Month: October 2011

If you take the picture the media paints to heart, you are likely to feel very depressed. Eurozone is in trouble, there are protests all around the world, global warming is likely to get worse – the world is in crisis. Everything is getting worse.

I thought I’d flip it around.

This is truly an incredible time to be alive, isn’t it?

The world is flat, connected and extremely personal.

It is flat because distance doesn’t matter anymore. We live in a large global village.

It is connected because we are all connected to each other in more ways than ever before. I realized this when I looked at the little community building around this blog – The Google Analytics data says this blog has had visits from 103 countries. 103 countries! Isn’t that simply mindblowing?

It is personal because, thanks to tools like Twitter, you know what your favorite pop star is up to. You know them as people, what they believe, what their lives are like and you can have conversations with them from time to time. They’re no longer people you just see on TV.
It is personal because you have your entire class from high school on your facebook and even if it has been ages since you last met, you’re still connected.

This is an incredible period because the world is in transition of sorts. Social media has changed the way the world works – fundamentally. It has empowered millions of us in and impacted us in very profound ways. Suddenly, we all have ‘voice’. Corporations are trying to get their heads around it, politicians don’t know what to do about it, countries try to block it – but you sure as hell can’t ignore it.

Sure, we may be in a tough time. But now, more than ever, we have the power to make the most of failure. We have opportunities to learn all around us, to get inspired, to do more and really make a difference. We’re not in the 1980s. Sure, we’ll have difficult times but now, more than ever, we have the power to make life work without employing ‘traditional’ methods. Times have changed.

And what a wonderful change it is. JLM put it nicely –

‘One of the great things about life just now is the realization how far our voices can be heard.

Seeing your rich background and knowing we can hear each others’ voices through the ether is really inspiring.

Not to go all Freud on you, but it gives me great hope for the world when you and I can communicate from far away and yet it seems like we are just sharing a coffee.

Is this a great time to be alive or what?’

The popularized version of Murphy’s law (different from the real thing) dictates that when we look for a taxi on our side of the road, there are likely going to be tons of available taxis on the other side. And if we decided to walk over, voila! there would be a few available on our side.

We tend to see this happen a lot when we call for taxis as well. We might wait for ages and then decide to call for one (= additional cost). And just as our ‘on call’ taxi comes to pick us up, a stream of available taxis will probably just pass by.

I’m using taxi’s here as the example. But, I’m sure it’s happened to you in one way or another – either with public transport or with movie tickets or with something else.

Like it or not, it just seems to happen.

The other day, I was in conversation with a taxi driver in Singapore who was talking about his general habits during a day of work. One of his rules was to go back home if he didn’t find customers for 2 straight hours post midnight. And this meanttaking the car to the car wash and then heading home as washing the car was part of his end-of-day routine.

And that’s when he spoke about how he always seemed to pass by 10 customers who wanted his services right after he washed his car!

I couldn’t help but smile. The grass is always greener..

This incident took place 2 years ago or so in university. I had wanted a few pages printed and I’d gone to a friend’s room as I didn’t have a printer. I was pressed for time and I remember wanting my documents in separate pages. And she insisted on printing stuff double sided.

Now, given she had a conventional laser jet, this meant printing a page and then turning it upside down just in time so it prints right. And so, it took longer than it should have and I remember getting annoyed. And then, something went wrong. I can’t remember what but I think the paper got jammed.

At that point, I voiced my frustration about her slow process to which she pointed out that she was doing her bit to save the environment. And I remember smugly pointing out that the real wasting is in the industries and this is not helping.

While my irritation and smug-ness probably got the better of me, it doesn’t take away from the fact that I was very wrong. It does matter that we do our bit.

I thought about that incident the other day as I was taking my little ‘environment friendly’ shopping bag to the Waitrose next door for my weekend shopping. I paid 50p a few months back for this bag and I take it along every week and thus don’t use any plastic bags. And over time, I’ve always tried to minimize paper wasting by using the back side of printed pages for scribbles and notes. I have a stack of these sheets under my desk.

