Schadenfreude

Schadenfreude is pleasure derived from the misfortune of others. I came across the word when I was reading a very insightful article on ‘The Hindu‘ in Chennai. The article is here and is a take on ‘India as the land of opportunity’ from the eyes of someone who has resided in the US for the past 21 years.

The article and the insight aside, I often ask myself as to why it is the case that Schadenfreude is so prevalent. A friend of mine once reasoned that he felt that humans hadn’t evolved enough from monkeys and it would probably be natural for monkeys to laugh at one that’s slipped and fallen.

I often wonder if that is the case. Sometimes I feel this is a disease that’s prevalent ONLY among human beings!

In my case, I’ve had a tough time fighting the beast – which is generally the root of envy and jealousy. Given my huge insecurities while in my teenage, I found it VERY hard to digest a friend’s success. Any known person’s success seemed to speak to me and challenge my own abilities. I felt everything I knew (those were the days when I though I knew a lot of course..haha) or had should be kept within myself/not be shared. This was not helped by break neck competition in all the schools I studied at, of course.

And it was in the beginning of last year that I decided I was going to fight this! It already promised to be a testing period with the end-of-student-life job hunt threatening to expose these insecurities and bring them to the fore. Having been inspired by Covey’s suggestion to adopt an ‘Abundance mentality’ i.e. where you genuinely believe there is enough out there for anybody, I decided I’d finally get to working on this beast.

I did – I started giving more, complimenting people around me more, sharing job resources with friends, making an effort to add value to people and tried to look at it as my own duty to make others successful. And I guess it is testimony to that when a close friend wrote in said he appreciated the constant giving without expectation.

Well, it feels great now – a good 1 year later. That’s not to say I’m completely ‘cured’. There are still those times when I find myself stuck in self doubt for a few moments when I hear of an unexpected success from elsewhere. But, this time, I do know that that’s how long it will last – a few moments, that’s all.

Now it’s over to other battles like learning to be positive and energetic every single day.

We are makers of our own destiny after all.

Remembering Timon and Pumba..

The last 4 days have been a blur of activity. They’ve had more difficult conversations than I think I’ve had for the whole of the past year, there’s been lots of change and lots of hard work and sleep-walking thanks to a messed up body clock and general lack of sleep. It’s one of those times when events happen so much in a blur that it often takes days, weeks and even months to digest what really happened.

And as I’m heading back home for a couple of days today, I am reminded of Timon and Pumba’s conversation with Simba (from ‘The Lion King‘ – (I don’t remember which one of them says it)

‘………….the way I see it. You can run from it or learn from it‘

And that’s amazingly true as well. Even in a time of intense activity (read crisis), there is always opportunity for unprecedented growth, perhaps more than ever. And it’s up to us to grab that opportunity.

And what’s more, there is always light at the end of the tunnel.

And if you don’t see it yet, it’s probably just that the tunnel is longer than you thought!

The Tip – An airport story from yesterday

I was just walking out of Chennai’s Anna International airport when I realized I needed a taxi to get home. I quickly got myself a receipt from the state owned (and hence cheap) taxi service and walked into the open area. Right there, stood a short worker dressed in the ‘Public Taxi service‘ uniform who took the receipt from my hand, gestured to me that he would take care of my bag and took it.

Firstly, I wasn’t aware that this was the system. I was used to walking all the way to the taxi parking lot as I’d done so before. Anyway, our man took my bag and just before he began walking ahead of me, turned back and flashed a warm smile. I smiled right back and felt ‘Welcome’. I followed him as he hustled his way through the crowd intensely focused on getting me to the parking lot quickly.

At the parking lot, there was a crowd around the desk where our man took the receipt. The next step was to allot a driver. It turned out that the crowd around the desk were all joking, laughing, talking (in true Indian style – I am saddened to add) and goofing off on their job. Our man persistently stood till the guy in-charge put in a taxi number. This was a tricky issue as a driver got upset that he wasn’t being chosen, and screamed till he got his way. Our man still stood patiently, and once the driver had been chosen, hustled to the taxi nearby and put my suitcase in the trunk.

As his job was done, he was now all set to go. At this point, I took out a 10 rupee note as I was determined to give him a small tip. I generally HATE giving tips especially if it is ‘culture‘ and not deserved. But this man thoroughly deserved it for his outstanding dedication to his job. I gave him the money and patted his shoulder.

Just then, he said his thanks, or tried to do so would be more like it. It struck me right then that his speech was impaired. And I was struck dumb as I stood still grasping this fact. As I was kicking myself for not having taken out a bigger amount, I could make our friend out in the distance, walking briskly to serve his next lucky customer. I considered chasing him but I didn’t want him to feel I was doing so out of pity, and most importantly, I didn’t want to stop him from doing his job..

I realized that this situation is a microcosm of the biggest challenge India will have to face if it has hopes of ‘making it‘ as a nation. Our people will have to stop talking and get to some doing. It’s only a pity that people like our friend our few and far between..

I’m still grasping the learnings from this incident. Clearly, there is so much for us to learn!

On different types of focus

Let us imagine I’m making a PowerPoint presentation for my boss. I have been sitting on it for a while and have to get moving!
So, I begin – work a bit on the 1st slide. Then, spell check alerts me that there is a typo and I start fixing the typo. Then, I realize that I don’t quite like the slide layout. And before I know it, I’ve spent 1 hour trying to beautify 1 slide.

Stever Robbins suggests breaking down every task into the various types of focus. For example, a better way to have done this task would have been to focus on –

a) Ideas: Here I should have put in all my thoughts on the presentation into a few slides – never mind the look or the formatting. In fact, I should even turn spell check off as the goal is to generate ideas.
b) Editing: This phase would have been checking the various sentences grammatically, improving the English and the flow.
c) Formatting: This would have had to do with the design of the slide.

The reason for this split is that our brain is best at work when focusing on ONE task and one task alone. Despite the ‘Make a PowerPoint presentation’ being just 1 task in our heads, it actually involves 3 kinds of focus!

For this week, let’s remember to ask ourselves if we are breaking tasks down to kinds of focus and watch our productivity zoom. :)

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Source: 9 steps to work less and do more by Stever Robbins

Signatures, autographs and The Bournvita Quiz Contest..

I remember watching ‘The Bournvita Quiz Contest‘ a lot as a kid. It was an Indian quiz show hosted by a charismatic quiz master. It was tradition in this show to have celebrity guests come for a round or so in the more important episodes. And this celebrity guest would ALWAYS autograph a huge flip chart with a small message at the end of the show.

This was my favorite part. I used to gaze in awe at the (often) stylish signatures of famous personalities along with short messages like ‘All the best’.

So, of late, along with my morning mojo (more about that here), I have begun writing a commitment to myself that I sign. And every morning, when I sign that commitment (eg: Today, I will be….’), I feel a surge of energy and I’m fondly reminded of the celebrity signing an autograph with a flourish.

Today, for instance, I signed thrice. It solidified my commitment to myself for the day and felt really good. My signature is not any different than it was 10 years ago, but it’s never felt so good!

When was the last time you signed with a flourish and felt good?

(And no, rushed signatures at banks, restaurants etc does NOT count! :D)