Month: May 2011

The Room with a View

He fought hard for that room with a view.

All his life.

Every day was filled with sweat and toil.

He wanted to be the king of the building. He wanted the room with the view.

And finally the day came.

‘President’ – said the plaque outside.

He had finally done it. Youngest ever.

He could allow himself time to rejoice.

He was the king of the building. He had the room with the view.

‘What next’ – he wondered to himself as he tasted his success.

And then he looked outside and gasped.

So many buildings. So many rooms with a view..

He sat dejected.

‘What was the point of all power and position?’ he thought.

‘I am but a speck!’ – he cried out in agony.

And then he glanced up and saw a quote his predecessor had hung on the wall

‘Do what you can, with what you have, where you are’

He went back to work, in the room with a view.

The Big Action Challenge: Acting on the Robin Sharma newsletter

This action challenge is to myself – Below is the text from Robin Sharma’s newsletter.
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17 Tips to Double Your Productivity in 14 Days

Dear Rohan,

I’m in Trinidad and Tobago, finishing up an intense but fulfilling tour through Latin America. Yesterday I spoke to the leaders of the government of this resource and culture-rich nation. As well as to 350 schoolkids on Leading Without a Title (here’s a link to a newspaper review of the event with the kids). I realized how much I love teaching kids about leadership.

Anyway, I’m also putting the finishing touches on the curriculum for the upcoming Remarkable EntrepreneurTM SuperConference June 10-12 which is all about helping small business owners double their profits while having more fun (there’s only a few seats left, register here). Entrepreneurs from over 26 countries have already registered. I haven’t been this excited about an event in years.

One of the modules is on “Doubling Your Productivity in 30 Days”, based on my work with some of the most successful entrepreneurs in business.

I wanted to share 17 of the tactics I’ve learned that I know will help you lean into your productive best in this age of dramatic distraction:

1. Turn off all technology for 60 minutes a day and focus on doing your most important work.

2. Work in 90 minute cycles (tons of science is now confirming that this is the optimal work to rest ratio).

3. Start your day with at least 30 minutes of exercise.

4. Don’t check your email first thing in the morning.

5. Turn all your electronic notifications off.

6. Take one day a week as a complete recovery day, to refuel and regenerate (that means no email, no phone calls and zero work). You need full recovery one day a week otherwise you’ll start depleting your capabilities.

7. The data says workers are interrupted every 11 minutes. Distractions destroy productivity. Learn to protect your time and say no to interruptions.

8. Schedule every day of your week every Sunday morning. A plan relieves you of the torment of choice (said novelist Saul Bellow). It restores focus and provides energy.

9. Work in blocks of time. Creative geniuses all had 2 things in common: when they worked they were fully engaged and when they worked, they worked with this deep concentration for long periods of time. Rare in this world of entrepreneurs who can’t sit still.

10. Drink a liter of water early every morning. We wake up dehydrated. The most precious asset of an entrepreneur isn’t time – it’s energy. Water restores it.

11. Don’t answer your phone every time it rings.

12. Invest in your professional development so you bring more value to the hours you work.

13. Avoid gossip and time vampires.

14. Touch paper just once.

15. Keep a “Stop Doing List”.

16. Get up at 5 am.

17. Have meetings standing up.

Stay Productive and Make Your Work Matter!

Kindest regards,

P.S. If you really want to dive deep into how the best in business translate their big ideas into fast results (while they actually have a lot more fun), you really can’t afford not to scoop up one of the few tickets left for The Remarkable EntrepreneurTM SuperConference in June. Don’t miss this game-changing event. Details here.

P.P.S. Watch this video on “The 11 Obsessions of Remarkable Entrepreneurs”

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Legend:
Italics = I don’t do this/am guilty of doing the opposite
Normal = I sort of do this/I do this!
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And you know what, I’m taking on his challenge for 2 weeks starting Thursday to see how it works. I’m starting Thursday to give myself another day of enjoying sleeping late as this was unplanned and I’m just leaving the office. (I’ve been told many times by a friend not to be too hard on myself ;))
So, tomorrow will be my transition day – and I shall keep you updated on how this goes!

How Many Hours of Sleep Do You Really Need? – Lifehacker

The general rule of thumb for what counts as a full night’s sleep has been eight hours for as long as anyone can remember, but it’s not an arbitrary number at all. Two studies, one at the University of Pennsylvania and the other at the Walter Reed Research Institute, tested dozens of sleepers and found that sleeping even seven hours a night will slowly add up to a costly sleep debt.
The studies lasted about four years and posted their results in 2003, but most people still operate under the old assumption that five or six hours of nightly sleep is enough to operate indefinitely, without any consequences. While it’s true that a small percentage of people can actually pull it off, the number for most of us is a rock-solid eight hours—anything less and we begin to suffer major losses in everything from attention span to reaction time.
The participants in the study were tested in a controlled laboratory setting for a period of two weeks. Those who slept eight or nine hours didn’t show any signs of slowing down when tested, but the four and six hour groups were found to be impaired to the point of being “the cognitive equivalent of being legally drunk” at the end of the two-week period. Sleeping in on the weekends won’t necessarily make it better, either. We just need to sleep more.

2 MUST-READ Articles:
How Little Sleep Can You Get Away With? | The New York Times

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We live in a world where it has become fashionable to prove we are sleeping less. And that is a tragedy because we are basically working like we would if we were drunk..
And I am a passionate believer. So, this is not going to be the last sleep related article!

3 of my Biggest Learnings from Too Big To Fail

On this week’s ‘Book Learning’ feature, we will discuss 3 big learnings from the great book on the financial crisis by Andrew Ross Sorkin.

