Month: July 2011

The Chopsticks Story

It’s 2 weeks from RealAcad at Stanford now and my mind went back to my first camp in Stanford in August 2007. The camp was due to start on Monday, the 6th of August. And on Sunday, a bunch of us ‘students’ got together to socialize prior to the camp.
We walked into a Japanese place. Now, we were a group of 5 – 1 Belgian, 1 Haitian studying in the US, 1 Kyrghstani studying in the US, 1 American and 1 Indian studying in Singapore (yours truly, of course). Food was soon served – there was just 1 problem. There were no forks and spoons, only chopsticks.
And I looked around clueless. The others who had begun digging in realized the issue and 1 of them offered to teach me.
‘You’re from Singapore, right?’ – asked another while I was going through Chopsticks 101 and I could feel my ears go red. I managed to get through the meal and thankfully, we didn’t do any ‘only chopstick’ meals in the camp.
I remember getting back to the office and making sure I ate every ‘Maggi’ Noodle meal in the next 2 months with chopsticks (We were a startup and we had plenty of maggi stocked) till I became very comfortable. I even remember going back home to India and eating rice at one of the Chinese joints with chopsticks!
And, I sure am glad I learnt that lesson early that it happened then and not at a Chinese meal with the consulting team on my 1st project or a Japanese meal with my boss. Many of us aim to ‘get into’ places. But, it’s often little things (not necessarily chopsticks mind..) can mean us being shown the door.
The other big lesson I learnt is that 1 year in Singapore had meant very little in terms of cultural openness in the food sense. And that changed for the better. It’s a beautiful world out there, after all.
Thank you chopsticks.

The Asylum forward

I was strolling in the gardens of an insane asylum when I met a young man who was reading a philosophy book.

His behavior and his evident good health made him stand out from the other inmates.

I sat down beside him and asked:

‘What are you doing here?’

He looked at me, surprised. But seeing that I was not one of the doctors, he replied:

‘It’s very simple. My father, a brilliant lawyer, wanted me to be like him.
“My uncle, who owns a large emporium, hoped I would follow his example.
“My mother wanted me to be the image of her beloved father.
“My sister always set her husband before me as an example of the successful man.
“My brother tried to train me up to be a fine athlete like himself.

“And the same thing happened at school, with the piano teacher and the English teacher – they were all convinced and determined that they were the best possible example to follow.

“None of them looked at me as one should look at a man, but as if they were looking in a mirror.

“So I decided to enter this asylum. At least here I can be myself.”

—
Some of these email forwards tend to touch a chord. I guess that’s why they get forwarded around!
This one did touch a chord.

Le Vie Est Belle

Movies and songs have a way into the depths of our soul.
And this one is a soul-ful movie. La Vie Est Belle or Life is Beautiful is a wonderful reminder of the power we exert over our lives and explains very simply that ‘management-y’ concept of ‘being proactive’.
The story is one of two halves. The first half is a sweet Italian comedy – a love story of sorts. Things change when the hero (Director Benigni himself) is whisked away to a Nazi concentration camp along with his son. And the rest of the story describes the events that follow – a period during which Benigni keeps his son healthy and cheerful thanks to his undying positivity and admirable strength of will.
If you haven’t watched this classic, I hope you do, as soon as you can get your hands/mouse on a copy. Roberto Benigni’s master class. There’s lots to learn from this one..

On Changing the Question

This week’s Book Learning draws inspiration from ‘first, break all the rules’ by Marcus Buckhingham and Curt Coffman.

Mike was always in the top 10 of his company’s top 150 salespeople. But, his manager, Kirk, always felt he had more to give.
Every month, he would try and talk to him about how well the other sales people had done. But, it had no effect. No fire, no burn – Mike just seemed dead bored.

It was then Kirk tried a different question. Instead of ‘What do you plan to do to beat the rest?’, he asked Mike ‘What do you plan to do to better yourself this month?’

And voila! Mike was transformed. It turned out that Mike was not competitive at all (unlike Kirk) but was an achiever who only cared about beating himself! Mike had dozens of ideas and together and Mike and Kirk worked on them. He ended up becoming the company’s top salesperson for 6 straight years!

