How to book an LPG gas connection in India?

For a new family or newly married couple who is starting a new home, one of the critical thing is to get gas connections. Here I am explaining certain procedures on how to get your gas connection from my own experience.

There are 3 gas companies in India that provide LPG connection:

• Bharat Gas
• HP Gas
• Indane Gas

There are nodal private distribution agencies to supply gas connections to each locality.

Step 1: Identify the most popular gas connection in your neighbourhood. Ask your neighbour and get the connection

Step 2: You will need your ID proof, photo, residence proof (Rent agreement)

Step 3: Go directly to the gas agencies and ask for the procedure.

Step 4: Fill the form and get your connections ready

Advice: Try to get an additional gas cylinder so it serves as the buffer for you to wait for the next replacement. Usually the price ranges from Rs.7000-9000 for one gas connections. 

My Tiny Habits Experiment

Dear fellow traveler,

As I have just enrolled myself in the TinyHabits Weekly program for the 3rd week, I am sharing few of my successes and additional resources I am pursuing in my Habit Formation process.

1. Success with Tiny Habits: While BJ Fogg's Tiny Habits program allows for setting and tracking only 3 habits per week, I had my own long list of to do habits (however on 'After I do ___, I will ____' format). On the second week, I had success with the 3 of those Tiny Habits:

• After I pee, I will do 2 squats
• After I get up after lunch, I will open my fridge door
• After I step in to my house, I will kiss my wife passionately

And yes, I am doing secretly doing squats after I pee. Opening my fridge door was intentionally to build the habit of drinking a cup of Tropicana fruit juice after the lunch. And not just the Tiny Habit, but drinking a cup of Tropicana fruit juice has become a habit. In fact, when the Tropicana can was over, my mind ensured that I buy the next set of cans so as to accomplish this Tiny Habit. And I am feeling lot closer with my wife. Except for the first habit, rest of them became natural - reason is that doing 2 squats is trying to expand to doing a full-stretch exercise routine. 

2. Getting Things Done: Have recently explored David Allen's GTD Method. Though it sounds a complicated process, I found the first and second step to be extremely useful: a. Capture b. Categorising. I am now capturing my fleeing thoughts in place, though I didn't mind it being an idea, or a life-long goal or a daily task. It just gets captured in my list. I transport the necessary into the Things-to-do list later in the beginning of the day. Naturally I categorise those I can immediately do (make a phone call & get updates), or spend a considerable amount of time (prepare the Progress report), etc. I cut down the tasks that gets completed both from my TTD list and my Capture list. 

3. Things to do list: I have been in the habit of formulating a list of things that I need to do everyday in the morning at work. I try to prioritize as much as I can (eat the frog/ get the low-hanging fruit). I check it off as I complete; if I can't I drag it to the next day of work. There are ad-hoc things that come in that may require immediate attention. I take it up, finish it and just continue to do the task on my to-do list. As mentioned before, I use my GTD Capture list to feed into my TTD list.

And thus the journey continues. 

I will share in more such experiments - both success and failure to help you guide your life. 

Warm regards,

Sathya

Getting That Habit Right

For quite sometime, I have been trying to master the art of habit formation. Slowly I discovering a pattern with myself on mastering it both by experimenting on myself and reading. 

I struck goldmine when I explored and experimented with Dr.BJ Fogg's TinyHabits program. A Professor at Stanford University, USA and an experimental psychologist by education, Dr.Fogg explicitly details the way behavior change happens. 

Not only theorizing upon his new found knowledge, he also conducted a little experiment to exploit it for the benefit of others. He runs an online accountable program on his website to help you learn the patterns of forming a new habit, decide upon one and do it as part of his 1-week program (You can join it here). 

While exploiting this online program, I also explored other avenues on 'what' on habits. Concepts of SlightEdge and the remarkably similar book Compound Effect validates this assumption on starting small, making minor course correction to achieve the greater good. 

What will be the most effective and popular habits? Those followed by the highly successful, super rich, effective etc. This lead me to discover that the topmost priority for most of us were Health Habits, followed by Relationship building and Productivity Habits. 

My previous reading and self-improvement experiments (on principles developed by Dr.Stephen R.Covey, Jack Canfield, etc) lead me discover 4 key essential areas in one's life:

1. Health: aka Physical fitness, Stamina, Food habits, Weight, etc

2. Relationship: Encompassing the emotional aspect of our life - love relationship, kinship, etc

3. Productivity

4. Philanthropy

5. Spiritual

This is where I had the clash of content between the two most buzzwords in Productivity Literature - Habits v/s Goals. I discovered that clarity when I learnt about them from James Clear. 

While Goals define a target, a destination to be reached, Habits refer to the lifestyle behavior one needs to do practice to achieve those target. This simple clarify helped me distinguish between those and merge those to help me create that process. 

While people like Covey, Canfield helped me define the what, James Clear, Fogg helped to navigate the process of how to achieve the what.

This clearly defined I must deliberately explain you the last one which I actually searched first. The process of tracking one's progress and believe the web is loaded with such information. Tactics like - Seinfeld's Don't Break the Chain, GoalTracker apps, Ben Franklin's book on tracking 13 Virtues etc were to be considered as helping the process.

But one should remember that this is the last one in the whole process: Review & Reflection. And I don't demean it anytime soon. Though I wrongly believed that having a foolproof tracking system will help me achieve the goals, I soon realised that it may be also necessary.

Now with my 'what' and 'how' clear I am using the Review systems to reflect upon my progress over the week. For me daily tracking doesn't seem work. James Clear calls this Backward approach, where at the end of week one reflects and reviews upon the 'Habits' one was suppose to do to achieve the overarching ultimate 'Goals'. 

Again after trying out few web apps, I am contentful with an excel sheet that tracks my Habits as I decided to do. 

I am getting in form now, I am doing regularly doing exercise, got a chance to deliberately build practices/ habits to strengthen my family life, made lifestyle changes (though minor) to improve my nutritious uptake and also develop my productivity. 

I hope to share more such experiments in my later blogs. 

Take care,

Sathya