Life Skills
Anoop Verma
Are you the kind of guy who always finds excuses for his shortcomings? If so, then you are like majority of the people. Most people in the world spend a major chunk of their lives making excuses. The most productive years of their lives get spend in making excuses and getting trapped in wrong jobs. The human psychology is such that it is most easy to come up with a myriad of reasons about why you can’t accomplish your goals or achieve the success you have been craving for.
If you are constantly making excuses, then you create the impression of someone who is indecisive and undependable; those who are in positions of power will not feel like trusting you with major responsibilities. People may not be inclined to respect or trust you. You might be the guy who always procrastinates, takes on too much or can’t say ‘no” and then can’t get everything done. It is time you recognise your penchant for making excuses as a major flaw in your personality and tried to do something about it.
You might feel that you are too busy to do anything to change the quality of your life. There is no doubt that the rat-race of modern life often makes us feel overwhelmed. At times, you may find yourself typing urgent emails from bathroom and attending business calls from your bed. But there are ways by which you can create extra time in your life. Watch a little less TV. Even if you can cut one hour of TV time each day, it gives you 30 hours of quality time every month. You can cut down the time that you spend on the social media.
If you had money, you could have done this, you could have done that, you could have achieved so much. But the thing is that money is not the most important factor when it comes to changing your life. You don’t need to save up to change your life. You don’t need money, you need hustle, you need innovation. You don’t need loans, you need hard work, you need vision. You also don’t need to procrastinate forever in the enterprise of changing your life. You can start today.
You need to recognise the fact that you will never be able to improve the quality of your life and get what you want, as long as you keep making excuses. Excuses are not really the reasons, they are just how we justify not pursuing what we want in life. We can only succeed when we stop telling ourselves why we can’t, and start living a life that shows we can.
Tech View
How to avoid getting hacked?
Anoop Verma
The data compiled by an online security company shows that in 2013, more than 13 million people were victims of identity theft and they ended up losing a total of more than $21 billion. With a problem that big, it’s important to know not only how hackers can find your personal or business information, but how to protect yourself. Almost all of us are vulnerable. But we can take steps to stop it.
These days most websites have stopped accepting weak passwords, but there are quite a few that do. If you are using “password” as your password, then you are obviously setting yourself up for being targeted by the hackers. Although ABC123 contains both numbers and letters, it is not a good password. You should try to pickup password that is of at least eight characters, and contains numbers, letters and punctuation. You should also have letters in both small and capital case.
It is not just individuals who are targeted by the hackers; even large companies suffer from online attacks. So if you are logging into some company’s account by using your password, it is in your interest to keep changing it every month. That way you will stay ahead of the bad guys.
The social media has become a facilitator for identity theft; this is because most users tend to share much more information than they should. The reality is that you can do with sharing a little bit less information. Over sharing may not be just embarrassing, it can also cause harm. Things like birth dates and graduation years can be used to access your information. That doesn’t mean you need to shut down your online presence, but be careful what details you put out there.
One good way of safeguarding your most valuable accounts is to opt for two way verification. Most banks and credit card companies today provide the option of two way verification. Even Google is providing this facility. If you use the service, you have to remember a password but also remember a special key that gets sent to you as a text.
Especially in case of bank and credit card companies it is possible for you to check when your account had been last logged in. Keep an eye on this data. If you see something suspicious, change your password immediately and inform the customer care. If there are log in attempts from odd places, someone is most likely trying to hack your account.
Since English is not our mother tongue most people express their thoughts in literal translation of their mother tongue which generates. serious comedy errors. Some of the common errors are as follows:
Let’s and Lets
Let’s is a short form of “let us”. For example, “let’s play football”
Lets is used when permission is involved. For instance, “he lets me use his car”
Repeat and Repeat Again
There is nothing like “repeat again” because the word “repeat” itself means doing something again.
Incorrect:Please repeat your statement again
Correct:Please repeat your statement
Revert and Revert back
Here the problem is similar as to with “repeat and repeat again”… there is nothing like “revert back”
Incorrect:I’ll revert back to you soon.
Correct:I’ll reply to you soon.
Than and Then
The conjunction “than” is used to compare whereas “then” is an adverb pointing to time.
Incorrect:Sachin Tendulkar runs faster then Dhoni
Correct:Sachin Tendulkar runs faster than Dhoni
Incorrect:He had gone and than she realized
Correct:He had gone and then she realized
Usage of “na” and “to”
North Indians use these two unnecessarily words to pose questions as well as to make statements. For example:
“He istovery smartna”
Here “o” oftois pronounced as in “go” and “a” ofnais pronounced as in “jar”. Bothtoandnaare nonsensical and totally unnecessary. Such usage should be avoided. Take another example:
Incorrect:“You are goingna?”
Correct:“You are going, aren’t you?”
Use of second form of verb after “did”
Incorrect:I didn’t saw him
Correct:I didn’t see him
Remember, “did” is always followed by the first form of the verb.
Overuse of “only”
Indians use the word “only” for adding emphasis. This is not exactly wrong except that in India “only” is overused to emphasise. In Hindi, there are words that we use to emphasise something. One such word is “hi” as in “Ramesh ko Nagpur jana hi hai”. English language lacks such words. Perhaps this is the reason, Indians make use “only” to replace “hi”.
For example, Indians tend to translate “main to aisa hi hoon” as “I am like this only”. However the correct form would be:
Incorrect:I am like this only
Correct:This is how I am
Can vs. May
“Can” denotes the ability of doing something whereas “may” denotes asking for the permission for doing something.
Incorrect :Can I take this magazine?
Correct:May I take this magazine?
If you say “Can I take this magazine?” –you are actually questioning your ability to take or lift a magazine. Of course you are strong enough to lift it and therefore you can take it. But when you say “May I take this magazine?” –you are asking for someone’s permission to have the magazine.
Cousin and Cousin Brother/Sister
I must credit Mr. Y.Singh, my English teacher in 9thclass, for telling me about the right usage (although, having done my entire schooling in Hindi medium schools, at that time I was least bothered about such nitty-gritty of English.)
In standard English “cousin” is used for both the sexes –brother or sister is not attached with this word. Although, it makes sense to use “cousin brother” or “cousin sister” because these terms are more informative –but, unfortunately, in English these are wrong terms.
—Lalit Kumar
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