I still don’t think these little steps are going to change much in the grand scheme of things right this moment. The biggest users of paper and other such resources are still the massive corporations that I/we don’t control. But, therein lies the key. There will come a day when I/we will have influence on these ‘macro’ factors. Either that, or we will be the parents of those who will. And, if we have been schooled well in sustainability and responsible use, it will show. We are creatures of habit after all.

Doing our bit – I’ve realized it matters in more ways than we can imagine. We often have very deep learnings from times when we were wrong and made errors in what we said or did.

Why, then, are we taught to fear and abhor such moments?

We live. And we learn.

I was at the Sports Store the other day to buy shoes.

I was there to replace my football studs. And, additionally, I was out to enquire how much Tennis shoes and Running shoes would cost. I was running with my tennis shoes much to the gym instructor’s annoyance. In short, now, I needed 3 new shoes and that meant an emptier wallet.

As always, I had a conversation inside my head between the stingy guy and the more pragmatic one. The stingy guy made a case for just 1 shoe and reminded me that nothing bad had happened for many years. Why worry now? He ignored the fact that I hadn’t been doing any treadmill running prior to this.

The pragmatic guy took a different approach. He beamed in an image of a friend twisting her ankle on the football field thanks to wrong shoes. And he also reminded me of a shopping experience I had had ages ago.

I had gone shopping with a wiser friend before a grass game we had signed up for. He was buying football studs and chose one for himself. He asked me if I had one and I shrugged. I told him that I was happy with my hard court shoes and I’d play with them. In truth, I wasn’t happy at all. I had slipped a fair bit in the previous game but I was a university student then and didn’t have money for 2 sets of football shoes. And he immediately bought me a pair and shared a quote that I had shared on this blog in January 2010 – When you are young, your feet are right but your shoes are wrong. When you get old, your shoes are right but your feet are wrong.

Brilliant. The pragmatic guy won it because he pulled a great chord – I was reminded of something I had preached here. And now, thanks to this blog, I now have as many shoes as many of close (girl) friends.

That aside, I also realized that we are always faced with hidden choices. When we say yes to something, we almost always are saying no to something else. And as we grow, we become more aware of these choices. The flip side is we take less risks and become more cautious with age. While we might have jumped onto a football game with the wrong gear when we were 16, we are likely not to do that when we are 32 and have more at stake. With growth comes responsibility.

I don’t know what to make of this thought yet except that we have to take as many risks as we can while we are young and irresponsible. So, I’ll leave it at that for now – as an observation. Look forward to your thoughts in the comments. :)

Yesterday, I finally put together a post on Elephants and Riders. It’s been a long time coming. But I chose to wait till I finished ‘Switch’ just in case I learnt something new about the concept. In hindsight, that was a good move as I feel I understand how to use it a little better.

And thanks to a friend’s email wondering how to put this into practice, I thought I’d go ahead and share what I’ve started with.

The problem I started with was waking up at 06:30 for the hour of power. This truly is the toughest battle of them all. This is the kind of habit that gives my rider tremendous happiness. It means fitness, completing my book reading quota for the day and generally improving my overall well being. And of course, this is exactly the kind of goal that my elephant HATES.

Ever since I read this little framework, I did the following –

1. Renamed the hour to ‘Hour of Power’ simply because it sounds cooler. My elephant is more receptive to that, especially when the alternative is 45 mins of exercise instead of snuggling under the blanket in the sleep inducing cold weather.

2. Took out all excuses – the chief one being sleep. I realize my elephant likes to believe it’s all logical. On nights I don’t get enough sleep, it will generally do a great job convincing me that sleep is more important. So, now, the focus is to get 8  hours of sleep so I can take out that bargaining chip early in the morning. (And I always have to! Always.)

3. Caused some pain. The first thing I do when I become conscious is to switch off the fan. That helps. I’ll have to find an alternative when the weather becomes colder though.

4. Found an excuse to start thinking. I used to call up a friend in the morning to wake him up and thus have a 5 min conversation to wake myself up. Then, I switched to checking email (a practice I hate). Over time, I’ve grown out of that. I’ve realized that all I need to do is get my hands on water to drink.

5. Drink a glass of water. I keep a jug next to my bed. I realize the moment my dehydrated body gets some water, I wake up.

