10 Simple Steps to Make the Most of Every Day

“Success in life is founded upon attention to the small things rather than to the large things.” – Booker T. Washington

Our lives are a large collection of single days one right after the other. The sun rises, the sun sets, and it rises again. And in the end, the lives we chose to live will be determined by how we choose to spend each day.

Unfortunately, for most of my life, I embraced little intentionality in my days. I survived each new day, but made little effort to make the most of it. Instead, they simply just came and went… and many were wasted.

But over the past few years, my views have changed. I have begun to view each day as an important gift. I have sought to embrace each one individually and discover the potential that it holds. After all, some may get more days than others, but each of us have been given this one. And we ought to be making the most of it.

Kids, do you know what this is?

Before Spotify, people used to drive around listening to music on this relic, the car stereo.

Collectors and music fans wearing the T-shirts of obscure rock bands brave the tropical heat outside a record store near Malaysia’s capital, Kuala Lumpur, waiting to get their hands on new cassette tapes.

No, this isn’t a flashback to the 1980s, but an event marking recent International Cassette Store Day, an annual celebration of a music format once thought headed for extinction but now enjoying a rebirth.

Vinyl’s renaissance is well-documented and now it seems cassettes are rising from the grave, with artists such as Kanye West and Justin Bieber releasing songs on tape.

In South-East Asia low production costs and a retro-cool image have made cassettes an underground-music fixture, especially for struggling bands getting their name out.

“Cassettes are our best sellers,” Mohammad Radzi Jasni, owner of the store, Teenage Head Records, said after shoving one by Singaporean surf-punk band Force Vomit into a bulky tape player.

“They are still the best way to discover new bands here. It’s very affordable for the guys releasing it and the fans buying them,” he added.

Manufacturing costs can be as low as RM4 per tape in Malaysia, compared to RM60 to RM80 for a vinyl record. Vinyl’s cost is a hurdle for young bands and DIY labels in Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines.