Inspiration for Life

Just finished reading this very good article on HBR: http://hbr.org/2010/07/how-will-you-measure-your-life/ar/1

I highly recommend reading this once. Following are key takeaways from this article for me:

• If you study the root causes of business disasters, over and over you’ll find this predisposition toward endeavors that offer immediate gratification. If you look at personal lives through that lens, you’ll see the same stunning and sobering pattern: people allocating fewer and fewer resources to the things they would have once said mattered most

• If you want your kids to have strong self-esteem and confidence that they can solve hard problems, those qualities won’t magically materialize in high school. You have to design them into your family’s culture—and you have to think about this very early on. Like employees, children build self-esteem by doing things that are hard and learning what works

• The lesson I learned from this is that it’s easier to hold to your principles 100% of the time than it is to hold to them 98% of the time. If you give in to “just this once,” based on a marginal cost analysis, as some of my former classmates have done, you’ll regret where you end up. You’ve got to define for yourself what you stand for and draw the line in a safe place.

• Generally, you can be humble only if you feel really good about yourself—and you want to help those around you feel really good about themselves, too

• How can I ensure that my relationship with my family proves to be an enduring source of happiness?—concerns how strategy is defined and implemented

Speech summary

Following is gist of my 5 minute speech given on occasion of Independence day celebrations while I was in India.

-          Do your part. Freedom comes with a responsibility to do your part. Narrated a story to illustrate this point

-          NRI perspective

• Celebrating independence abroad as best as possible. Get together or parades to mark the occasion.
• there is a desire to contribute back to nation and majority engage in non-profit work with passion,
• there is a responsibility to clear misconceptions about India and Indian culture. Illustrated misconceptions with an example of how ‘being vegetarian’ is highly misunderstood. Use your ‘human’ ability to rationalize when it comes to understanding misconceptions about any country. Believe only what you see and not hearsay and interpretations

-          We only realize value of something when we lose it. Illustrated this with a point that majority of us cannot imagine what life was like before TV, Internet and cell phones. We have taken a few things for granted. Do imagine what it means to be when someone occupies your house if you don’t understand value of freedom.

-          Don’t celebrate mechanically. Illustrated the importance of rationalizing with another story.

-          Be proud of: Rich history of India. Don’t forget it.

Ended the speech reiterating the points. I was happy to be given an opportunity to talk and it was new experience to me.

School Reunion Summary

• Very well organized reunion by friends. 3 months of preparation. Organizers tracked 50+ friends, made arrangements (a marriage hall for 2 days + all arrangements for stay and food).
• Event agenda included felicitation of teachers, introductions of everyone, skits, performances, games etc.
• Photos and Video coverage
•  Prepared album with photos and bio data of everyone.
• Following is a group photo

Reading favorite blogs again

I have used different mechanisms to keep track of blog posts by different individuals with whom I shared interests. Over the years, I used Intravnews for getting feeds into outlook, attempted to use Firefox Feed Subscription and also migrated to RSS reader.  Things got mixed up with outlook and lost a few subscriptions when I switched computers etc. Very recently I have started using Google Reader. Over last few weeks I have been able to resume reading blog posts by adding subscriptions.

Google Reader is quite easy to organize content and offers very simple interface. It is pinned as a tab in my browser and always stays opened. If you have not tried using this before, give it a try.

Thinking Less and Flower Insights

Following are extracts from the book “Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life” by Thich Nhat Hanh.

Two key messages I took away from the following passages are:

- Find a way to stop/slow down the cassette playing in your mind by whatever means you find works.
- Stop trying to find a reason for everything. Keep simple things simple. Don’t sweat the small stuff.

Thinking Less

While we practice conscious breathing, our thinking will slow down, and we can give ourselves a real rest. Most of the time, we think too much, and mindful breathing helps us to be calm, relaxed, and peaceful. It helps us stop thinking so much and stop being possessed by sorrows of the past and worries about the future. It enables us to be in touch with life, which is wonderful in the present moment.

Of course, thinking is important, but quite  a lot of our thinking is useless. It is as if, in our head, each of us has a cassette tape that is always running, day and night. We think of this and we think of that, and it is difficult to stop. With a cassette, we can just press the stop button. But with our thinking, we do not have any button. We may think and worry so much that we cannot sleep.

Flower Insights

There is a story about a flower which is well known in the Zen Circles. One day the Buddha help up a flower in front of an audience of 1,250 monks and nuns. He did not say anything for quite a long time. The audience was perfectly silent. Everyone seems to be thinking hard, trying to see the meaning behind the Buddha’s gesture. Then, suddenly, the Buddha smiled. He smiled because someone the audience smiled at him and at the flower.  The name of that monk was Mahakashyapa. He was the only person who smiled, and the Buddha smiled back and said, “I have a treasure of insight, and I have transmitted it to Mahakashyapa.”. That story has been discussed by many generations of Zen students, and people continue to look for its meaning. To me the meaning is quite simple. When someone holds up a flower and shows it to you, he wants you to see it. If you keep thinking, you miss the flower. The person who was not thinking, who was just himself, was able to encounter the flower in depth, and he smiled.

That is the problem of life. If we are not fully ourselves, truly in the present moment, we miss everything. When a child presents himself to you with his smile, if you are not really there – thinking about the future or the past, or preoccupied with other problems – then the child is not really there for you.

Coming up for air

After a long time I managed to (re)read a fiction book: “Coming up for air” – by George Orwell. I read this book long time back when I was in college. I still remember the bound book that contained multiple novels by George Orwell loaned from University Library and managed to reach each over a period of time.

