When I sent the email and the mailing system started listing wrong email addresses, I started getting worried. But it was its morrow when the first emails and comments came to us. To be honest, when someone was appointed too write the first Interactive, I got sad (and jealous!) that it wasn’t me. In fact, I was not supposed to write this Interactive either; but according to the topic of this issue, Time Management, somebody failed to write the Interactive on time. so I took the chance to write it and let you know that we have had many emails and comments from you.

But from this beginning issues, we need to consider something to make everything better:

- We have two email addresses for The Gazette; for official letters, inquiries and contacts, please use info@thegazette.ir

- For your kind words to us as a friend, even to criticize us,you can use thegazette.ir@gmail.com

- There is a toolbar at the bottom of the page that I hope you have noticed; there is also a Chat service available there, where you can talk to other people online. We are going to have some appointment for group discussions. We once did it years ago on Messenger, do you remember that?!

- A good point with the Internet is the interactivity possible for us. You can easily comment on each text and even vote for them. Moreover, you can agree or disagree comments of other people. You see! We can have a good communication in here.

- There already are and will be more facilities on the website. from time to time we will introduce you some of them, so that you can enjoy the best of The Gazette.

- Just keep in touch! We are waiting for your comments, emails and words.

When you ask people like our members who cannot do their tasks in the given time, they usually say a similar reason; and guess what it is: “I’m busy!”

Quite familiar, isn’t it?! Many people are overwhelmed by tasks that are behind the schedule. The reason is that they collect the duties without thinking of the time each consumes and the power they take. Moreover, instead of dedicating the time to these to-do things, they waste a lot of extra time for extra things. So the duties go behind the schedule more and more.

Speaking of wasting time, I shall say that it is not just for those who have things to catch up with. We are almost all wasting a considerable part of our lives for nothing; if you cannot believe it, let’s review some examples. Think of times you are in the bus, taxi or your own car; think of times in front of TV when commercials are on TV; think of oversleeping in the mornings; think of those times that your eyes are moving on pages of your lesson books, but your mind is wandering about; and a lot of more examples. As you see, there are a lot of small parts of tie that if collected together, would make a valuable time to do great things. Yes, I know you cannot add the times of commuting to TV commercials or other things; but you can do things that can be distributed to these times; let’s say… reading books. You can always have a small book, magazine, paper or something with yourself and have a look at them in these spare times. I remember reading a memoir of the Leader of Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Khamenei, talking about reading several novels, some of which have had several volumes, on the bus going places. That happens when you believe you must read and more than that, you must use your time.

So, I have a suggestion. Take a paper and a pen. Take your time and write down all different things you do and you spend time for in your life; you can consider a single day, a week or general time. Write down for what you are consuming and spending your time.

Now, read them for 2 times and put it aside for 10 minutes. After ten minutes tae the list and think carefully which are necessary and which are not. Just cross unnecessary things over and promise yourself not to waste time for them. Be careful, it doesn’t mean you should not have fun, watch TV or rest; the point is that you shouldn’t spend more than enough for them.

Now, it’s time to decide for the spare times scattered in your daily life. Try to attach them to each other to make a good time, but if you couldn’t do that, don’t worry. Just find small things that you can do in short time. It can be a book, a paper, some vocabulary to review and learn. As I said, you can also do things, like reading, that can be resumed whenever you are free.

Do not forget to read the other writings of this issue to learn more techniques for saving, managing and benefiting your time.

By the way, what did you do during those 10 minutes I told you to put your list aside?!

So what happens to us when we throw away such a precious thing just like a piece of nothing and pay no attention to it?! We are living as if we are eternally never-ending. The reason might be that most of us do not know how to manage our time in the best way. “Time management” is under great consideration nowadays, and thus, lots of workshops are being held to teach time managing skills to people. Moreover, there are lots of websites, books, and articles about this subject. Though it is impossible to tell you all the skills in this short note, here are some practical productivity tips to get you started.

