Category: Everything else

I read a thoughtful post a few months back that asked an important question – is being happy a worthwhile goal in life? Or is it just a selfish way of looking at our grandest adventure on this planet?

I am beginning to believe that being happy may just be the most worthwhile of goals. I believe that to be the case because I think that the toughest question life poses to us is – “What will it take for you to be happy?” Life is a relentless teacher who never gives up on us. So, it poses us this question every single day of our lives. It’s only when we learn to answer it does it leave us alone. Or perhaps it doesn’t ever leave us alone.. perhaps the wise just know how to put it in context and in it’s place.

So, what is happiness? My thesis on happiness is that happiness is a state of being when we feel a coherence between what we do, how we do it, and why we do it and when we acquire the ability to be present and put all our experiences in context. I don’t think happiness is a feeling. Joy is a feeling. Sadness is a feeling. Happiness is a state of being. When it comes to sadness, “feeling sad” sounds right; “being sad” doesn’t seem to fit. But, when it comes to happiness, it’s the other way around. So, what do we need to be happy?

Ancient wisdom equates happiness to love and work. There are so many great books out there that explain this concept in great detail. Today, I aim to pare it down to it’s essence without stripping it of the poetry.

What we do – We spend a big part of our lives thinking and acting in the “what” dimension.

What career should I choose? What subject should I study? What job should I apply for? What should I do in my free time? Where should I volunteer? What should my salary be?

If we then consider how our lives are set up, the traditional job is designed for us to spend 24% of a week at “work.” However, thanks to 60-80 hour weeks being fashionable, we spend close to 50% of our lives at work. Let’s think about this for a moment – we spend up to 50% of our lives in the “what” dimension. We have more money, more comfort, more safety, and arguably more to be happy about in this age than any other. Yet, we seem to have more depression and happiness than ever before. Why is that?

How we do it – The How question is the most nuanced question of them all.

How do I approach my work? How do I plan my days? How do I think about this problem? How I prioritize?

‘How’ is the true middle man. It doesn’t exist without influences of the ‘why’ and the ‘what.’ If you’ve decided to spend most of your day at the office, the ‘how’ helps siphon out what really needs to get done. If you’ve decided to enjoy the weekend, the ‘how’ helps you dig deep enough to understand how you ought to spend your time. The ‘how’ becomes a part of what we can call ‘our style.’ But, for the how to be effective, it needs to lean on the ‘why’.

Why we do it – The most profound question them all. There may be many ‘what’ questions, fewer ‘how’ questions, but there are only a couple of ‘why’ questions.

Why? Why not?

This what-how-why funnel illustrates one of the biggest reasons for our unhappiness. We are trained to solve problems by asking ourselves “what” questions. It makes sense when we get started since solving problems by asking ourselves ‘what’ questions give us a sense of accomplishment. ‘What’ questions are numerous and answering them is relatively simple. Move to ‘how’ and the challenge becomes evident. We’re not taught to explore ‘why’ – how do you teach someone how to ask themselves ‘why’ if you don’t answer to it for yourself?

Therein lies the biggest misconception about teaching and learning. The real role of a learner is not to worry about finding answers to questions. The real role of a learner is simply to learn to pause and ask herself better questions. The real purpose behind learning is to be comfortable with the process of iteration – to keep refining one’s questions until, one day, the question becomes so good that the answer cannot hide behind the bushes. It just shows itself. The real role of a teacher, as a result, is simply to get the learner started, aide her on her journey, help the learner when the learner asks for it, and not get in the way.

You see, if we began by turning the funnel upside down, we would begin by asking ourselves the two most difficult questions. Once we work through them, the rest of the journey would become progressively easier until we get to a solution. Every solution is the “right one” only for a while. The next time you go through the same process, the questions may still be the same but the answers will have changed.. That’s where the learner’s openness to change come into question. It’s tempting to avoid the tough questions but it wreaks more havoc than we can imagine. It’s not adversity that kills us. It’s comfort.

