A Learning a Day

I was getting off the tube in the morning. Mornings are generally pretty full. Up at 615. Off for exercise with book reading, blogging, personal inbox clearing and then traveling to work. And the journey to work since last week has been getting back to book writing on my phone. Ever since solving the real problem, that’s been in place.

And, for a few moments, as I stepped out of the train, I remember feeling very tired.

It was only 3 hours into the day but you know how these things go. Sometimes, you just feel.. tired. Now, this was a bit of a bummer because I feel it’s very important to walk into our place of work smiling and energized. I had 10 minutes to turn this around.

And I promptly pulled out my phone, switched on some music and the song was a recent favorite from Venga Boys.

And 2 lines woke me up – ‘Happiness is round the corner’ and ‘So if you like to party, get on and move your body.’

I did.

Happiness was indeed round the corner.

There was a spring in my step.

And the smile and energy came rushing back. What a wonderful world..

Very rarely do I feature a book on this blog. That’s precisely why my book reviews blog exists. But, this book, in many ways, is an exception. Not because it is extremely well written or because it’s a commercial superstar, but simply because of the depth of insight that it has.

I have been on a quest for some self-knowledge for the past many months. And, in many ways, the insights in this book have contributed greatly to a major jump in understanding.

Gifts Differing is written by Isabel Briggs Myers, the woman behind the world famous Myers Briggs Type Indicator. Typically these types are assigned to us based on our answers to various tests and it is recommended that we have this discussion with an MBTI certified coach.

There are numerous tests available online but I’m inclined not to put in any of the links here because every test practically gave me a different answer. And that’s why I went about trying to find the book and then read it. The basic structure of the types are as follows:

Extraversion vs Introversion (i.e. where do you get your energy from? People or yourself?)
Sensing vs Intuition (i.e. How do you process information? By taking in all facts or looking for possibilities?)
Thinking vs Feeling (i.e. How do you make decisions? Using impersonal logic or feelings?)
Judging vs Perceiving (i.e. How do you live your life? Are you regimented or open?)

Now, typically, you are assigned a combination of these letters. And the book will, of course, explain what this means, what are the typical strengths of somebody of this personality type, challenges if you are married to someone of an opposite type, how type takes formation in kids etc.

What I’ve realized is that we always have a clear dominant characteristic and a clear auxilary characteristic. The rest, really depends because, these dominant characters get set when we are kids and over time, we learn  the benefits of the others and they gradually become a part of us.

I’ll be happy to explain my understanding of this from my own example – My end type, based on my self test, was E/I N F J.

I couldn’t conclude between E vs I because I answer the basic question (i.e. where do you get your energy?) as an introvert. However, when put in a social situation, I am extravert all over. So, I concluded I’m 50%.

N or intuition was a clear win. I am a poor observer and live in a world of possibilities. The split here was probably 80-20 and I’m paying attention more to sensing, especially over the last year, thanks to analysis.

F or feeling was also a clear winner. Probably 70-30. My decisions are definitely based on my own value system, and not on impersonal logic.

J or Judging. By nature, I am very self regimented but over time, my perception has improved and I guess I find that most in my views becoming more tolerant. This is probably 60-40 split.

The key concept here is that we need most of these processes. E vs I is less relevant because this is just how we get our energy. It’s almost an understanding on how to deal with ourselves. I have a set goal of not having more than 2 social nights in the week (self regimentation on display :)) because I end up becoming very tired after there. And I do love my weekends in solitude.

We need sensing because sensing helps in our observation capabilities, in us collecting all the facts, paying attention to the details.

We need intuition because intuition helps connect these observations together and seeks out possibilities.

We need thinking because we need impersonal logic to arrive at the ‘right’ decision.

We need feeling because we need to be able to understand how this could impact the people involved.

(eg: The right decision after a presentation may be to give honest feedback on what you thought about the concept. But it’s important that it’s done in a way that makes it easier for the person to accept the feedback. That process involves both T and F)

We need judging to make decisions.

We need perception to explore possibilities.

And it seems that the natural process is that we end up developing our dominant process very well. In my case, based on whether I am in ‘E’ i.e. with people or ‘I’ i.e. with myself, the dominant process is ‘F’ or ‘N’. And once we develop this dominant process, we can go on and work on our auxiliary ones because they ensure balance to our personality.

