Apps to keep yourself Fit and Healthy

Obino: For real-time Health

Among the myriad health and weight stands out with its personalised approach a dedicated coach will monitor your eating habits real time, interact with you through the app, and prescribe tailored diets and lifestyle changes. While a pedometer in the app tracks your steps during the day, another fitness coach will guide you on activities and weight loss exercises. But all that's not going to work without that extra ounce of commitment on your part.

Noisli: For customizable ambient Noise

The app plays a selection of sounds including rain, a stream, storm, and others to help you concentrate while working or studying, or relax before going to sleep. The sounds can be mixed and there's a color changing background to help with your relaxation. Other features include offline sounds and timer with a fadeout function.

Poccare: For appointment with doctors, hospitals and wellness chains

It's a patient-centric app that not only helps you with a hassle-free appointment with doctors, but also allows consulting them through video call and live web chat. You can set medicine reminders, access your medical records including diagnosis and test records, and get answers to common health questions.

Sleep Cycle: For Intelligent sleep analysis

A good night's sleep is just as important as eating healthy and exercising. If you have trouble sleeping, this app can tell you when you were in a deep sleep or awake during the night, how much sleep you got, your sleep quality, sleep quality affected by weather, activity and more. It comes with a lot of features, data charts and customization options.

Calm: For guided meditation sessions

If you are looking for an app that can help you relax, improve concentration and sleep better, download Calm. It has a library of meditation audios and 'scenes' that you can watch. If you register, you will be able to access a seven-day program to get into the practice of meditation. Once you feel ready for more programs, you can subscribe it to access its entire library.

RunKeeper: For sports and fitness activity tracking

The app tracks your workouts as well as weight loss. It has planned routes and set workouts, though you can create your own with audio coaching. You can create a custom fitness challenge, invite friends, track each other's progress, and cheer each other on chat. It can be synced with other tracking apps like MyFitnessPal's Calorie Counter and Fitbit.

Change in Planning Commission

A key component of the Nehruvian socialism – the economic approach by India’s First Prime Minister – the Five Year Plans have been laid to rest by the NDA Government. The 12^th Plan, the last of the Five Year Plans, had come to an end on March 31, though it has been given an extension of six months to allow ministries to complete their appraisals.

The decades old Five Year Plans will make way for a three year action plan, which will be a part of a seven year strategy paper and a 15 year vision document. The Niti Aayog, which has replaced the Planning Commission, had launched a three year action plan from April 1.

Five Year Plans – FYP were centralized economic and social growth programs. Joseph Stalin, president of the USSR implemented the first Five Year Plan in the late 1920s. India too followed the socialist path but here the planning was not as comprehensive since the country had both public and private sectors. The Planning in India was only about the public sector. The first Five Year Plan was launched in 1951. The idea was to plan public spending for equitable growth rather than leaving expenditure to the market forces.

The Five Year Plans played a great role in lifting India’s social sector and building of heavy industry. A centralized planning system could ensure that the money gets spent where it was the most needed.

For a long time, there had been a feeling that for a country as diverse and big as India, centralized planning could not work beyond a point due to its one-size-fits-all approach. Moreover, since the Planning Commission used to be controlled by the Central government, it often ended up as a tool to punish states ruled by the opposition parties when it came to allocating funds. Due to the top-to-bottom approach in centralized planning, it was felt that the states needed to have greater say in planning their expenditure. The planning commission was seen to be imposing its diktats on states who could have better known what and how much they needed.

The Niti Aayog, which has replaced the Planning commission, is the new body that gives policy direction. Its founding principal is cooperative federalism. Most important difference is that Niti Aayog has no power to grand funds or makes decisions on behalf of states. It is only an advisory body.

IPL 2017: New Ad Campaigns

Completing a decade of revolutionizing Cricket in India, the Indian Premier League (IPL) continues to attract immense advertiser interest. Brands pay hefty fee to air commercials during the sports extravaganza making the event similar to the Super Bowl in US, which is known for Brands showcasing their biggest campaigns of this season. Let’s take a look at the five brands which aired new campaigns during the ongoing league.

