Category: Everything else

Digital workflow

First, I must say it is lovely to hear from you every time a post resonates with you. Whether it is via the comments or via the email, thank you so much for taking the time to write in. Your notes are much appreciated!

And, since a couple of you wrote in with thoughts on digital workflow in the past week, I thought I’d share my current digital workflow in rough order of where I spend most of my time (my combination is Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga, an iPad 2 and an iPhone 5) –

1. Microsoft OneNote (laptop) – This is where I organize my life. My OneNote has record of practically everything meaningful I’ve done in the past 6 years. It is an incredible tool. I find it a pleasure to use.

2. Outlook (laptop) + Sunrise (phone) – I’ve written about Outlook many a time. I prefer Outlook to Gmail. It just works for me. I’m less picky on the phone – just use the default Mail and Gmail apps. And, I use Sunrise as my calendar app on my phone. Sunrise doesn’t yet allow me to invite people on my Exchange server – but, aside from that, works really well.

3.. iTunes and iTunes Radio (laptop mainly). I have music on nearly throughout the day. And, I buy all my music on iTunes and enjoy listening to iTunes Radio when I’m in discovery mode. I like owning my music vs. renting it on Spotify.

4. Audible (phone) + Kindle (iPad). Awesome apps – this is how I do all my reading. Audible is for all non-fiction books and Kindle is largely for bed time reading.

5. Whatsapp (phone). Whatsapp is great – all my favorite groups are on Whatsapp and it makes for the best “keep-in-touch” tool for close friends.

6. Chrome + WordPress + Lastpass (laptop) – I am really liking WordPress after a few teething issues when I made the switch from blogger last year. And, Chrome and Lastpass are both awesome. If any website is important, it is on my bookmarks bar and the password is stored on my Lastpass.

7. Feedly (laptop) + Reeder (phone) – I use Feedly to aggregate my feeds. It works. And, I try and do most of my feed reading on Reeder. I love the Reeder app. It somehow makes reading news headlines, etc., feel easy.

8. Dropbox + Crashplan (laptop mostly) – All my files are on my Dropbox folder (I’ve accumulated 8.5 GB of free space and that works well). I back up my Dropbox stuff and my photos on Crashplan. Dropbox alone means I don’t ever have to worry about accessing a file – whether it is a document I’ve created or scanned copies of documents like my passport. And, Crashplan means I never have to back up anything on an external hard drive. That’s cool.

9. Google Drive and Microsoft Excel/PowerPoint/Word (laptop). Any team that I work with typically has a shared folder on my Google Drive. I also have a bunch of personal documents I keep on Google Drive. It just works and is great for collaboration. If I have to create documents, however, Microsoft Office is still my go to.

10. Envelopes (phone). To keep track of my finances. I use this along with Google Drive for budgeting.

11. FaceTime > Skype > Google Hangouts (iPad, Laptop). FaceTime is my favorite. Skype and Google Hangouts are used as and when necessary. I only wish FaceTime had conference facilities.

12. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn for different purposes (Laptop, iPhone). Facebook primarily for serendipitous staying-in-touch and sharing blog posts (Google+ too – though I’m not sure if anyone reads it on G+), Twitter for serendipitous checking to see what the people I follow are saying and LinkedIn as an amazing research tool before I meet anyone.

13. Google Authenticator. For 2 factor authentication. If you don’t have it, enable 2 factor authentication now!

14. Fitbit (pocket, phone). I’m not sure this counts as digital workflow but I enjoy carrying my Fitbit in my pocket. It has changed the way I think about walking and I push myself to hit the 10,000 steps / 8.7 kilometer mark at least 3 days in the week. I allow myself up to 2 Fitbit points out of my weekly exercise target of 7 for 2 days where I’ve hit the 10,000 steps goal.

That’s a wrap. As you can tell, I am more a laptop person than a phone person. I think I just prefer the big screen and I use my phone as a tool to get things done while I’m on the move / waiting.

Looking forward to hearing some of your workflows. Hope it helps.. and wish you all a great weekend!

