5 Tips for Better Work Life Balance

1. Figure Out What Really Matters to You in Life
Personal coach Laura Berman Fortgang, author of NOW WHAT? 90 Days to a New Life Direction, says getting your priorities clear is the first and most essential step toward achieving a well-balanced life. The important point here is to figure out what you want your priorities to be, not what you think they should be.

"I use an exercise for figuring out what matters most," Fortgang tells WebMD. She has her clients take a couple days off from work to contemplate the following series of questions:

1. If my life could focus on one thing and one thing only, what would that be?
2. If I could add a second thing, what would that be?
3. A third?
4. A fourth?
5. A fifth?

If you answer thoughtfully and honestly, the result will be a list of your top five priorities. Fortgang says a typical top-five list might include some of the following:

Children
Spouse
Satisfying career
Community service
Religion/spirituality
Health
Sports
Art
Hobbies, such as gardening
Adventure/travel

Ismael Al-Ramahi, a graduate student at Baylor College of Medicine, says his current priorities are his wife, his 4-month-old son, and his research. He tells WebMD the key is not only knowing your priorities, but devoting your full attention to just one priority at a time. "Split your time and your mind so that you're thinking about work when you're at work and you're paying attention to the baby when you're with him."

2. Drop Unnecessary Activities
By making a concrete list of what really matters to you, you may discover you're devoting too much time to activities that aren't a priority, and you can adjust your schedule accordingly. Since having a baby, Al-Ramahi says he and his wife have become much more efficient in managing their time -- cutting back on television, for example.

If at all possible, Fortgang recommends dropping any commitments and pursuits that don't make your top-five list, because "unnecessary activities keep you away from the things that matter to you."

3. Protect Your Private Time
You would probably think twice before skipping out on work, a parent-teacher conference, or a doctor's appointment. Your private time deserves the same respect. "Carve out hours that contribute to yourself and your relationship," says Stevan Hobfoll, PhD, distinguished professor of psychology at Kent State University, and co-author of Work Won't Love You Back: The Dual Career Couple's Survival Guide. Guard this personal time fervently and don't let work or other distractions intrude. "Stop checking email and cell phones so often," Hobfoll advises. "Few people are so important that they need their phones on at all times."

If work consistently interferes with your personal time, Hobfoll recommends discussing some adjustments with your boss. "There's a mythology in the workplace that more hours means more," he tells WebMD. Demonstrate that you can deliver the same or better results in fewer hours. Your job performance "should never be judged in terms of hours of input," Hobfoll says. Protecting your private time often leads to "greater satisfaction in both work life and personal life, greater productivity, and more creativity."

If you're your own boss, it's up to you to create boundaries that keep work from intruding on family time. Lachlan Brown is president of Tech for People, a small business consulting firm specializing in Internet marketing. "I make it very clear at the beginning of any new business relationship that if I work nights and/or weekends then this is purely by choice," he tells WebMD. "I've told clients more than once that if they call me at night or on the weekend that they shouldn't expect me to a) answer the phone and b) reply until the next business day."

Brown, who has a 9-month-old daughter, doesn't see his reluctance to work after hours as compromising his career but quite the opposite. "I believe that if I truly honor the different aspects of my life, such as work, play, and family, I will be more successful and fulfilled in each area. If I skimp on family time or 'me' time, then my success in my career will suffer as a result. I look to my daughter to remind me of how to be open-minded and excited and curious about life … key ingredients for innovative, breakthrough thinking. If I don't spend time with her now, this opportunity will be lost forever."

4. Accept Help to Balance Your Life
Allow yourself to rely on your partner, family members, or friends -- anyone who can watch the kids or run an errand while you focus on other top priorities. "Try tag-teaming," Hobfoll suggests. "One spouse works out before dinner, one after dinner, while the other watches the kids."

To get more alone-time with your partner, accept babysitting offers from friends and family, or try arranging a regular trade-off with another couple. "'I'll watch your kids this Saturday if you watch mine next Saturday.' Tag-teaming is a great way to create extra free time," Hobfoll says.

