A Learning a Day

Give Path a shot.

It’s one of those apps which I’ve been hearing about for a while but resisted trying for some reason. And it’s definitely one of those apps which made me wonder why I had resisted, since it’s absolutely amazing.

Path is like a combination of Facebook, Twitter and FourSquare, except, it is exclusively for the people closest to you. I can see Path being used amongst a very close set of friends who’d like to be updated with what the other is doing very often but I see the value in keeping in much closer touch with loved ones elsewhere.

Why do I use Path? Because staying connected is all about knowing the small details and Path enables me to do that.

How do I use Path? I’ve been using it for the past couple of weeks now and have been loving it. I love checking in to various places, ranting/venting out frustrations, sharing photos of cool places I’ve been to, sharing music I’m listening to, uploading short video updates.

In theory, you could use Facebook, Twitter etc to do these things but I’m not sure if you’ll enjoy sharing the same things you share with your family as you would with 500 friends.

A great app. And a must if your parents/best friend/girl friend/boy friend are far away and you want to stay in close touch. It’s also great if you travel often, as the screenshot above shows.And if your loved ones don’t have a smartphone, it’s one of those apps that makes buying one for them completely worth it.

That’s saying something.

Enjoy Friday folks!

Yesterday, I had the following conversation on my Facebook

I’ve had similar conversations a few times in the past few months and thought I would dedicate a post to Creative Commons. If you scroll down to the bottom of this blog, you will see..

I don’t have a stand yet on bigger issues of copyright and the like. I don’t fully understand them. I don’t have a clear stand on piracy either. I do know that these things are not simple black and white issues. And I’m thinking about these things more these days.

I do have a clear stand on everything written here though. That’s why everything used in this blog is licensed under Creative Commons. This means you are free to use the content here any which way you want as long as you attribute it to the source.

I’ve found it to be a great principle for creative work done online since we don’t really care about stuff like Copyrights and are too busy working to make a difference to go about suing folk who use our work. All we appreciate is the credit and reach that comes from others attributing our work to us. An opportunity to make a bigger difference.

So, once again, please feel free to use/re-use any of the content here. And, if you need anything else in addition, please just send me a note on rohan[at]rohanrajiv[dot]com and I’ll do what I can to be of help to you.

Have a great day.

One of the biggest sources of happiness over the past 2 years has been an email I call the ‘Sunday Hello.’ This is an email I write out every Sunday (Yes, Duh..) to a bunch of close friends and family detailing the happenings of the week. On some weeks, it’s purely about the significant events that took place and on others, it’s about things I learnt. Either way, I attempt to give them a flavour of things on my side.

I have different frequencies for different sets of friends, of course. Mom, for example, is written to 3 times a week. And some friends and groups of friends are written to once a month.

I’m notoriously bad at staying in touch via chat. I rarely do ‘stay-in-touch’ Skype calls. These are not my strengths. The best ways I stay in touch with friends is when I work with them on some initiative or another. That provides the necessary excuse and I do do this from time to time. But, there’s only so much of this I can do.

I do email pretty okay though. So, this one is right down my street. I can barely express the amount of joy I get when I see a nice long detailed email from friends in reply. The joy is really in knowing the details, understanding the highs and lows and being there, or at least feeling like I am there and being able to offer support.

We often hear of relationships where we pick up right from where we left off. Funnily enough, I find that to be an excuse for not staying in touch. I used to say that a lot about many relationships and say that much less now. I am in touch with friends and family members and that makes all the difference in the world.

At the end of the day, it’s my belief that we all crave connection and that we all like to be loved and cared for. A big part of our self esteem comes from this as well. To be loved and cared for, we have to love and care as well. And these are verbs for for a reason. One way of demonstrating that is by committing to stay in touch.

‘Good relationships are like the hands of a clock. They meet for a short time, but they always stay connected.’

So, let’s stay connected.

I’m glad I made that commitment to myself. I hope you do too.

There’s a lot of pride involved in being self taught. You picked up a new skill without extra costs beyond buying an instrument/gear that’s mandatory. You probably even have friends who have done so with aplomb. That’s great. Before you take the jump however, do give it a moment’s thought.

Key question to think about. Which side of the spectrum do you lean towards?

As mentioned in the diagram, this is a purely unschooled view on people. I have intentionally not used words like OCD or ADHD so as to not incur the wrath of schooled psychologists.

My understanding is that we all lean towards one side in terms of our traits.

In my case, I clearly lean towards the Attention Deficit side of things. I have low attention span on most things and it takes a tremendous amount of effort to focus on detail. It’s not impossible but it doesn’t come naturally. Focus, attention to detail, being a sniper etc are hence learned traits. 

As far as thoroughness is concerned, I’ve found that to be a state of mind. If it’s something I consider very important, I can sit myself down and be thorough. But, that applies to few things.

If I have to learn something on the side by myself, I would likely learn enough to get by. And, if you’ve ever seen me swim, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. I am an average swimmer. I can swim a few 50 metre laps pretty okay but I don’t do it right. The strokes are not right and there’s no elegance in the process. Of course, I’m self taught. It’s a similar story with football.