There was also a piece of advice that I got that helped me in this journey. (Courtesy: a wise friend)

‘It feels to me like you have gone a great distance in better understanding your preferences, and for me, that what these instruments measure – preferences. I do not place “OR” between them. For example, I do not see myself as either E or I, rather, I tend to show up most often, in most aspects of my life, as I… and, in many situations I am E all over the place. I find many of the definitions that these practitioners use end up being interpreted as formulaic… and I do not believe life is formulaic.’


For me, these assessments are of “self”, and as such, must come from within. In my experience of observing people go through these things, I notice that many of us “want the answer to be such and such”, so we are not always honest with ourselves. I also believe that it is important to pick the one that feels best, fits right… like a suit… not the one that the sales person says looks great on you… even though they may be right.


And

Could you love yourself exactly as you are? Could you take your new learnings into life and see how your internal theory measures up against real situations, especially those at the extremes?

This wise friend was also an MBTI practitioner. And I found his advice VERY useful as I was going through the journey, especially the sales person and suit analogy.

Now, I feel like I’ve got a better understanding of my preferences. And armed with this understanding, I actually feel far more comfortable dealing with the world because I am beginning to realize which process of mine dictates which reaction and whether it is applicable or whether another process works better.

Probably the biggest impact is the increased understanding of people around me that I interact with from time to time. As with all cases, how we behave is a reflection of who we are. And when we understand ourselves, we do understand the world a bit better.

And it definitely reinforces a principle I believe in – we are all gifted, in different ways. We just have to find our place in the world, use our gifts and make a difference.

A great book, in short. I learnt a lot  from it. I thought I’d quote Aristotle before wishing you a great day.

Carry, the hen, is given a lot of freedom by the farmer to do what she likes but she knows that what he really wants from her is eggs. That is the purpose of her existence after all.

Jim loves Carry dearly. He’s taken care of her since she was a baby hen and the time has now come for her to start hatching eggs as well. Return on investment, if you will.

But, Carry isn’t hatching eggs. And Jim can’t tell why. She seems to be playing around with the other hens, doing all the things a normal hen would do and even eating as much as the other hens. And then, one day, Carry does actually lay some eggs but in all her zeal to make sure they survive, she doesn’t let them out of her grasp. She can’t fail this time after all! What would the other hens think?

She practically sits on them till they suffocate and die. This happens  few times and finally, an exasperated Jim stops expecting eggs from Carry and a now exasperated Carry stops expecting chickens from herself.

All this pent up anger results in her getting annoyed with the other hens that are hatching eggs and living a normal life. She always has a mean word or two to say. Over time, she finds company in a couple of other hens as well who have gotten too used to a life of entitlement. And in time, Carry died as well. But, there was really no hen or person who cared.. Why would anybody care? What did she give the world?
—

Now, many excuses later, we almost can’t deny some great ideas we have energy for. These ideas would likely require us to do  more – to volunteer at that not-for-profit after work or to start our own company doing e-commerce after our day job or offer a service online for free just because we look doing or to blog or to study further or to learn a language. Very exciting ideas waiting to be executed. But, no, we sit on the with more excuses and obstinacy. We don’t give them the space they require to grow. We don’t try anything because we feel it will only increase our chances of failure.

And finally, they die.

Over time, we get used to the idea that ‘some’ people can do more and we just can’t. And life goes on, as we know it. We are likely to be bitter about not doing it.. but hey, that’s what we’re meant to do, isn’t it?

No.

Hatch those eggs! Give them a chance to survive. Put some effort into nurturing them. Fail. Laugh. Do again. Pay attention only to those who encourage. Do. As JLM put it, most people are not be impressed by what they did in 1 year, but very impressed about what they did in 5. Put in the effort. There are many eggs within you waiting to be hatched. Make them count.

There’s been a lot of activity on this blog since Friday night thanks to the post on Bill Gates. I have been posting these blog posts on Hacker News for a while. Hacker News is a news aggregator and essentially, if the circumstances are right, your post could become a superstar post for a day.

That was the case with this post. And the impact was massive, make no mistake. The average numbers on this blog are 150 unique visitors (according to Google Analytics) + 170 odd feed readers and email subscribers. I estimate that to be 250-300 readers a day. And the comment thread generally reflects that as well. The most popular posts have about 10-12 comments.

Hacker news changed this for that post. It’s fascinating to see the impact. The post had about 90 comments, 39 reactions and I was wondering what the visitor count would be.

There you go – ~11,000. (the highest before this was 520)

And that brings me to the point of this post. I was having a short chat yesterday with an important member of this community. He remarked that this post had given this blog quite a readership. And I remember discussing with him the difference between readership and page views for a post.