To get the best out of our teams, it is essential we ask the right questions. And the big learning here is not to ask ONE question to everyone but to change the question to play to the motivations of those in our team. And hopefully, we will also ask ourselves the right question in the process..

Here’s to asking the right questions this week!

Setting Recurring Alarms to get Routines in Place

Over the past month and a half or so, I’ve stumbled on a very effective system.
The problems I had were simple – Food and Sleep. Yes, the basics!
In a nutshell, I needed the following to be in place –
1. Lunch @ 11:50 am (latest 12ish): So I avoid the crazy afternoon rush.
2. Snack @ 3:50 pm: 4 hour food refill.
3. Get out @ 6:15pm
4. Dinner @ 7:50pm
5: Sleep @ 9pm
The reasons are simple. This routine is designed for my early morning wake up. So, 3, 4, and 5 are straightforward.
Point 2 i.e. the snack at 3:50pm is a big problem as I am generally mid-way through a nice work session right then. And it is much easier to just skip it and wait for dinner but I’ve had enough issues with acidity in the past because of my tendency to just motor through hunger when I’m in ‘flow’.
And what’s the way to do this? Recurring alarms. Due App on the iPhone (developed by a friend’s friend) has daily alarms at all these times. That’s the easy part of course.
The annoying thing is that the alarm doesn’t let go. It continues to buzz till I get it done.
Now, these things hardly ever happen on time (snack, get out, eat dinner, sleep etc) but atleast they happen at a more reasonable point than before as I have disciplined myself to switch the reminder off only after I have finished the task.
Does this drive me nuts? YES! Can you imagine what it might be to be half way through a problem and spend the next hour with a phone vibrating every 2 minutes?
It is extremely annoying. But, it gets stuff done. And that’s the point.
—
Coincidentally, Lifehacker had a similar piece on this idea

Dealing with worry by writing things down

Worry is a toughie. While it’s impossible to run away from it, there are certain ways that can help us soften it’s impact.
Let’s take a simple example. I realized today that there are some overdue bills (very overdue!) that I wasn’t aware of. Now, I saw the letters and I began freaking out. The whole thing looked pretty darn scary.
I always give myself 5 minutes of freaking out time when I’m faced with a problem I can’t do much about, atleast at that moment. During that time, I play ‘judger’ and think about what went wrong. In this case, I had a friend’s help in setting up payment and my hypothesis is that something broke down.
Once I am past the irrational ‘freaking out’ period, it’s time to problem solve. I made a couple of calls to check in on how bad the (potential) situation is. The (only) best case solution is to wait till Monday morning and make the payment as soon as the offices open.
That said and done, I found myself worrying again. And here, I employ another old tactic – Write it down. So, I write on my trusty whiteboard –
(The lighting wasn’t the best – hence the red hue!)
So, that’s my ‘stop worrying about it – only thing you can do is sleep @ 9pm tomorrow’ and ‘if you are really restless, finish all your weekend tasks today’ note.
This does a couple of things –
1. Writing is neuro-muscular – so the message is clearer (to myself!)
2. Clearly describes what I CAN do -> Sleep by 9pm tomorrow so I can be up at 5am on Monday
3. Tells me what to do to distract myself i.e. do my weekend tasks! (there’s a list on the side)
And this has helped greatly. I am on my weekend tasks now and am focusing on the ‘issue’ a lot less. Again, logic here would tell you that there’s no point worrying. But, worrying is emotional, and hence not rational.
And I hope the workaround helps you if you find yourself in a similar situation.

Giving Condolences

A friend/relative/elder lost a near/dear one.
You haven’t spoken to them for ages.
It would be very weird if you called them out of the blue.
What would you say?
Just make that call.
Still thinking about whether or not to do so?
Don’t think. Make that call.
Just call and say you’re sorry to hear about the news.
Luckily, being human means our feelings tend to manifest themselves into words..
Still thinking?
Don’t bother. Make that call.
I’ve been on the ‘other’ side.
And it makes all the difference in the world.
—
Inspired by an exchange I had with a friend who was debating whether or not to make the call. He did. And I was glad he made the choice, for he knows not what he’s done.. (in a good way) :)