Anwar's Blog

For the last one and half years, I have been trying to improve my writing. A majority of my time is spent thinking about writing rather than actually writing. Writing is a skill and it can only be improved by practicing. Not just practicing but continuous consistent deliberate practice. Thinking about improving the writing will only help you get so far. In order to make real improvements to your writing, you have to write. So in this article, I will share with you 3 ways you can follow that will drastically help you improve your writing skills. 1. Write Every Single Day Nothing can beat consistency. Our brains are designed to get better at things that we do on a consistent basis. When it comes to writing, I don’t think there is a better way to practice writing and get better at it than writing every single day. It doesn’t matter what you write, how much you write, and the quality and clarity of your writing. As long as you create a system for writing and follow it every single day w...

 This is my last post of 2020. The year is almost over and it's been the most dramatic year of my entire life so far. Although I had big expectations at the beginning of this year, everything turned upside down over the last few months and some dramatic and unexpected things happened. The Covid-19 pandemic and the lockdown that followed it which lasted for more than 8 months have stagnated the lives of billions around the world including mine. I had plans to complete my course and try for a better job and a couple of other things. But the biggest lesson that I have learned this year is that life is highly unpredictable and uncertain and that uncertainty is not always a bad thing. I have reasons to back that argument up. Although the first couple of months of the lockdown were a complete mess, the months after that were really transformational and life-changing, for me! I discovered this incredible productivity tool called Notion and I built some cool systems in it to manage my li...

 It's been almost 2 months since I have published my last article on this blog. I have not been able to finish another article and publish it here after that. It's not because I don't want to, it's because I can't! Writing is a tough process, especially for a beginner and a non-native speaker like me. I deeply and sincerely want to write and stick with my initial plan of publishing one article here in this blog every week. But I find it harder than ever before for me to finish something that I start. I have read articles and articles and watched a ton of videos on how to write effectively and how to overcome writer's blocks. Still, I am struggling a great deal and I don't sincerely know what to do. One thing I am sure of is that I will overcome this phase. Sometime in the near future, I will be able to write like how I want to and I will be meeting my expectations and standards. Self-doubt is a good thing. It's a sign which indicates that you have goo...

Tom Cruise is one of my favorite actors. I have watched almost all of his movies and I adore him as an actor. Recently, I came to watch some short clips of him appearing on TV talk shows. He is very charismatic and people love him. I watched a lot of his videos and I was really curious to know what makes a person so attractive that people love them so much. I did contemplate a lot, did some research, watched a bunch of videos on Youtube on how to become a charismatic person. After a few days, I have come to some final thoughts and understandings of which some I already knew and some I learned new. I want to point out 4 specific characteristics of charismatic people here. They are comfortable with who they are and what they are - Everyone has flaws and insecurities and most of the people are stuck in life because they care too much about their flaws and people's opinions. One major characteristic that differentiates charismatic people from the rest is that they have accepted the...

  Everyone wants to live a better life. But when it comes to setting goals and working on them, most of us, including myself, often fail miserably. At the same time, there are some people among us who do achieve what they set out to achieve, no matter what. They say what they will do and they do what they said they would do. Nothing stops them from pursuing their goals and dreams. It has always fascinated me seeing someone stick with a routine for long enough until they reach where they wanted to be. It drives me crazy to see those hardworking people at the gym who hit the gym consistently without any excuses and build those stunning abs. While we are here, wishing, daydreaming about a distant goal, and doing nothing about it, those people work hard and make their dream a reality. Lately, I have been thinking a lot about what makes them, the doers, different from us, the wishers, and I have come to a profound observation. What makes the doers different from the wishers is not the...

 Procrastination is the worst enemy of any ambitious person. We clearly know what we want and what we need to do but in an environment surrounded by endless tools to distract us, it is so much harder to sit down and do the work. Over the years, I have experimented with numerous methods to beat my procrastination. Some did not work, some worked for some time, but I had not found the best way to deal with procrastination until I came to know about a principle called The Parkinson's Principle. What if your boss calls you and tells you to submit that project report by the end of the next day? What will you do? Of course, there's no doubt that you will set everything aside and get into work and get it done in no time and submit it on time. Why? Because it's an existential problem with a hard deadline which is only one day ahead. Now, imagine the same scenario but this time your boss says that the report has to be submitted before next week. What will happen then? Will you hurry...