1. Write tasks down: one of the most common mistakes is trying to use memory to remember too many details which consequently lead to information overload. Using a to-do list to write things down is a great way to take control of your projects and tasks and keep you organized. It is so simple; just list all of your tasks instead of memorizing them.
2. Prioritize your list: arranging your to-do list in order of its priority, helps you focus and spend more of your time on the things that are really important for you. You can value your tasks into categories using the ABCD prioritization system. (Doing A and B increase your pleasure and decrease your stress.)  In this way you might find some of your tasks as not urgent or necessary; you could eliminate some of them or want someone else to be done.
3. Plan your week: Spend some time at the beginning of each week to plan your schedule. Taking the extra time to do this will help increase your productivity and balance your important long-term projects with your more urgent tasks. All you need is fifteen to
   thirty minutes each week for your planning session.

1. Learn to say no: many people become overloaded with too much work just because they become overcommitted; they say yes when really should be saying no. It seems necessary sometimes to say no, so that you will free up time to spend on things that are more important.
2. 5. Think before acting: Before committing to a new task and giving your answer, stop to think about it. This will prevent you from taking too much work. If you still are not able to say no, buy time; you can use some similar phrases like: “let me first check my day-book.”
3. 6. Continuously improve yourself: learn new things and develop your natural talents and abilities.
4. Identify bad habits: Make a list of bad habits that are stealing your time, disrupting your goals, and blocking your success. After you do, work on them and eliminate them from your life. Remember that the easiest way to eliminate a bad habit, is to replace it with a better habit.

1. Remember developing time management skills is a journey: it might be started with this guideline, but needs practice and other guidance along the way.
2. Become aware of how you use your time: having a to-do list and scheduling for it is not all you have to do. After all these, what you need is to be aware of how you are following your schedule and how successful you have so far been in your duties.

2. Time is infinite. Time is as fluid as water. Its current washes out the melancholy of life. That’s why they say time heals wounds. (But at the same time it can wound heals, believe me!). The flow of time is always cruel… its speed seems different for each person, but no one can change it (we just think that we can change it)
Since the very beginning, mankind was trying to find a way to control time, but this powerful man has forgotten or maybe ignored the fact that time is untamable. It moves and this is US who should try to catch up with it. Time doesn’t wait for us. They say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.  All things end in unending time .and there lays the secret of life: guess what! Enjoying the passage of time.
Salvador Dali, famous Spanish painter had depicted the fluidity of time in his paintings and sculptures. He also believes that time is a fluid concept and this is time that controls human being, not human being controlling the time…I can’t remember exactly where but I read somewhere that “Time goes, you say? Ah no, alas, time stays, we go”. time is precious, because time is infinite.

3. If we lose a valuable property; our laptop, our car, our cell phone,… we may get sad, days seem gloomy to us, but …The minutes pass and we don’t care about how they pass. We spend days and nights on a routine basis and all of a sudden we come to the understanding that years have passed and we are still waiting for a right time to start doing something. But lost time is never found again. Time is more precious than Gold, because an inch of gold won’t buy an inch of time. So…I’m talking to you, exactly you…! Dear gazetteers…don’t lose the time. Start writing for gazette. Do you think time is finite or infinite? Share with us your ideas…

INTRODUCTION

Manager: well?

Interviewee: as a matter of fact I can judge myself as a responsible and creative worker… hmm… I try to get the best of my time… And I am patient to the end, I like cooperation…

Manager: like what?

Interviewee: right, like… for example… you may think it’s a bit of strange… but… like… I read all magazines on my desk before noon, and… usually or better to say always, I try to make a working lunch, in one of the cinematic complex around here. Or like… you know, I see at least 3 films during each week or…!

Manager: I see. I think you can work with us. Let’s see. Can we start from tomorrow?

*******

Time management: at work

The interviewee mentioned above is a movie critic and his life is a mixture of fun and work, but is it true about everyone? Do we all work in the way we love and enjoy? And do you think swallowing that ugly frog is for these cases that we don’t love our job?

No, not true, if you do not like your job I sincerely ask you to stop working ASAP. If you do not like your carrier, nothing else can be helpful; actually you are wasting time of others and yours. Be brave and quit it, otherwise you will waste your life and it’d be too late to return. In one way or other, if you like your job you will find a way to be successful in it.

Time management: in life

Remember time management is not to make you successful in your job.

It is going to help you to be successful in your life! It should organize your relationship with you and others.

And these two are very different from each other:

You can be a successful working mom, but not a good mom or wife.

You can be a prosperous student, but not a good child to your parents and time management comes to manage these things all together, help you to go through life smoothly.