This whole process coupled with 2 min snooze alarms typically takes about 10 minutes but has hardly ever failed to work. The big barrier is 8 hour sleep which I try and ensure.I find it pointless to fight my elephant if I don’t get my sleep quota. Self control is an exhaustible resource after all. (More on that coming soon..)

That’s my process. I’m sure you have yours and I’d love to hear about it in the comments.
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On a completely different note, if you had told me a few years ago that I’d spend so much thought into just waking up at a certain time and doing some exercise, I might have laughed (cue: my teenage self). I’m learning to appreciate more and more that consistency on these little things takes so much more grit, discipline, strength of will and character than I can ever imagine.

My respect for those who attended every class in university has only gone up. :)

One of the highlights this weekend aside from watching the 1st Star Wars movie (awesome graphics for the 1980s!) has to be getting started on ‘Gifts Differing‘ by Isabel Briggs Myers, the woman behind the famous Myers Briggs Type Indicator.

I have been wanting to dig a little deeper on my understanding of ‘Introversion’ and ‘Extraversion’ for a while now. And on Friday, I began taking a couple of tests online and wasn’t satisfied by the results. I needed to understand more so I made sure I had a copy of the book in my hands before the book stores closed on Friday evening. Given it is a hard copy book, I expect to make slower progress than usual. But, this is also one of those books where having a physical copy helps greatly (vs an audio version).

The MBTI personality type is composed of a combination of – E vs I (Extraversion vs Introversion), S vs N (Sensing vs Intuition), T vs F (Thinking vs Feeling) and J vs P (Judging vs Perceiving). And we typically are closer to one or the other – a sample MBTI type would be ISTJ or ENTP. In essence, the Myers Briggs Type Indicator is based on the assumption that we all have certain dominant characteristics. Like all other psychometric instruments, I don’t think the MBTI is anywhere close to perfect. However, it is likely to give us a framework in which to view the world (and ourselves, as I have realized) – and this is often most helpful.

Eager as I was to get a sneak preview of the pages ahead, I went to one of the tables that described the difference between 2 characteristics – P vs J i.e. Perceptive vs Judging.

Judging:  Are inclined to regard the perceptive types as aimless drifters.
Perceptive: Are inclined to view the judging types as half alive.

Judging: Aim to be right.
Perceptive: Aim to miss nothing.

Judging: Are self-regimented, purposeful and exacting.
Perceptive: Are flexible, adaptable and tolerant.

I couldn’t help burst out laughing when I read this because I was thinking of the number of times I thought of someone as an aimless drifter and the number of times I’ve gotten annoyed at others thinking of me as half alive thanks to my own routines/organization systems. I have worked hard over time to be more tolerant of other points of views because that doesn’t come easy to me either. I tend to be viewed more as arrogant than accepting and I’ve worked hard (still work in progress) to smooth that edge. And don’t even get me started on how hard I’ve had to work to not try to be right in every argument.

I couldn’t help but laugh because I finally felt understood – by myself.

A touch of understanding. It goes a long way. Exciting times ahead.

I also had a major ‘I am such a geek’ realization on Friday. Getting so excited over a book on personality types? My teenage self must be laughing..

This week’s learning draws inspiration from ‘Switch’ by Chip and Dan Heath.

Jonathan Haidt developed a very interesting way of describing the relationship between our emotional and rational sides.

He describe the emotional side as the elephant and rational side as the rider.

Perched atop the elephant, the rider seems to have control. However, his situation is very precarious because IF they disagree, there is only one winner. And you will recognize this if you have ever over eaten, called up an ex at midnight, skipped the gym, procrastinated, said something you regretted, abandoned piano lessons and so on. :)

The weakness of the elephant is evident. It is lazy and goes for short term pay off – eg: ice cream vs being thin. When change fails, it is generally because of the elephant.
However, the elephant is also the reason for love, compassion and sympathy – it’s the elephant that gets things done as it has the energy and drive.

Our rider, while responsible for logic, tends to over analyze and over think things and can brainstorm about ideas for hours without really doing anything!

It is only when we understand the nature of our elephants and riders can we truly understand how to bring about change – both in ourselves and in our organizations. For real change, we will need to appeal to both because we need both the rider’s direction and planning as well as the elephant’s energy.

