A Learning a Day

I sometimes wonder if most of the institutions we have dreamed up as human beings exist to fill that gap, that massive emptiness created by a lack of purpose.

I find these institutions to be of 2 kinds – the ‘bigger than yourself’ institutions i.e. religion, organized sports where you are part of something bigger than yourself and the ‘keep me busy enough so I don’t notice’ kind that involves everything we do to avoid getting ‘bored’ regularly – regular socializing and maybe, most work?

As developed as we are as a race, it’s amazing that we still ask ourselves ‘What should I do now to feel better?’, ‘What kind of job will make me happy?’, ‘What should I do different?’ – as if ‘what’ ever gave us the answer.

Perhaps we should just stop asking and listening to ‘what’ questions for a week. And replace them all with ‘why’.

Why am I not feeling good? Why am I not happy with what I do? Why am I always looking for something different to do? Why do I work?

Of course, it’s scary. And of course, most attempts will give us the wrong answers.

But, the way I see it, it’s better to attempt to solve the right questions than to spend a lifetime solving the wrong ones..

I have noticed a trend when I attempt to bring about change in myself. Every change goes through a very definite cycle.

Thought -> Decision -> Action -> Result

And this never changes. There are times when I read something, mull it for ages before acting on it. For example, the Godin advice on changing the first thing I do every morning from consumption (checking feeds, email) to production like blogging was out there in January. It’s practically been in the ‘thought’ phase for a long while. Not actively, but sub consciously. And finally, as of 3 days ago, I decided to throw it out.

What changed? Frustration and annoyance came into the picture. I found myself annoyed at passively taking in information first thing at the morning. The learning came to mind. Okay. No excuses. Time to change.

As a result, I find the change from thought to decision critical in bringing about change and in my case, that frustration and annoyance at myself. This was a comparatively smaller decision, of course. Every 2-3 months, I am pushed to make a big change in my self management game for some reason or the other. Sometimes, it’s to wind down, other times it’s to wind up and in day before yesterday’s case, it was to reduce the number of focus points because there was simply too much to do in a day and I was getting overwhelmed.

Change is good. But, change is hard. And I go through the same process (when I really want to push for change, these typically take a week each). And the breakthrough is typically the day when I’m really frustrated and annoyed with myself.

I felt that frustration and annoyance on Tuesday. And, for a change, I was very happy in my heart of hearts because I sensed imminent change. It bubbled for a while.. and then the change came. My daily focus list was brutally cut down to the most essential tasks until the end of October. I am still moving from decision to action but I’ve gone through the most difficult part of the change curve and I’m more confident of moving things along now.

The biggest ability we humans have compared to animals is the ability to observe ourselves and take an outside view in a situation where we are very involved in. It really is a fascinating ability because that’s the ability that gives us the deepest learnings.. learnings about ourselves.

When I started out reading AVC, a daily blog by venture capitalist Fred Wilson, I used to be critical about typos. There was typically one every post and I used to point them out in the comments once a while. Those were the days when I only blogged ‘long form’ occasionally. Now that I do a ‘long form’ post a day, I have all sympathy for typos. I think I have one a day, too! You’ve got to feel the pain.. :-)

The idea of structuring topics by days of the week (Eg: Work Hacks Wednesday) also comes from the structure I see him adopt. He does MBA Mondays and Fun/Feature Fridays. I can see the benefit. It helps simplify blogging every day. And now, for the first time, I’m copying another Fred Wilson feature – a series! And funnily, it was because I was wondering how I would cover the very useful topic of ‘structuring’ in a post. And, of course, the series idea made perfect sense..

How does this relate to structuring? Structuring, in my mind, is breaking things down to digestible/comprehensible chunks to help ourselves and others understand the situation at hand and what we/they need to do.

So, structuring in the case of an ambiguous thing like daily blogging is adding bits of consistency like a work hack every Wednesday or an interview every fortnight. That sounds an awful lot like organization, of course but it isn’t. Structuring is a lot more than just organization. It’s an approach, a way of thought that translates into what we do. And most importantly, it is one that can be learnt.

I feel structuring, as a skill, is underrated and is one that should be taught in schools. While we love emphasising people who get things done, getting things done effectively always involves upfront structuring. In essence, it’s operationalizing what Stephen Covey describes as ‘Begin with the end in mind.’

Of course, I’m not claiming to the most structured person around by any means but I’ve learnt a lot over the past few years or so thought I would put down some ideas that help me structure –

1. Verbal Communication
2. Written Communication
3. Presentations
4. Projects
5. Thought

Any other requests/ideas for the series is, of course, welcome.

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I am experimenting writing without the traditional image. Thanks to nudges from William and Nishanth and reading this blog post on using images from Google Images, I am contemplating stopping using images altogether. Thoughts on this are much appreciated as well!

One of the habits that’s been on my mind as one ripe for change is my habit of waking up by looking at ‘Reeder’ and ‘Gmail’ on my iPhone. My excuse is that it is the easiest way to wake up with no snooze alarms.

Essentially, my excuse results in content consumption first thing in the morning.

Image Source: Rick

I remember a Seth Godin post from ages ago on the first thing you do when you sit down at your computer.

If you’re a tech company or a marketer, your goal is to be the first thing people do when they start their day. If you’re an artist, a leader or someone seeking to make a difference, the first thing you do should be to lay tracks to accomplish your goals, not to hear how others have reacted/responded/insisted to what happened yesterday.

It’s time to change this. Thanks Seth.

I am bullish about a couple of things –

– If you work hard, stay focused and dedicated, good things always lie ahead.

– The best times ALWAYS lie ahead.

– You never peak. In fact, like U2 believed, you are always ‘arriving’ as a phenomenon.

– If you are building things for others… even if you don’t manage to change the world as you imagined it, you definitely changed yourself and made a dent that you likely cannot even see.

There’s probably a few more on the ‘bullish’ list. But, these 3 things I strongly believe.

Optimism, at the end of the day, is a world view after all. It’s a preference. It’s a belief system we pick. And this is how my belief system works.

I’ve come to believe that beliefs have the power to change more than we give them credit for. Think Steve Jobs. Think Henry Ford. We spend a lot of time ‘doing’ things and I find it’s vital to think about what we believe every once a while.

The ‘What’ derives itself from the ‘Why’ at the end of the day.

‎’Sometimes you have to stop worrying, wondering or doubting. Have faith that things will work out, maybe not as you have planned, but that’s just how it’s meant to be.’

This week’s book learning is from ‘Talent is Overrated’ by Geoff Colvin.

Last week, we looked at the study in Berlin that examined 3 groups of students in their mid 20s – the ‘good’ group who practiced 9 hours solo every week and the ‘better’ and ‘best’ groups that practiced 24 hours solo every week at school.

So, what separated the two top groups? Was it raw talent?

For this, we would have to examine the average ‘lifetime’ practice time of the students in this group. The researchers dug into the number of hours each of these groups had spent with their violins before age 18.

Group 1 – Good: 3420 hours
Group 2 – Better: 5301 hours
Group 3 – Best: 7410 hours

The date, of course, says it all..

Excellence, essentially, is cumulative! It’s achieved one day at a time over a very long period. This story seems to take away all the mystery around the concept of ‘Talent’. But, I was left with more questions than answers and I assume you are too.

Specifically, maybe this is the case in case of violinists – does it then apply to fields like sports where raw talent seems everything? Stay tuned for the answer to that question. Coming up next week.. :-)

Here’s to putting in the hours of practice in our chosen fields every day this week!

There were a few lifestyle changes I promised myself post the Himalaya Trek last month. Very simply stated, they were to walk more, stand more and read more. I decided to improve on the walking by not taking the lift in my apartment for a start (4 floors) and made progress on the reading and wrote about it.