And there is not a single timetable which works for two people the same. Every one should fill his timetable out based on his abilities and possibilities; and only when you fill it out you will get to know that how short the  time is, how limited the things we can do are! The shocking point is actually this: to understand that we are limited by time! Shackled by it!

A question always obsessed my mind: How should we manage our time when there is no ‘our time’, our time is to some extent shared with others’ time, like a chain…

Time management: Limited time

When I was at school, I think about time management and it sounds funny to me; considering scientific findings, let’s see how it can possible to manage 24 hours to :

a) be a good student at school

b) be healthy

c) enjoy life because those good old days will never be repeated during life

d) be a good child.

Let me explain more:

Doctors prove our body and mind needs 7 to 8 hours sleep each night.

Educational researchers claim for each 1-hour class attendance we need 2-hour out-of-class study.

After each 45 minutes, mind needs 10 to 15 minutes break.

As a Muslim, you need to spend around 1 hour saying prayer.

And to have energy to go on, you need 1 hour during each day to eat meals.

Now let’s calculate:

24h-8h=16h

16h-1h=15h

15h-1h(meal)=14h

14h-6h(class attendance)=8h

8h*2h( out-of-class study)= 16h

Actually we need 8 extra hours; impossible!

Let alone the time we spend commuting.

Now you see? Can we enjoy our time, help our parents, learn a skill other than study, or read books, or have social role?

Add to this:

This scene will be continued later on, while you are at university, and unfortunately TV shows and movies portrait the ones who are university students and work as well, and make this feeling in parents and students they have to work or they are lazy, a couch potato, but I find this costume funny. Isn’t it?

No-BODY

Not every one is allowed to read this article:

Those who should not read this article ( because these people usually  have not a flexible mind):

If you believe you are of omniscience…

If you wait for that special day…

If  you think others are more privileged than you…

If you think you are the savior of the world…

If each small unimportant thing of the world drives you crazy…

If you believe no one is like you and how different you are…

If you think tomorrow is a day different than today…

If you think you are going to stay young and powerful for ever…

If you are estranged with paper and pencil to write your ideas and programs down on it…

And the most important one, if you have no goal in your life…

CONCLUSION

The point is this:

Time management is a myth!

The only thing is this:

You should manage your spirit, your feeling, “your mood”, to fit yourself to time and that is the whole story.

Listening to Leila’s voice, mom thought: Since both children coped with my time limitation claiming and I am going to miss them from now on, maybe it is time to do something real instead of listening to whatever the counselor tells and look for real classes to attend instead of passing time at home!!!

She did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy that held her. A clear and exalted perception enabled her to dismiss the suggestion as trivial. She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead. But she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that owuld belong to her absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome.
There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they ahve a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature. A kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that brief moment of illumination.
And yet she had loved him–sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in the face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being!
“Free! Body and soul free!” she kept whispering.
Josephine was kneeling before the closed door with her lips to the keyhold, imploring for admission. “Louise, open the door! I beg; open the door–you will make yourself ill. What are you doing, Louise? For heaven’s sake open the door.”
“Go away. I am not making myself ill.” No; she was drinking in a very elixir of life through that open window.
Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her. Spring days, and summer days, and all sorts of days that would be her own. She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long.
She arose at length and opened the door to her sister’s importunities. There was a feverish triumph in her eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory. She clasped her sister’s waist, and together they descended the stairs. Richards stood waiting for them at the bottom.
Some one was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was Brently Mallard who entered, a little travel-stained, composedly carrying his grip-sack and umbrella. He had been far from the scene of the accident, and did not even know there had been one. He stood amazed at Josephine’s piercing cry; at Richards’ quick motion to screen him from the view of his wife.
When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease–of the joy that kills.

http://whathappenedinmybirthyear.com/

These days,

Nothing can calm My Tension down,

but repeating These words:

Your are Coming…!

GATHER ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old time is still a-flying :
And this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he’s a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he’s to setting.

That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer ;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may go marry :
For having lost but once your prime
You may for ever tarry.

