Author: alearningaday

Everybody is a Reporter today. Of course, just being a reporter doesn’t necessitate that the quality of reporters has gone up. But, thanks to Facebook, Twitter, Blogs and the like, there is a lot of reporting going on.

A hundred years ago, if a company committed fraud, all it had to do was make sure the news never got to 10 major news publications. Now, all it can do is send it’s Media Relations team to do some crisis management. It’s transparent. It’s different. (Better is a point of view)

The consequence if you are planning on/are doing important work and leading, is that you better have your own soapbox. Ensure there is a place where you can make your stand and views clear. Besides, in a very noisy space filled with messages from every Tom, Dick and Harry, you want your voice to be very clear and audible to those who want to listen to you.

Image by Grant

Take the time, and effort. It’s the only way forward. Media and marketing will never go away. At the end of the day, it’s not about who you know but who knows you.

PS: Even with all this effort, it will probably take you roughly 10 years to become an overnight sensation.

I tend to look at every little assignment as a project of sorts. So, every big project has a whole bunch of small projects.

And when a project doesn’t get done in a way that satisfy the ‘giver’ of the project or the ‘doer’ of the project, most of the time, the issue is one of structure. Infusing structure in a project is fairly straightforward – ask the 4Ws and H questions.

Why are we doing this? i.e. Purpose, Reason

What outputs are we expected to deliver? i.e. Deliverables, Scope

By When are we expected to do this? i.e. Timeline

Who will be the stakeholders? i.e. Team, sponsors

How are we planning to do it? i.e. Method, Plan

The reason most projects are structured wrong is that there hardly ever seems time to clarify most of these questions at the start of the project. This is a period when we are driven by adrenaline at the thought of the change we are hoping to bring. Questions around scope and timeline may be answered but the purpose, the deliverables and the stakeholder engagement is hardly ever done properly because this stuff takes time.

When we don’t spend the time upfront, it inevitably comes back to bite us and requires us to spend much more time aligning everyone involved and clarifying purpose.

Ever wondered why so many projects end up in the back burner? Now you know..

Tools are sources of immense power. The personal computer gave many individuals the power to do what only big corporations could do, until then. The internet has levelled the playing field further and social media even more so.

Now, as an individual, you can have your own mega phone/soap box, you can use state-of-the-art tools to build something on your own and even disrupt an industry while you are at it.

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While it is justified that we work hard to further understand how to use tools like the computer, the iPad, the internet, social media etc, it can be argued that we forget to learn to harness the greatest tool of them all – our mind.

All the productivity tools in the world are futile if our mind isn’t firmly in our grasp. The wonderful creation that it is, it can both lead us to experience moments of genius and equally, drive us crazy.

Self control, will power and discipline – the real tools of power. That’s where genius truly lies..

Regulars here know that I have been running on a “gamification” system for about 2 and a half years now. This involves giving myself points for various activities that involve ‘producing’ or contributing to productivity in a day and then tallying a score at the end of the day.

In many ways, I put the system on hold for a couple of weeks as a test of how life would work without it during crisis mode. The simple answer – not very well. And I began thinking about why that was the case.

There was one obvious thing missing – I wasn’t exercising enough without the pressure and a change in geography meant I had thrown out my exercising routine but otherwise, overall productivity didn’t seem to suffer. 1 other thing did dip though – Happiness.

And, last Thursday, I finally stumbled on why that was the case. I realize what I missed most was the act of ‘closing the day’ i.e. tallying the score for the day, sending an email to my friend-coach to report the score for the day and thus shutting the day in my head. I was then ready for a quick bath (my trouble tree) and ready for what remained of the evening (i.e. end of day). This act of ‘closing the day’ compartmentalized the day in my head and I was ready to start the next day fresh and renewed. (Sometimes, the new day began a couple of hours after the old day closed but that almost never matters is what I have come to realize!)

I realized weekends had a similar effect. My ‘close the week’ task was sending my ‘Sunday Hello’ to framily. This email where I put together the biggest events of the week and often my biggest learnings from it signifies the end of the week in my head. When these systems are operational, I realize I live in day-tight, and then week-tight compartments where spills of worries and troubles are restricted by these boundaries.