The struggle and the road

There are many ideas that aren’t taught or discussed enough – personal finance, marriage, relationships, happiness, learning how to learn, and so on. In some way, the focus of this blog is about all these things (some more than others).

One such topic that I try to do justice to is what ex-entrepreneur and a16z venture capitalist Ben Horowitz terms ‘the struggle.’ I see the struggle as life’s way of testing our mental strength. And, mental strength is also one of those topics rarely discussed even if the idea of “grit” is beginning to surface in discussions around leadership and success. Ben describes it well.

The Struggle is when you are surrounded by people and you are all alone. The Struggle has no mercy.

The Struggle is not failure, but it causes failure. Especially if you are weak. Always if you are weak.

Every great entrepreneur from Steve Jobs to Mark Zuckerberg went through The Struggle and struggle they did, so you are not alone. But that does not mean that you will make it. You may not make it. That is why it is The Struggle.

The Struggle is where greatness comes from.

Ben describes it in the context of entrepreneurship. I think it is equally applicable to life. We’re all entrepreneurs and leaders of Me, Inc., after all. And, most of us have experienced the struggle at some point. And, if you’ve ever attempted to take initiative, start something, or ship something, you have definitely experienced the struggle. Once the romance of starting something new goes away, the struggle usually takes over.

The hard part about the struggle is that it is something you almost always have to face yourself. It is our customized mental strength regime – we just don’t know it. Yes, they often tend to be first world problems but that doesn’t make them any less difficult. Problems that test mental strength are often the hardest of them all. Depression and mental illnesses hit human beings regardless of their socioeconomic status.

Ben shares a few ideas in his post that might help. My favorite is “focus on the road.” He says – “When they teach you how to drive a racecar, they tell you to focus on the road when you go around a turn. They tell you that because if you focus on the wall, then you will drive straight into the wall. If you focus on how you might fail, then you will fail. Even if you only have one bullet left in the gun and you have to hit the target, focus on the target. You might not hit it, but you definitely won’t hit if you focus on other things.”

Thanks Ben, for sharing your wisdom. And, here’s to writing and discussing ideas that aren’t discussed enough.

Keeping perspective

The biggest challenge when things don’t work out is to keep perspective. And, here are 3 ideas that help me keep perspective –

1. Setbacks are as predictable as winters. Every “up” or few “ups” are followed by an inevitable “down.” Setbacks are guaranteed. We don’t always know their exact timings but, after a while, you pick up on the pattern. There’s no point being upset about winter. Put your winter clothes on and get to work!

2. You only need one thing to work out. Setbacks are often a matter of perception. We don’t need every element of our elaborately laid plan to work. Often, we just need one thing to work out – one venture capitalist to sign the term sheet, one opportunity to work on a cool project, etc. Hold out for that one thing.

3. You never know when it is a good day. This is my other favorite. It is hard to tell if a recent bad day was really a bad day. Things have a funny way of working out. And, looking back from a day in the future, a bad day could turn out to be the best thing that happened to you at that time. So, keep plugging away.

This definitely borders on the philosophical but I’ve found all too many times that you don’t get what you want. Instead, you get what you need in the end.

The message? Keep perspective when set backs happen. And, keep plugging away regardless..

Planting trees before you need the fruit

If you feel you need fruit 10 years from now, it is best to plant a tree today.

The trouble, though, is that you don’t often know what sort of fruit you’ll need. So, how do you strategically plant trees that’ll give you exactly what you need later?

While there might be minds who might be able to engineer such circumstances, an approach that might work better is to just plant trees anyway and tend them carefully as the years go by. Invest in people, in learning, in great relationships, in yourself and share what you learn on your journey. Create your own podcast, your own not-for-profit along the way, or join other creators who you feel are creating impact. And, no matter what you decide to do, approach it like a gardener would – plant, tend and nurture.

