Author: alearningaday

Washing away my International Driving Permit

Life is such an incredibly adept leveler. It always amazes me.
I just finished up with a truly amazing 1 week experience at RealAcad at Stanford last week – I learnt lots, had tons of fun, made new friends and strengthened bonds with the old.
And since I got back to Singapore yesterday, things have been in, for want of a better word, a bit of a mess. I guess it comes with having a huge backlog of things to catch up with, work emails flying in now that I am back from vacation and the like. However, there were a couple of incidents that made me admire life’s leveling abilities even more..
– I came home yesterday and realized that I couldn’t find my house keys. So, I was locked out of home for quite a while – dishevelled, tired as hell etc
– A couple of small downers that I can’t talk about here also propped up dutifully at the very same moment
– The moment I felt it most was this morning when I took my laundry out of the Washing Machine. I had been carrying around my International Driving Permit in my formal pant and had forgotten to take it off. I saw it in beautiful wet bits..
And that was just 2 hours before realizing that I might be on a project in the EU for a little while and sighing gratefully that I did renew my permit in time.
As you can tell, I learnt quite a few things –
1. Take photocopies of all important documents! Multiple photocopies!
2. Check your pants before throwing them in the laundry as they often have important stuff in them.
3. When things go wrong – they go wrong altogether.
4. It doesn’t require 1 big incident to make things feel ‘bad’. A combination of small things have just as much of a devastating effect.
5. Accepting things after a bad phase is part of the game. These things DO happen no matter what and it wouldn’t feel like life if there were no challenges.
6. Moping/’Having your reaction’ is okay – but only for a little while.
Lots to learn and time to move on.

Catching Up with.. Everything

It’s been a very intense week away at RealAcad. Intense, in a very good way – I’ve come out on the other side feeling richer in terms of learning, friends, happiness and ..life.
There’s tons of catching up to do though – post camp follow up, catching up with the 300 odd emails that came in during the period, blogs to read, friends to call (friendship day was practically spent in the air), family to catch up with, football highlights to watch and the like. And all that aside from the fact that there’s work to get done! :)
Oh, and lest I forget, this blog just got it’s 1st 100 ‘likes’ on Facebook. There are few things that make me feel as good..
I am excited though. The next few weeks promise to be VERY exciting though as a RealAcad week generally fills me with ideas, positivity and a zest for life. I feel like I have re-committed to my goal of finishing my book by the end of this year, re-committed to doing great at work, re-committed to making this blog meaningful and most importantly, re-committed to waking up every morning and giving it my all – one day at a time.
And the week only further deepened my desire to get to the Bay Area at some point in my life.
There’s going to be lots of activity coming up on this space as I begin to reflect and digest some of my biggest learnings from RealAcad.
Until then, I wish you a great start to the week! :)

On the 12 questions

This week’s learning draws inspiration from ‘First, break the rules’ by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman.

The 25 year Gallup research study on management resulted in the following 12 questions being a great judge of whether a workplace ‘attracts and retains’ the best employees. Workplaces that received a ‘Strongly Agree’ on all were truly fantastic workplaces.

Base Camp: How can I clarify this to ensure I am being productive? Are my lowest level needs met?
1. Do I know what is expected of me at work?
2. Do I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right?
3. At work, do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day?

Camp 1: Do I have people who care for my development?
4. In the last seven days, have I received recognition or praise for doing good work?
5. Does my supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about me as a person?
6. Is there someone at work who encourages my development?

Camp 2: Do I feel involved in the team?
7. At work, do my opinions count?
8. Does the mission/purpose of my company make me feel my job is important?
9. Are my co-workers committed to doing quality work?

Camp 3: Am in an environment that encourages me to innovate?
10. Do I have a best friend at work?
11. In the last six months, has someone at work talked to me about my progress?
12. This last year, have I had opportunities at work to learn and grow?


First up, I thought this was a nice framework for us to apply for our own jobs and see if there are factors missing. The key point here is that missing points on Camp 3 has very less impact as compared to missing points on Camp 1, for example. It doesn’t matter if the company ticks all points in Camp 3 if Camp 1 is left unfulfilled as you are left with ‘mountain sickness’ i.e lack of Oxygen supply thanks to climbing up too fast!

Here’s to asking ourselves the 12 questions this week!

Writing Things Down – A Think Straight Measure

Amidst a few rather crazy days here (sleep deprived, lots of learning, lots of fun etc), I found it very useful to take a piece of paper and pen and just pour out everything I had in mind.
Suddenly, I had clear direction on what I wanted to do, how I was feeling etc.
We’ll know how much of an impact this has tomorrow but my sense is that it will probably be big. Let’s see!