Category: Everything else

When you most need help..

.. take the time to help someone else.

If you are in need of time, give away your time. If it is resources are what you need, give some away to those who need it more than you.

In the long run, the universe has a nice way of rewarding you for the good you do. But, the real reason to help isn’t that.

As we go through the day-to-day, it is easy to forget how much of the good we already have at our disposal. And, helping someone else is a nice way to remember that. It is generally all in your head. Life is good.

The process wisdom frontier

As you all know, I’ve been going on and on about the idea about the idea of focusing on ‘process’/systems vs. goals for many months now. I’m sure a search for process will provide an inordinate number of hits in the past year. It has definitely been top of mind in my approach to life.

As I reflect on the progress I’ve made in the past 3 years, I realize that, overall, a lot of things have worked well. For example, I’ve learnt to enjoy the journey a lot more instead of simply driving with an eye on the destination. This, in my opinion, has translated to a better quality of work and deeper learning. It has also resulted in more repeatable processes wherein I’ve focused more on the “how” of learning instead of just attempting to get through it. And, finally, I find myself judging my preparation and performance a lot more than the outcome. That’s a big change and means it has definitely been a happier journey as we spend 99% of our time on the process.

But, there is one frontier I still haven’t overcome and this promises to be the toughest of them all. For important results, I find myself having to work very hard to truly let go of the outcome and just focus on the next process instead. I have to keep repeating the ‘you’ve done all you can and thinking about it now is useless’ idea. It still hasn’t worked nearly as well I’d like.

I realize it calls for a certain amount of detachment from outcomes and a fair amount of wisdom to channel energies only on things we control – both of which have, for the most part, eluded me so far. I guess I’m still experiencing very basic human instincts when I experience these feelings of anticipation. However, I also realize that wisdom is often about letting go of some of these instincts and learning to be above them. Perhaps a part of getting there is not doubting that great processes lead to great results. I don’t doubt the idea especially considering I’ve seen plenty of evidence of the truth in it. But, as far as my own experiences go, this has been a relatively new part of my life and I think I do have a pretty high internal burden of proof. So, perhaps, the full unquestioning belief will come in over time as I experience more good results following good processes.

Either way, letting go of results after a good process is likely to be the final frontier in my process quest. Looking forward to making progress. I will keep you posted on (you guessed it) the process – of course. :-)

Finding root causes

Every once in a while, there comes a day when I feel like I’m just stumbling through it. One mistake or misstep seems to follow another. And, within a few hours, they all seem to snowball into something bigger than they really should be.

This happened again a week ago and, for the first time, I did something that was unusual. I was waiting for the an event I’d organized to start in 20 minutes and was thinking about how best to use the time. Instead, thanks to a suggestion from a friend to relax and slow down a bit, I did just that. I stared into space for 20 minutes.

This ran completely counter to how I was feeling, of course. I was feeling all over the place and it felt like I’d only get better after a few corrective actions. But, I realize now that those are the moments when you need breaks the most. Slow down and take a step back – especially when you don’t want it and particularly when you are making mistakes. It is very similar to the idea of doing less and going to sleep early when having a bad day. The previous distinction in my mind was that bad days were when the universe seemed to go against you while these days were your own doing.

Second, I spent time in the 20 minutes thinking about the snowball of mistakes I’d made in the morning and attempting to find the root cause. I did this by working my way through each of them and asking “why did I do that?” I soon realized the root cause issue was straightforward – I hadn’t slept well. I’d woken up in the middle of the night and, as I was worried about something, thought I’d start working. Bad decision. Always prioritize sleep. After an hour, I’d realized that was futile and tried going back to sleep. And, I didn’t sleep so well. This really hit home as sleep has been the single biggest root cause for days when I’ve felt error prone over the years. I guess a lack of it robs you of willpower, bandwidth and thinking capacity. In short, you say the wrong things and make bad decisions.

A study done a few years ago found many executives and politicians barely got 4 hours of sleep.

Can you imagine what that can do to companies and the world?

The weight of those who are gone

I thought I’d interrupt normal programming today (i.e. the 200 words project) to write about something that is top of mind and personal. I try very hard to abstract from events and focus on the essence of what I’ve learnt. This will not be easy to do in this case but I’ll try.

