflix satisfy the need for videos. There are plenty of games on the Amazon appstore too. And their free app every day promotion means something new to play with regularly.

Amazon Cloud player and music store are always in use for music, as is Pandora which quickly lets you buy any music on the Amazon MP3 store if you like it.

1-click shopping is amazing - I've already bought so much more because the tablet is always with me when I remember what I need to buy.

It's nearly replaced my phone as the device I take to bed with me at night to read, to set my alarm on, etc. 

So now my gripes:

Holding it up. You need a case. I bought this Marware case and it's perfect. I prop up the Kindle in landscape mode on my desk and read every spare chance I get. I needed one with a strap so I could hold it up as well as prop it up. So the book-like cases, though they look really cool wouldn't really work.

Sluggish response to screen presses. After rooting it, I was able to install an app that sped things up though. It flies now.

Blocking the Google Market and Google integration. This is what made me root my device. Disclaimer: After playing with it for 48 hours, I have already bricked my Kindle Fire by rooting it so beware. Thankfully, Amazon is sending me a new one. I will root it again - I think I went overboard with the customizations though, so I'll be more careful this time. It took me about 30 minutes to root it (downloading the files you need is what takes like half that time). And then for about 2 hours I just went app-crazy installing everything and anything onto it. It's still running Android 2.1 so apps are plentiful and it's basically an oversized phone so the phone versions of apps run perfectly fine on it (as opposed to Honeycomb-tablet specific apps which sometimes are non-existent for services). All I really need is the Gmail and Calendar sync app - everything else doesn't matter.

I'm not going to end this review by saying you should buy a Kindle Fire. But if you're in the market for a tablet, first figure out why. Do you want to draw on it? Get a Lenovo Android tablet with Wacom digitizer. Do you want to write long emails and notes on the go? Get an Asus Transformer (Prime) with laptop dock. Do you want to read? Get a Kindle Fire.

When we ponder on what if, most of us think about what if I did this in the future, and what if I lived like this, and we daydream of a pleasant life.

Lately I've been thinking about what if...backwards in time. And it's made me all the more grateful for the people who have helped me out in life. Because there is no viable response to what if he hadn't helped you out then when you needed it most? What if this job opportunity hadn't been there when you wanted it? What if...but through the past.

Try it and post in the comments what you're grateful for. It's difficult to admit that beneath this impermeable, impervious façade is someone who needs help, who needs others.

When we stop and are just genuinely grateful to those who have taken time and energy out of their own lives to help put us in a place where we are today, we can really enjoy life. The hard part is to then show that other person that you are indeed grateful. I'm still working on that with a lot of people...

(Photo courtesy of Jenny)

Last night I attended a celebration of the Indian new year hosted by the BAPS Campus Fellowship at Georgia Tech here in downtown Atlanta. There were a few thought-provoking speeches which made me think about what the credo of Pramukh Swami Maharaj, "In the joy of others lies our own" really means and how to apply it in the coming year. 

We can only share happiness if we are happy

By definition, 'sharing' something requires that you have it and you can afford to give some of it to others without losing it yourself. And happiness is one of those things that needs to be shared, not given or taken. 

During the program, when everyone was polled about why they had chosen a certain major, a third said to make their parents happy, a third said for the money, and a smaller portion said because they had a genuine passion for the field. I'm sure this small sampling is representative of a much larger trend within Millenials, even outside of the Indian community. Thinking about this brought me back to one of my favorite quotes of all time by Howard Thurman, a minister and educator, "Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive."

Today's world is one in which we have the freedom to make all the choices we need in order to 'come alive' or be happy, moreso than ever before in history. Yet we often try to choose the path which we think most others have followed and end up being miserable on a path that hasn't been designed for us. This underscores the need for a true guru, one who can help us customize the path of life after understanding the potential within each of us.

What makes us happy?

"...the ability to be weird, the freedom to make choices...are the factors most highly correlated with happiness around the world. ... It’s human nature to be weird, but also human to be lonely. This conflict between fitting in and standing out is at the core of who we are." - Seth Godin, We Are All Weird

Lots of things make us happy. Some instances of that happiness last longer than others. That's why we have so many words for the shades of happiness we feel. Jubilation. Joy. Bliss. The list goes on...

