Category: Everything else

This was what Shanghai looked like on a week-day in December. I think it was Friday, 13-December.

The PSI index that measures pollution is calibrated to a pollution score of 500. Anything above 300 is considered toxic. Shanghai, on that day, hit 504. I stepped out to buy lunch that day and found myself coughing for the rest of the day as some particles got stuck in my throat.

I have now added fresh air to the list of things I’m thankful for.

Now, my life isn’t perfect. Far from it. It is very likely that a colleague from China might just spend a couple of months in my life and go back with a list of things he/she is thankful for. That would be a great outcome.. because, the more we add to our “things to be thankful for” list, the happier we are.

I find it very easy to get sucked into a world of first world problems if I am not careful – cursing if the the internet is slow for a few minutes or the lifts are too crowded. This fresh air example is a nice reminder that there are so many things to be grateful for. I have a roof over my shoulders, don’t have to worry about my next meal – it’s a privileged life.

As I’ve been mulling about changes I’m making in my life as I think of the next 4 years, one thing I’d like to do much better is meaningful giving. I have experimented with micro-loans in the past but haven’t found it as satisfactory. I’d like to be more involved and I’d like to be able to see and feel the impact if possible. The funny thing is that this act of giving will probably benefit me more than it will the recipient as I’ll add many more fresh air equivalents to my list. Perhaps giving is simply the best gift we can give ourselves?

Back to the gratitude list then (I realize I’m rambling today. Sorry about that). I am going to leave you, and myself, with 2 questions for the weekend-

1. How often do we give thanks for all the gifts in our life? How can we do more?
2. Do you feel you give enough to those who are less fortunate? And if yes, do you feel it is meaningful?

A few friends and I are working on solving the 2nd problem at the moment. There will be more updates on Help2Grow shortly – stay tuned.

Until we have experience, it is hard to look at a situation with different perspectives. Perspectives come with experience. But, widening our options and seeing choice is an important part of making good decisions. So, the question then would be – how do we make good decisions when we are young and relatively inexperienced? (this isn’t necessarily a reference to age. It could just refer to our experience within a specific topic as well.)

A suggestion that helped me greatly was engaging a “board of directors” group. This is different from mentorship – a board of directors are engaged in an organization (in this case, you) on all long term decisions. They may not be around for the short-term day-to-day activities – they could, but it’s not necessary. The idea here is to float the important questions with this board of directors group. If you’ve done a half decent job assembling this board, you will likely receive 3-4 different points of view and voila! Your options are here. You can now pick or tailor a solution to suit your style.

You can take this concept forward in any decision you make – for example, if you are considering making a decision on setting up a website, pick 3 friends who you think know how to do this and get their advice on how to approach it. Of course, blogs have made this easier since someone on the internet has definitely gone through what you are going through. But, for the more personal, less public decisions, triangulation as an approach works really well.

If at all possible, let your board be a mix of people of varying age groups. If this is hard at this point of your life, start with a group of peers you respect. The important thing here is to get started – triangulation is a great way to make slightly better decisions.

A close friend and I had a passionate debate about Quora over the holidays. He is a big fan and was working hard to convert me to one too. His argument was that it’s the best way to use little breaks during the day – nice easy way to gather knowledge. My argument, on the other hand, is that Quora isn’t as good for you as might be led to believe.

First, let me quickly point out that I love what Quora has done. It’s a great newer version of Yahoo! Answers to me and I’d definitely get on Quora if I had a specific question. I don’t contribute to the content yet. Maybe that will change someday.

I just don’t think Quora is a good investment of pockets of time during the day. I would prefer to either stare into space during the small pockets and try and carve out a larger pocket to lead a good book.

Why? Bandwidth. We have very limited bandwidth and I believe we must use it wisely. If we’re accumulating knowledge in a day, I’d rather we do it in a structured and focused manner. Quora doesn’t do that. A book does. I have a similar argument against TED. The other complication with both these services is that you can also spend an hour on both of these services and come out with near 0 learning or insight.

So, is it a better use of your time than scanning your Facebook feeds? Maybe. Even that might be debatable because your friends on Facebook might throw up useful content occasionally. Social media has made serendipitous knowledge gathering easy. Feedback and engagement is instantaneous and I admire the attempt of services like Quora and TED to make knowledge gathering instantaneous and easy as well.

Yes, gathering knowledge (and wisdom?) from a book isn’t as easy. But it’s better.