You can run away from your hardest and most important task in a day by hiding behind a long to do list of 40 meaningless items that do not matter. But, you’ll be unhappy. Hacking life only goes thus far. A false sense of accomplishment is just that.. false. We face a challenge every single day in this grand adventure we call life. It may be the longest thing we ever do but we have nothing to compare it with and so, for all practical purposes, it is always shorter than we realize. Every day, we wake up with a simple choice – ask ourselves why or run away from it. In answering that one question, we determine whether or not we get a shot at being happy.

Acquiring the ability to be present and put all our experiences in context. This is where life shows it’s ingenuity. You’d think that learning to repeatedly ask yourself “why,” “how,” and “what” would be enough to be happy. But that’s only one part of the puzzle. The good news, however, is that if you do manage to get that part figured out, this part will follow as well.

That’s because the ability to be present and put experiences in context requires a variety of trials, adversity, and experiences that test your character. If you don’t know what it is to truly be in shit, if you haven’t experienced that stench, you’ll never really be able to put what you are experiencing right now in context. If you haven’t experienced a situation when you had to choose between what’s right and what’s easy, how will you know how to put your current conundrum in context?

Luckily, life gives us a way out – it guarantees us experience. It doesn’t guarantee that we’ll learn something from it though. That’s our job.

That’s why it gets tougher and tougher to stay happy as we grow up. As we learn to think, come face-to-face with our deepest fears, insecurities, needs, it becomes easier to fill our lives with activities by just sticking to the ‘what’ questions. We get consumed by what’s happening on TV, amongst our friends and family, and become upset by matters of no real consequence simply because we’ve masked our insecurities with our ego. We stop living in the real sense of the word. We exist. We react. But we do not live. We do not go onto push ourselves to learn, to relentlessly ask ourselves that dreaded “why” question, to stop thinking about the past or the future, and to just focus on what we can control – the here and now. We face the resistance and give up without a fight.

I don’t think happiness comes from balance or  moderation. I think balance and moderation are necessary every once a while but if everything is in moderation, even moderation should be in moderation after all. I think we need more struggles than we think we can handle, more pain than we think is necessary, and more experiences that challenge our integrity and character. Fear is a force that transforms our comfort into action. It’s only when we embrace life’s pains, both small and large, in it’s entire-ity do we learn that the only way to “be happy” is by repeatedly facing up to the tough questions and by treating every day as a challenge by preparing for it, resting for it, and training for it. Life, in the final analysis, is how we spend our days after all.

When a couple of us were discussing our trysts with crime, a friend shared an experience where he was held at gunpoint after he made a withdrawal worth $10,000 to make a big payment. “10,000 dollars” we gasped “That’s horrible.”

“Horrible? That’s not horrible. It’s only money,” he said. “What would have been horrible would have been to lose a leg or have my family killed.”

Damn right. He’s earned his happiness stripes.

Happiness is hard – the hardest and probably the most worthy challenge we’ll ever face. It’s as worthwhile a goal as any because when you’re happy, you’ll do things that are good for the world and most importantly, you will learn to love and laugh. And what is life without love and laughter?

So, to face up to that challenge, make it a habit to ask yourself three questions every day –

“Why am I/should I be doing this?”
“Is this really as bad as I’m making it seem?”
“Am I being present?”

Here’s to love, laughter and learning… and, lest I forget, may the force be with you…

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Yes, this is a note to myself.

..is that it depersonalizes the performance. So, if you’ve had a bad week on your exercise or on improving your sales pipeline, it’s still just a number or a bunch of statuses. Your focus then is to improving the numbers and statuses. Simple as that.

The downside of tracking is evident if overdone. When customer service metrics treat people as a number and remove the human connection (we’ve all seen this happen and felt it), we get pissed off. Like every tool, figuring out it’s utility goes a long way – especially in an organization.