But if we had to identify those instances of happiness which lasted the longest, I suspect they would be the ones where we found a place to belong. What do I mean by that? I mean we have forever been 'weird,' the odd ones out. We all went to middle school and high school. We all thought it was just a "phase" where we felt nobody really understood us. That wasn't the case; nobody understood us because we were looking for understanding in all the wrong places.

Then we grew up. We went to college and actually understood who we were, what we liked. And we gravitated towards other people who were just as weird. If we couldn't find them in our dorm, surely there were some on our campus. If we couldn't find them on our campus, surely we found them in this new interconnected digital world somewhere. But we found a place to belong. We embraced the weird, and we felt that happiness last longer than it ever has before. We're all weird. We need to find others who are weird in the same way as us in order to be happy.

Being happy takes courage

Deciding to be happy is no easy choice. We face so many of our own insecurities along the way that we didn't even know existed. We read about them in books but we're blinded when those very insecurities crop up within us. 

Deciding to be happy is most often the same as deciding to go against the grain, to be different, to break free from the conditioning that we have received since childhood. This daunting decision is where most people get stuck. Everyone has a flicker of weird in them, whether they choose to embrace it or not is the part that takes courage. 

 

Time. The one thing everyone wishes they had more of. I was just thinking about how important the concept of time is to us and how it relates to rajipo.

Sometimes we arbitrarily lump together our decisions in units of time for judgment of rajipo because we're so temporally oriented. Our lives are governed by the clock. But we forget that Bhagwan and his sant are not under the influence (read: restraints) of time.

So despite knowing what we know about how Bhagwan and his sant are always looking at our intentions and are with us every second, why do we think we have "bad days" and if we make one bad decision, we should give up for the rest of the day? Ekadashi is the easiest example to explain this with - if we accidentally eat something we weren't supposed to, we may give up for the rest of the day saying what's the point anyways now. It's as if we say to ourselves this day cannot be redeemed so I'll try again tomorrow. We give up. But God and his sant are above time. They judge decisions on their own merits.

This is a rather large problem we face in understanding the satpurush and anything in the realm of the divine. We are so inextricably tied to the concept of time whereas they have no regard (or probably actually disregard) for it.

One of the first questions we ask in satsang (or any religion) is "how was this earth created?" It's a valid question in its own right as our lizard brains attempt to understand the universe around us. But when the reply comes back that 5 tattvas are eternal, we cannot even begin to grasp this concept of something not following the rules of time we have set.

Clearly it is difficult to understand satsang concepts from our perspective but from the Satpurush's perspective, I wonder if he sees everything regardless of time. Perhaps he sees everything in the present tense. Maybe this explains how he can so easily forgive our blunders and recall the smallest things we have done in the past for the sanstha: he can see all our actions in the present since he is not influenced by time. On the other hand, if someone had done us a favor a long time ago but somehow managed to wrong us today, we would forget what he did a long time ago and say, "Yeah that was then and this is now…" But the Satpurush teaches us through his example how to disregard time and still appreciate things that people have done for us. If we break a niyam or do something wrong, in his eyes, he must see all the things we've done right in the past in the same instance - sort of like a bunch of attachments all attached to the same email - our past actions all attached with this present mistake to our souls - and he is able to overlook the misdeed easily because of things we have done in the past. And in this same line of thinking, if time is of no regard, then he must see the future potential of that soul continuing down his current path at the very same moment.

I really don't know how he sees us, or if he even thinks about all this to be honest. He looks like a man but his actions are clearly divine. He says he simply prays to God and asks what advice to give and says what comes to mind.

But in my head I can't help but think of him as a superhero on this eve of Halloween and so I really hope he does it the first way...

I'm not rich. I'm not well-off by any means. I've just started working for the past year, paying off student loans, and the whole nine yards - I'm sure you know how it is. Anything I save goes to paying off my loans. And so I live in a very modest home with a very simple lifestyle - that's also by choice, not by sheer necessity. I am a minimalist by nature. Minimalists only keep the bare minimum of what we need. We don't hoard things. We don't like cluttered spaces. Basically, we don't like many possessions.