The tougher problem to solve was the ‘how do I stand more’ problem. Work involves a fair amount of sitting during the week and I felt like I was exacerbating thanks to all the additional work I was doing at home! On average, it’s about 25-30 extra hours per week that I could do something about.

Now, this is an issue that Lifehacker has been writing about for a while now and I was always intrigued by the idea of a standing desk. This idea took further shape when I interviewed venture capitalist Bijan, who, of course, took the Skype call from his standing desk. So, I decided that I’d work on this idea last weekend and see where it took me.

So, I went to Ikea and bought myself a shelving cabinet with the idea that this would be ideal height for my laptop screen. What I didn’t realize then is that the keyboard and mouse needed to be significantly lower so as to be comfortable. So, after a bit of DIY with a friend, we ended up converting my Ikea trolley to that platform with 6 bricks and one of the shelves from the rack. I also realized that I’d be better off getting myself a nice monitor (something I’d wanted for a LONG time anyway!) and a keyboard.

So, after many hours of toil.. (well, not exactly – it was very exciting putting this together), VOILA!

I thought I would wait a week before blogging about it so I didn’t recommend it too early but my god, am I in love with this idea!

A few things I’ve learnt and observed over the past week..

– I know we are all different but I can’t help but believe that we are born with a desire to ‘figure things out’, to build, to hack, if necessary. The joy I derived from putting together this solution is hard to express.

– Standing takes getting used to. I stood practically all of last Sunday and I remember really looking forward to sitting at the end of the day! That said, I’m getting used to it real quick..

– You know that good feeling after you exercise? Working at this desk makes me feel physically just as good about myself!

– I find myself to be more alert, more focused and less distracted and that’s a big help in the morning on weekdays when I wake up to blog.

– And I find standing suits my type of ADD! I get to move around, bob around, play with a small ‘stress ball’ by kicking it about/throwing it on the wall and catching it.

In short, I LOVE it. The most amazing part of it was that my mom was so intrigued by the idea that she put together a standing desk herself the very next day and blogged about it!

All in all, a way of working that I’m going to take forward for life.. Thank you to Lifehacker and Bijan, for the inspiration. And thank you to the Himalayas and all the people who made it happen for inspiring such thought..

Richard Feynman, in his famous autobiography, ‘Surely you’re joking, Mr Feynman’, has some very interesting experiences with trying to pick up women in a bar. After many attempts, failures and successes, he concludes that the best way to do that is to be an absolute jackass. Don’t buy the woman a drink, be rude, obnoxious and your chances of success are really high.

Now, I don’t know how true this is. I haven’t experienced it for myself but it does tend to agree with my observations. Playing ‘hard to get’ works, whether in relationships, friendships or even in business.

As service providers or businesses, it is actually very tempting to forego the customers who actually love you in pursuit of ones that are ‘hard to get’. It’s the joy of pursuit – the activity that gets our adrenaline up, the activity that is a key part of what makes romance and courtship seem so exciting. This is why, when as a kid or a teenager, you tell a friend you’re done with them and instead of them ignoring you, they come clinging back trying to be ‘better’ friends than they were.

The problem with this approach, then, is obvious. One step at a time, you alienate those that really love you. These tend to be the nice folk (who are generally used to be taken for granted) and it’s only a matter of time before the word gets around and the nice folk avoid you altogether.

That’s the real problem. Because the magic, as we all realize, is not in the romance but in the companionship. At some point, we run out of the energy for romance..

And yes, this is a round about way of saying – Don’t take the ones who love you, care for you and who are loyal to you for granted. Maybe I should have just said that?

While there are a few tough situations that get resolved in a day thanks to a stroke of genius or a bit of luck, they generally take longer to resolve.

And, very often, after making significant progress, we feel very stuck.

During such times, I remind myself to ask a simple question – “Are we better now than we were when we started?”

The answer, almost always, is yes thanks to a bucket load of hard work. The issue, of course, is that we forget that and take the progress for granted. This question reminds me to take it one step at a time.

One step at a time. One chunk at a time. One minute at a time. One day at a time.. that’s how great things are built.