If you can’t do something yourself… then it is not easy. And you have to no right to call it an easy or simple task. Does this happen only to me, or do you too find people who call certain task easy? Tasks they know nothing about, and have no means of completing or at times even attempting. I can’t get the logic! If you have never attempted something, how can you know it is easy?

If you are tempted to call a certain task easy, attempt it once by yourself. If you can finish it of quickly and without much effort; then go ahead and call it easy. Before you say, a plumber has it easy, try fixing your own taps. Before you say, a housewife has a great time just sitting at home, try doing all the chores yourself once. If you fail, appreciate the skill of someone who makes a difficult task seem easy.

I have been amazed by all the different skills that humans can achieve. Skilled people make the most difficult tasks seem like an effortlessly natural act. That doesn’t reduce the complexity of the job one bit, but it does give a testimonial to their having mastered the job. To walk up to a person whose job you don’t understand, and to tell him that he has it easy in life; is an insult to that persons’ skill. But worse than that; it shows how stupid the person passing the remark is.

The next time you are tempted to call as task easy, think if you can manage it all by yourself.

“It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live” - Albus Dumbledore to Harry Potter, in “The Sorcerer’s Stone“. How very true! I am sure you will agree. But dreams are not all that bad. Just remember that the real world is very different. Remember that you have to live here. Dreams may make you happy, but they can never get you satisfaction. True happiness is what you get out of a sense of achievement; a feeling that you have beaten the odds, beaten reality to make your dreams come true. It is when the line between dreams and reality vanishes; probably that true one may find true happiness.

Paulo Coelho is a remarkable author. If there is one thing that he tries to convince his readers, it is to follow their dreams. He says that we like to believe that we never had the opportunity to follow our dreams. When we do get the chance to pursue many don’t. We just like to believe that life could be much better, but rarely are ready to run the risks to fulfill that dream. Why do we love this dream world so much?

Probably because the dream world does not show the whole picture. We see things the way we want. I recently watched the “Matrix”. It is my favorite movie. Many people never wanted to come out of the dream world. When we dream we do not see the challenges and difficulties along the way. You have thought of all the difficulties? Well I am sure not. Why? Because real life does not go as you want. Something or someone will perform some action that will hinder your plan. You see yourself doing things rightly and succeeding. But this does not always happen. You may have overseen a small detail. Someone may foolishly do something that hampers your job. If you dream of going somewhere, you may see yourself parking your vehicle at the destination. You rarely see that you get caught up in traffic, the parking lot is full, and that someone moves in from the wrong direction and takes the last place available. I am not saying all, but something like this may occur. At this moment although nothing much has changed in your dream, you start feeling that life is not as good as you would like it to be.

But look carefully and you will realize that you did make it to your destination, and there is no reason to feel bad about. Just look back a little, you will find a hundred things that you thought of and managed to do. So rather than holding onto memories of defeats, hold on to memories of deeds that you performed. It will make you feel a lot better.

I work in the IT industry. So for most of the workday I am surrounded by people who work with computers and often do a lot of programming. And you can’t help but to notice the use of words, metaphors and even jokes; that a non-programmer would not be able to understand. There are cases, like when you are discussing a technical issue, where the use of technical words becomes unavoidable. I believe every profession has a jargon that only fellow professionals will understand. Then why am I so vehement to avoid technical jargons?!

But this becomes a habit and people use jargons even with non-programmers who would not know them. Using jargons hampers communication. The best method of communication is to stick to a simple language. It needs conscious effort to keep your language understandable to all. Isn’t it good that everyone should be able to understand you?! The more people understand you, the more you exchange ideas. You will find several problems that you can solve that way. Language generates a gap between those who face problems and those who can solve them.

When I formally learnt communication at college we were taught that you have to always keep your audience in mind. Audience is every person who listens to what you say. Not just when you are giving an important presentation. When unsure of the background of your audience simple short words are what you need. Yes that communication barrier that you heard about can exist even with people you know, and programmers more than others seem to be falling prey to it.

Avoid Jargons! Communicate better! Live smarter!!