5. Plan Fun and Relaxation
Fun and relaxation are an essential part of living a well-balanced life. That's why Brown makes time for weekly guitar lessons, a yoga class, a date night with his wife, and a guys' night out a couple times a month. In addition, he exercises on a trampoline in his backyard most days of the week. How does he squeeze in all this playtime while running his business and sharing the responsibilities of raising a daughter? "If you believe that the most important thing is to be happy in life (not when I'm a millionaire or when I retire but right now) then you can always make time."

Until you get into the habit of taking time for yourself, set aside space in your planner for relaxation and fun. Plan what you're going to do and make any necessary arrangements, such as childcare, to ensure you'll be able to keep your commitment. "Remember, you make time for what you want to make time for," Fortgang says. If something is important to you, don't brush it aside with a dismissive "I don't have time for that." You are in charge of your own schedule -- it's up to you to make time.


Aurobindo
In ESHQ Always

CIL ROCKS

CIL really rocks...
the culture the enviornment everything here is different.
We proud to say "tomorrow has been happening here since yesterday"


Aurobindo
In ESHQ Always

My Project manager

Nitin Barman

Nitin was born in Kanpur, India to a family of doctors. He completed his education in Kanpur and then did his B.Tech from Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur in the field of Materials and Metallurgical Engineering. His love for entrepreneurship forced him to give up a lucrative job in Computer Associates, Texas and he started his professional career by opening Messiah Labs Pvt. Ltd. with a few of his friends. The company was the first to be incubated by IIT Kanpur. After working for 2 years with Messiah Labs, he shifted to Delhi where he joined a software company as Business Manager. He then joined Compare Infobase as General Manager – Projects. As Chief Executive Officer, TSPL, Nitin’s strong technical knowledge in web-based applications and web development has been cardinal in implementing new and innovative technologies, as well as entering new markets for the services that Turnkey Software Projects is providing. He takes care of the day-to-day operations as well as the emerging markets of the travel and tourism industry.

WHY " COMPARE INFOBASE LTD." ????

Many a times, I am asked, why did we call Compare Infobase, “Compare Infobase”? Why not “Infosys”, Infotech”, “Infosoft”, “Infoweb” or “Infonet”? Here's the reason why….

The word Compare reminds us of our vision to make CIL a benchmark for others to compare themselves with. ‘Base' as a suffix to ‘Info' gives us an open window to the horizon beyond ‘Sys', ‘Tech', ‘Soft', ‘Net' and ‘Web'. It tells us to use information technology as the base in whatever we do. So when we develop a Mapsofindia CD, we use IT as a base and similarly when we sell e-products or send e-cards online. We use IT as a base when we develop a travel website and also when we shoot over 3,000 photographs of the beautiful city of Delhi. So when anyone asks you, ‘Why is Compare Infobase called so?' tell them that we aim to become a benchmark for comparison with the best in the industry and also that our roots lie in information technology.

Compare Infobase Limited, as an organization was established to design, develop, sub-contract and sell Internet websites and pages. We have always maintained that we got into the dot-com industry because of reasons other than the boom and if we have to get out of it, it has to be for reasons other than a bust.

When we look back there have been moments of both joy and sorrow. If we’ve had joy and happiness in the past 9 years, we’ve also faced sorrow and anguish. However, this process has actually helped us in making Compare Infobase, a true organism. It walks, it talks, it eats, it sleeps, it laughs, it cries. It is a common identity, which would be a sum-total of our individual strengths. However, in our endeavor it has also acquired some of our individual weaknesses. We are working as a team together to overcome those weaknesses and to achieve a unique value proposition, which is to put a big smile on all our faces.

- By Simarprit Singh, M.D.
Simarprit Singh is the founder and CEO of Compare Infobase Limited. He has a B.Com degree in Statistics and a Post-graduate diploma in Computer Applications. Simar, as he’s popularly known, began his career as a Research Associate at NIIT. He left to become an entrepreneur and set up DISC (Information Technology) Pvt. Ltd. While at DISC, he made a presentation to the United Nations on Information Technologies and Developing Countries. He later served as the VP of Business Development at Nucleus Software, prior to his return to entrepreneurship at Compare Infobase. In 1998, Compare Infobase was born. From then on, he’s been instrumental in growing Compare Infobase as a leading web design and web development company.

