Le Vie Est Belle

Movies and songs have a way into the depths of our soul.
And this one is a soul-ful movie. La Vie Est Belle or Life is Beautiful is a wonderful reminder of the power we exert over our lives and explains very simply that ‘management-y’ concept of ‘being proactive’.
The story is one of two halves. The first half is a sweet Italian comedy – a love story of sorts. Things change when the hero (Director Benigni himself) is whisked away to a Nazi concentration camp along with his son. And the rest of the story describes the events that follow – a period during which Benigni keeps his son healthy and cheerful thanks to his undying positivity and admirable strength of will.
If you haven’t watched this classic, I hope you do, as soon as you can get your hands/mouse on a copy. Roberto Benigni’s master class. There’s lots to learn from this one..

On Changing the Question

This week’s Book Learning draws inspiration from ‘first, break all the rules’ by Marcus Buckhingham and Curt Coffman.

Mike was always in the top 10 of his company’s top 150 salespeople. But, his manager, Kirk, always felt he had more to give.
Every month, he would try and talk to him about how well the other sales people had done. But, it had no effect. No fire, no burn – Mike just seemed dead bored.

It was then Kirk tried a different question. Instead of ‘What do you plan to do to beat the rest?’, he asked Mike ‘What do you plan to do to better yourself this month?’

And voila! Mike was transformed. It turned out that Mike was not competitive at all (unlike Kirk) but was an achiever who only cared about beating himself! Mike had dozens of ideas and together and Mike and Kirk worked on them. He ended up becoming the company’s top salesperson for 6 straight years!

To get the best out of our teams, it is essential we ask the right questions. And the big learning here is not to ask ONE question to everyone but to change the question to play to the motivations of those in our team. And hopefully, we will also ask ourselves the right question in the process..

Here’s to asking the right questions this week!

Setting Recurring Alarms to get Routines in Place

Over the past month and a half or so, I’ve stumbled on a very effective system.
The problems I had were simple – Food and Sleep. Yes, the basics!
In a nutshell, I needed the following to be in place –
1. Lunch @ 11:50 am (latest 12ish): So I avoid the crazy afternoon rush.
2. Snack @ 3:50 pm: 4 hour food refill.
3. Get out @ 6:15pm
4. Dinner @ 7:50pm
5: Sleep @ 9pm
The reasons are simple. This routine is designed for my early morning wake up. So, 3, 4, and 5 are straightforward.
Point 2 i.e. the snack at 3:50pm is a big problem as I am generally mid-way through a nice work session right then. And it is much easier to just skip it and wait for dinner but I’ve had enough issues with acidity in the past because of my tendency to just motor through hunger when I’m in ‘flow’.
And what’s the way to do this? Recurring alarms. Due App on the iPhone (developed by a friend’s friend) has daily alarms at all these times. That’s the easy part of course.
The annoying thing is that the alarm doesn’t let go. It continues to buzz till I get it done.
Now, these things hardly ever happen on time (snack, get out, eat dinner, sleep etc) but atleast they happen at a more reasonable point than before as I have disciplined myself to switch the reminder off only after I have finished the task.
Does this drive me nuts? YES! Can you imagine what it might be to be half way through a problem and spend the next hour with a phone vibrating every 2 minutes?
It is extremely annoying. But, it gets stuff done. And that’s the point.
—
Coincidentally, Lifehacker had a similar piece on this idea

Dealing with worry by writing things down

Worry is a toughie. While it’s impossible to run away from it, there are certain ways that can help us soften it’s impact.
Let’s take a simple example. I realized today that there are some overdue bills (very overdue!) that I wasn’t aware of. Now, I saw the letters and I began freaking out. The whole thing looked pretty darn scary.
I always give myself 5 minutes of freaking out time when I’m faced with a problem I can’t do much about, atleast at that moment. During that time, I play ‘judger’ and think about what went wrong. In this case, I had a friend’s help in setting up payment and my hypothesis is that something broke down.
Once I am past the irrational ‘freaking out’ period, it’s time to problem solve. I made a couple of calls to check in on how bad the (potential) situation is. The (only) best case solution is to wait till Monday morning and make the payment as soon as the offices open.
That said and done, I found myself worrying again. And here, I employ another old tactic – Write it down. So, I write on my trusty whiteboard –
(The lighting wasn’t the best – hence the red hue!)
So, that’s my ‘stop worrying about it – only thing you can do is sleep @ 9pm tomorrow’ and ‘if you are really restless, finish all your weekend tasks today’ note.
This does a couple of things –
1. Writing is neuro-muscular – so the message is clearer (to myself!)
2. Clearly describes what I CAN do -> Sleep by 9pm tomorrow so I can be up at 5am on Monday
3. Tells me what to do to distract myself i.e. do my weekend tasks! (there’s a list on the side)
And this has helped greatly. I am on my weekend tasks now and am focusing on the ‘issue’ a lot less. Again, logic here would tell you that there’s no point worrying. But, worrying is emotional, and hence not rational.
And I hope the workaround helps you if you find yourself in a similar situation.