But just this past weekend, I was stunned at how attached I, a minimalist through and through, have become to the concept of "home". I say the 'concept of' home because again, I do not live in a lavish house; there's not much in the physical home to get attached to. I don't sleep on a bed. I don't have a big-screen TV. I barely have a functioning kitchen. My office space is probably where I spend most of my time but again, nothing too over the top. And so it wasn't that I was attached to some thing but rather simply the concept of "home".

I was due to fly out Monday morning from NY to head back home to Atlanta when Sunday night I realized that I was going to miss an important presentation next Tuesday if I left. I had completely forgotten the presentation was so soon and had booked my return tickets hastily. I quickly called Delta and changed the flights. After I hung up the phone and made arrangements to cancel my rides and all that, it all sunk in: I wasn't going home tomorrow. I was actually kind of bummed that I wouldn't be going home the next morning. I asked myself why and eventually got to the reason: I had been out for about a month and was looking forward to relaxing. That was the key.

We get attached to this concept of "home" because we define home as a place we can relax. We find it difficult to relax everywhere else. This is at the root of stress and burn-out. Over the summer though, I am a digital nomad, traveling for at least 1-2 months at a time, not returning home to relax. So I put together some ways I have tried in the past or want to try soon to relax while on the go so I don't ever have to be attached to this concept of "home" as the only place I can relax.

1. Extend your morning routine.

   Being a night owl, I know how hard it is to ask someone to wake up earlier than is required of them, but hear me out. Too often do we wake up with barely enough time to get ready and be where we need to be. Instead, wake up 30 minutes earlier and use that time to quietly reflect, read something, and just do what you'd like in general. I like taking my time getting ready and after I'm done, I enjoy just sitting on the couch with something to drink and thinking about my day - what's in store, what I need to get done, who I need to meet, etc.

2. Read something.

   Read anything really. I have Kindle where I'm reading a couple of books like Enchantment by Guy Kawasaki or Anything You Want by Derek Sivers. I have a whole long queue of books I want to read after these. I always enjoy a good Tom Clancy spy novel as well. Reading fiction or non-fiction will get your mind off things. Reading lets you inject yourself into another world, and even though it's temporary, when you come back, you'll be surprised but you'll have ideas and solutions for the problems you face in the real world. You'll find your subconscious has been hard at work all along. 

3. Take breaks.

   An average person can only focus on a task for an hour and a half before the law of diminishing returns kicks in. You keep putting in more time but your brain is not quite all there and you're getting diminishing returns. After an hour and a half, take a quick mental break. I like to reminisce on some of my favorite memories. You can choose to just take deep breaths as well. Take a quick walk. Do anything for 5 minutes, including reading if you want. I actually also enjoy catching up on my Twitter feed (mostly world news, tech news, and inspirational/self-improvement articles) in small bursts whenever I can spare a few minutes. These short bursts of escaping keep me sane throughout the day when I don't have enough time to read anything substantial.

4. Connect with someone.

   When you're on the go, it's difficult to take a minute and just catch up with someone because that's not necessarily on your long list of tasks. Passion is contagious though. When you find yourself feeling stressed, take a second to call/text/email/IM someone you know that can bring you back to life. Someone who you care about and share a lot of memories with is usually best. Reminiscing is an instant de-stressor. This is the age of the Internet too though, so if you don't know anyone like that, you have the whole world at your fingertips. Send out a tweet/status update/blog post - but instead of complaining, ask a question that you want people to respond to. Ask them something personal about themselves - for some reason getting to know people better, even if they're strangers over the Internet, gives us all a warm fuzzy feeling inside.

5. Stay on top of the small things.

   Rookie travelers always make this mistake and that's why they have to go home after a few days: they let the small things pile up. I'm talking about emails, phone calls, texts, and errands. Just about all of us now have smartphones and they can be our best friends and our worst enemies at times. When we're not on top of our communication, that blinking green light or that counter in the notification bar can drive us insane. I can't recommend Inbox Zero to enough of my friends and team. Your to-do list can be a mile long but stay on top of the communication - respond back to emails, reply to texts, etc. Simply say you're out right now and you'll get back to them by this date or you'll return what they need by this date. People respect that. Or learn how to delegate better while you're traveling. Don't take on assignments you won't have time for.
    