CORPORATE PHILOSOPHY OF MY COMPANY

Creating an ethical culture is essential for a company to instill and maintain a commitment for achieving its targets on time and also for providing the best quality in products, services and solutions. Be it at Delhi, Kolkata or Gurgaon, all of CIL’s corporate offices have a high energy, fast-paced and entrepreneurial environment. We encourage new ideas and thinkers at all levels.

Our work ethos at Compare Infobase can be summed up by the term ESHQ that stands for Entrepreneurship, Speed, Horizon and Quality.

Entrepreneurship — We believe that entrepreneurship is the prime requisite for a committed and passionate workforce. An entrepreneur is a person who has an eye for opportunity and also the ability to achieve it, despite the risks involved. He is the one who has the zeal to ‘Lead from the front’.

Speed —The zeal to achieve our goals and the passion to respect deadlines is what we believe in. We aspire to maintain a mutually beneficial relationship with our clients by ensuring that all deliverables reach the client on time or sooner, without compromising the quality of our products and services.

Horizon — We at Compare Infobase stay focused on the larger picture and always look beyond our immediate tasks. We believe that a good professional looks for an opportunity, even in adversity, and has the guts to make it successful.

Quality — Compare Infobase is dedicated to producing quality products and software solutions for our clients. We believe that quality is a measure of excellence and a good professional must be able to deliver more and better than the set standards every time.

work in office

After 2 days leave i came to office on Friday. Saturday & Sunday there is holiday. Now today is monday and i am in my office with full of enthusiasm. The site i contributed for are JobZing.com, netchap.com, countriesandcapitals.com .I want to sit for assessment test for J2EE as soon as possible then i can switch to java projects.

leave just after 2 days of joining

i have to take leave for 2 days for complete rest in room just after joining on 4th june as the ENT Specialist advised me.... as i had fever, glostitis and bleeding from the nose. In the 2nd day i was in office but couldn't sit properly..i was sleepy..cant concentrate in my work. I talked about this to so many of my seniors, they suggested me to go for a ENT Spcialist. That day in the evening after returning from the office i went to the doctor. He advised me to take rest for 3 days. I called my Reporting Officer and said everything. My reporting Officer Mr. Nitin is so kind in nature that he permitted me to take leave. I was there in my room for the whole day on my bed in my room. In the 2nd day evening i feel quite good and decided to come office frm friday.

My First Day In Office

I was very sick, very tired. I had shear headache, my eyes were like i

was sleeping. My legs were not falling in manner. I was feeling sleepy.

Between 9a.m to 6p.m, i think i slept for 2-3 hours for about 8-20

times.Though the time i was alive whatever i listen, whatever i

saw..was very good..i felt good at my heart. The persons aroud me were

very simple, kind in nature and co-operative. I am very happy.
Alas! if i could also enjoy this day. Every graduate wait for this day.

Anyway, I got this job its true but for this so many people sacrificed

many things like my parents, sisters and gf. I am thankful to my

friends, classmates, collegemates, my neucleus group and my relatives.

Working for The Man? Advice to a young programmer

Working for Google is full of surprises. When I first arrived I started to get to know my office-mate. He's a laid back, rather cool but studious-looking guy with longish hair. I asked him what he did and learned a lot about how students were taught parallel processing in a cluster environment. Politely he responded with the same question and I started to tell him about Samba and what I was currently working on. "You remember around 1988 when AT&T came out with a file-sharing protocol called RFS (Remote File System) to compete with NFS (Sun's Network File System)..." I continued.

"I was eight years old in 1988," he replied.

After I'd finished checking for obvious facial wrinkles in the bathroom, I decided to go on a quest to find other engineers in the building who were at least as old as I was, and felt much better when I found some. But it set me thinking about what kind of advice I would give if I could meet myself at his age, in order to guide the young Allison into a promising engineering career. So, in the best spirit of "The Screwtape Letters," here is some of what I've learned so far about making yourself a career in writing software.
If it's not what you love, don't do it

I've worked with many programmers during my career. Without a doubt, the only ones who are any good at it are those who see writing code as art, a creative process. I know it's an obvious lesson, but it's really important. If you want to make lots of money and retire early, don't start by writing software; learn about business and start a company instead. I've run into so many poor programmers, in both senses of the word, who got into the field because they "wanted to be the next Bill Gates." Bill Gates didn't get rich by programming, he got very rich by being very good at running a company. I've had to fix code created by these people and it isn't pretty. Eventually they usually move into management where they might have a chance to find their true calling.
Learn the architecture of the machine

