A Learning a Day

This is pretty incredible given there are more than 6 billion of us. All originals. And all weird, in our own sweet way.

I think it takes a lot of time to accept this fact – it was for me, atleast. As a close friend remarked yesterday, it’s been over 5 years since I left home. And these 5 years have been an incredible experience – applying principles learnt at home, assimilating from the ‘real’ world and meeting and spending time with many fantastic people. The best way I’ve understood this over time is by thinking of those I consider my own ‘Board of Directors’ –  these are some great folks who I go to for mentorship and advice. It’s amazing how different and diverse they are in their approaches. A couple of examples come to mind – while one doesn’t believe in the importance of birthdays, another would swear by them and similarly, while one swears by the importance of motivational/self-help books, another doesn’t believe in self help books at all.

Over time, I’ve learnt to appreciate their differences as I realize it is that diversity that contributes to my learning and understanding of the fact that we are all weird. And it is this diversity that has gradually led me to accept myself as I am (It’s still an ongoing process). Over time, I’ve learnt to understand and appreciate the differences between principles and approaches because I realize that while their approaches may be different, it’s their principles that I respect – incredible levels of integrity, commitment to family and relationships and a spirit of lifelong learning.

The reason I say this is because, like many many others, I felt that tinge of sadness when I read about Steve Jobs’ death. And I found myself reflecting on this whole concept of principles and approaches in relation to him.

I had just recently read ‘The Second Coming of Steve Jobs’ by Alan Deutschman – a book that gave brilliant insight into the man. His was the typical story of a young man caught in the media’s eye and struggling with what it meant for him and what to do about it. The book details tales of his often fearsome personality and it made me wonder if I would have wanted to work with him IF I had a chance.

And, after reading the book, I remember thinking there would be no way I would have done so. He seemed like quite a crazy personality.

That knee-jerk reaction came back to me as I was thinking of Principles and Approaches the other day. And I realized that what I was reacting to was his ‘Approach’ i.e. his often unpredictable personality. And it was when I reflected on his principles – of excellence, of continuous improvement, of a relentless search for perfection, of minimalism – that I realized that my thinking needed a different perspective.

(Of course, there are a lot of big assumptions here in this hypothetical situation. But, well, what are we without our imagination? ;))

He once said – ‘My job is to not be easy on people. My job is to make them better.’ 


I think that said it all.

Thanks Steve, for being weird. And changing the world, for the better. You will be missed. 

And, after a statue day yesterday, I was on the lookout for some inspiration and I opened up my blogroll this morning to read..
—
Expanding the circle of ‘missed’ by Seth Godin

Would they miss you if you didn’t show up? Would they miss your brand or your writing or your leadership?

If you work at the local fast food joint or the local library and you don’t show up for work, do they consider shutting the place down? If you’re on the team at the ER and you have a bad day, would someone die?

Everyone is capable of being missed. Most of us would be missed by our family if we secretly moved to Perth in the middle of the night. The question, then, is not whether or not you’re capable of being missed. The question is whether you will choose to be missed by a wider circle of people.

It’s a risk, of course. You have to extend yourself. You must make promises (and then keep them.) More pressure than it might be worth.

Except when it is.
—
It spoke to me.

We live, we do, occasionally we succeed, other times we don’t, we learn, we live..
Thanks Seth, for the inspiration.

On March 24, 1975, underdog Chuck Wepner took on World Heavyweight Champion Muhammad Ali.
The fight was legendary – Wepner lasted 15 rounds with Muhammad Ali almost knocking him out in the process. Eventually, he was knocked out in round 15 with 19 seconds to go.
Over a 1000 miles away, struggling actor Sylvester Stallone was very inspired by Wepner’s effort as an underdog fighter. So, he began writing the script for a story with him as the underdog boxer, Rocky. The rest, as they say, is history.

On hearing this story, I was reminded of a friend who responded to the 2008 oil crisis (when the oil price went down to $40 per gallon) by buying 600,000 gallons of oil (!). While the rest of the world was busy reading newspapers, he saw an opportunity. Two years later, the oil price was back to $120 per gallon. He sold it at 300%.

Millions watched the Ali-Wepner fight on television but one man decided to use it to catapult his struggling acting career to a million dollar one.

The point I am trying to make here is that we have ‘stimulus’ all around us that could inspire us to no end. The big question is if our minds are open to it.

Here’s to seeking inspiration from events around us this week!

Thanks to Microsoft Office’s dominance, it is likely that you are using Outlook at work, at school or have even begun using it for your personal email.

As many of you know, I am a big Outlook Fan. I have discussed my love for Outlook before. I think one of my biggest learnings when it comes to Outlook is the difference knowledge of it’s features makes. Using Outlook’s ‘Rules’ alone, you can become a ‘no-spam-ninja’ within a month,  delay sending emails so you avoid  BSAK errors among others.

And then, you can take it to the next level by using Macros. A macro I have blogged about before is the ‘Never forget an attachment again’, a 1 step process that will alert you every time you say ‘attach/attached’ in an email and forget the attachment. (In a hurry, you may still miss this! But well, it helps 80% of the time.. :))

That brings me to the purpose of this post – to present to you – ‘The coolest simple Macro of them all’ – the FolderSort macro.