When I introduce myself to people I work with, one of the ideas I share to help communicate who I am is – I have been shaped a lot by death. Our family lost my uncle to an accident and my father to himself in a space of 3 years. Now, the typical reaction to this for the opposite person to say – I’m sorry. And, if we’re having a really upfront conversation, I generally explain more. You see, the hard part wasn’t that we lost 2 members of our family. The hard part is that my grandmother has, over the 17 years that have gone by, held those who’ve gone dearer to her than those who’re still here. I’m going to leave the details out here and instead just say that very few conversations with my grandmom in 17 years have gone by without us feeling the weight of our absent family members.

I wish this was a unique problem. Given my general comfort with topics that are generally perceived taboo or morbid, I’ve been fortunate to be trusted with information about so many families who have similar dynamics internally. The data I’ve collected over the years has led me to one important conclusion –  we need death education more than we do sex education.

In an average lifetime, we see at least ten births and ten deaths of people who are close to us. And, yet, very few hardly ever get comfortable with the idea of death. That’s a funny situation to be in as death is one among the few certainties of our life on this planet. So, that results in whole families torn apart, relationships broken, and many many unhappy years following a single event. There’s a wonderful Buddhist parable in which a woman goes weeping to the Buddha and asks him to bring her young son back from the dead. He asks her to bring a mustard seed from a house that has never seen death. So, she goes on a long search and comes back empty handed – every house she went to had seen death…

I wanted to write about this today as today was another day when I felt the weight of those who are gone. Today is actually my grandparents 50th anniversary. I’d have loved to interrupt normal programming to wish them a happy anniversary. But, as has been a trend in the past 17 years, there’s always an excuse to mar happy occasions. I’ve made peace with this fact after an “aha” moment 5 years ago. But, my mother hasn’t, for instance. And, that’s tough.

So, I thought I’ll do what I always do and share a few of my biggest learnings from these experiences.

1. Every person is responsible for their own happiness. This has two powerful implications. First, it is that you ought to worry most about your own happiness and not sacrifice that at the expense of others. That’s because, over time, you cannot help anyone else if you can’t help yourself. So, to be useful in the long run, take care of yourself first. Second, you can attempt to help others for a short while. But, after a certain point, it is their life and their responsibility. Don’t try to play god.

2. Really appreciate the people around you. If your mind is always stuck on the past, you’re never going to be able to enjoy the present or the future. All we have in this life is a collection of memories. Yes, there were great memories in the past with great people. But, there are equally great moments waiting in the future. For that, you have to really appreciate and be thankful for those who are with you now. Be great to the people you are with. Collect memories.

3. Express your love and gratitude. Once you learnt to appreciate the people around you, express you love and gratitude. Be generous with hugs, kisses, compliments, affection and love. We sometimes treat our heart as one that has space only for a few. It couldn’t be less true. My experience is that it only expands with time.

4. The world is your family. I’ve come to realize that there is so much family out there in the world. I count myself as a person rich in relationships as I’ve found an abundance of parents and siblings out in the world who’ve taken incredible care of me. I guess you just have to open your eyes to the possibility.

5. Take death education seriously. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about design firm IDEO’s efforts to “design death” and have those difficult conversations. I think we all have a duty to understand this certainty. If you’ve experienced in some form with a relative or family member, then I hope you’ll take the time to reflect, think, and have conversations about it. Death and the fear of it shapes more lives than you and I can even imagine. And, a lack of an understanding of this concept probably destroys more people’s happiness than diseases like cancer.

For my part, I’ll do my best to add more to conversation here. Death, depression and all such taboo topics are only taboo because we don’t spend enough time thinking about them and really understanding them. And, understanding them is strangely liberating.

One thing that does happen when you do think about these things is you realize how fleeting these moments are. The days feel long, but the years are really short. And, while life may be the longest thing we do, it is still really short in the big scheme of things. It is up to us to do something worthwhile with the time we have and spread as much love and joy as we possibly can instead of being caught in vicious cycles of unhappiness.

As I type these words, there are people who’re dying in various places. Many of these folk likely wish they could live a bit longer and tell the people they loved how much they cared about them – that’s the biggest regret of them all. Some others likely wish they’d lived a life with more meaning.

Happiness is not one of those things that comes assured on our birth certificate. Happiness is hard because it requires us to live a life close to our purpose and have real impact on the people on this planet. But, hard doesn’t make it impossible, of course. To make this life meaningful, to make it count – that’s entirely our responsibility.

And, what a great responsibility it is.