Many programmers, especially those who write for virtual machines such as Java or the .NET CLI, think that low-level machine architecture and processor instructions don't matter anymore. That's still not true, and I don't believe it ever will be. Someone who understands what the machine is really doing underneath all the modern layers of glop such as virtual machines, garbage collection algorithms, network and threading abstractions, will always be able to solve problems better than someone who lets the compiler or the "execution environment" they're using make all the decisions for them. These days the effects of processor caches and memory bandwidth mean that it's even more important to understand the lower levels of computer architecture than it used to be in order to be a good programmer. The good news is that modern tools like the amazing free software tool "valgrind" can emulate an entire processor in software and make understanding what is going on at each line of code as simple as looking at a visualization of execution time. Using resources efficiently matters when you're dealing with modern clusters containing thousands of machines.
Reputation is important

The days of starting at IBM after college and working there in obscurity until you retire are long gone. Any modern programmer will move between many companies in his or her career. It is very important to be able to show your next employer what you have done, and what you are able to do in a team. Free software/open source is the ideal way of doing this. It's not just a better way of producing software, it's actually better for the reputation of the people creating it. One of the first things I do when evaluating someone is to look for samples of their code out there on the Internet. If you work on proprietary software you can't show anyone anything, and real code speaks louder than any list of projects you claim to have worked on.
Proprietary environments are a trap

I used to be a Microsoft Windows programmer, as well as a UNIX/POSIX programmer. The knowledge I've gained about programming POSIX is still useful, even though I learned a lot of it over 20 years ago. My Windows knowledge is now rather out of date, and getting more so over the years. It isn't worth my time anymore to keep up with each increasingly baroque change to the Windows environment. Just as an example, over this time the latest "hot" communication paradigm that Microsoft recommended developers use in Windows changed from NetBEUI, to NetDDE, then OLE, followed by OLE2, then COM, DCE/RPC, DCOM, and now currently seems to be Web Services (SOAP and the like). Meanwhile, in the UNIX world the Berkeley socket API was useful in the 1980's and is still the core of all communications frameworks in the open standards world. All the UNIX RPC, object and Web Service environments are built on that stable base.

Learn as much about the proprietary environments as you need to be able to help people port programs over to open standards. You'll never be lost for work. The same is true of any proprietary environment, not just Windows. Windows just happens to be the one I know best. What will get very interesting in the future is the effect a fully open Java platform will have on the software environment in the next 10 years. After initially ignoring Java due to its proprietary restrictions, I now believe Java and its associated libraries have the potential to be the next POSIX.
The network really is the computer

There are now no interesting non-networked applications. Standalone computers are devices for watching stored video or listening to music, usually on airplanes. People doing offline email are simply working in an extreme case of a network disconnect, a rather large network latency if you will. The Internet has become the real computing environment of the next century and all programming will become network programming. This is a more challenging environment than programmers have been used to, with connection, latency and concurrency problems making our work much more interesting than it used to be on the standalone DOS box. All entertainment and communications such as television, radio and the telephone network will move onto the Internet. Poor Sun Microsystems were 20 years too early with their "the network is the computer" slogan, but they will eventually be proven right.
The community is more important than your employer

Are corporations fundamentally amoral? If they can make more money by outsourcing your job to India or China, or recycling employees into fertilizer for the rose garden at corporate headquarters, will they do it? I once had to listen to several high-level executives (for a previous company that shall remain nameless) waiting for the private corporate jet complain how inefficient it was that the country was run by democratically elected politicians as "they just didn't understand business."

Corporations are great places to work when things are going well, and I enjoy the perks as well as the next employee, but I'm very careful even in my optimism to not make the mistake of thinking this is the way things will always stay. In the free software/open source community, the people you're collaborating with and creating code with are the people you can really depend on. While you might not get on with all of them personally, they share your common goal of making sure that the code is the greatest, most beautiful work of art that all of you can create together. Smart corporations, at least the ones you'd want to work for, hire from that pool of people, and even though individual corporations may stumble and fall, if you're part of our community you should be able to successfully manage your career between the occasional stormy periods of corporate upheaval.