“Why did she say that?/ Why did he behave like that? Maybe……..”

I’ve had many experiences with second guessing intentions. I’ve also had an equal number of bad experiences with others trying to second guess my intentions. The common thread I’ve found in most of my experiences is that the second guessed intention typically assumes the worst. The real intention is better, almost always.

So, avoid attempting to second guess intentions. Talk about them. Ask when you have a question and communicate until you are clear about them. Our actions are hardly ever perceived as we would intend them to be. So, communicating intentions matter.

I have been quick to jump to conclusions in the past. It rises from my tendency to be impatient. Experiences with implicit assumptions and bad second guessing have taught me the importance of patience before drawing a conclusion. I don’t think patience will ever be strength but I do think I can teach myself to stop attempting to second guess intentions as it is regularly counter productive.

Finally, it’s also a reminder for us to share our intentions where possible so we have others second guessing our intentions less than necessary. Let’s talk about why we do things more often – I think only good can come from it.

6 months into my marriage, I’ve learned a thing or two about making a marriage work. I had lived largely by myself for the 2 preceding years and this means everything works as per your rules. Being married is very different. I’d even say that it is different even if you’ve lived in together. There’s a permanence about it that adds an extra dimension.

A big learning that’s helped me be a slightly better spouse is to let the small things pass.

If ever there was any pretence about your moods or habits (both good and bad) prior to your wedding, it’s all sure to breakdown once you spend most waking minutes at home together. And, accept it or not, we all have our moods.

There was one such moody moment a few days ago when I recall feeling tempted to snap during a short exchange. There are many variables that could have caused this – my mood, my wife’s mood, the topic of exchange, and so on. Such things happen from time to time. But, as I find myself feeling I was treated unfair, I find it worth remembering that I’m not a beacon of fairness. We all have our inconsistencies. We all slip. Let’s call on a little self awareness, learn to laugh at ourselves, and let the small things pass.

The difference between a mountain and a mole hill, very often, is just one of perspective. Don’t make the small things bigger than they should be and make sure these little moments are spent happy, for it’s all these little moments that make up a lifetime.

A close friend, who recently published a book, described the experience as feeling like she’d put a piece of herself out for the whole world to critique. I understand that emotion.

I kick-started a new project yesterday (will debut here on Sunday – do look out for more details). As I sent out the first emails, I felt the usual emotion of fear rise. I’ve experienced this fear every time I’ve started a new project. Even blog posts that talk about a sore failure on this blog give rise to that emotion. I’ve learnt that it’s normal. While it has been debilitating early in the “ALearningaDay” journey, nowadays, it is a signal that I’m attempting to do the right thing. You only face the resistance when you’re doing something that is making you grow.

2 learnings after many projects and many failures –

1. Courage is not the absence of fear. It’s acknowledging there are things more important than fear.

2. You fail.. So what? It’s really no big deal. I had a lot of good feedback and some critical feedback thanks to a mistake I identified a bit late. It’s all good as it helped me get better. I’ll work on delivering better content in the coming weeks. The prospective failure always seems worse in our head.

You’re never going to stop failing. My suggestion would be to just make it a process you’re used to. All projects come with a “this might not work” tag. Isn’t that the best part?

“Okay guys. I get that you love the game. From here on in, every game will be 90 minutes long. ”

Whatever the exact words may have been, the first signal to excited young men about to play football that they would only get 90 minutes out on the field must have been one of dislike. We don’t like constraints, at least at first. But, constraints are everything. Some of the best systems – the 9*5 work day, for example, are built around constraint. Sure, we don’t all stick to the 9*5 work day but my experiments with unconstrained workdays tell me that workdays with deadlines are most productive. At one of my clients, we had to get out at 5:30 because the bus to the city left then. Since it took most people between 1.5 hours to 2 hours to get home, there was a mad rush of intense productivity in the afternoon so we all finished by 5:30. There was no post lunch slacking off as the deadline loomed in front of us.

Twitter is another great example. Say whatever you like but keep it within 140 characters.

So, if and when you’re designing a system for yourself this month, think about constraint, e.g., you will only be allowed to hit your exercise/reading goals between 6am-8am and 7pm-9pm. It will focus your thinking on how you will hit your targets between these times. And, focus = magic.