I liked this book for following:
- Being very reflective that everyone can relate to
- How nostalgia can drive you to do things of past

Some key extracts from book

It’s a queer experience to go over a bit of country you haven’t seen in 20 years. You remember in great detail, and you remember it all wrong. All the distances are different, and the landmarks seem to have moved about. You keep feeling, this hill used to be a lot steeper – surely that turning was on the other side of the road? And on the otherhand you’ll have memories which are perfectly accurate, but which only belong to one particular occasion. You’ll remember, for instance, a corner of a field, on a wet day in winter, with the grass so green. That it’s almost blue and a rotten gatepost covered with leeches and a cow standing in the grass and looking at you. And you’ll go back after 20 years and be surprised because the cow isn’t standing in the same place and looking at you with the same expression.

Fear! We swim in it. It’s our element. Everyone that isn’t scared of losing his job is scared stiff of war, or fascism or communism or something.

The past is a curious thing. It’s with you all the time. I suppose an hour never passes without your thinking of things that happened ten or twenty years ago, and yet most of the time it’s got no reality. It’s just a set of facts that you’ve learned, like a lot of stuff in a history book. Then some change sight or sound or smell, especially smell, sets you going and the past doesn’t merely comeback to you, you’re actually in the past.

These books I’m speaking of weren’t in the least high brow. But now and again it so happens that you strike a book which is exactly at the mental level you’ve reached at the moment, so much so that it seems to have been written especially for you.

One gets used to everything in time.

Perhaps a man really dies when his brain stops, when he loses the power to take in a new idea.

Find peace wherever you are

Go wherever you like. Go to Kashmir, to Darjeeling, to Vienna or the Alps, you will not find any real rest.

The charming scenery may soothe the retina for a few seconds but raga (attraction), dvesha (aversion), jealousy, passion and greed are everywhere. You will find the same earth, the same sky, the same air, the same water everywhere. You carry the same mind with you everywhere. Imagination and change of place have deceived many people. Be contented. Live wherever you like – but discipline the mind and the senses ceaselessly. Meditate on the inner Self (antar- atman) ceaselessly. Here you will find everlasting peace. The mind will stop deceiving you now.

- Swami Sivananda

Ego @ Work

I was re-reading the book “Business Think”. You will not typically expect a chapter about ego in a business book. But this chapter goes into what traps one can fall into at work . Following are a few excerpts on topic of Ego

Without a heightened awareness of the development of your own ego, healthy characteristics and unique, powerful talents can become destructive and degenerate into weakness.

This Strength…	… when multiplied by Ego Breeds
Confidence	A sense of infallibility
Quickness	Overhastiness
Sharp Wit	Abrasiveness
Alertness	Narrow focus
Dedication	Workaholism
Control	Inflexibility
Courage	Foolhardiness
Perseverance	Resistance to change
Charm	Manipulation
Ambition	Coercion
Power	Autocracy
Flexibility	Ambivalence

Got Ego?

Here are some key warning signs we’ve noticed that indicate someone is in the “ego zone”:

• You are showcasing your brilliance
• You are constantly seeking approval from others
• You are being defensive

Ego defense mechanisms affect ideas and communication in at least four ways.

1. Magnify: Ego amplifies information beyond its intended significance or meaning
2. Filter: Ego selectively allows in only what validates your own thinking and experience. You also tend to conveniently discard information that is contrary to your position
3. Alter: Ego bends or manipulates information that comes in to support your own ideas or to validate your position
4. Fabricate: Ego creates information that never existed.

Bad decisions are made because … emotions like anxiety, greed, exasperation, intolerance, apathy or fear have hijacked their brains and directed them to the “easy way out”, the “path of least resistance”, the “safe route”, or “taking care of number one”

Improvised Planning Sheets

Planner sheets I have seen used so far allow making lists.

-          List of goals for a month

-          List of tasks for a day

I am attempting to make the priority of the goals and tasks visually better by changing layout of the planner sheet into 4 quadrants.

4 quadrants that are used for prioritization are

-          Urgent/Important

-          Urgent/Not-Important

-          Important/Not Urgent

-          Not Important/Not Urgent

See impact of using the quadrants instead of lists over next few weeks and let me know if you this improves effectiveness of planning.

Download attached template: PlannerSheets

Project: Dream workplace

I am looking for a max of 9 more contributors to this crowdsourced book project. Read the idea below and if you think you have ideas to share, please send me a note explaining why you want to be part of the effort with some examples.  I am going to use Google Wave to collaborate and will send you an invite to join after we have exchanged some emails about your potential contribution.  If you are just curious about how this project is going on, I will be posting a monthly update about progress on my blog.

The Idea:

You always had a dream job in your mind. You wanted to join a company that is a dream come true. The experience you have is always mixed. A few things are good and you wish some things were different.

In this book we will capture things that are working. Ingredients that can make the workplace a dream come true.

Content:

Each chapter will be about a particular aspect of workplace and best practices you have actually seen/experienced working and felt that when you start your own company you will make sure this is done. You will also see things to avoid at any costs.

These ideas can be presented in form of case studies/stories to make the point.

Ideas will not be ‘theoretical’ but something that has been tried and confirmed it has yielded the results. Actual use of company name will not be allowed unless there is explicit agreement by company.

Chapters will be different touch points of a company either as employee, partner, customer or even an applicant to the company but didn’t join

Topics will cover (but not limited to following)

- Hiring/Interviewing Process
- Onboarding
- Workplace
- Performance Management
- Work life Balance
- Communications
- Management Style
- Culture
- Training