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January 2021

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Top 30 Quotes on Routines.

In Quotes 5 Mins Read By

A Routine is a sequence of actions regularly followed; a fixed program. A lot of us focus on the goal/goal setting but one of the easiest way to get your goals achieved is to have systems and daily routines. As Aristotle said: “We are what we repeatedly do, excellence then is not an act but a habit.” How you do anything is how you do everything, you get rewarded in public for what you repeatedly do in private.

In his book, Million Dollar Habits: 10 Simple Steps to Getting Everything You Want, Author and speaker Robert Ringer, writes about the power of daily routines and habits:

  • Remember, life is nothing more than the sum total of many successful years;
  • a successful year is nothing more than the sum total of many successful months;
  • a successful month is nothing more than the sum total of many successful weeks;
  • a successful week is nothing more than the sum total of many successful days.
  • That’s why practicing successful habits day in and day out is the most certain way to win over the long term

Here are some great quotes on having daily routines:

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Erdal Arıkan Biography (Polar Codes)

In Bios 6 Mins Read By

Erdal Arıkan (born 1958) is a Turkish professor in the Electrical and Electronics Engineering Department at Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey. In 2013, Arıkan received the IEEE W.R.G. Baker Award for his contributions to information theory, particularly for his development of polar coding. In December 2017 he was honored with the 2018 Richard W. Hamming Medal. In June 2018, he received the Shannon Award.

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Acres of Diamonds.

In Insight 6 Mins Read By

In Earl Nightingale’s very inspiring and influential book, lead the field; he shares the story of Russell Herman Conwell (Founder of Temple University). Dr. Conwell gave over 6,000 lectures on “Acres of Diamonds.” He was able to raise several million dollars, with which he founded Temple University.

In 1843, a man was born who was to have a profound effect upon the lives of millions of people. His name was Russell Herman Conwell. He became a lawyer, then a newspaper editor, and, finally, a clergyman. During his church career, an incident occurred that was to change his life and the lives of countless others. 

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Book Summary – Goals!: How to Get Everything You Want — Faster Than You Ever Thought by Brian Tracy.

In Book Summaries 15 Mins Read By

Print | Kindle(eBook) | Audiobook

In his seminal book on goal setting, Author and Motivational Speaker Brian Tracy shares twenty-one principles of goal setting and goal achieving – he says: “There are no unrealistic goals; there are merely unrealistic deadlines.” A goal is a dream with a deadline, and if you do not set the goals, you can not magically achieve it. Goals by Brian Tracy is one of the few books I have read at least five times as goal setting is a continuous, lifelong process.

The great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving. – OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

Here are my favorite takeaways from reading, Goals!: How to Get Everything You Want — Faster Than You Ever Thought by Brian Tracy:

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On Goal Setting.

In Life 13 Mins Read By

“There are no unrealistic goals, only unrealistic deadlines.” – Brian Tracy

It is that time of the year again for new years resolutions, we want to exercise more, read more books, eat healthier, spend more time with family and friends, lose weight, save more money, the list is endless. The challenge with a lot of this new year resolutions is that they are mere wishes as most of us go back to our lives of quite desperation, tip toeing through live and we go back to where we started by february/march.

Gyms around the world always see a surge in the number of people in their facilities and they already know this new year gym goers would soon drop out of the fitness program. The reason a lot of us would not follow through on our new year resolutions just like the new year gym-goers is that we have not mastered the art of goal setting. The key to achieving any goal requires what I call the DCE framework: Decide, Commit and Execute.

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Parker Palmer’s 2015 Naropa University Commencement Speech.

In Speech 10 Mins Read By

In his May 10, 2015 Naropa University graduation address, Parker Palmer offered the advice of Socrates, and urged Naropa graduates to lead “an examined life.” Parker is the founder of the Courage & Renewal Center in Seattle, WA, as well as an accomplished author and scholar.

Parker Palmer’s 2015 Naropa University Commencement Speech Transcript:

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It’s Simply Great by Sidney Warren Mase.

In Poem 1 Min Read By

It’s great to be alive, and be
—A part of all that’s going on;
To live and work and feel and see
—Life lived each day from early dawn;
To rise and with the morning light
—Go forth until the hours grow late,
Then joyously return at night
—And rest from honest toil—it’s great!

It’s great to be a living part
—Of all the surging world alive,
And lend a hand in field and mart,
—A worker in this human hive;
To live and earn and dare to do,
—Nor ever shirk or deviate
From course or purpose we pursue!
—Until the goal is won—it’s great!

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Book Summary – Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant.