Real readership would be retaining a small portion of these visitors for the long run. To all our new members, welcome! I hope you enjoy your stay.  :)

This post was an outlier. However, it made for an amazing learning experience as always. Aside from being called ‘gay’ by one commenter, I was screamed at by quite a few and was also asked to examine my values by a couple. I was reminded how difficult it must be to be a child star, having to deal with intense criticism at a very young age. That’s what I realized with Steve Jobs as well – a lot of his crazy neurotic behavior came from the fact that he was in the spotlight at a time he wasn’t ready for it. And dealing with this bashing every day definitely requires a strong set of values and sense of self.

I still remember the early days of this blog. Putting yourself out there is so damn difficult. When people critique your writing and point of view, it feels like a direct attack on you. You feel naked and exposed. And you always remember the ones who critiqued you, conveniently forgetting about the many that did actually have nice things to say.

Luckily, this time, I was ready for this kind of attention. I’ve learnt not to take critiques overly personally. And watching seasoned bloggers like Fred (in particular), Joanne and Mark handle comments on their blog has led me to develop my own style. But, it was interesting nevertheless to be the object of intense criticism – even if that was only the case for a day.

I posted this experience in a comment on AVC and had a couple of interesting replies. Fred said ‘Welcome to the jungle’ (he would know..) and another regular LE sent me a link to this article by Mike Arrington that resonated.

Any blogger will tell you how frustrating the early days are. Getting someone, anyone, to link to you. Your first comment! etc. And as your audience grows you are introduced to the first rule of anonymous human behavior – it’s dark and brutal, and reminds me how thin the veil of civilized behavior really is. If there is something nasty that can be said, someone will say it. Over and over.


A big part of blogging is simply keeping the peace. You set rules on whether or not you’ll allow anonymous commenting, or commenting at all. You decide if/how to moderate comments. You decide if/how to respond to opposing arguments and (more often) personal attacks. And you, involuntarily for the most part, evolve your writing in response to the feedback loop. Those are the days of innocence, simple joys and simple sadnesses.


And this led me to think about the whole concept of Building Fires. I replied to one comment with a quote I’ve posted here before..

There are 3 types of people in this world – some light fires, others tend to them and then there are those who spend their life pissing on the fire. Avoid them at all costs.

JLM’s quote stood me in good stead yesterday. I also realized something different. It takes a fire lighter or a fire tender to be the bigger person in any conversation or argument. It is so easy to criticize, so easy to give advice, so easy to gang up on a person’s idea or execution and make them feel stupid – essentially, it is extremely simple to piss on the fire.

But, the ones who have played their part in lighting fires or tending them know how hard it is to actually go out there and ‘do’. To build is hard. Because the way the world works, you will have opposition even before you start building. And once you begin, you will have many around you letting you know the truth and tell you that you will fail.

But, that’s the way of things. You will always have people pissing on your work and ideas. That’s half the fun, in truth. It would probably be boring without them.

On this blog, and in specific that post, however, I tried hard to let the pissers know they are not welcome in the comments. This is a place for anyone and everyone who is building or tending to fires, or wants to build or tend to fires. Here, we make mistakes. We say a few wrong things once in a while. But we learn. And we are always encouraged. Never shot down. If you are searching for negativity and gloom, then this is not the place for you.

And to all you ‘fire’ people reading this, a passage from Theodore Roosevelt came to mind.

Man in the Arena by Theodore Roosevelt

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.


—
The naysayers often have good feedback for you as well. One of them pointed out that the quotes weren’t very readable. I’m experimenting with a highlighter in this post. Do let me know if you have other suggestions.. 

1. Do I give more than I get? How much do I ask of others and how much do I give? And in what situations do I find myself ‘giving’ more?

2. Am I consciously building something special? If so, what am I building? What challenges am I facing? What am I learning?

3. What are the most meaningful learning experiences in my life right now? What am I learning from them?

I’m still reflecting on the answers. The answers to questions 2 and 3 are pretty fascinating. They weren’t entirely what I expected.

There were a couple of posts that got me thinking about this. Brad Feld had one ages ago that I stumbled on about giving more than you get.

Seth Godin had an insightful thought this week about building, a post on the difference between Math and Arithmetic. And it ended with this line that stuck with me.

It’s harder to create an original tweet than it is to retweet. It’s harder to find metaphor than it is to work through a to do list. Hard work, true. But worth it.