Giving Condolences

A friend/relative/elder lost a near/dear one.
You haven’t spoken to them for ages.
It would be very weird if you called them out of the blue.
What would you say?
Just make that call.
Still thinking about whether or not to do so?
Don’t think. Make that call.
Just call and say you’re sorry to hear about the news.
Luckily, being human means our feelings tend to manifest themselves into words..
Still thinking?
Don’t bother. Make that call.
I’ve been on the ‘other’ side.
And it makes all the difference in the world.
—
Inspired by an exchange I had with a friend who was debating whether or not to make the call. He did. And I was glad he made the choice, for he knows not what he’s done.. (in a good way) :)

On Chasing Themes

I walked out into the beautiful summer day.

Wondering what it was about summer days that inspired poetry.
For I was inspired.
So, I looked around for a theme.
A fitting theme.
I was soon ambling in the picturesque surrounds of Regent’s park.
But I still hadn’t found a theme.
So I looked around for one.
I saw the old couple walking hand in hand,
the kid who couldn’t hide his delight at having dozens of birds around him,
the ducks walking around without a care in the world,
the baby laughing at the scene unfolding,
the men in suits discussing their work-lives,
yet more men in suits sharing photos of loved ones with each other,
young boys heading to the field for a game of football,
the touch rugby gang and the cricket gang,
the two lovers coochy-cooing on a bench,
the colleagues playing softball,
the solitary swan swimming about in search of it’s mate,
the lush green fields,
the kids running with their dogs,
the two girls sprawled on the grass playing cards,
and me, walking around, searching for a theme.
And then it hit me.
Much as many things in life hit me.
Why was I searching?
What an idiot I had been.. (as usual)
The theme was, of course, right in front of my eyes.
‘Chasing Themes’ , wasn’t that a theme after all?
For I couldn’t decide between the many sights and sounds,
that made for a perfect summer day.
A day when you felt ‘the rhythm of love.’
A day to play the music low.. and sway to the rhythm of love.
(And the poem continues)..

The Dots always connect

I had an ‘Aha’ moment last week.
It happened like most other ‘Aha’ moments. I think it was 2 hours past midnight on Monday and I was just about leaving the office. We had an event in 2 days and I was helping in the organization of it.
And during the course of the day, I had spent time trying to make a great video, going through logistics and multimedia plans and just trying to think through how we could add small touches so as to make the event very memorable.
During that day, I had summoned a whole collection of learnings from 3 defining experiences in the past 4 years – ExpressionHappens (videos), Sparkz (event management) and RealAcad (more about events..).
The dots do connect. Thank you Steve (Jobs).

Starting a Movement – Are you in?

It all started a few days ago when I first saw the Seth Godin TED talk on Tribes. If you haven’t seen it yet, I hope you do. Here is a link. It is worthwhile spending 20 minutes on it.
Godin suggests that, with the internet, humans are going back to tribes as a way of interaction. And these tribes are groups of people with similar interests or beliefs finding ways to get together, interact and meet – all thanks to the internet. So, he argues, if you wanted to find a group of Ukranian folk dancers today, you could.
He ends by asking us to start a movement (within 24 hours). Well, I couldn’t do it in 24 hours so I thought it might not be a bad idea to do it within 24 days atleast.
The movement I am inspired to start is the ‘Learner’ movement. The cause here is simple – I visualize a world where people will not fear making mistakes, where they will focus on ‘responding’ to mistakes creatively, constructively and correctively and where they will forge ahead making one mistake after another knowing fully well that they are better for it.
In essence, they will not be paralyzed by the fear of failure. They will be energized by it because, in either case, they will have a store to tell to their brother/sisterhood of learners.
I have no idea how to proceed with this. And I have no idea what the next steps are. But, I am inspired. And I am determined to do something about it. It all starts with the will, I guess.
So, my big question to you – Would you be inspired enough to be part of the founding of a movement of this nature? We don’t know the name yet, but we will, soon. We don’t know what we’re going to do yet, but we will soon.
It may also be a while before it starts making a dent. But, I am optimistic that it is only a matter of time. Keep me posted.
PS: The big inspiration here is ‘The Beatles did not invent teenagers. They just lead them.’ We are not going to invent ‘learners’, we are just going to find, and united them!