In Book Summaries 11 Mins Read By

Print | Kindle(eBook) | Audiobook

Blue Ocean Strategy is a book published in 2004 written by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, professors at INSEAD. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne are Professors of Strategy at INSEAD, one of the world’s top business schools, and co-directors of the INSEAD Blue Ocean Strategy Institute in Fontainebleau, France.

The Blue Ocean Strategy is one of the most impactful business book have ever read, my first reading was around 2010, and have since read the book more than 3 times, and it keeps resonating each time. Blue ocean strategy breaks from the stranglehold of competition. At the book’s core is the notion of a shift from competing to creating new market space, making the competition irrelevant.

Blue ocean strategy challenges companies to break out of the red ocean of bloody competition by creating uncontested market space that makes the competition irrelevant. Instead of dividing up existing—and often shrinking—demand and benchmarking competitors, blue ocean strategy is about growing demand and breaking away from the competition.

Here are my favourite take-aways from reading, Blue Ocean Strategy by Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne:

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Microsoft Azure Enablement Show: Cloud Adoption Series.

In Lifelong Learning 3 Mins Read By

In line with Microsoft’s effort to support their customer’s cloud journey, Microsoft has announced the launch of the Azure Enablement show. It is a series of technical conversations with a community of Microsoft experts, addressing common questions and challenges in your cloud adoption journey.

A collection of technical conversations addressing common cloud adoption challenges. 

Cloud Adoption Framework Series

Well-Architected Series

Series 1: Cloud Adoption Framework for Azure

The Cloud Adoption Framework for Azure series has three modules right now: Introduction, Azure landing zones, and Governance.

Episode one: Overview of the Cloud Adoption Framework

Episode two: Assess your cloud readiness using Microsoft assessments
The second module in the series is focused on Azure landing zones, a set of architecture guidelines, reference implementations, and code samples based on proven practices to prepare cloud environments. 

This module will help you prepare your cloud environment with the necessary governance, compliance, and operational requirements specific to your organization’s needs.

Episode one: Prepare your cloud environments using Azure landing zones

Episode two: Choosing the best Azure landing zone option

Episode three: ‘Start small and expand’ Azure landing zones approach

Episode four: Create an enterprise-scale architecture in Azure

Episode five: Dig into enterprise scale architecture methodology

Third Module: Governance Methodology

The third module in this debut version of the show focuses on the governance methodology of the Cloud Adoption Framework which guides you through the process of striking a balance between control and compliance on one side, and delivering speed and agility on the other, while you adopt the cloud.

Episode one: Establish cloud governance and compliance

Episode two: Implement cost control, budget, forecast, and allocation

Episode three: Identity baseline with authentication and access control

Episode four: Implement security baseline through corporate policy

Episode five: Cloud governance using IaC, Azure Policy, and Blueprints

Episode six: Govern and manage Azure resources at scale

Series 2: Azure Well-Architected

The Azure Well-Architected series is aimed at helping you build, design, and manage high quality workloads in Azure

Episode one: Architect successful workloads on Azure: Introduction module

Episode two: Ask the right questions about your Azure workloads

Episode three (Part 1): Essential advice for improving Azure workloads

Episode three (Part 2): Essential advice for improving your Azure workloads

The  cost optimization pillar of the Well-Architected Framework

Episode one: Start optimizing your Azure costs

Episode two (Part 1): Diving deeper into Azure cost optimization

Episode two (Part 2): Diving deeper into Azure cost optimization

Reliability Module

Episode one: Start improving the reliability of your Azure workloads

Episode two (Part 1): Diving deeper into Azure workload reliability

Episode two (Part 2): Diving deeper into Azure workload reliability

Official Webpage of the Microsoft Azure Enablement Show

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Top 30 Quotes on Goal Setting.

In Quotes 4 Mins Read By

‘The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.’ – Michangelo

It is that time of the year again where we are all making New Year’s resolutions, setting goals, wishes, re-awakening but a lot of us would not follow through because we are obsessed with the goal but not with the process, we write the goals but we do not decide and commit to following through, we do not set up the systems and routine that would make the goals achievable.

A Goal is a dream with a deadline, to achieve your goals this year; you need to set SMART Goals. Ask yourself, are my goals Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time bound.

Here are some great quotes on Goals:

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50 Magazines Reading Challenge 2021.

In Lifelong Learning 6 Mins Read By

One of the most exciting things about living in the west is the access to a good, functional public library and the reading culture in general. Growing up in sub-Saharan Africa/Nigeria, I did not have access to the luxury of being able to borrow 50 books from the library every 3 weeks, borrow 10 audiobooks every month, get access to a multitude of magazines such as Entrepreneur, Wired, Times, Fast Company, The Economist, all for free,.

The public library allows users to borrow digital versions of popular magazines such as Times, Wired et al through platforms such as RB Digital, Flipster, BookMyne, and others. The technology world is filled with stories of great entrepreneurs that founded their corporations through insights from a magazine article or a report.

