Thank you. Yes, Power of Now breaks the concepts down into chunks that are much more tangible and easier to understand than the oft quoted "focus on nothing" that is so unachievable for most people.
First things first. If you feel like crap and are depressed you need to eat better and get more exercise. Even just going for a walk or jog once a day.
The trick to most successful people is they don't wait until they feel like it, they just go and do it because they know its what they need to do.
By exercising you will stimulate some feel good hormones which will help you for the next step. Your perception.
Depression (aside from biochemical issues) is largely due to having a picture you thought reality would be and it not matching your actual reality.
My guess is you thought your life would be a lot easier than it is. And I'm also guessing that many of your decisions have been based on trying to please others, especially your family.
In India, family, technology and spirituality are generally the highest values.
What I want you to do is write a list of at least 100 benefits you have gained from the path you have taken. And then 100 things that are bad about achieving the picture in your mind of how you thought things could have been.
This might be hard to start with but will definitely help you if you give it a go. Most of the time we romanticise a non existent reality by perceiving it to be much better than it is and we ignore the negative sides to it.
Clare Graves work on the different levels we operate from is really interesting and useful when dealing with different types of people and organisations.
This has been popularised into Spiral Dynamics. A search on this will get you a great base to start from.
Best book I've found on it is called Igniting Inspiration. Skip the first chapter to get to the good stuff.
Basic overview is that we each operate from a primary motivation. Eg power, universal truth and rules, material gain, harmony etc.
When you can see the signals for each type, you can speak their language and also understand yourself better in the process and why we do the (often irrational) things we do.
Depends what kind of skills you have, that would make the question more relevant.
Theloop.com.au have creative jobs
Cofounderspeeddating.com and search by location
Contact any of the work spaces such as fishburners or blue chilli, also pollenizer, they will all be able to point you in potential directions. Again, depends on your skillset.
I first learnt meditation at age 11. Lucky that my parents thought it valuable. Have discovered several different types over the years, some more useful than others.
TM, transcendental meditation involves being given a specific mantra by a TM master. This is usually a word that you focus on during the meditation for 20mins twice a day. It works if you work it as with most things. You can choose a word, like 'focus' or 'love' to meditate on even if you haven't been given an official mantra. Or you can simply visualise the flicker of a candle flame in your minds eye.
Mindfulness is the most useful meditation form I've found to help me. It is not a dedicated time that you 'do' meditation, but a greater awareness of yourself and all around you as you go through life. It is becoming the observer. Simply by noticing your thoughts and noticing yourself noticing your thoughts it can bring about a much higher level of clarity.
The great thing with this is you can set up certain triggers to remind you to do it. There are several apps that can ding at a random interval and remind you to become aware. Or you can use walking through a doorway as your trigger.
For me personally, I want to improve my levels of patience. So now any time I feel impatient, I use that as my trigger to become present to where I am, what I'm feeling and how I'm being.
Being impatient is essentially rejecting the reality of 'now' for some preferred future. So by coming back to experiencing the present moment as if I had chosen it myself, it's quite a powerful way to then move forward.
Best book I've read that can help with this is Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle.
There are many kinds of visualisations, breathing techniques, silence and stillness exercises, but the most useful to actually making a difference in life is mindfulness from my experience. And the great thing is it doesn't take any extra time out of your day!
I use Flipboard to aggregate the best stories from several sources. They have a heap of design feeds already listed as well as business, tech and HN in there too. Best part is its easy to flick quickly through headlines, share what you want and also save to instapaper for later.