Month: July 2011

The sign of a great experience is..

Withdrawal symptoms.
The next day, you feel that bit of emptiness that is difficult to express. Depending on how great the experience was, the void is only harder to fill.
I am feeling one such void after our annual a-connect meet. Sigh, I miss Eynsham Hall and the a-connect team.
And I can clearly remember the last few times I had withdrawal symptoms – Sparkz, RealAcad(s), Agnee, Europe Trip, Cameron Highlands Trip..
All of a sudden, this has given me a new way to measure trips now – Make a trip with HUGE withdrawal symptoms! And I have one coming in 3 weeks – RealAcad Stanford’11. That one never fails to disappoint.
But, here’s to planning many more, then!

On Keeping and Visualizing Dreams

This week’s learning draws inspiration from ‘Success Principles’ by Jack Canfield

Monty Roberts, the son of a horse trainer, was asked to write a paper about what he wanted to do when he grew up. So, he wrote a 7 page paper describing his goal of owning a horse ranch. He even drew a diagram of a 200-acre ranch, a detailed floor plan of the house on the ranch, the location of the stables, buildings and track and handed in his paper.

2 days later, he received it back. On the front page was a large F with a note, “See me after class”. The teacher then said, “This is an unrealistic dream for a boy like you. If you re-write this paper with a more realistic goal, I will reconsider your grade.”

Monty went home and thought long and hard. Finally, he turned in the same paper with no corrections. “You keep the F and I’ll keep my dream” – was all he could say to the teacher when she asked him for an explanation.

20 years later Monty was the proud owner of a 200-acre horse ranch and has the school paper framed over the fireplace.

Visualization is the first step to realizing our dreams. How many dreams do we visualize the way Monty did? And how many times have we responded to a scathing comment by just moving on, and keeping our dream anyway?

Maybe it’s time to start doing both..

Here’s to keeping and visualizing our dreams this week!

Google Translate app power

I was just standing in a hotel helping my uncle with some ticket sales for a ‘Bollywood Night’. And an Italian gentleman walked by.
He spoke in Italian and said ‘no english’.
My response was pretty simple. I whipped out my phone, opened up the app and asked him to speak into it.
Within a couple of iterations, we were soon having an excellent conversation. (albeit a slow one, but well!)
And by the end of it, he was so impressed that he made me write down the name of the phone, how much it cost and how he could get this cool translator going.
Powerful stuff. Apple – you owe me 1. (literally)
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And that aside, I’ve been inactive this week by usual standards and that’s thanks to a great 4 days spent with my colleagues in the UK. TONS of learnings – can’t wait to share. Food and sleep beckons for now.

Do your GMAT early

If you have just graduated and are thinking of B school 3 years or so down the line, I have just 1 tip – do your GMAT early. Either finish it before you start work or make sure you book a date a couple of months down the line.
The key here is to ‘book the date‘. The timing may not be ‘ideal’ but believe me, it never is. And the longer you wait, the harder it gets because work tends to get quite busy.
This might apply to your GRE too. Take it early. Get it over with. From what I have heard and understand, these scores don’t get you in but they do get you out. So, get past the threshold and focus on what will really get you in – hard work (and a resume that proves it), great references and great essays.
(I always thought I would delay this post till I manage to secure admission into a B school myself, for want of not looking like an absolute idiot then. But, having just experienced how hard it gets to prepare for a test, I thought it would help sound an early warning. So, I hope it helps!
And it doesn’t matter if you are in your 2nd year of work or 4th year of work. The key is to do it ASAP – postponing doesn’t help.)
And, just in case it helps, I have detailed my experiences and learnings here.

On Merlin Mann and Inbox Zero:

This week’s learning draws inspiration from Ready for Anything by David Allen.

As promised, the last learning in our David Allen inspired productivity series is on Merlin Mann’s Inbox Zero system.

Merlin’s ‘Inbox Zero’ philosophy is based on one simple premise – Email creates stress. And the simplest way to remove this stress is by working smartly around it.

In the picture below, we have Merlin’s 5 folder email approach. This involves:

1. Delete: The more email sits in your inbox, the more it adds to stress. Take it out of your sight! Move to the delete folder.
2. Delegate: Pass it on to someone else in your team. This is delete – except you are passing the ownership onto someone else
3. Respond: Typically, this involves the ‘2 minute’ rule i.e. if it can be done within 2 minutes, get it over with!
4. Defer: For various reasons, you may want to keep it ‘on hold’. Move it to your ‘Defer folder’
5. Do: These are the emails that require action. File, organize into your ‘to do’s’, act, and then reply!


I’ve found Merlin’s ‘Inbox Zero’ an inspiration and have managed to maintain this over the past 2 years. I don’t strictly stick to his system and work with a simple ‘WIP’ or ‘Work in progress’ folder for my ‘Defer’ emails. On the whole though, I do sleep well at night knowing all my email is under control. And that adds a lot of value..

Here’s to email control, one step at a time, this week!
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PS: For the regular followers of this blog who read my previous post a few weeks ago about Inbox Zero, Yes.. Merlin Mann and Me – that’s a love fest.