My learning on tracking initiatives and quantifying what you do is that it’s excellent when used to build personal habits. It’s worth doing every time you’re trying to embed a new habit in your life. After a while, you will probably not need it but in the early stages, it helps you take failure less personally.

Want to wake up at 5am every day? Start a tracker on google doc, find a friend who you’ll report to on your progress every week, and be patient with yourself. Repeat progress for all habits on your wish list.

We change our habits.. and change our lives.

PS: While you’re at it on the tracking, use conditional formatting so you get a splash of bright green when you hit a target. Celebrate small wins…

You need to Warren Buffet-ize your schedule.

“If I had started this 5 years ago, I’d be incredibly successful by now. Instead, I have to…”

“If only you had started doing this a few months back, the timing would have been much better..”

Just get started.

Yes, the timing might have been much better but you wouldn’t have been ready. And I’d take my readiness over optimal timing any day of the week. The timing is hardly ever optimal. Rarely do we have a day on the road when all the lights we pass are green. If we waited for the optimal moment, we’d never get started.

Timing is the resistance’s way of playing tricks on you. It’s an easy excuse to get out of action. Often, you’re looking at the wrong thing altogether. The timing may be wrong for an opportunity you think you wanted but may be perfectly right for the opportunity you really need. Of course you can’t see it seated on your couch.

When you get started, don’t worry about about the middle or the end because the middle and the end are going to look very different when you get there.

Just get started.

I first reached out to Jonathan Haidt for a Real Leader interview on 28/10/2012. I received no response.

I tried again a week later on 3/11/2012. Again, no response.

I am a big fan of Jonathan Haidt’s book “The Happiness Hypothesis” and did not want to give up on the idea of interviewing him. So, I tried again on 3/3/2012. Again, silence.

When I was sifting through my list for interview follow ups in May, I asked myself if writing to Jon was a good idea. Cue self doubt. He had after all not gotten back to me three times in a row now. Perhaps he was just ignoring me. Knowing I was facing the resistance, I shook away these concerns and wrote him a note again on 18/05/2013.

I heard back from him almost immediately. A few emails later, we’d found a slot for the interview and one week after the interview, I am very very glad I decided to write to Jon. Aside from a wonderful 25 odd minutes interviewing, Jon is amongst the nicest people I’ve met. And I know I was very close to rejecting myself out of this opportunity.

I find myself face-to-face with the resistance very often. Since I don’t know most of the luminaries I’ve interviewed on RealLeaders.tv, it often takes 4-5 emails before I even receive a response. It is so tempting to just reject myself and run away from putting myself out there..again. I don’t even need to go so far – even my friends often choose to stay silent as I try out one idea after another with them over email (Of course, maybe that’s a hint..haha).

By now, I’ve learnt recognize the resistance’s familiar countenance as it attempts to fill me with self doubt and, inspired by the wonderful Steven Pressfield’s words, I realize I must destroy it with action and say “Rest in peace, @$&*#$&*@*^##@.”

Forget the 21 day rule for creating new habits. That’s one of the many products of flawed e-mail forwards that claim to cite good research. The downside with a “fact” of this nature is that it has led many to disappointment. Exercising for 21 days does not make it a habit.

The real research points to an average 66 days for the creation of a new habit. It goes up or down depending on the difficulty of the habit and my estimation for the difficult habit is 7 weeks or 84 days.

A couple of observations from the researchers –

– Missing a single day did not reduce the chance of forming a habit. (i.e. stop judging progress)
– A sub-group took much longer than the others to form their habits, perhaps suggesting some people are ‘habit-resistant’. (i.e. if your mind is closed, it might take longer than 84 days)

Let’s stop 4 week habit experiments (assuming you’re working on the habit 5 days/week) and start setting up 17 week experiments. Habits are only formed when we’re in it for the long run. Are we?