There is a chance that all the trees you plant will be useful. Most likely, it’ll turn out that a few are incredibly useful while many of the others aren’t. It really won’t matter. The journey would have been so much fun that the result will only feel like a small addendum. The truth about the final analysis is that there never is a final analysis. Any analysis is just a part of the greater journey.

And, as it turns out, it is rarely about the fruit. The fruit disappears in a few bites. The planting, however, lasts a lifetime. And, what a great way to spend a lifetime..

Why mobile and native ads are a big deal

There’s a lot of chatter about the mobile revolution in the mainstream press these days. In my views, the chatter isn’t nearly enough. Mobile is going to change how we do things at a fundamental level. To illustrate, I’d like to take a look at advertising – an industry that has changed a lot in the past decade. Advertising is also the engine that propelled Google’s incredible growth (and, given Google is the poster child of the modern day tech company, advertising is probably the engine for the web 2.0 as well) over the past decade. However, the very engine that propelled Google’s growth is is also turning out to be a problem thanks to mobile.

The other day, my wife was scrolling through her Facebook news feed to show me a video when we passed a native ad. She spent an extra second on the ad and continued to scroll down till we found the video.

Before we discuss it, let’s discuss what a native ad on Facebook looks like

Sidecar ad

 

And, now, let’s contrast it with a traditional search ad for the term “share car Chicago” – A Zipcar ad pops up.

 

Car Share search

 

The Zipcar ad on Google search takes up roughly 10% of my screen area while the Sidecar ad on Facebook takes up practically 100% of my screen area. In an age when attention is so precious, a native ad takes 100% of your attention for a few brief seconds.

The other interesting implication of native ads is the subconscious effect they have. My wife says she occasionally finds herself remembering a native ad she saw on Facebook and searching for more information. That’s not surprising.

And, finally, Facebook and the cookies on my browser have a ton of data on what I’m interested in, searching for, and shopping for and I’m sure these ads will get more relevant over time. This has equally big implications for niche social networks like LinkedIn (not sure 332M users is all that niche but let’s run with that), Twitter and Pinterest.

So, why is this a big deal? See this graph on Facebook’s mobile revenue growth from Statista.com

Facebook mobile revenue

Once Facebook flipped the switch on mobile in Q3 2012, they reached a run rate of about 1.5B dollars per quarter. Mobile devices are probably half of what they will be 2 years. Everyone at the Googleplex in Mountainview ought to be worried..

If that doesn’t feel a big enough deal, consider this – mobile is barely 10% of US ad spend. And, the US ad spend is worth $220B. Print ads still account for ~15%. This is changing, of course. And, this opportunity is going to be huge.

5 books that made an impact – from 2014

I generally do a “Book of the year” feature at the end of the year and realized I didn’t do it during the holiday season.

So, here’s a belated version of the 5 books that made a huge impact on me in 2014.

1. Decisive by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. Decisive has been the single biggest influence on my decision making. I was so inspired by the book that I created this learnographic with a talented friend, shared around 20 posts on decision making learnings from Decisive on this blog and even carry a small pocket card summarizing the framework.

It is an outstanding book and is one I’d recommend to every person interested in leading a better life. The quality of our decisions play a big role in the quality of our lives. This book helps improve the quality of those decisions.

2. The Hard thing about Hard Things by Ben Horowitz. The Hard Thing about Hard Things isn’t for everyone. That said, if you have an interest in technology, start-ups, building companies or leading teams, it is the closest a book comes to an instruction manual. Ben’s thinking on the topic of building a company is profound. And, I expect to read this book many times over in the next few years.

3. How an Economy Grows and Why it Crashes. One of my favorite parts about graduate school is learning how many of the building blocks of the world we live in actually work. And, this book provided me a great crash course in economics and the economy. It is a fun read. The book definitely has a political agenda and there are a few things about the theory espoused that aren’t perfect. However, it makes for a great read and is almost guaranteed to pique your interest in the working of the global economy.

4. The Everything Store by Brad Stone. I shared this book with a close friend who has been working in the tech industry for the past 3 years. He said he was so blown away by this book’s take on Amazon and Jeff Bezos that he’s started buying everything on Amazon.com. I wasn’t surprised.