Boundaries matter, a lot. A football game is no fun if there is no clear pitch. One would argue that the smaller the pitch, the more fun the game is thanks to the skill levels required to manoeuvre the ball around. Life isn’t any different.

Image by Nigel Mykura

2 and a half years into a system, I often forget why some things are done the way they are done. I just know they work well. But, a couple of weeks without these structures have taught me how and why they add immense value.

Big insight.

This week’s book learning is from ‘Switch’ by Chip and Dan Heath.

One of the biggest shifts in the world of therapy was to focus on solutions rather than problems. Thus, solution focused therapy was born.

A key part of that switch was actually just one question from the counsellor.

“Can I ask you a strange question? Suppose you go to the bed tonight and sleep well and while you are sleeping, a miracle happens and all your troubles are solved. When you wake up in the morning, what’s the first small sign you’d like to see that would make you feel the problem is gone?”

For a couple undergoing counselling, the conversation progressed..

“I’d be happy to feel at ease. I’d be more pleasant to Bob, not jumping down his throat all the time.”

“What will you do instead?”

“Well, there would be more understanding and we would listen more to each other.”

“How can you tell?”

“Well, I guess we’d make eye contact and nod at the right places. Yes, we’d both respond to what the others were saying. ”

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I thought it was a very cool insight. We all know big problems are solved by breaking them down into small, actionable chunks. But, thinking of solutions in terms of small signs feels both realistic and fun!

I can’t wait to test the miracle question on myself..

Here’s to solving our problems by asking ourselves the ‘miracle question’ this week!

One of the consequences of a daily learning blog of a personal nature like this one is that what you say on the blog generally corresponds a heck of a lot with what you are going through in life. I’ve said this many times but I find myself reminded of this from time to time.

If you are in difficult times, you allude to it many a time with your posts. It’s just the nature of the game and it’s part of being yourself, being authentic. I always do my best to stay away from the specifics of discussing highs and lows but if you are a regular, you will likely make out rather easily as to whether the general trajectory is upwards or downwards.

I was thinking about faith the other day in the context of a tough period. I am not a religious person but I am fairly spiritual. I believe in a force and in a concept called God. It’s just my faith. Being a Hindu by religion, I don’t like going to temples – especially the big, popular ones often frequented by those who go there out of habit, or to find purpose. I guess I am a bit of a rebel by nature and I like to delude myself about the ‘purity’ of my beliefs/way of doing things.

One of the lines in my personal mission statement is to ‘Seek and Merit Divine Help.’ I don’t know if there does exists a concept called divine help. Again, it’s a belief, an act of faith and it’s something I’ve become conscious of in the last 3 years. I remember I had turned agnostic for a big part of the first 3 years of university. I felt faith didn’t serve a purpose.. until I hit one of the most longest profound ‘low’ periods I’ve every experienced and found myself naturally clutching at faith to feel calmer, better and probably most importantly, give me hope.

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Ever since, I’ve always done my best to set a few minutes aside every weekend for a ‘thank you’ prayer so I don’t just think of divine help when I am in trouble. That said, even when I’m in trouble, I’ve never really asked for help. My mom always taught me to say thank you for all I had. I still do that.

These days, more than ever, I do my best to remind myself that tough times exist to give us a sense of meaning and difficulty in our lives. We couldn’t be heroes of our own life if we didn’t have obstacles we had to overcome. Thank god for them. Can you imagine a narrative to your grandchildren without these challenges and obstacles? Joy wouldn’t be good if it wasn’t for pain.

And at the end of the day, especially post my trek to the Himalayas, I am doing my best to remind myself often enough that life.. is indeed very good.

Thank god for that.

Thanks to iBooks, I’ve been doing a lot of ‘light reading’ and I’m loving it. The subject of the light reading has been Sherlock Holmes.

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I had read Hercule Poirot, Agatha Christie’s detective and used to like them lots. Sherlock, arguably, takes it up a notch. I love his casual swagger and focus on the absolute basics. I must admit that the fact that my guesses of the criminal and nature of the crime have been right 70-80% of the time and that has definitely increased my enjoyment. As a friend rightly point out, in Holmes’ case, you get to see most clues that help him solve the problem. (That was not the case with Poirot)

The other fact that adds to the fun is a knowledge of London. I can mentally picture most locations mentioned in the book, their journeys and the like. It’s amazing to think that they talk of taking the same underground 130 odd years ago as I’ve taken many a time in the past 1 and a half years.