This week’s book learning is part 1 of a 5 part series on Personal Finance and Investing inspired by 3 books- The Investors Manifesto by William J Bernstein, I Will Teach You to Be Rich by Ramit Sethi, and The Millionaire Teacher by Andrew Hallam.

Today, we dive into personal finance 101.

Step 1: Stop discussing minutiae. We can talk about the effect of carbohydrates and trans fats on our health all day. What we REALLY need to know to stay healthy is to eat less and exercise more.
It’s the same with money – spend less than you make, live simple, spend consciously, and invest.

Step 2: Work with % guidelines for your budget. Below is a guideline split (primarily from Ramit Sethi) –
50% Fixed costs – rent, utilities, debts, transport, food, and health
15% Investments – this will be covered in parts 2, 3 and 4 of the series
10% Savings for future expenses – wedding, vacations, gifts, etc.
25% Guilt free spending – i.e. conscious spending (Pro tip: spend on experiences, not things)

Step 3: Be smart with your credit cards. If you live in countries which look into credit history before giving you loans, use your credit cards for your spending to save much more in the form of better interest rates on big loans. Never let your credit card balance go on overdraft though. Aside from hefty fees, it also damages your credit history.

So, if you are responsible with credit payments, ignore investment gurus who ask you to cut up your credit cards.
(Pro tip: Never pay yearly credit card fees. These can easily be taken off with a call to your credit card company)

Sketch by EB

I began reading up on personal finance and investing out of a personal need to understand the subject. It’s one of those subjects that requires a heavy one time investment to understand it and I’m glad I took the time. This series is the resulting thesis that I have developed. I hope you find it useful to get you thinking…

You’ve probably heard the derogatory saying “Jack of all trades, master of none.” It implies that by trying to learn many things, you give up mastery of any of them. Quora designer David Cole says this is a myth.

He talks specifically about the field of design (the myth of the “unicorn” designer who can do everything from identity design to user interface design to Javascript coding), but his arguments apply to many fields. You don’t have to pick between being great at one thing or just mediocre at many things.

“Learning isn’t a zero-sum activity,” Cole writes:

The central counter-argument here is that any learning comes with opportunity cost. Learning Python might very well take up time that you would otherwise use for studying, say, product management. This is true, in theory. But in practice, most designers I know, including myself prior to joining Quora, are not learning at their maximum rate. I have spent much of my career solving the same design problems over and over again with no substantive personal growth to show for it. I don’t think my situation is unique.

But even if you were learning at your maximum rate, the opportunity cost argument actually works in favor of the multi-disciplinary approach. Design and its component practices are like any other craft: you can always develop a deeper familiarity with the minutiae, asymptotically approaching mastery. But this is a process with diminishing returns. Would you rather carve a door 1% better than you did last year, or learn how to build the rest of the house in the same amount of time? As I argue below, the connective tissue between these skills may actually be more valuable than incremental gains in a single practice.

—

Thanks Lifehacker. A nice reminder to just learn, learn, learn. Whether the dots connect or not, you’re always better for it.

When you are standing in front of an important group to make your case, you always have less time than what you feel you require. So, it feels right, efficient even, to just dive in and give them your pitch.

That’s a mistake.

The assumption that a group of executives/venture capitalists are in a similar head space and share your context is typically wrong. As you enter and set up, they are busy thinking about the previous presenter, the unattended issues in the business, and their son’s basketball game in the evening among others. They need you to guide them to a place where your presentation begins to makes sense to them. So, take a minute to set the context and explain why you’re standing in front of them.

When you “feel” busy is always when you most need to slow down.

In retrospect, it’s easy to wonder why things weren’t more straightforward. Why didn’t he/she/you just do “that?” That seems so painfully obvious.

Thanks to our inherent flaws and irrationality, human life is never straightforward. The path will never be a straight line.

Painfully obvious is only painfully obvious when someone points it out to you.

Embrace the squiggly line.