For those interested in technology, entrepreneurship, retail, e-commerce, the phenomenon called Amazon.com or simply learning more about one of the greatest entrepreneur of this generation, this book is a must-read.

5. What To Do When It Is Your Turn by Seth Godin. Super biased recommendation here as I’ve shared before. But, hey, I’m talking about books that had an impact on me. :)

Other great books that almost made the list that I’d recommend in a heart beat – Give and Take by Adam Grant, In The Plex by Steven Levy (Google), The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt (Operations Management), and Flash Boys/Boomerang/Moneyball by Michael Lewis. As for 2015, I have many books queued on my Audible – some of these are How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big by Dilbert creator Scott Adams, The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday, How Google Works by Eric Schmidt, How We Got To Now by Steven Johnson, The Art of Thinking Clealy by Rolf Dobelli among others. And, I’m reading Mastery by Robert Greene and The Innovators by Walter Isaacson now.

Thanks to tons of interesting reading in graduate school, I’ve been reading less than usual. I think I only read 19 books last year (I average 24 usually) and I expect a low yield year this year too (12 good books would be a big win). But, every few months, I share reviews on all books I’ve read on RohanRajiv.com and also share a summary of my notes on The BookBytes Project Tumblog – that will not change. Many of these make their way here. The tumblog is just the unedited version straight out of the Notes app on my phone.

Hope this helps. And, happy reading!

Tim Duncan and Hurricane Hugo

Tim Duncan, then a kid in the Virgin Islands, dreamed of becoming a swimmer on the 1992 US Olympic swim team and emulate his sister. His mother instilled an incredible work ethic in him and he became a nationally ranked swimmer by age 13 in 1989.

But, hurricane Hugo swept through the Virgin Islands in 1989 and destroyed the only Olympic size pool in his home island of St Croix. Now, the only remaining place to practice swimming was the Carribean sea and this dented Tim’s enthusiasm as he was afraid of sharks. Following that, his mother died from breast cancer taking away his desire to swim.

While the Virgin Islands might have lost many a talented swimmer then, Tim began focusing on basketball thanks to encouragement from his brother-in-law. While there are few are blessed with Tim’s prodigious athletic ability, he only started playing basketball in his 9th grade – considered late by every standard. However, thanks to that work ethic and a constructive response to a tough situation, he went on to win 5 NBA championships and is often named the greatest power forward of all times.

It is safe to say that went well.

If it wasn’t for hurricane Hugo, we might perhaps have never seen Tim Duncan, the legendary basketball player. However, given his work ethic, we’d likely have seen or heard about Tim Duncan, the great swimmer.

There is no human being on the planet who doesn’t face challenges. Very few, however, respond like Tim and simply rise above them.

Thanks Tim – for showing the way, and for reminding us that it isn’t what happens to us that matters. It all comes down to how we respond.

This will come of use again

Often, the biggest reason for shoddy work is the belief that what we’re learning or doing will never come of use. We don’t like it, we perceive it useless and we try to do the minimum and move on.

I’ve found, however, that the world conspires (with unerring consistency) to make sure you have to do it again. I have so many comical instances where I put in the minimum required effort to get something done with the belief that I’ll never have to do so again and then found myself having to re-do it properly a few days/months down the line.

The enlightened approach to this is to just do things well. That is easier said than done, of course. Applying yourself to everything you do requires a consistency of effort and a commitment to focus and discipline that is unusual.

But, the benefit of doing things well is that, if and when you need to do them again (and you will) at a later time, you will remember the Steve Jobs line and say ‘Ah, the dots do connect.’

Because they do.

Building teams that innovate – learning from history

I am reading “The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks” Created the Digital Revolution.” I realized I didn’t know much about the early history of the digital age and have, so far, found it fascinating. I’m still only 25% into the book and am beginning to see a trend in how innovative teams that shaped the digital age were built.

