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Free Stuff

  Recently I was thinking about how grateful I am for having had a chance to find a lot of books online for free for the past 15 years. I grew up in a middle class family and most of the books that I had access to were either in local language or Russian and those were mostly very common educational fiction and non fiction books or bestsellers for which I had no interest. Therefore, the access to books in English on philosophy, arts, business and rhetorics that I would otherwise never be able to find in my city where I grew up, was crucial for my growth as a conscious human being. Those books were my friends that I could speak, relate and listen to. Without them, I wouldn’t be who I am right now, the person I am happy and content with. In early 2000s I registered at local British Council library, where they had very unique collection of books on diverse topics. I mostly picked up beginner to intermediate levels simplified English literature, self-learner guides to watercolor painting o
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Recent posts

Swim of Life

I'm sitting in my sofa. Tired, joyfully exhausted and a little sleepy. I did some literature review for my professor Dr. Schwartz, organized a makeup exam for undergraduates, sent emails to my customers, attended evening class, went to swimming and did a bit coding, stopping in the end because of tiredness. Just made some tea and waiting for it to steep. I wish I could do more today. I wish I could continue coding and do more, but that's the end of the day and what I will do next is grab my glass, sip my tea and enjoy a nice evening with my girlfriend watching a movie. Finishing my coding activity and lying on the floor to relax a bit, I realized something. I'm not a good swimmer. I really suck at it as I never really tried hard to learn how to swim. Here in the US I got some motivation to learn to swim and nowadays I'm doing better. Today while swimming in the pool and reaching to the middle of the line, I was out of breath, using all my strength of arms and legs
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Productivity Boost with To-Do Lists

Last week I started experimenting with to-do lists. I started writing all the tasks that I have to finish until the end of the day and check them once they were done. However, it's not only about prioritizing the tasks in hand. I started tracking the time spent for each of these tasks and distractions in between.
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Choose Life

I was sitting in the classroom, looking at the paper in front of me. The paper had questions on it with 4 multiple choice answers. I had to choose one, but only one in order to get a score. Choose one more or choose wrong one and I'd get less score.
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What I Learned from Going to a Dance Class

Some of my friends already know that I've been practicing swing dance for more than 3 months already. I go to the dance school, where they have a variety of dances and dance teachers. Till know, I'm satisfied with how it is going. I learned some techniques and I enjoy how beautiful this swing dance is. Most of the time, I suck at it, but I've improved a lot so far. Dance is like any other art and there a lot of similarities and paralleles between dance and life. The way how you dance, how you relate to your partner, how you control the movement and even breathe have lots of relations with life and how we live it. Perhaps, I could have many ideas about it, but there is one thing that really struck me today when I thought about it. In my dance class there are around 16 people who are as beginners as me. Some of them are quite good, but most of us are quite slow in learning how to dance really properly. It's normal, as most of the people are average , rather than great
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Resolution of No-Time

Busy Time for the Mowers - Grigoriy Myasoyedov The reality is plastic enough to play with it. Although it's hard to change our perceptions when we're grown enough to be called adults, there is some space left to experiment. Acknowledge this: look at the times you write emails in a haste, serve someone in your workplace, prepare for exam or write a message to some friend. There is a certain haste in those activities. Where does it come from? Look deeper into daily routines.
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Brain Workout

One of the habits I restored recently is workout . I love doing pushups and pullups, feeling the breath going in and out and taking a cold shower in the end. I also started focusing more on what is important for me and spending less time on facebook and other social media websites. What I discovered though is that the way we build our muscles and make a strong body works the same way it works for the mind. I was always wondering why creating a new habit and sticking to it makes me be more effective in other habits. When I discontinue old habits, I also discontinue the other habits I developed successfully. My theory is that being lazy makes your brain lose its control over other things too. To preserve brain in a 'good shape' it's important to make a 'brain workout'. Otherwise it turns into the old animal machine needing only food, sex and instant satisfaction available just few clicks away. I have to admit, it's not really easy. I failed a lot . However,
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