A wiser friend who taught us poker had a couple of useful insights for the game. Poker, most of all, is a game about decisions and information. And, given the way probability works, it is very possible to be rewarded initially for bad decisions. Over time, however, it balances itself out. Bad decisions lead to bad results, without exception.

Conversely, in the short term, good decisions can often lead to bad results. Let’s take a simple example – imagine you’ve decided to spend a huge amount to do your undergraduate studies at a top university. Your financials may be in the red compared to a friend who has decided to skip university all together and is working instead. In the long term, however, the chances are very high that you will more than make up for these years in the red as it’s an investment. It’s a good decision. The results will show.

Most situations we encounter are much more complex of course. But, we do repeatedly run the risk of overreacting to bad results and not continue down the path of making decisions. Not making decisions is almost as bad as making bad decisions and probably worse in the long term.

So, how do we help ourselves make better decisions?

1. Actively think about your decision making process. Do you have a decision making process in the first place?
2. When you experience a bad result, reflect on the decisions you made and see if the decisions were right. If they were right, celebrate the fact that you made good decisions. The results will show.
3. Irrespective of the result, evaluate the decisions you made anyway. Improving decision making takes deliberate effort. And it definitely is effort worth taking.

Decision making is one of the topics I’m thinking about this year. There will be more to follow.. especially around thinking about our decision making process. In the meanwhile, if you have insights on what helps you make good decisions, I’m all ears.

As we near the weekend, I have one objective in mind – ensure this weekend is an excellent weekend. Last weekend was not. I had a lot to do and it’s showed in my week – it hasn’t been the best.

I think good weekends are critical to having good weeks and I think it’s worth taking the time to think about how you define a good weekend. My typical good weekend involves complete unwind on 2 evenings (typically Friday and Saturday), alarm-less sleep, work on various projects between 1 to 1.5 days, and play. And, overall, around 1.5 days of introversion to make it the dream introvert’s weekend in my case.

This is one of the reasons I’m not a fan of traveling on weekends when in a different country on a work project/trip – the cost of doing so becomes apparent during the work week. That moment when I complete my plan for the week early on Sunday evening, and get all set for a relaxed dinner and bed, is when I know that an excellent week will follow.

Intentional weekends matter. I plan to make the most of this one. There’s only going to be 50 more of these in 2014 and I look forward to making as many of them count.

As a commenter and friend reminded me the other day, the weeks are long.. but the years are short.

Matt Mullenweg, the founder of WordPress, had a great post up on the intrinsic value of blogging. He spoke of how numbers and stats around blogs were discouraging and how chasing popularity results in deconstructing what makes something share-able and creating sensationalist blogs like this.

Matt knows a thing or two about blogging. Seth Godin does too. He had an instructive post during the end of the year when he pointed out that his most popular posts were not his best ones.

My own experience of this isn’t too different. A couple of my most popular posts are those that went viral on Hacker News. I didn’t think they were particularly great – they went viral because they had a sensational element to it – the more popular one being a Bill Gates vs Jobs debate. I used to share my links in 5-6 places after posting. That’s down to 3 now. I’ve removed browser favorite links to Feedburner and Google Analytics, too. I didn’t see the point. Those numbers weren’t going to change the way I blogged (they threatened to, a few years back but didn’t – thank god..) and they hardly ever raised the right questions.

Matt’s solution to the problem is one I agree with completely.

The antidote I’ve found for this is to write for only two people. First, write for yourself, both your present self whose thinking will be clarified by distilling an idea through writing and editing, and your future self who will be able to look back on these words and be reminded of the context in which they were written.

Second, write for a single person who you have in mind as the perfect person to read what you write, almost like a letter, even if they never will, or a person who you’re sure will read it because of a connection you have to them (hi Mom!). Even on my moblog I have a frequent commenter who I’ll often keep in mind when posting a photo, curious to see her reaction.

There have been a few blogger friends over time who’ve written in asking about how they can be popular. I’ve tried to communicate the “blog for yourself” message but have not been able to articulate it as well as Matt. I will be able to do so now (thanks Matt!).

My only addition to Matt’s excellent post will be to caveat that very few great bloggers support themselves via blogging. Blogging, more often than not, is a side-project that helps them in their careers as entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, authors, and the like. Fred Wilson’s blog works the way it does largely because he’s a venture capitalist par excellence. So, let blogging never detract from the main thing. Your career is the first and biggest way to achieve real impact. Blogging generally is a side project.

That said, what a great side project it is..