When we watch someone who hasn’t learnt things right, it’s tempting to think it’s a person problem. In my case, I judged myself as someone who couldn’t learn stuff properly. But, how could I explain table tennis then? Or some of the other stuff I can do right. The simple answer here is that I learnt under a teacher.

For someone with my traits, a teacher helps greatly when learning something that I deem a hobby/not a ‘main thing’. Teaching myself guitar, for example, would be a big mistake. I would learn enough to get by but I would be doing it wrong. Being thorough is not my strength.

If you can identify yourself in some of these traits, then please do yourself a favor and get yourself a teacher when you want to learn something outside of your job. I’m of course assuming you deem what you do important. If you don’t, then a coach would do you no harm there either. :-)

Essentially, teaching oneself is not for everyone. There’s no pride lost if you don’t have the natural discipline or thoroughness required. In fact, if you understand yourself enough to game the traits that might be holding you back, that’s a big win.

And, if you are on the other side like a few good friends of mine, what are you waiting for? Decide, and get proficient!

This week’s book learning is from Success Principles by Jack Canfield.

Peter Vidmar and Tim Daggett were training as gymnasts at the UCLA gym with their coach Mako to become Olympic gold medallists.

To keep focused on their Olympic dream, they began ending their workouts by visualizing being in the final round in the Olympics with the People’s Republic of China. That’s when Peter would step forward, do a perfect routine and win the gold medal.

On July 31st 1984, Peter Vidmar was ready to perform his usual routine. The only difference was that he was at the Olympic Arena with thirteen thousand people and a few hundred cameras broadcasting to the two million viewers on television.

As Peter got ready, Coach Mako said – ‘Okay, Peter, let’s go. You know what to do. You’ve done it a 1000 times. Let’s just do it one more time and go home. You are prepared’

Peter did go home, with the gold medal.

Many of us have begun the new year with new resolutions and commitments. I made my personal and proficiency commitments yesterday, and thought this story would be apt for this week in the spirit of visualizing what success would look like at the end of year. I’d love to hear about your commitments in the comments.

Here’s to choosing to visualizing our dreams this week!

‘One proficiency a year’ is a mantra I picked up from a video that inspires me greatly. It’s one of those videos we see at RealAcad and I was so inspired by it that I used to watch it practically every day during my last year in university.

I’ve picked up a couple of great maxims from it. ‘Live so that when your children think of fairness, caring and integrity, they think of you’ is one of them.

I’ve proactively thought of one proficiency a year since 2009. I’ve defined proficiency as a combination of the skill picked up, an ability to admire the art and an in-depth understanding of the science. In short, the skill and the art and science of it.

2009 was the year of Bowling. That was more by accident thanks to a stroke of luck that led to me being a state runner up back home when I was fooling around at the bowling alley during vacations. More on that sometime.

2010 was the year of tennis. In reality though, 2011 was the year I really understood tennis thanks a fantastic coach who taught me a great deal in very less time.

2011 was supposed the year of the book. In reality, it became the year of blogging.

And 2012 is.. the year of the guitar.

This is my new baby! And I have been like a 3 year old child with a new toy today. I bought it with the help of my new Guitar teacher. We met at Denmark Street, a small narrow street full of musical history. It was fascinating walking around guitar shops and reading bits of history – The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Elton John, The Rolling Stones and many others bought guitars and recorded in the street. And Elton John even wrote and sang ‘Your Song’ on the roof of the building below (No.20, Denmark Street).

It’s things like this that make London very special. Pure magic and history in the middle of nowhere.

Playing the guitar has been a dream for a very long time now. I remember a conversation I had six years or so ago with a close friend – he spoke of learning the drums while I promised to learn the guitar so we could both sing and play with our friends. He did go on to keep his end of the bargain and I figured it’s better late than never on my side too.

And then I remember the moment at a Boyce Avenue concert with a friend in November. We were both discussing guitar playing being on our bucket lists. And I remember moments in the future flashing before my eyes.. and deciding that it was about time that I got this done. If not now, when?

All in all, I’m very excited after my ‘baby’s day out’ experience, as a close friend put it. While I promise to spare you the torture of watching any videos of me playing or singing, you guys will probably hear of guitar analogies, my guitar teacher and the like in the coming months. I just thought I’d warn you in advance..

So, 2012 has well and truly kicked in. I have my big personal development goal and my proficiency for the year.

Let’s hit it!

I realize it’s 2 weeks past ‘resolution’ day’. I mentioned on my new years day post that I don’t do resolutions, only commitments. ‘Taking stock’ days like the 1st of January are very useful as they get me to think of commitments I must make to myself.

I’ve done this in the past with varying degrees of success. That said, I had a traditionally machine gun approach to these things – take many shots, expect one to hit. I remember making a 5 trait improvement initiative on my birthday 3 years ago, creating an over matrixed excel sheet to track my performance that lasted 15 days.

(Ha! I managed to dig up the sheet)

As you can see, I wasn’t all that consistently positive or reliable by my own assessment in 2009. I’m happy to note that that has changed.

