Ahmed Bilal

It’s A Good Day To Die

I know the fear of death, but it brings no urgency to my life. If I died today, there is nothing I would regret missing out, nothing I would wish I had more time for. Indeed, my greatest concern is to let people know what to do with my ‘stuff’ when I’m gone (always the extra-efficient one, you see).

These are not the musings of a man bound by morbidity or fascinated with death. These are not my final words. These are just thoughts, a window into a conversation. If you were ever concerned, this isn’t the thing to be concerned about. Send me an iPad instead.

(more…)

People will believe just about anything, but they won’t believe everything.

The perfect belief system captures the essence of that experience and uses it to it’s advantage. Instead of trying to close all the loopholes, instead of trying to use reasoning to answer all the what ifs, you simply need to do the following:

(more…)

Misbah-ul-Haq is a limited batsman.

This isn’t a criticism (and you’ll find plenty of critics today), just fact. He has a limited range of orthodox scoring shots, he lacks the hitting power of a Shahid Afridi (although he’s not as weak as Younus Khan), and worst of all, he lacks the dexterity of a Javed Miandad in rotating the strike early in his innings.

But where he stands out – and this is crucial in a team that is traditionally poor in this area – is his mental strength, his calmness, his ability to keep fighting till the end, and through that strength, the flickers of hope he gives to his teammates (and the viewers) as long as he is at the crease.

(more…)

This blog post is for people who aren’t married – either by choice or fortune (good or bad is your own interpretation!). What works, what doesn’t, why you should / shouldn’t, etc.

We live in a world where marriage is still subtly (or forcibly, depending on which part of the world you live in) thrust upon us as a ‘logical next step’, and yet the same world affords us enough room to live without it (you still can’t escape the chatting behind your back wondering why you’re not married yet though). Monogamy vs perennial solitude aren’t the only options available to you, although it may seem that way sometimes given how our society is set up.

So let’s get started:

(more…)

People fall into two distinct camps when it comes to marriage – those who will laugh at you for thinking about it and counsel you against it, and those who will get unreasonably excited at the thought and pester you to get married (if you aren’t).

Both have the same problem – they are projecting their own (flawed) values on to you. Regardless of what might be best for you in your life, at that point in time, they will only focus on their own problems.

And that’s why you should never listen to people when it comes to advice on marriage – because they always want to tell you what they want out of their lives, not what’s best for you.

While explaining to someone what I do, I got this oft-repeated comment:

“You’re so lucky to be doing something like that, not many people get the chance to do something different.”

That’s just not true, and here’s why: our whole lives are spent making choices. From when you’re struggling to get up in the morning (drowsy or not, you’re making a choice to hit the snooze button) to when you’re deciding between checking what’s on the TV or hitting the bed early, you’re making choices in your life.

(more…)

If you’re a Muslim, why do you fast?

There’s no right answer. You could say it’s one of the five pillars of Islam, and that’s fine. You could say that you do it because everybody else around you does it, and that’s fine too. You maybe do it to feel closer to God and to purify your soul, which is brilliant, and absolutely fine.

But why do it one month in an year?

My issue, if you’ve gathered, is not with fasting nor with it’s purpose. Of all the tenets of Islam, fasting is the one that’s focused on the individual, on your inner self. Depending on how deep you want to go into the philosophy behind fasting, you could argue that it’s good for your health, you could argue that it helps you become more compassionate, and you could even argue that only by learning to discipline yourself (most importantly your mind) can you become a better person / better Muslim.

But wouldn’t an exercise of such great value to the human soul and to the sheer Muslimness of you be much more useful if it was conducted on a regular basis? In essence – wouldn’t it be better if you fasted once a week, all throughout the year, instead of 29-30 days at a stretch out of 354-355 days (lunar calendar)?

If you get past your initial horror of changing anything you’ve been taught, the benefits are mind-numbingly obvious:

(more…)

Racking my brain for ideas. The outlandish. The otherwordly. The impossible. Even the unthinkable.