Bill Gates

In 1974, Paul Allen showed Bill Gates a magazine article about Altair 8800, the world’s first Microcomputer. Recognizing a huge opportunity, Bill Gates and Paul Allen called the ManufacturerMicro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS), in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and convinced the president they had written a version of BASIC, a popular computer programming language for Altair. That was the beginning of one of the most successful corporations of the 20th century, Microsoft. It all started from insight garnered from a magazine article.

Jeff Bezos: Founding of Amazon

  • After graduation, Bezos went to New York to apply his computer skills to the financial industry. He ended up at a hedge fund run by David E. Shaw, which used computer algorithms to discover pricing disparities in the financial markets. Bezos took to the work with a disciplined zeal. Foreshadowing the workplace fanaticism he would later try to instill at Amazon, he kept a sleeping bag in his office in case he wanted to sleep there after a late night of work.

While working at the hedge fund in 1994,

Bezos came across the statistic that the web had been growing by more than 2,300 percent each year. He decided that he wanted to get aboard that rocket, and he came up with the idea of opening a retail store online, sort of a Sears catalogue for the digital age.

Steve Jobs on Computers

I remember reading an article when I was about twelve years old. I think it might have been Scientific American where they measured the efficiency of locomotion for all these species on planet earth. How many kilocalories did they expend to get from point A to point B? And the Condor 1 came in at the top of the list, surpassed everything else. And humans came in about a third of the way down the list which was not such a great showing for the crown of creation. And — but somebody there had the imagination to test the efficiency of a human riding a bicycle. A human riding a bicycle blew away the Condor, all the way off the top of the list. And it made a really big impression on me that we humans are tool builders. And that we can fashion tools that amplify these inherent abilities that we have to spectacular magnitudes.And so for me, a computer has always been a bicycle of the mind.Something that takes us far beyond our inherent abilities.

And I think we’re just at the early stages of this tool. Very early stages.And we’ve come only a very short distance. And it’s still in its formation, but already we’ve seen enormous changes. I think that’s nothing compared to what’s coming in the next hundred years.

I stopped reading the daily newspaper, listening to the news and I am kind of not on social media, I try to regulate the kind of information I consume. The magazine format is one of my favorite ways to learn what is going on in the world.

Goal: Read 50 digital magazines by December 31st, 2021.

Strategy: Borrow from the public library through platforms such as RB Digital and Flipster,

January -5

February -4

March -4

April -6

May

June

July

December

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50 Audiobooks Listening Challenge 2021.

In Book Challenge 2 Mins Read By

In 2020, I experimented with listening to 50 audiobooks and was able to listen to 38. In 2021, I am committing to listening to 50 audiobooks by December 31st, 2021.

Strategy

  • Buy one Audiobook every month which comes with my monthly subscription on Audible.com
  • Borrow Audiobooks from the Public Library
  • Re-Listen to more audiobooks in my compilation as I have come to realize that with repeated listens I get the concepts better.

Listening Times –

  • First thing in the morning and last thing in the evening.
  • While in commute and in the Gym.

Here are the audiobooks I’m listening to

January

February

April

May

June

July

  • The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversity by Nadine Burke Harris M.D. 
  • Toxic In-Laws: Loving Strategies for Protecting Your Marriage by Susan Forward  

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100 Books Reading Challenge 2021

In Book Challenge 9 Mins Read By


Goal: Read 100 Books by December 31st 2021.

100 Books Reading Challenge 2020

January – 8

February -10

March – 11

April – 11

May – 14

June – 12

July – 13

August – 11

September – 13

October

November

December

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Project Python 2021.

In Lifelong Learning 2 Mins Read By

Goal: Learn the Python Programming Language at Intermediate level by December 31st 2021.

My Widely Important learning goal for 2021 is to learn the Python Programming language at the intermediate level by December 31st, 2021. I intend to commit at least 1 hour a day/ 365 hours of study time (Video tutorials, books, libraries, projects) to learn Python in 2021.

Python is an interpreted, high-level and general-purpose programming language. As of December 2020 Python ranked third in TIOBE’s index of most popular programming languages, behind C and Java.

Will it be easy? Certainly not. I had tried to learn python through a Data Science Bootcamp in 2019 but could not keep up as the classroom setup did not align with my personal goals; I had to stop the class and forfeit the initial payment. It is going to require a lot of commitment, routine, and dedication. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. I would be updating my progress here; let the coding begin.

Strategy: Project based learning.

Use Case: Cybersecurity, Cloud Computing, DevOps

Learning Progress

Linkedin Learning

Books

Youtube

All the best in your quest to get better. Don’t Settle: Live with Passion.

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