Internal seasons

Of late, I’ve begun to think of states of mind as analogous to the weather and seasons. For example, this is what I associate the seasons with –

Spring – excitement and endless possibilities. This is time for action.
Summer – all is well and feels great. Won’t last forever so enjoy it while it lasts and save for winter.
Autumn – still pretty but surfaces the first signs of caution as winter is coming
Winter – tough and unforgiving and demands shorter strides

I’ve learnt a couple of things from this analogy –

1. Simple frameworks go a long way in helping us process what’s going on. This season analogy, for instance, helps me process how I’m feeling and then understand what the appropriate next step should be.

2. I wonder how our internal weather correlates with the external weather.

3. I think it helps if you treat your internal weather like how you might treat the weather outside, i.e., don’t take it too seriously (sadly, too few do this). Wear your winter coat but don’t compromise on your energy or spirit.

4. And, finally, I am always amazed as to how quickly the weather can change. When I look back, there have been moments that have dramatically shifted how I feel. One phone call about an incredible opportunity that worked out can change the weather forecast for an entire year.

The conclusion, for me, is one I seem to end up at from so many seemingly different angles – be aware of how you’re feeling, understand why, do something about it and, regardless of how good or bad it feels at the moment, keep plugging away. Good stuff happens..

Things that will not change

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos was recently asked about what Amazon might look ten years from now given all the changes sweeping through the world thanks to technology.

His response was that, instead of looking at what would change in the next decade, Amazon preferred to look at what would not change. So, there may be big shifts in the devices customers use to shop, for example, but customers will always favor low prices. A focus on things that will not change helps anchor Amazon to its objectives.

News websites and blogs called described this line as “Jeff Bezos’ advice to entrepreneurs.”

I think of it as advice for life. As we think about our lives in the coming years and decades, it should be clear that a lot of what we think will happen will not actually take place and that there will be more change in the way we do things than you and I can probably imagine. Instead of focusing on that, we’re better off focusing on what won’t change – our values and principles. It is worth thinking intentionally about these values and principles as we adapt to all that happens around us.

Despite its focus to lower prices and deliver a customer-centric experience, Amazon does make the odd misstep. We will, too. Change demands a relentless focus on what really matters.

It won’t be easy… but, boy, will it be worth it.

Despicable behavior and internet ethics

Critic Anita Sarkeesian has been the subject of intense harassment and abuse (a.k.a “trolling”) from the gaming community after sharing her views on how women are portrayed in video games. She shared 1 week of tweets from trolls from on her blog last week. Just as a preview, she has the following content warning before her tweets – Content warning for misogyny, gendered insults, victim blaming, incitement to suicide, sexual violence, rape and death threats.

Now, a question – how many of those who tweeted would have the guts to say that to her in person?

I would be surprised if one out of every hundred had real courage. The most courageous people would look to give Anita a call and discuss her point of view or perhaps disagree with her with a critique on her own. Despicable behavior is a hallmark of gutless cowards. And, unfortunately, such pseudo-macho behavior is a hallmark of cowardly male behavior on the internet.

There are 2 thoughts that come straight to mind –
1. In short term, Twitter needs to take a hard stand against trolling. We need to think of it as bouncers in a club. Users should be given a warning (strike 1), thrown out for a few days for abusive tweeting (strike 2) and then banned from the service altogether if there’s a third strike. I know this would run counter to the typical social media mantra of “we want all the users we can get,” but, Twitter is fairly niche and is really well positioned to take such a stand. (And, it looks like they’re thinking about it)

And, my hypothesis is that a few such actions will stop the rest from such behavior. Cowardice doesn’t do too well with hard action. It is just a question of creating norms – you rarely see such trolls on LinkedIn..

2. In the long term, we need more education and discussion around ethics on the internet. I spent a lot of time as a secondary student learning to write letters as part of the English curriculum. Now, I write letters just once a year but, at least, some of those learnings have been useful in the world of email. Services like Twitter are completely new territory and we need to think intentionally about ethics and norms.

And, the other question for the long term is whether we can figure out ways to reduce emotional distance between two people on services like Twitter. Emotional distance is what makes it easy for a coward to throw insults on Twitter but not in person. It doesn’t feel as “real” and we forget that the people at the other end are real people – a lot like us (see Derek Sivers’ excellent 3 min video if you haven’t as yet). I’m not sure how we’d do that as yet. But, there has to be a way. And, I’m sure we’ll find it.