If you come from a coal mining area as I do, you can't finish a piece like this without paying homage to Merle Travis's wonderful song about really having to work for a living. No matter how much complaining we do, at least we're not "workin' for the man" :-).

You load sixteen tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store
-- Merle Travis

Good luck young Mr. Allison, and let me know if you have any more advice for him. I'd love to hear it.

Is Flash better than Java?

For various reasons, Java applets have never worked all that well but we some folks use them anyway, for example in business charting and other graphic visualizations. Over the past few years alternatives to Java in and around the browser have been gaining traction, especially Flash. In this article I will argue that it's time for Java to take a lesson from its competitors (on the client side) and address some of the shortcomings that are allowing them to flourish.

Flash
The most serious competition for webtop Java is Macromedia Flash. Flash started life as a very small footprint (~180K) media plug-in for Internet Explorer and Netscape.Adobe acquired Macromedia a few years ago, and has been pouring resources and marketing into it. Now, Flash 9 is an advanced development platform. Through Flex and ActionScript, you can write sophisticated browser-hosted interactive business applications. The run-time is still relatively small (much smaller than Sun's Java, about 1MB), it's frequently updated with "frictionless" installs, supports vector graphics, streaming video, Ajax-y back-end interaction, and many other features that users find appealing.

Flash Lite is extending the Flash ecosystem to mobile devices. What was previously the domain of J2ME (now called Java Micro Edition or Java ME) is now being Flash-enabled. Because Flash is vector-based, applications are easier to port from one screen size to another, and users don't see jaggies because Flash has always done anti-aliasing. When I read this article from Adobe it really made me think. Even if you don't do anything with J2ME, Flash Lite is draining more mind-share away from Java.Adobe Apollo brings Flash to desktop applications, in direct competition with Java Swing and Rich Client Platforms. It holds an attractive promise of being able to share code between browser-based, mobile-based, and desktop-based applications. Well, hasn't Java been doing the same thing for 10 years? Yes, but its execution has been flawed in many ways.

Analysis
Ok, so what does all this mean for developers? The software industry has a tremendous investment in Java code, millions of lines and billions of dollars. We don't want to move to another language like ActionScript just for the fun of it, right? If there was a good enough reason, then it could be justified. I'm all in favor of new ideas and moving to better, more efficient technologies. In fact I've used that argument more than once to move C code to Java or C#. But recoding from Java to ActionScript? There's no way that qualifies. IMHO, there's no technical reason that Java can't do everything that Flash can do, with a little work.

The most serious problem that has allowed alternatives to flourish is the poor Java applet user experience. What if we could toss that out and replace it with something better?

I'm talking about work to make Flash-like small footprint installs of a Java-based run-time. Instant-on and streaming compressed content (no more Java progress bars). Frequent updates, fully backward compatible (no content left behind). Viewer-like security with no scary prompts for the user but no complicated signing either. And so forth. I'm sure you all have lots of ideas about this too.

What about F3?
Some have suggested that the new F3 language is Java's "Flash killer". F3 is an experimental declarative scripting language with static typing, type-inference, declarative syntax, data-binding, 2d graphics, declarative anmiation, and more. It demonstrates that the Java platform is highly competitive with competing platforms such as Flash. But F3 is a different language from Java. I'm talking about using Java code that already exists. Also I haven't seen any demos of F3 running inside the browser, only through Java WebStart (.jnlp). F3 doesn't address the underlying problems with applets and Java installs that Flash addresses. It can't be a Flash killer until its user experience is as good as or better than Flash.
Conclusion
For years the industry has waited for Sun to solve this problem and they haven't. Now, with Java 7 being open source, we could do something about it ourselves. Java experts could work together to build an open community around a new Java-based viewer (which we might not even want to call "Java"), and reverse the brain-drain away from Java technologies, preserving our investment in Java code and expertise.

Is Flash better than Java? No, just far better executed for some important use cases. Failing to address this, and allowing Flash and other alternatives to continue to grow and improve unchecked, is going to lead to competitive disadvantages or needless conversions down the road for Java developers. Instead of participating in endless arguments about esoteric subjects like closures and native code, competition from Flash should light a fire under the Java community and force it to respond with radically better user-facing solutions.