happylife

MandalArt

MandalArt is a kind of thinking method similar to Mind Mapping. In Mind Mapping, we create an idea tree which is made of keywords surrounded by circles and connected with lines. It is an effective way to think about complicated things. While the idea tree of Mind Mapping is drawn on a white canvas, MandalArt has a fixed form in which keywords are written. It is made of nine square cells which is just the same as tic-tac-toe game board. All we have to do is write down our main subject in the center cell and fill the eight surrounding cells with keywords derived from the main subject. In the next step, we copy each keyword of the eight cells in the center cell of the next MandalArt form page. By repeating this process until all the keywords are derived from our brain, we can make up a structured idea. It is such an easy way that you might be doubt of its effectiveness, however, it is the most powerful method as far as I know. It was more than ten years ago when I came across this method and six months later, I quitted my first job for a large company to start my own independent business. Anyway, MandalArt method has been implemented into the iPhone recently and we can now use this powerful method more conveniently. It is really comfortable to edit, move, copy and paste cells to arrange our idea tree until we are fully satisfied.

remember the milk

It's a traditionally popular idea to put down what we should do on a to do list. We have been using a piece of paper as the place on which we write down the list so that we don't forget important things. Paper is still one of the most useful tool; easy, simple, handy and flexible, but it has a critical defect. The bigger the list, the more useless the list on a sheet of paper. We don't want to check a list of a hundred items on a paper list. It's a hard work to handle the list there; we can't easily search or sort each item. As the counter solution against this paper list, a lot of software tools have been developed and offered. I have used some of them, but I've not found the ultimate tool. This "remember the milk" is one of the most recent and popular tools that handle our to do lists. As it works as a free, web service, all you have to do is create your own account for the service. Once you create your account, you can put down as many to do items as you like and you can organize your list as you like later. You can also connect to this service via your mobile phone browser. It's really convenient, but I worry about an emergency case in which the service was shutdown and I lost all of my appointments. The oldest and simplest tool seems to have a great advantage on this point.

Why "CAPS LOCK" ?

How often do you type the "CAPS LOCK" key on your keyboard? I never use it. Quite a few people have been thinking that the key is occupying the good position on a keyboard against its value. It is not only useless, but also causes some troubles; have you ever been rejected when you entered your password correctly but the caps had been locked? When I was mainly using XP, I was using a special keyboard without "CAPS LOCK" key, but I have completely switched from Windows to Mac and the Mac's US keyboard still has this annoying key. I tried to find a device driver which replaces the keys, but there was a better way prepared for Leopard, the Mac's genuine OS, itself, By selecting System Preferences - Keyboard & Mouse - Modifier Keys, we can easily replace the "CAPS LOCK" with "CTRL" key! Furthermore, the light of "CAPS LOCK" is automatically set OFF. As we Japanese often use CTRL in order to input Japanese characters, it is very convenient and comfortable to be able to use "CAPS LOCK" as "CTRL". If you are using Mac and don't use "CAPS LOCK," I strongly recommend this method.

To make the most of a small parking lot

When I was walking around my home, I came across this small, private parking lot. As you can see in this picture, the car cannot be parked except on the head of this strip -- you wouldn't be able to open the any door of the car to get out because the both sides of the space are not enough. So, most of the strip can only be used as a private path to the parking lot. However, the owner of this land found a good idea to use the center part of the space as a flowerbed. Short flowers can be grown perfectly because the tires will never tread them. I think this idea might be applied to public roads. Most drivers will voluntarily slow down and never change lanes if the center part of the road would be flowerbeds.

To drink colder

The other day, I had lunch in a Thai restaurant in Tokyo. The menu items were good, but what impressed me more was the other thing; it was rather a hot spring day and an iced tea was served in a metal cup. We usually have something cold with a glass or ceramic cup. I think it's rare to use metal cup. Actually I have no metal cup except for a camping gear. I think it is because a metal cup is not suitable to have hot drinks because it becomes too hot. It is not good either to drink something cold because it easily forms dew on its surface and wet table. However, it is very pleasant to have cold drink with a metal cup on a hot day because the cool metal feeling on your lips will make you feel way cooler than a glass or a ceramic cup. The cup in the Thai restaurant had a saucer to avoid dews and I could fully enjoy the benefit of the metal cup. How about the idea to make a ceramic cup with a metal part? -- Whole part is made of ceramic except the area lips touch so that it has the cool metal feeling with no dews.

Step by step

I don't like cleaning. It might be what I dislike most in the world. I don't like my surroundings to be messy either. Between these two contradicting things, I often feel a strong stress. Happy people who are good at cleaning and whose room is clean, sometimes say that keeping a room always clean is the best way. They say we should always take care not to make things into a chaotic situation. It is quite true, but what should I do if my room is already filthy enough? I'm now experimenting a simple method to make my room clean; to clean my room step by step. I cleaned the bottom part of a bookshelf yesterday and the second part today. I'm thinking about cleaning under the desk tomorrow. In this way, my room is getting cleaner day by day; very slowly but steadily. It might take a few more weeks until my room becomes perfect, but I already feel happier because the situation of my room is apparently improving. To clean the room all at once in a day, you have to have a lot of energy, but step-by-step cleaning doesn't need so much. I hope this method works well and my room and my office becomes clean before the rainy season starts.

To clean a PC keyboard

There are a lot of great life hacks on the Internet which improve our daily life and I feel happy when I encounter such hacks. This might be the greatest hack that I have found this year. As you might recognize with a glance at this picture, this is one of the simplest but most powerful ways to clean your PC keyboard. It's just using a scotch tape. When I found this method on the Internet, I had no tape in my room and I rushed into a nearby supermarket to get it for less than two bucks. After a few minute apply of this hack on my notebook PC, which was rather a pleasant job, the tape caught unbelievable amount of dust, waste threads and hairs from the ditch of my PC keyboard and it became almost brand new! As far as I know, this is the best way to clean your keyboard. It's way more effective and costless than using air spray. I assure and hope that you will become as happy as I am by trying this method.