Shorter strides

The skies delivered 19 odd inches of snow in our area this weekend. Yesterday was bright and sunny and the snow had just begun to melt. I normally walk fast with as long a stride as I can muster. As I began doing that today, I felt my snow boot slip just a bit a couple of times. Cue: a change of style – I needed to take shorter strides.

It worked like a charm.

There must have been inspiration in the air as I realized right then that I’d stumbled onto an interesting learning. It begins and ends with the core idea – when in slippery territory, take shorter strides.

I think this idea has many many applications –
When low on budget in your company, design experiments with quicker feedback cycles and undertake fewer expansive projects.
In a poker game that is high stakes and “loose,” keep your money close and play tight. Weigh every move carefully.
When you’re slipping on your life’s “process,” slow down and start taking small steps towards getting back into the zone.
When you’re running out of money in your start-up, focus on your customers and cut out any additional projects (inspiring ex-entrepreneur and VC Ben Horowitz describes this as the difference between peace-time and war-time).
When in a challenging period where every second of your productivity counts, plan out every half an hour in your day carefully. Sweat the small stuff.

Summer will eventually arrive, of course. We will then be able to take longer carefree strides and try out our ambitious and expansive bets. But, not now.

Winter is all about difficult weather and slippery terrain. It is about nailing the basics and ensuring we have enough to make it till summer. For now, we’ll just focus on shorter strides..

Seeking tension – the MLK Jr. way

Martin Luther King Jr., in a famous letter from Birmingham Jail, said –

“There is a type of constructive nonviolent tension that is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, we must see the need of having nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men to rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.”

He makes a profound point – tension is not a necessary evil, it is a necessity. It needs to not be avoided, but welcomed.

So, we must seek it in every form – the tension that comes from having set a tough target, the tension that comes from the expectation to prepare hard and perform, the tension that comes from holding two conflicting ideas, the tension that comes from making a tough values based decision and the tension from having difficult conversations that matter.

Move towards tension and the struggle it brings and conquer it repeatedly with great processes that you develop as you go.

Growth can’t help but follow..

Availability bias, news, and Google vs. Apple/Amazon

I think it is possible that the amount of news coverage an event receives today equals ten years of news coverage in the 18th century. This amount of chatter greatly affects perception. And, the amount of chatter is definitely not correlated to accuracy.

An example from this week is the news on the earnings from all the major technology companies. We had news from Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc. A lot of the news in the past 4 years around Apple (since Steve Jobs left) has revolved around whether Apple has what it takes to continue making money without their visionary founder. And, until a year ago, I was in that camp.

And, this last quarter, Apple sold 74 billion dollars of products. To put that number in context, that is more than the revenue of a collection of the next few technology firms (Microsoft, Google, Facebook) put together. And, in that one quarter, Apple’s profits were larger than Google’s revenues. There are similar negative perceptions about Amazon’s stock. Google, on the other hand, has had a consistent stream of positive press for its ‘moon shots’.

But, here’s a dose of reality –
– Apple makes money by selling premium devices to the high end of the market. The high end of the market isn’t going away any time soon.
– Amazon is still less than 2% of North American retail and, once cloud computing takes off completely, Amazon Web Services could dwarf its e-commerce sales in 10 years.
– Google is searching for ways to compensate for its declining advertising revenue by investing in a whole host of businesses. Google’s stronghold was on the desktop/laptop. Mobile hasn’t worked nearly as well. That’s not to say it won’t figure out the next step. It is just that the news around Google in comparison to firms like Apple is often dis proportionally positive.

All this news and chatter affects our perception. Information that is easily available to us feels right because we can easily recall it when making decisions. But, just because we’ve heard something 10 times doesn’t necessarily mean it is right. Availability bias, however, is something we fall prey to repeatedly and is a big part of being human.

The <15 word summary of the post so far could very well be interpreted as – ‘Beware news. Dig deep to understand what is really going on.’

But, the point I’m hoping to make is a level deeper – it is to think intentionally about the content we consume. This means –
1. Audit your sources of content – news, feeds, facebook, twitter, linkedin friends, etc. – and understand where we develop points of view on what’s going on in the world
2. Develop a content consumption habit and plan in alignment with the sort of person you want to be. If you want to think deeply about the automotive industry, find the best automotive industry blog and shelve time spent on reading stuff that doesn’t add value

These small decisions inform the way we think about and approach the world and our lives. Let’s approach them with care.