I found the elephant and rider analogy VERY powerful. I find myself applying this to all the goals and tasks I set for myself. The applications for this are endless – appealing to both the elephant and the rider matters in our daily conversations, important presentations, any change effort and probably most importantly, in understanding and managing ourselves.

Here’s to appealing to both our elephant and rider this week!

It’s been many weeks since I’ve taken a break of sorts.

Today has turned out to be the day.

Since afternoon, I’ve been feeling a certain numbness that signals it’s time for a switch off. So, many plans have been shelved. It’s time for a break. (and that’s the bottom line cos’..)

This is unlike the usual weekend – which is a web of activity. And this weekend was the same till this afternoon.

There were a stream of learnings waiting to be plugged in today thanks to the learning filled last few weeks.

I almost began typing one out but decided today’s learning had to be about today’s learning.

Switching off.

Have a nice evening.

PS: I’m very excited about reading ‘Gifts Differing’ by Isabel Briggs Myers. I bought the book yesterday and can’t wait to spend some time with it. Yes, I am weird. And I’m still trying to understand myself. :) More to follow..

The theory goes that there are ‘owls’, ‘larks’ and ‘hummingbirds’. Owls are people who work better at night while Larks are those who work better in the morning. And of course, the Hummingbirds are those who can do both.

Going by this definition, I was your classic owl. Before work-life began, getting up in the morning meant an unproductive and dreary day. Over time though, I’ve begun to wonder if my ‘owl’ tendencies were a result of my expression of rebellion in my teenage years. My grandparents didn’t at all appreciate the fact that I was up studying at inhuman hours (in their definition atleast). Over time, of course, they came to accept it. And, in hindsight, I think I loved doing something they disapproved with good enough results. (My way is better, etc..)

I used to like working into the night primarily because it was productive. No interruptions or disturbances at the inhuman hours. Interestingly, by that argument, waking up early works just as well.

One year into work life, I seem very happy being a ‘lark’. My ideal day starts at 6am, followed by my ‘hour of power’ and then the work day. I’ve noticed over time that my days just flow better when I wake up early vs staying up late. And now, the challenge is to find the discipline to get my regular quota of sleep and wake up early enough.

So, again, by the definition, I must now be a ‘hummingbird’.

Let’s consider the situation for a moment here. As a university student, being an ‘owl’ is natural order. Going to sleep before 2AM was rare. That changes when you start working of course.

Of late, I’m realizing that what looks like a people problem is often a situation problem. In this case, while it’s not a ‘problem’ in the traditional sense of the world, I’m beginning to wonder if the behavior is just a manifestation of the situation.

I have more questions than answers on this one. I began wondering about this when I thought of university – if you go by the ‘owl’ and ‘lark’ view of the world, it would seem that >90% of university students are ‘owls’. Now, that can’t be true, can it?

So, when are you most productive? And does this ‘owl’ and ‘lark’ view of the world make sense to you? Looking forward to your comments.. 

A groundbreaking Harvard Medical School led by Dr Nicholas A Christakis once revealed that Obesity is contagious. For the purposes of the study, they followed 12067 subjects for 32 years. And they found that when someone became obese, the odds of that person’s close friends becoming obese tripled.

Proximity didn’t matter. It even spread across geographies. What happens is that we change our idea of what is an acceptable body type by looking at the people around us.

Another study showed that when college males were paired with a dormitory roommate who drank frequently in high school, they saw their GPA’s drop by 0.25 on average.

Marriage, smoking, shaking hands to greet someone, wearing fashionably fluffy boots and investing in Google are a few examples of an endless list of contagious behavior.

We imitate people around us especially when a situation is ambiguous. For ambiguous situations, think starting in a new job or starting out as a freshman in university.

Essentially, if we want to change things, we have to pay close attention to social signals.

I was very inspired when I heard this on ‘Switch’ this morning. It brings to attention (again) the question of the season – Who do you spend your time with? :)

And more importantly, the presence of a behavior like ‘marriage’ amidst low GPA’s and tobacco reinforces that fact that all kinds of behavior have hope.

The Silicon valley has proved that over time with an incredible tolerance for failure and mistakes.

Perhaps the daily learning habit and ‘learner’ behavior will get contagious as well. Someday.