6. Be realistic & hit the reset button.

   Sometimes we over-extend ourselves and try to get too much done while we're on the go. We just have to throw up our white flag and ask for help. Everyone knows we wear our underwear under our pants and they can see we don't have a cape on; we can stop pretending we're invincible superheroes. We do have to simplify our schedules and take into account that we're only human. From time to time we have to make a "home" away from home. Schedule in those days in between all your traveling that you know you can just sleep in or catch up with everything. Those days are godsends. You don't feel like you accomplished anything the whole day but the next day you more than make up for it, trust me...

What other ways do you guys battle stress and burn-out either on the go or at home? Send me some feedback below, or on Twitter or Facebook.

(Photo courtesy of Kenneth John Brown)

Have you ever noticed when we're in a classroom or a theater, we don't mind if hundreds of people are seated right next to us? But if we're sitting on a park bench alone and someone comes and sits next to us, we start eyeing him/her and may even get up and move. We hop up as if to ask, "What does this guy want with me?" 

A few years ago when I was in college at NC State in Raleigh, I went grocery shopping near closing time. I'm a night owl; I run my errands on my own schedule. But I just so happened to pull into the parking spot next to someone who had just parked as well. The rest of the lot was pretty empty. So we both got out of our cars and the first thing the guy asks me is, "Why'd you have to park next to me? The whole lot is open..." It was one of the few times in my life I've honestly been speechless because I really didn't have an answer for him. I mustered together a polite response to appease him, but I couldn't shake the feeling of that moment.

I understand this feeling when your privacy is threatened. We slip into our lizard brains and we get very territorial. But when you're just going to the grocery store or relaxing at the park or sitting on a bus or standing in an elevator? What then?

We slip in and out of this "it's me vs. the world" mindset so quickly and easily that we don't even notice it. 

I'm an introvert by definition: I enjoy time by myself and prefer one-to-one conversations to large groups. If anything, you'd think introverts would be more prone to this "me vs. the world" syndrome, but I actually think a lot of introverts are immune to it. Here's why and here's how everyone else can actually hack this fear of the world...

1. Hack your way to confidence. The easiest way is to know what you're talking about, in any domain. If you're comfortable with the web, know the hell out of the web and everything related to it. If you enjoy design, know what you're talking about when you talk design. Read up. Talk to people who know their stuff. Become an authority on any topic either in the small domain of people you know, or in the broader domain of the web. With the Internet at most of our fingertips, there's never the excuse of being "forever alone". There's plenty of other ways to develop confidence but I'll save that for another post. Being confident (not egotistical, just confident) is the very first thing you need to slow the transition into this "me vs. the world" mentality and I find that introverts are usually knowledgeable about their domains because all that time alone is usually spent doing something intelligent and productive.
2. Hack your way into your mind. Ok, so you bought yourself some time by being confident. Your mind begins to second-guess itself when someone comes and sits next to you on that park bench. You say, "He's just being friendly...relax, you're being paranoid..." In that moment, you have to hack your way into your mind. Being aware of your thoughts is the next step to avoiding this "me vs. the world" mindset. Introverts are naturally introspective I think - they know how to be alone with their thoughts, slow the world down and actually revel in the thought process, all within the split second that they have to make that decision. Thinking about what you're thinking about is the next part of overcoming this "me vs. the world" mindset.

3. Fake it 'til you make it. So you've caught yourself, used your confidence to help stave off this fear. The next part is probably the easiest: just fake it. Even if you don't like that person being so close to you or in your personal space, fake being nice to them. Introverts have perfected this concept of faking their interactions with the world. Surprisingly, quite a few people you consider to be outgoing may actually be introverts who simply know how to be sociable. They have figured themselves out well enough to know they enjoy being alone but they also need to hang out with others and enjoy their company. Take a page out of their book and fake it 'til you make it. This really just means strike up a conversation with that person. We're all so involved in our own little worlds when we're out that it's creating a society in which it's RUDE to make eye contact or talk to a stranger. Break that norm. Rejection is just a numbers game - take your chance with it. Talk to the person politely - they probably don't even expect it. You'll throw them off guard and you'll have an interesting (hopefully) conversation for a few minutes. Most people's days go by and at the end of it (or with the advent of social media, all throughout it), all they can do is complain about things - they rarely have one positive experience to share that they enjoyed that day. Make those experiences by making the most of the world around you. Engage with the world and you'll enjoy it after a while...

(Photo courtesy of Ed Yourdon)