There’s nothing. I cleared my mind of pressing concerns, of plans and money and sex and everything else. I cleared it all out, and then there was nothing. No inner voice, no spark of genius, just space. Nothingness. I was a zombie.

We’re all zombies. The remarkable has escaped us, somewhere between the minute we started asking questions and the time we started worrying about broken relationships, about money, about religion, about survival, about houses and cars and clothes and work. WORK. Work. The spark never had a chance against Work.

(more…)

As bloggers and site owners we often focus on quality content and providing value to our readers. Unfortunately, our ‘quality’ content is NOT providing maximum value to readers.

They might be loving it, and it may make you a blogging rock star, but are they using your advice? And materially benefiting from it?
Really?

Three years ago I was strapped for cash and in a fit of desperation, turned to the Internet for ways to make money. Through Rent A Coder I started picking up writing projects, and soon I met a guy who wanted a writer for his email newsletter. He was selling software through his one-page website, and the newsletter was geared to compliment and support the software.

Over the next year and a half, we tested and tracked the responses of two specific types of articles – a how-to article discussing a specific SEO strategy and a how-to article that used the software to demonstrate an SEO strategy.

The software-oriented articles won every single time, hands down.

The takeaway lesson wasn’t that a piece of software is more attention-grabbing than quality content.

The lesson is that if you give your readers a systematic way to do things and show them how to do it, you will get a much better response.

A reusable system that ‘just works’ every single time is a valuable resource that will keep your readers coming back for more and more.

Why is software more useful than books? Because 99% of the time, the software is a blackbox through which you get your regular tasks done. The book, on the other hand, explains how the blackbox works, which makes for fascinating reading but doesn’t really build a blackbox for your readers.

A simple example – the book Getting Things Done is wildy popular because GTD is a system, and the book showcases that system. If Paul Allen had just listed productivity tips, he wouldn’t have had 1/10th of the success he has now.

For books and blogs and writing to be as effective, they have to be usable, day in and day out. Sell ideas like you would sell software – as a system of doing things and thus making it easy for people to use your ideas.

A few tips for making your blogs and blog posts more usable:

• Remember that not everything you write will be a ’system’ – sharing ideas and offering advice is part and parcel of the game.
• When offering advice on how to do something, write it up in a series of actionable steps. The step-by-step, handholding approach is popular precisely because that style of instructions is easy to follow.
• Keep your ‘tasks’ short and manageable. Don’t cram a crash course in how to do blog SEO in one big article (a report is a different thing) – break it up into segments.
• Provide a route for feedback so readers can report their experiences and get help if necessary. Forums are great for this, but comment threads do just fine.
• Add tools / services to your blog – you might be surprised at how much more valuable readers find such things as compared to quality content.
• Yes, your ‘how-to / system’ posts can be used as resources / tools as well.

Bottom line: if you tell people what to do, chances are that they’ll acclaim you for being wise but not get busy doing anything that you’ve said. On the other hand, if you can show people how to do it, you’ll get a better response.

So what are you aiming for? Building a fan club by impressing people with your knowledge or effectively teaching people how to do what you do?

Update: An excerpt from the first page of Mark Joyner’s book, simple.ology, does a great job of explaining this concept.

Let’s face it: books are old school.

I love to hold a book in my hands. I love the way it looks on my shelf. But if I really want to master something, I need to engage myself in its application.

Reading is one thing. Understanding is another. And proper application is a whole ‘nother thing entirely.

Well said Mr. Joyner.

To apply what you learn, you need a system – whether a how-to, step-by-step guide or a software – that helps you apply what you have read and understood.

This article was originally written on 18 Jul 2007 for Performancing.com.

How do you alleviate suffering on a local and global scale?

How do improve conditions – security, living standards, health care, education, economy – in your country and in other countries?

A fundamental principle of human society is our responsibility to our fellow man – to aid, collaborate and generally work together for the betterment of society at large. We’re hardwired – genetically or socially, that’s up to you – to make things better for ourselves and for the people around us.

There are two ways we do this:

(more…)