If you are using Outlook, you probably have folders to transfer emails into after you have read them. And most likely, you are dragging and dropping them into these folders which, over time, is a massive productive drain.

And thanks to this genius macro, I have not had to do any dragging and dropping for over 3 years now. It is a 5 step process and will work well for you. All you have to do is follow the process and you are a comment away if you have any questions of course.

Essentially, it’s 10 minutes of investment now or 100s of minutes of lost time dragging and dropping emails.

Before you begin, here’s what success will look like (screenshot from my own Outlook)
(The second is zoomed in).

Essentially, what we are going to do is make these buttons – 1 for every folder that you have on your Outlook.

Step 1 – Copy the Macro from here and copy the code.  (The significance of the red is mentioned in the steps below)

Step 2 – Go to Tools -> Macro -> Visual Basic Editor

Step 3 – Copy the code into the window (on the left, might have to open up the ‘Project 1…’ till you get to ‘ThisOutlookSession’. the copied code will look like this.

Step 4 – Replace the red folder names with your real folder names
A small note here – please keep your folder name to 1 word to keep the code simple i.e. no ‘Personal Emails’ – just ‘Personal’.

If you would like 5 such buttons, just copy it 5 times and change the folder names accordingly.

Step 5 – You are essentially done. All you need to do is put it up on your Toolbar.
Right click anywhere on your toolbar and click on Customize

Just drag it onto your toolbar and voila your button is ready! Now you can customize it all you want.. Right clicking it will give you many options. You can change the name, edit the button image (as you can see, I have little colored images on mine)

This is as simple as it looks. As always, your questions are very welcome in the comments.

And of course, if you do decided to give this a shot and get these installed, do share your experience too!

—
This post is thanks to a certain Donna, from the community at AVC who asked for the Outlook macros. I hope you all find it useful. 

Mark was about 21 and thanks to a unique set of circumstances, had been given the opportunity to run an under performing factory. The factory was traditionally rated low in the yearly inspections and when Mark learnt of the state of affairs, he decided to change that. The challenge, however, was that the next inspection was in 3 weeks.

All inspired, Mark began working feverishly with his team to get all the machines up to speed. Within a week or so, they had cleaned up all machines and ensured they were in top working condition – all machines, except one. So, they began working on that, but, despite their best efforts, it just refused to work. They still persisted but the machine would not budge.

At their wits end the night before the inspection, they gave up. They applied some extra grease and were hoping the inspector would be impressed by it’s looks and not ask them to demonstrate it’s working.

The next morning, their inspector came in. He was originally from France and spoke with a distinct French accent (I remember him saying he distinctly remembers the man and his accent). He walked around the factory asking them to demonstrate the various machines while he scribbled his assessment. And then, he came to our problem machine and asked them to switch it on.

And of course, it didn’t work. ‘Let me take a look’ – he said. Mark told him resignedly that they had tried everything and that it just wouldn’t work. But our inspector decided to take a close look. After carefully looking around and muttering to himself, he asked for some tools and tweaked some parts. ‘Switch it on’ – he said right after.

And voila! It worked perfectly!

When this happened, Mark became very upset. He was disconsolate. At the end of the inspection, the inspector finally said ‘You look upset. And I don’t understand why. This factory has got the highest grade in it’s history. You should be celebrating. I have never seen it in such top condition.’

‘How can I be? You fixed the machine in 5 minutes and we have been trying to fix it for 3 weeks! We must be no good.’

‘Mark, I have been inspecting factories for more than 20 years. How many such machines do you think I have seen?’

‘Thousands..’

‘And after having fixed thousands, wouldn’t you expect me to be able to fix this one?’ he asked.

Mark had no answer.

‘Don’t be impressed by experience, Mark.’ – The inspector said with a smile before he bade goodbye.

—
He remembers the story with great fondness to this day.

I was told this story as I was marveling at some of the things he was doing naturally on the project. And when he told me the story in response, I didn’t really know what to make of it. What else do you get impressed by, after all?

But, this story came back to me earlier this week. I had been working on an Excel model for the most part of last week and had gotten stuck. I had an Excel wizard come in and bail me out and make the model incredibly cool. I spent some time trying to understand how and why he had built the model the way he did and noticed that so many things he did were almost out of habit. And after one of my ‘why’ questions, he said ‘Rohan, I have built hundreds of these and over time, I know what not to do. It just comes with experience. When you finish doing a 100, you’ll be able to do all this as well!’

As a 22 year old in a whole new world, I find myself watching in awe thanks to many past masters who just ‘own’ what they do. However, I do find that the ones I look up to and admire are the ones willing to pass it on, to encourage, to nurture, to stay positive and calm through difficulties and to help others around them grow. And that doesn’t necessarily come with experience but with care, empathy and a desire to help others grow.

‘Don’t Be Impressed By Experience’ – more questions than answers on my understanding of this one. And I take that as a good sign…