The war between Iran and Iraq has finished for years, but still armies in both sides look after their frontiers. A soldier serving in Khorramshahr, finds a letter near the limit. Reading the letter, he is tempted to answer it, even for just passing the time. He can not be sure if the letter is from the other side of the line or from a noncommissioned officer who checks on the soldier’s service. But nothing can stop him. He can not stay unresponsive and he writes back.
The reply gets more interesting. The letter comes from the other side of the line. An Iraqi officer is the writer of the letter and he has a favor to ask. He wants the Iranian soldier to help him find a family in Khorramshahr. He wants to know if the family he once had rescued from death is still living and if they are back in their own city after all.
Letters bandy from both sides, letting the strangers come to know each other step by step. The Iranian soldier does not use his name and he has a reason to do it. But the reason is not accepted from the other side, although there is no sign of eagerness to find out the name. It is not understandable for the Iraqi man why someone has to use another name to introduce himself. Despite the differences, the men get close and closer as they reach to an agreement. The Iranian soldier begins looking for the missing family.
The family consisting of a mother with her young daughter shows up. They meet with the soldier. They listen to his story. They even read the letters. But their story is somehow different. The man is not their rescuer. He was the one who attempted killing them after killing the woman’s husband. The soldier does not know which one he should trust. The family sends a dagger for the Iraqi man as a sign via the soldier. Letters stops coming back. The soldier tries to find the man, but there is nothing from other side. After many letters from this part, comes an ending to the story by the Iraqi man. He does not want to go on looking for anybody. He returns the dagger, claiming that he is not the one who the family thinks. He has no favor to ask, and he wants to put an end to the relationship while the soldier has left behind too many un-answered question in his mind.
The structure of the book is familiar. The most famous one is “Daddy Long Leg”; a novel built-up from letters. Two members of an army at the frontier take the risk to exchange letters. The idea is too attractive. If you do not open the book written by Majid Gheisari, and just hear the main idea of the story, you would be eager to read it. But the book is not that attractive!
The first good point is that both sides have pictured the same. Both are real humans with no exaggeration in picturing the good or evil side. The second good point is where we find out how awful it is that Iranian people are going to ruin their own mother tongue by misusing the structures through the soldier’s writing. The last good point is that writer makes us feel like the soldier at the end. We do not know who is telling the truth. No acceptable evidence is there to be investigated. The man is right, because he was trying too hard to find the family. The family is right, because they have no reason to make the story up. Neither side insists to prove what has been claimed. The story ends in a way that the reader should decide for himself.
As I mentioned and you just went through, there are enough fortes in the book to make it an interesting one. But why does it not work that way?
The major problem is that writer has not tried to feel characters. We never feel if the Iraqi man emotionally was involved with someone in this family. We never believe that he just wants to make sure they are fine and back to the city due to the rescue story. The relation between the two men could be more challenging. Both are asking things and answering questions, both learning new things, receiving information, but nothing seems to reach anywhere. The soldier has no main influence on what is going on. The importance lays between the Iraqi man and the missing family. They are main the characters. But when it comes to them, nothing happens.
Two men from two nations which had a history of 8 years war, sending letters to each other. They are not even ordinary men. Both are army member of their own country. But what happens between them along the story has nothing to do with their background! So careless for a writer who had the courage to create such characters!
I had never read anything by Majid Gheisari before and it was the first time; might be his first book too. Despite the weaknesses which had made the story look so crude, I would highly recommend you to read the book. It has beautiful moments, unforgettable pictures and precise word choosing. The book might not be satisfying enough itself, but the amazing thing about it is the part when it flips your creativity to stop the book at any point and direct it to the way which seems more readable.
So, do not waste time, and start your own version of the Gheisari’s story.

Rebirth

Once upon a time, there was an English page in JameJam newspaper (Nasle 3) with a lot of loveable and eager readers. Its name was Gazette. Everything looks good. A team of young writers who try to publish gazette every week and a group of eager readers who follow their page by read it and send mails, SMSs and Emails. What a beautiful days with Gazette! But after about 18 month, unfortunately because of some problems in newspaper the writers had to abandon dear gazette and maybe its unique readers! It was really a bad surprise for our friends all around of Iran. Of course, a lot of them never leave us. Their kept their touch with Emails and SMSs and some of them with phone!
The team tried to restart for several times but nothing happened! Finally a new decision solved this problem. Electronic Gazette! Yes, exactly. An English site, in fact an electronic magazine can give a rebirth to gazette and even its members! So everybody started to write for different part of site.
Now, we are here again, beside of you. And we will be appreciate you if you protect gazette like past. Come on everybody! This is you and this gazette! Read it, enjoy it and send us your valuable ideas. As usual, we’re waiting for you impatiently!