Anuradha Sridharan

Yesterday, I went to a nearby supermarket with my 4 year old daughter. She has been insisting me to buy her a strawberry flavored breakfast cereal. Though I'm totally against such ready-to-eat packaged cereals, I do give into her demand once in a while for a smaller pack size. I don't want to completely ban such products in my home as the kid might start developing a craving and give more importance to such foods. In the last couple of weeks, whenever we go shopping, she would ask me for the strawberry cereal but we couldn't get a smaller pack. "D, I will buy it only when we get a smaller pack", I told her. She spotted a smaller pack yesterday and brought it to me. "Mumma, see…I found a small pack", she handed it to me with a big smile. I kept my promise and bought one. The product was made with ragi flakes and claims "deliciously healthy" (now you know which brand it is!). This morning, she promptly remembered during breakfast and w...

Image Source: https://thebonablog.com/2016/02/22/top-5-a-race-to-the-finish-line/  On my farewell day at Oracle in 2006, one of my senior colleagues said to me "You are a good finisher". It struck me and I was glad that someone else was able to spot something about my personality that I wasn't even aware of. A finisher is someone who takes initiatives to completion and persists at them for long enough. In today's distracted world, we start multiple new initiatives at work, at home, as part of our continuous learning process, new hobbies etc. But the steam dies down after a few days, weeks or months. The opportunities are aplenty and there's no reason to stick to one thing if it doesn't work out. But persisting, keeping at it and taking it to completion has numerous advantages. It helps us to proceed down the road of mastery. As we practice a skill long enough, we become exponentially better, it gives us tremendous confidence and boosts our self-esteem...

Dry waste collection happens in our apartment complex every Sunday. We have a separate bag in our utility balcony where we dump dry waste (plastic, paper) on an ongoing basis and on Sunday morning, we keep this bag outside for collection. Last Sunday, when I peeped into our bag, there was hardly anything. And then I realized that this had been the case for the last few Sundays -  the bag hadn't reached its full capacity for the past several weeks. This made me feel happy and gave a sense of satisfaction that I'm contributing a teeny tiny bit towards reducing waste and garbage. Our bag that day had plastic milk packets, a few plastic covers and some torn paper bills and receipts. Over time, we have made many changes to our lifestyle that has resulted in a positive impact towards reduction of garbage going to the landfills. I'm sharing those changes here, hoping that you might get a few ideas. 1) Kitchen DIY - I had already written a detailed post on it. Yoghurt boxes, rea...