And, finally, a wiser friend of mine and I were discussing our most meaningful experiences of the moment and our biggest trials. So, I do have half my answers to question 3. The answers, by themselves, were pretty fascinating. Definitely not what I expected.

All these made me take a step back and reflect.

We make our way through life searching for answers. At work, it’s answers to the problem of the moment. In our social time, it’s answers to what would make us happy and what would make for nice experiences with people we love. In our spiritual/philosophical time, we are looking for answers to deeper questions about life and it’s meaning. We’re constantly seeking – from people and life, through our questions.

I just thought I’d flip it around today.

And ask myself a few questions. Give before I get, after all.

Have a nice weekend, folks. I’d love to hear of your reflections/questions that inspire you in the thread.

There were a couple of line in Coursey’s article that rang very true.

All that money you think Gates stole from you? He’s giving it back, with interest, to the world’s poorest.
All that money you think Apple has overcharged people? Apple still has it and Steve got and kept his share.

Steve Jobs has fittingly had a long list of tributes. He was among the greatest technologists, businessmen, marketeers and charismatic leaders of our generation. He was to CEO’s as the late George Best was to football – the first pop star.

However, there’s been an unfair amount of Bill Gates bashing that’s been going on on the side. Especially with Jobs’ new biography. Now, Bill Gates needs no defending whatsoever just like Steve Jobs didn’t need any additional tributes but I’m going to launch into a staunch defence of the great man purely because there are so many lessons in here.

Gates has been the man easy to hate just as Jobs has been so easy to love. Steve Jobs was the maverick, the showman, the obsessive genius while Gates is the boring anti-technology nerd who copies people’s ideas and makes money of them.

Now, I can’t say I’m the biggest fan of Microsoft’s products. I think Steve Jobs definitely got the concept of ‘shipping’ spot on. I love my iPhone and wouldn’t trade it for anything else. I love Windows, too, though and primarily because it is excellent for collaboration and the world practically runs on Windows. It’s credit to Bill Gates that that has happened. Microsoft’s goal was to put a computer on every desk and thanks to Gates’ leadership and vision, they actually have. I have never been a fan of Microsoft’s business practices but, that said, Apple’s aren’t much better either. For excessive use of lawsuits on one hand, we have a closed app store on the other.

But, the biggest reason I feel Bill Gates is the man to be idolized is because of his work ethic and humility. He is known to be a voracious reader, an extremely hard worker and has constantly carried himself with an incredible amount of humility for what he has achieved. Make no mistake, he is still Superman. A lot has been made of late of Apple overtaking Microsoft in terms of market cap. Mike Arrington puts this in perspective when speaking of Jobs and Gates as supermen–

Bill Gates was the co-founder and CEO of Microsoft, building it to an astounding $470B market cap. Under him, Microsoft had multiple acts, among them: DOS, Windows, Office, and enterprise server software. Since Steve Ballmer became CEO, the company’s value has declined to $223B. I’m sure Steve Ballmer is a smart and passionate guy, but he’s no superman.

In short, I am a huge fan. And always will be.

That said, he just went up many notches when I read this bit of news.

ABC news asked Gates of his view on Jobs’ criticism in his Biography.

“Bill is basically unimaginative and has never invented anything, which is why I think he’s more comfortable now in philanthropy than technology. He just shamelessly ripped off other people’s ideas.”

“When you think about why is the world better today, the Internet, the personal computer, the phone, the way you can deal with information is just so phenomenal…Over the course of the 30 years we worked together, he said a lot of very nice things about me and he said a lot of tough things. I mean, he faced, several times at Apple, the fact that their products were so premium priced that they literally might not stay in the marketplace. So the fact that we were succeeding with high volume products, including a range of prices, because of the way we worked with multiple companies, it’s tough. So the fact that at various times, he felt beleaguered, he felt like he was the good guy and we were the bad guys, you know, very understandable. I respect Steve. We got to work together. We spurred each other on, even as competitors. None of that bothers me at all.”

I liken the evolution to doing interviews. I remember my first experience as an interviewer in my 2nd year of university in our little start up. I clearly remember being so excited that first session that all focus was on myself and not on the candidate. I was constantly wondering if I was sounding credible to the candidate and behaving like a seasoned interviewer would. All this meant that the interviewee was secondary. It really was more about me than him.

Dozens of interviews later, I learnt to relax. And slowly, it turned to be more about the interviewee. Over time, I was self aware enough to see more hints that were coming my way and feeling at home.

