Questions You Must Be Asking Yourself

  1. What would you put in your to don’t list?
  2. What was your favorite thing about being five years old?
  3. What individual inspires you most?
  4. What would you want your family to say in your eulogy?
  5. If you were 100, what would you tell your 25 year old self?
  6. What is your biggest fear?
  7. What is the color of fear?
  8. What is the color of success?
  9. What is the most inspiring organization?
  10. What is the biggest failure in history?
  11. What is the biggest success in history?
  12. If you give one thing away right now, what would you give away?
  13. Who is the most important person in your life, and why?
  14. What is the one dream for your life you most look forward to achieving?
  15. Who has the capacity to make you angrier than anyone else in your life, and what in particular does he or she do to make you so angry?
  16. Who has the capacity to make you feel loved more than anyone else in your life, and what in particular does he or she do to cause you to feel so lovable?
  17. How do you feel about yourself—physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually?
  18. When do you feel inspired? How does it feel when you are inspired?
  19. What is the most important thing in the world to you?
  20. If you had one day to live, how would you want to spend it?
  21. When do you feel most afraid?
  22. If you could accomplish only one thing during the rest of your life, what would it be?
  23. What bores you? Why is this?
  24. How important is money to you? How much time do you spend thinking about it?
  25. What is the role of God in your life? Do you believe there is a God, and if so, what is God like in relation to you?
  26. What three interests are you most passionate about?
  27. Who is your biggest enemy, and precisely how and why did this person become your enemy?
  28. How important is food to you? Do you feel disciplined when it comes to eating?
  29. Does the idea of being married to the same person for the rest of your life sound appealing to you—or not so appealing? What is there about it that you would especially like or not like?
  30. Do you consider yourself emotionally healthy? In what ways are you especially healthy, and in what ways could you use improvement?
  31. Do you argue very much with the people closest to you? How does it usually turn out?
  32. What specifically would you like your closest friends to say about you at your funeral?
  33. What do you really, really, really want? Ask yourself ever night before you go to bed. Your subconscious mind will figure out the answer and let you know.
  34. What made you really, really, really happy today?
Image Source: Bilal K.

Lifehacks

To Do/Project Management
Asana: Simple task and project management built on the concept of flow.
Email
Boomerang: Schedule emails to be sent later or setup reminders.
Rapportive: View LinkedIn/Facebook/Twitter/Other Profiles all within gmail. Not only does this save time, it helps keep you in the know when communicating via email.
Productivity
Google Chrome: Although, I am still hoping Mozilla Firefox gets to be a lot better again — Google Chrome is fast, easy-to-use, efficient and has tons of apps that you can add on.
Evernote & Evernote Google Chrome Clip: The best way to organize all of your notes, paperwork, and memories.
Dropbox: Keeps all your files available anywhere and between all your computers.
Fujitsu Scansnap: This amazing little machine has more than paid for itself. I am almost 100% paperless and this little scanner scans perfectly into Evernote like a charm.
Pinboard: A clean and friendly interface for saving bookmarks.
+IFTTT: IF This Then That. This convient web app connects all your other apps. For example, if you take a picture on Instragram it will automatically save it to Evernote.
Reading
Instapaper: If you are anything like me, you are always reading articles online and 10 minutes online can lead you to find hundreds of interesting websites. Sign-up (for free) and  install (drag and drop) the bookmarklet. Whenever you find an interesting article that you want to read, then Instapaper-it. Later, you can go to Instapaper.com and read the article or  go to the iPhone app and read your articles.
Kindle: Although I still love reading books in paper, I love having my books at my finger tips and being able to highlight quotes and passages that I find interesting.
Meditation
Insight Meditation App: This app is perfect for meditating. It has a lot of nice options for mindfulness bells and it will ring at the beginning and end of your meditation.
Service
ServiceSpace.org: ServiceSpace is the best community on the Internet. This completely volunteer run organization (which I am a part of), provides you with a forum to share inspiration, random acts of kindness and a nice way to create an online and offline community that is focused on doing good.
KarmaTube: KarmaTube (from ServiceSpace) curates inspirational videos and gives you specific actions on how take advantage of them. (Disclaimer: I help do the write-ups for the videos).
iJourney.org: Inspirational, thought provoking and spiritual passages that will provide the perfect conversation topic for a meditation group or just with your friends and family.
Photography
Instagram: No wonder Facebook bought this for $1B its fun and addictive. I love taking pictures with it and sending them around.
Google Picasa: I prefer Google Picasa to iPhoto or any other photo management app because it enables me to maintain my photos based on the folders on my computer and it enables me to sync easily with Google Web albums!
Collaboration
Join.me: Need to share your screen in two seconds? Go here.
Balsamiq: I love the companies culture and I love the software they have developed for creating mock-ups.
Learning
Google.com: The most game changing web application that has changed education: Google.com. Google let’s you find the answer to whatever question you may have and let’s you go down the rabbit hole of your curiosity.
Khan Academy: Sal Khan started making videos for his nephew in India and they came extremely popular. Now, his website is Gates backed, and he is changing how people around the world can learn about anything.
Blogs
ZenHabits.net: I have been reading this blog for almost four years. The blog focusses on simplicity and mindfulness. The writing is simple and the website is to the point.
The Art of Non Conformity: This blog depicts the journey of one man to visit every country in the world, and he provides some amazing insights on life.
James Altutcher: As a writer, James bleeds the truth — he is brutally honest about all of his experiences and provides practical and actionable ideas.
Travel
+ Rolf Potts: Rolf Potts is absolutely my favorite travel writer. His writing is thought provoking and forces you to look at travel, work and life in different ways.
RickSteves: Rick Steves got me through all of Europe. His small business is honest and provides good and solid guides and other travel related products.

Best of Istanbul Turkey

I had the opportunity to spend a couple days in the beautiful city of Istanbul, Turkey with my Mom. Not only was it wonderful place to travel with my Mom, the culture, the people, and the experiences were amazing. Some useful highlights:

1. Where to stay? Tan Hotel: This hotel was gorgeous, simple, quaint and had great service. Aside from enjoying a small business, it had spectacular views of the Blue Mosque from its breakfast area on the roof!

2. What to do? 

  • Cağaloğlu Hamami (or, Turkish Bath): According to the sign in from of the this turkish bath it is one of the 1,000 Places to Visit Before You Die, so I figured it had to be done. When you first enter, you can see the age and history behind one of Instanbul’s oldest baths. Men and women bath areas are separate and the service is classically Turkish: simple and good service with a smile. An old man scrubbed every knock-and-cranny on me…and I was probably the cleanest I had been in all my life.
  • Visit During Ramadan: The Blue Mosque, the cistern and the Topikapa palace were all amazing, but, the best part of Istanbul was visiting during Ramandan. Every evening at 5PM, we were able to enjoy the food, culture and people in the evenings.

2. Where to eat if you are vegetarian?  

  • Dubb Indian Restaurant: As a vegetarians, I noticed that all of the food was very similar for vegetarians: vegetable kabobs, yogurt and rice. This Indian restaurant was our salvation: the Indian food was better than most Indian restaurants in NYC and the service was quick and simple.