Amazon – The online marketplace along with its advertising agency Ogilvy and Mather created a fictional cricket team called Chonkpur Cheetahs for this IPL season. Through a series of films, the campaign portrays the journey of this aspiring team to reach their goal of playing T20. It also communicates how in various small ways Amazon enables them to get a step closer to their dream of playing T20. The dreams of the Chonkpur Cheetahs is a metaphor for the dreams of millions of Indians and how Amazon can enable them by providing access to different products.

Vodafone – The telecom company, which has been associated with the league since its inception, brought back animated character ZooZoos in the new campaign made by Ogilvy & Mather. First introduced during the second season of IPL in 2009, the cute animated characters are shown in three different ads celebrating Indian team’s famous huddle, run outs and boundary moments.

Pepsi – PepsiCo India’s cola brand launched its summer campaign during the IPL, featuring Indian cricket team’s captain Virat Kohli made by Advertising agency JWT India, the spot features Virat Kohli giving it back to Australian fans by stopping a boundary during an intense match. Pepsi has been associated closely with IPL; it has been the league title sponsor for three years between 2013 and 2015 and was eventually replaced by Chinese handset maker Vivo.

Maruti Suzuki – The country’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India (MSI), which is also the associate sponsor of IPL, has rolled out a new campaign for its compact SUV Vista Brezza. The television campaign, made by Dentsu Creative Impact, highlights the stylish built and advanced features of the car.

Parle Products – To establish the wide array of products the company has to offer, IPL’s associate sponsor Parle Products has launched a new ‘Naam Toh Suna hi Hoga’ campaign along with its advertising agency Taproot Dentsu. The films are a humorous take on the daily lives of Indians stuck in awkward situations – an employee being questioned by his boss, a school principal complaining to a student’s mother and two women bragging about their lifestyle.

Some Essential Life Skills

If you haven’t mastered some of the most essential life skills already, it may be time to take a different approach. Whether you’re looking to listen better or negotiate for a raise, here are some of the most surprising ways you can master essential life skills.

Listening – it’s a surprisingly simple yet underused concept. If you want to listen better, keep your mouth shut. As Austrian pianist Alfred Brendel once said, “The word listen contains the same letters as the word Silent.” Not only does thinking about what you’re going to say next take your attention away from the speaker, but hijacking the conversation shows that you think you have something more important to say.

Conserving Willpower – the Greatest Human strength, “we all have a finite amount of willpower in a given day. The key to conserving it is to limit the number of decisions you have to make.

Time Management – The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say ‘no’ to almost everything. If you don’t prioritize your time over others, you’ll find your productivity will suffer and resentment will mount.

Honesty – If you don’t have anything nice to say, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t say it. HHPP to remember, Radical candor is humble, helpful, and immediate, in person and it doesn’t personalize.

Creative Thinking - The best way to come up with your next big idea may be to simply stop trying. During a 2011 study, researchers found study participants to be more creative at times when they were relaxed or unfocused.

Public Speaking – Most people think that trying to calm down is the best way to cope with public speaking anxiety, but research suggests that this doesn’t work. A better strategy is to stop trying to relax and instead reframe your jitters as excitement.

Negotiating – Recent research suggests that it’s better to emphasize what you’re giving the other person as opposed to what they’re losing in any negotiation.

Reading More – Assuming that most books are average, not great, then there are really only one or two major ideas to get out of them, which can take you less than three hours to ascertain if you skim. Start by reading the table of contents to understand the ideas dispersed within the book, make notations on the pages you want to revisit, read more deeply for 30 minutes on your second visit, and if the book is worth another read, take an hour or two to read the best parts again.

Learning a new Language – A growing body of research suggests that the best way to remember something forever is to practice remembering it. Rather than reading a new word over and over, read it once and practice recalling it several times.

Stress Management – Rather than letting stress hurt productivity and focus, the idea behind resilience is using stress to your advantage as energy to help you perform in high-pressure environments like investment banking.

Making Friends – It’s hard to make new friends as an adult, but joining a choir could help. Recent research suggests that singing can be a great icebreaker among large groups of strangers and can facilitate friendships down the line.

Asking for Help – A recent study suggests that asking for advice makes you look more, not less capable. Author Tim Ferriss says that the biggest mistake is asking conventionally successful people for help. Instead, he suggests consulting those who’ve gone from zero to expert in about six months.