1. Multi-disciplinary teams. Great technology breakthroughs were not made by a group of computer scientists working together. Instead, they involved groups of theoretical physicists, chemists and programmers who came together. This was the case in the creation of the early computers at University of Penn and in the case of the semiconductor at Bell Labs.

Bell Labs was a great example of a place that was simply bustling with innovative ideas. Its DNA was built on the fact that it kept exposing scientists to others with different expertise. Steve Jobs was so inspired by Bell Labs that he designed the Pixar headquarters (and, perhaps, Apple, too?) to mimic Bell Labs. At the Pixar headquarters, you are forced to bump into others from different parts of the organization at the large Atrium. It is, as Jobs described it, a place that “promoted promoted encounters and unplanned collaborations.”

2. An intersection of science and the arts. Ada Lovelace, John von Neumann, Steve Jobs were examples of people who brought together two seemingly unconnected disciplines. This is, in some ways, related to point 1 but still worth a separate call out. All 3 were credited with visionary thinking that shaped the digital age and, perhaps, it was only made possible by their position at that intersection.

3. Teams that combined individual genius and great team spirit. We like building tales of the individual inventor. But, great inventions were largely built by teams. What is distinctive about nearly every one of these teams is that they combined individual genius (often one or two within the group) and great team spirit from working really well together. Not all these times lasted long because of recurring issues around ego, but when they did, they worked fantastic.

This point is a great guide to anyone looking to build a great team. You want to encourage individual genius in your team and, at the same time, do your best to foster team spirit. It always feels safer to just bring people whose egos don’t clash. But, then, you lose edge. And, edge is often what make teams great.

The email tool

Email has been around for 30+ years now. And, despite its ubiquity, it still polarizes. Email has also been declared dead many a time in these 21 years but still manages to stick on. If you read Cal Newport’s excellent blog, you will likely see regular posts telling you – it’s okay to be bad at email. There are tons of productivity blogs who’ve written about inbox zero, the 2 minute rule, etc., etc. So, which is the truth?

Here’s how I think of email –

1. Email is a near-ubiquitous communication tool. It is important to think of it as a communication tool and not a getting-things-done tool or productivity tool. Email just helps get messages across.

2. This leads us to the question – where is email most useful? Email is most useful in any work that requires connection because, well, it helps connect people. “Duh” – you might say. Forgive me for stating the obvious.

3. So, for researchers who need to spend more time reading and digesting complex scientific paper, Cal is absolutely right. Email isn’t a necessity.

4. However, if you work in the “connection” economy, I believe it is essential you learn how to use the tool. If you lead a team of really busy people or a team of people at different locations (increasingly the norm), for instance, being bad at email is really not an option. A CEO who doesn’t do email well can repeatedly stall an entire organization.

5. Did we communicate well before email? Sure, we did. We survived just fine without computers too. While we could argue about whether our quality of lives have improved, the fact is – things have changed. As things stand now, email is the norm for a tool of communication. Figure out a way to deal with it.

6. Notice, my message isn’t to respond to every email. Just figure out a way to deal with it – set expectations on how you respond and help folks who work with you understand what to expect. This may become easier as you become more busy/sought after/important as people understand you have a lot on your plate. But, I’d argue that it probably never gets much easier.

7. You can definitely choose to view email as a necessary evil. But, given many of us spent at least 30 minutes to an hour on our inbox in our working lives, I’d imagine that view isn’t doing us much good. Every once in a while, I get a completely serendipitous email from someone I haven’t heard from in a long time and I feel really thankful for the awesomeness that is email. If you aren’t getting such emails, be that someone and send someone you are thinking about a nice personal note..

8. Also, email can be incredibly helpful in making connections with people you have never met. I’ve been fortunate to meet some really cool people after some persistent emailing. So, if you haven’t gotten around to using the email tool for that, well, it is about time..

Email is a tool we’re going to have live with. I’d recommend the following – Take some time really think about how you plan to work with it, learn to use it to your advantage (it is definitely a skill) and love it. Love is a verb, after all.