1. There is no such thing as ‘Too Big to Fail’. Success can make the best of us dizzy. The investment banks, in 2007, were big bloated institutions – employee salaries had little to do with the amount of value they really added, undue risks were being taken without any foundation or back up, balance sheet holes were being covered by valuing assets wrong among others.
Eventually, the situation came to a head, of course. Lehman Brothers’ fall spelt the beginning of the end for ‘investment banks’ as a type of financial institution and resulted in the worst recession since ‘The Great Depression’

Big Lesson – Even sustained success can be fleeting. What’s most vital is that we always remember never to take success for granted. We are never too big to fail..

2. Firms are reflective of the people who lead them. Too Big to Fail is written from the point of view of all those influential men (CEOs, Key US Treasury Officials) who played massive roles in the crisis. And what is amazing is that even though each of these firms had 1000s of employees working for them, their fates were decided by that vital few and in many cases, by their leader. The leader’s personality reflected the firm’s response.
Big Lesson – The importance of leadership can NEVER be understated – especially in the time of a crisis.

3. The issue with losing sight of your core business. Imagine what it would look like if Google stopped focusing on search and just went on an endless spree of mergers and acquisitions? To most, it would seem like Google has sold it’s soul for the sake of profits and the lure of money.
This typified the kind of wild expansion the investment banks and insurance firms undertook. So much so, that, when Hank Paulson (ex US Treasury Secretary) was on phone explaining to George Bush about the possible impacts of an AIG bankruptcy on the world economy, Bush spluttered – ‘Does an insurance firm really do all that?’
Big Lesson – Keep constant focus on your core capabilities. It always pays off in the long term.

As you might have gathered by now (haha), I am a big fan of the book as I have hardly ever come across a book that is so well written. If you would like to know more, I have written about some memorable moments from the book here.

Here’s to getting your hands on a copy of ‘Too Big to Fail’ this week.. ;-)

He always adds value

A few months ago, my Mom received a call from a childhood friend. This friend wanted her opinion on the best education path for his kids. She recalled that while they are hardly in touch, he never fails to call her every time he needs any advice regarding his kid’s education. (My mom’s been in Education since forever..) That’s pretty amazing, I thought – to always go back to a friend from long long ago when you make a decision.
Anyway, I realized that I have one such friend too. This is a friend (a very very close one at that) who I’ve been close to for a long time now. It’s a long distance relationship (haha) but we’ve made it work.
He’s quite the ‘geek’ and loves anything technology. And that makes a perfect fit because I go to him with all my doubts, queries and the like. And I also realize that if I was ever buying any new phone, laptop or anything technology related – I wouldn’t do so without his blessing. And I realized one other thing, he always adds value.
Isn’t that amazing? To call a friend to catch up and always get a little nugget that helps a great deal! And you know what’s even better – it just happens. Sometimes, it happens because I ask for it.. and yet other times, it just happens because we speak. Many a day, I come back with a nugget for my blog (see the new RSS subsciption link today!), else it’s a nugget for my computer or sometimes it’s just some good insight into the industry.
And if that’s not good enough, he does it in his own non intrusive style. No ego, all humility, all value.
‘Aspire to be someone of value’ was a quote I read ages ago. And he lives that, where I’m concerned.
Lots to learn, always..
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If you are interested in anything mobile technology/internet based or even need the occasional laugh do feel free to follow him on his twitter. :)

Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and the 4 Stages of Competence

My tennis coach explained the 4 stages of competence when talking about the difference between Federer and Nadal –

Level 1 – Conscious incompetence

You know you are bad but do it anyway. When you pick up a tennis racket for the first time and just play..

Level 2 – Unconscious incompetence
This is a very broad group. This involves all of us who think we are good because we have put in the hours, but in truth, our basics are not good enough. So, we play under the illusion that we know stuff. This typically characterizes the rung below the professional elite.

Level 3 – Conscious competence
Also known as the zone – when you’re able to flush out great strokes. This is what happens to a top level player in a game. The more he can ‘be’ in this zone, the better he will do..
Level 4 – Unconscious competence
Also known as genius. This is a level when everything you do is just based on instinct. Examples of unconscious competence is Pete Sampras in the 1999 Wimbledon final against Agassi when Agassi termed him to be ‘walking on water’ or any one of the many Federer grand slams during his peak.
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Here, we had an interesting discussion about Federer and Nadal. And his point made a lot of sense.
He termed Nadal a freak – a natural right hander who played left because his uncle told him it would help him attain unqualified success. As a result, he is a manufactured player – a player whose concentration levels are so high that he stays for amazingly long periods in the ‘Conscious Competence’ stage. Of course, that is in addition to his amazing levels of fitness.
Federer, on the other hand, is a natural right hander. He plays so much in harmony with the natural laws of the game that he is capable of creating new strokes with no apparent difficulty. Federer in his peak was capable of constant genius i.e. unconscious competence and that requires tremendously high levels of confidence (which seems to be a big problem at the moment) as like most other individual sports, tennis is played very much in the mind. And what differentiates Federer from most others is that even in his peak, when he was not at Level 4, he was good enough to catch that, switch on and play at Level 3.
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Now, let’s shift the discussion to ourselves for a bit. I think is one key question we need to ask ourselves –
What area in life do we think we can get into ‘Level 4’ i.e. What area(s) in life are we capable of genius?
Here, the answer may be ‘none’ now. Let’s not forget the 10,000 hour rule. Federer is where he is thanks to years of practice. But, the big question is – where does our untapped potential lie? Where are we capable of genius? And if we know where we are capable of genius, are we putting in the hours necessary?
Or are we putting in those hours in areas that don’t count? (i.e. surfing, chatting etc :))
I feel it is a question worth asking..