So, for today, I thought I’d share a short exchange I bookmarked from the ‘The Adventure of The Noble Bachelor’. Lord St Simon, a haughty British noble meets Holmes and tries to point out that Holmes should count himself fortunate to have someone of his ‘class’.

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“A most painful matter to me, as you can most readily imagine, Mr. Holmes. I have been cut to the quick. I understand that you have already managed several delicate cases of this sort sir, though I presume that they were hardly from the same class of society.”

     “No, I am descending.”

     “I beg pardon.”

     “My last client of the sort was a king.”

     “Oh, really! I had no idea. And which king?”

     “The King of Scandinavia.”

     “What! Had he lost his wife?”

     “You can understand,” said Holmes suavely, “that I extend to the affairs of my other clients the same secrecy which I promise to you in yours.”

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I felt like I had to clap when I read this!

Are you a Holmes or Poirot fan? Are there any fictional characters you love? Look forward to hearing about it in the comments.

I’ve discussed life as an ECG a few times here. The specialty of an ECG is that every up and down are of a different depth/height. And while some of the ups are incredibly high, some of the downs are incredibly low as well.

The beauty of being human is that we have the power to play ‘Observer’ i.e. we can step out of our current selves and view the situation we are in perspective. Late Stephen Covey called that the ‘space’ in which we had the ability choose a response. You could call that ‘our consciousness’ but all fancy names aside, it gives us a unique ability, if channelled.

I was playing ‘the observer’ two days ago and realized I was hitting one of the lowest points of an curve in a long time. And a few hours later, voila! I felt like I had hit the lowest point.

This was a very liberating experience as I have a tremendous faith in hitting rock bottom because the only way you can go is… up!

I may yet be proved wrong but that feeling of a surge of enthusiasm is a good one. Maybe life is really moving from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm?

‘Even this will pass away.’

I’ve paused the series on Structuring for a week on ‘Work Hacks Wednesdays’ choosing a topic that came to mind yesterday, Professionalism.

I’ve often thought about this question – what is professionalism?

I wasn’t sure, in the early days, if professionalism meant being the dedicated work soldier and never ever bringing or expressing personal issues. These days, I feel differently.

As a friend said, work problems are much easier to deal with than personal problems. We get by deadlines, key meetings, presentations okay. Yes, not all of them work out but we still get by okay. The tougher problems to deal with are always personal one – someone fell sick, something on the personal admin front went wrong. So, do we take these problems to work or pretend all is well in our world?

My take on professionalism is that while we all have our own authentic styles of conducting ourselves at work, deal with problems etc, professionalism is continually prioritizing long term effectiveness above all else and this is done in a way that your immediate team know that, personal issues or not, they can always count on you to do the right thing for your current project or commitment.

As I type this, I realize that my definition of Professionalism seems to come close to that of integrity i.e. making and keeping commitments. Perhaps, that’s what professionalism is? To keep up our integrity in the heat of fire?

Lifehacker, over the years, has been a very good source of articles on sleep. And I’m a regular follower on this topic as I find sleep to be the single biggest contributor to my energy. There is a noticeable difference between days I’m sleep deprived and days I’m not.

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I was once theorizing about sleep with a light sleeper and my thesis around having great sleep was going to bed feeling mentally tired. Physical tiredness is ideal as well but it’s still optional. Mental tiredness is critical. There was no science behind this assertion though.

So, I must admit I was happy to note a line in their latest article on sleep and productivity that said ‘for the highest quality of sleep, you need to be drained, both physically and mentally.’

I cannot agree more. A caveat here – we all have different mental capacities and as a result, it’s vital that you do what it takes to stretch your minds. The reason I say this is because I notice the difficulty some incredibly smart people have – they need a lot more mental activity to feel ‘drained’ and hence, they take ages to fall off to sleep. I, on the other hand, have no such problem. :-) Leave it to you to draw your own conclusions..