One of the benefits of transitioning from machine gun to sniper in the way I approach things is that I’m realizing the importance of doing one thing, and nailing it. So, I had a bunch of improvement ideas in the new year and it took me two weeks to bring it down to one.

And that one is what I call ‘Voice Control’.

A certain wiser friend identified this as a high potential area. What I love about it is that it is a potential area of strength that just needs work (read: lots of work). For those I haven’t met, I have a very loud voice. And there’s no exaggeration in the ‘very’. And, if you ever get me engrossed in a conversation or topic that excites me, then god bless you. I would practically be screaming the roof off. The intent, of course, is not to scream. My excitement takes over and I never realize I’m screaming until I’m told.

This wiser friend put it best (paraphrased)

If you can take control and learn to modulate your voice while speaking so you truly emphasize things that you are excited about i.e. if you use the power in the voice to only highlight what’s important, it would put your point across much much stronger.

Right now, it feels like you’re excited about everything. This may be the case but, to the person sitting opposite you, it’s hard to distinguish between things you care about and things you don’t. There’s immense power in modulating your voice and using pauses.

This is one of those things I’ve ALWAYS wanted to do. It’s a challenge I’ve faced with energy. With all the effort that’s gone into managing my energy over the past 2 years, I tend to have a fair amount of it and this is of no use if I don’t learn to channel it. I’m glad that that’s going much better than my voice.

This learning is also part cultural. Western society does tend to be softer, especially in business settings. And I’m glad I’m having a shot at testing this out this year

All in all, I’m very excited. I have one personal development/trait commitment to myself for 2012 – To have full control of my voice by the end of the year. I’m not underestimating the difficulty of this commitment. I’ve already put in a ‘Modulate voice’ task on my daily task list so I can remind myself of it every single day. It’ll take will power, self awareness and some mental hard work to get there. Oh, and I also expect to fail many many many times..

That said, I also hope to keep this commitment and write about my success controlling my voice by this time next year. Here’s to that!

‘Let the one who will move the world, first move himself’.’ | Aristotle

A close friend and I were having a conversation the other day. A part of it was about waking up early in the morning that went something like this.

How do you manage to wake up before 630?’

‘I switch off my laptop by 9.’

‘What? Switching off the laptop by that time is BIG!’

‘Yup. I unplug the internet once I’m back from work. That helps.’

I remember looking at the conversation and grinning. It sounded like a conversation that two toddlers might have about finding the discipline of switching off laptops.

I was in half a mind to ignore it and pretend it didn’t happen. But, I thought I’d share simply because this particular challenge was one of my biggest challenges in the past year. It took me about year to get to the discipline of switching off my laptop at a certain time and heading to bed by a certain time. No kidding. And, of course, 100 excuses to myself were downed along the way as well.

In this simple example lies the difficulty of being self directed. It’s very easy to go to bed when you have your Mom goading you to go to bed and threatening you with consequences. It’s very easy to wake up early if your work starts at 6am in the morning.

(Of course, your Mom and your work would be the ‘bad cops’ and you would probably curse them endlessly for putting you through the pain.)

So, what’s the difference, you may ask – I wake up 530am to get up for work and you wake up 530am because you believe it’s the right thing to do.

The end result may not be too different. But, if you’ve managed to get into the habit of managing yourself to be able to do all those things you believe in by exercising your own discipline and will power, I think it makes all the difference in the world.

The basics are not so basic after all.

I gifted Grandmom an iPad over Christmas so we could start using FaceTime to video call each other.

The iPad is truly amazing for someone like her – easy to use, large screen and easy to carry around. I had attempted to teach her how to use a computer to video chat before I left home for university but she’d found that way too complex. As a result, she’s been dependent on Mom to be home on weekends for a Skype video call.

Thanks to the iPad, that could now change.

(I wish I had a photo of Grandmom with the iPad!)

That said, I’ll be the first to admit that I was sceptical about whether she’d take to it. She’s a few days away from turning 70 after all. The effect of age on learning new things is not to be underestimated.

But, my god.. has she blown me away! She’s taken learning to a whole new level. Once she’d understood FaceTime, she wanted to learn how to email. And a measure of success is the fact that I received a 3 line email from her full of typos (blessed autocorrect!) with love you and I am learning being the only 2 phrases that were decipherable. Damn cute!

Email will only bring us closer.

She is also well versed at FaceTime now. We have to fix the minor problem of her keeping the iPad wrapped safely under two layers of protection as this means the mild FaceTime ring isn’t audible. We’re getting there.

I hear she’s literally a woman on a mission now. She’s out with the iPad every time Mom is at home asking for a tutorial and clearing her doubts. And Mom has been in awe of her spirit and determination to figure the iPad out.

And that’s really what I wanted to celebrate this morning – spirit. We have an innate curiosity, an innate nature that likes to figure things out. Watching my Grandmom on the iPad is a great reminder to keep the fire burning, always.

And, on that note, thank you to Steve and Apple for making technology easy. You are now bringing families closer – what a difference these things make.

Have a great day, everyone.