We go through this learning curve in almost everything we do. Driving and leadership comes to mind. When we begin learning driving, we tend to give our cars a really bad ride (especially, if it is a geared vehicle). And when leading, our first followers likely had hell to pay. Mine did, certainly. God bless them.

It’s been similar with blogging. The learning curve, however, has been longer. In my first year, it was all about reminding myself to look for a learning every day. In the second, it was being disciplined enough to blog about it. And in the third, it gradually come down to picking the most significant and blogging about it. And now, it’s evolving to see the bigger picture. The attitude/comfort is in place. Now, I can spend more time on the real thing.

I’ve said this a few times now but I’ve come to realize that a blog is like a coffee shop/bar/meeting place. And the blogger is like a host. Very naturally, there is a community of people around it who visit every day. Some visit once a week and some less regularly. But, to the regulars, it’s an institution of sorts. You tend to like that regularity. You tend to like that bit of dialogue and even, debate. I’ve seen this most at AVC and BothSidesoftheTable, also at TheGothamGal. When I started visiting these blogs last year, I used to go for the purpose of reading. It was similar with blogs of my friends. Over time though, I realized that there are few things I enjoy as a blogger as to see comments and discussions. And keeping the Golden Rule in view, it is but expected that I do the same.

So, over time, I’ve made it a point to comment every time I read a post. At my friends’ blogs, I’ve requested for Disqus (versus the extremely unfriendly built in comments at Blogger, WordPress) and have tried to engage. At AVC and the like, I’ve seen myself become one of the regulars and I love the dialogue and debate. It’s a wonderful way to spend breaks at work. Instead of mindless surfing, there’s some intellectual stimulation. The brain is like a muscle after all, and it’s nice to give it some varied exercise. Besides, like in a pub/coffee shop, it’s nice to see some friendships develop with people from very different backgrounds.

This is a huge evolution in my thinking, though. It’s resulted in a huge change in behavior. Now, I find that I hardly ever read to take in but also to engage. And, in the process, I realize I give back, even if it is just a little bit. There are places I choose not to engage as well. The Harvard Business Review blog is one of them. There is so much of people and blogger bashing that goes on that it doesn’t feel like a place I’d like to share my own views as often.

The key in maintaining a culture of dialogue and debate is to keep it open, welcoming and civilized. And, bloggers and readers alike, have a huge role to play in making that happen.

Besides, wouldn’t it be a pity if most of the discussion (and debate?) of our time takes place under photos of people on Facebook?

As always, I welcome your thoughts. :)

Essentially, it’s a problem I avoided. Book-a-day used to be a constant unchecked task on my task list until a week ago.

I didn’t avoid the problem on purpose, I must add. It always felt like I had more important things to do and it was always easier to check a task like Blog or Blessings-a-day versus Book-a-day. I had no idea what I was supposed to do about it anyway. There’s a lot of very good literature about unclear to-do’s and this was the mother of unclear to-do’s.

It was 2 weeks ago that I finally realized that I was running out of time if I wanted to finish the book, as I had hoped to, by the end of the year. December was bound to be a busy month and taking such factors into consideration, I realistically had until the end of November to finish.

Holy cow. I finally had to face the problem. There was no way around it.

I realized that I was not resisting the writing but the task of sitting down and reading the 10 written chapters. I never read on my computer. How did I expect to get this done?

But then, I did read on my phone. So, now, I had to get it on my phone. A bit of research told me that the Dropbox app was perfect for reading stuff on my phone. Perfect! All my files are on Dropbox anyway (I’d done this earlier this year to save myself the trouble of any backing up).

And ever since mid-week last week, I’ve finally been able to get to reading my previous chapters. All inspired, I even penned down the epilogue chapter on the train and I’ve now dedicated my morning’s journey to my book. If I can get through the reading of all chapters by the weekend, I think I would be very inspired to get a lot of writing done when I’m away from work and email on Saturday evening. And yes, I’m very happy.

All that said, one part of me does feel like banging my head on the wall. The real problem was never the book. I’ve always wanted to finish writing it and I’ve always had the energy for it. The real problem was to find a tool that would enable me to read previous chapters when I wanted. Essentially, all these months, I was 1 app download away from making progress.

Relentless focus on removing obstacles and finding the real problem. That’s all I needed. We often get stuck not because we lack the energy to do a job but just because we lack the environment or the tools that would enable us to do it. And all we need to do then is to use our ability to think to enable ourselves to do just that. The rest will happen. And that begins by defining the real problem in the first place.

When stuck, define the problem.

A ‘Duh’ moment.

High time I learnt the lesson.