RamGanapathy.com

Category: Insights

  • Ray of Reason

    Ray of Reason

    Fifteen years ago, I got promoted to manage a team of twelve. I saw myself as a young, aspirational and enthusiastic manager, guiding these young(er) bunch of men and women on a challenging journey to deliver a critical piece of software in a short period of time. Towards the end of the year, the software was subjected to thorough testing. Around the same time, I too got tested – a 360-degree feedback from my team on my performance.

    The software performed well. I got thrashed. The team basically said, “We don’t like you(r style of managing)”.

    I had a dilemma. Should I switch to being an individual contributor and play to my strengths in technology? Or should I learn from my mistakes, grow as a person and try to connect better with my team?

    It will be several attempts, several years and many such corrective feedback cycles before I did better. On hindsight, I should have…

    We need to think clearly in such situations. That is not easy.

    These days, when I face a complex situation, I try a principle suggested by the billionaire, Ray Dalio. It is deceptively simple, but very effective. The method involves thinking through three questions and filling your answers across three columns on a piece of paper. Every time I fill those columns, I feel better. I feel I have understood, even if not conquered the complex territory I am navigating.

    Here is the principle:

    1. Decide what you want
    2. Find out what is true
    3. Figure out what to do, based on 1 and 2.

    I did warn you, it appears simple.

    Ray Dalio has filled 592 pages of his book with many such principles derived from his life and work. Like a catch surprising the fisherman, this principle popped out of the first few pages, and I have only read fifty or so.

    I stopped after the first catch, because I wanted to taste it first. As I began applying this principle, a key insight was how (1) and (2) are sometimes distinct. Even, mutually exclusive. The trick is to construct a bridge from columns 1 and 2, leading into 3.

    If I had this clarity fifteen years ago, I would have identified my want as, “My team to deliver on the goals on time, on budget, with high quality, not getting burnt along the way, not getting micro-managed”.

    I would have scribbled under the second column, “It is true, however, the team is under pressure; I am under the pump. Also true that the team has not been given a choice, not given a voice, and not clear on why we were doing what we were doing”.

    If I had these three distinct columns, I would have not jumped to the actions. I would have learnt to be a bit more objective, a bit more sensible. Would have learnt to remove “I” from the equation and listen to what the team had to say regarding the goal pursuit.

    On hindsight, I should have…

    As I encounter this principle fifteen years late, I stop. “What is reality telling me? What are the constraints? What am I not thinking about?”

    “What is true?”

    I am still exploring this principle. Do let me know if this works for you.

  • A beautiful mindset

    I have struggled with the word strategy all through my career. No, I haven’t struggled to make a plan or define a logical sequence of activities, but this whole strategising thing is something else that bothered me. How do you successfully get through to the other side of a challenging project to deliver, or an uncertain future for the product and team, or an unexpected change in career? Dealing with, and winning at these require more than grit or luck. Pure logic doesn’t help beyond a point. I have often heard from colleagues that life resembles a chess game, one to be mastered.

    I am bad at chess.

    My other problem is with the word, Art. There is an art for anything these days: “Art of speaking..”, “Art of writing…”, “Art of winning…” and of course, the ultimate “Art of living”. All my life, I was more into science and math, and I was particularly bad at art.

    Bad at art, and worse at chess, I have no hope then.

    I am good with reading books however, and to my pleasant surprise I landed on this book recently that carried both these words in its title: The Art of Strategy, A Game Theorist’s Guide to Success in Business and Life.

    One of the authors of this book is a professor in the US but of Indian origin, which made me think: after all, wasn’t the Indian civilisation that gave birth to Chaturanga, the predecessor of the modern chess game? Even the famous epic Mahabharatha revolves around a game of dice gone wrong for the Pandavas. India is also the place of Chanakya the philosopher-guru who authored Artha-Shastra – a treatise similar to the more famous Art of War.

    The definition of strategic thinking was very helpful: “the art of outdoing an adversary, knowing that the adversary is trying to do the same to you”, “art of convincing others, and even yourself, to do what you say.”, “art of putting yourself in others” shoes so as to predict and influence what they will do.

    Out of the many strategies and approaches, the common theme for me was the element of surprise, as a winning ingredient in any strategy, especially dealing with bullies. The authors explain the best strategy to confront a powerful and intimidating bully at school, at work, or even a dictator: a sudden, visible, unexpected act of defiance by the collective.

    The book as such is hard to finish, but there are some interesting parts not to be missed, especially the stories from world war, movie references (The Beautiful Mind, for example), and other real-life examples. The definitions of various game theory constructs eg. zero sum game, dominant strategy, Nash equilibrium etc. ) are well explained, until they loose you by going deep into the mathematics.

    Yet, there is more to unpack from this book. It says at one point, “All of us are strategists. It is better to be a good one, than a bad one”.

    That sounds to me a practical, if not a beautiful mindset.

  • A page from a book is more than that

    I notice my family, friends and acquaintances, not reading books.

    Some of them don’t have time in their lives right now, to dedicate an afternoon to even begin to read from a book they bought many years ago. This blog is not for them.

    A few don’t like to read books, they tell me. They have apparently lost interest in the written word. I am writing this piece, directly looking at them. Yes, I know who you are.

    I am kidding. I promise, I won’t preach why you should read. Nor would I prescribe a bunch of books on this last day of the year. I am kidding again.

    This is more about two moments from my 2021 trip around the sun. One acted as an anchor, giving me a sense of what I loved doing, and another that brought out the force in me, and gave direction.

    The Greeks again

    In February this year, on a lazy Saturday afternoon, I saw a tweet by a speech consultant @JohnfBowe. His article explained how two thousand years ago, the Greeks figured out that public speaking – the art of rhetoric – is a foundational skill to be acquired by everyone. Yeah, for once, it is not all about philosophy when it comes to the ancients.

    I ended up buying his book. It begins with the story of his cousin whose life takes a dramatic turn after joining Toastmasters. The guy never left basement until he was fifty nine years old, but soon got married, and overcame shyness (not necessarily in that order), helped by the world’s largest organisation devoted to the art of public speaking.

    John’s book made me reflect on the way I do presentations. Content is king, they say. I no longer start my preparations researching for what to include. The recipient(s) of the message take centre stage, more than the message itself. Audience is king.

    I reached out to the nearest club in Canberra. I wasn’t shy, but curious. I was welcomed into the Woden Valley Toastmasters club as a guest, a pivotal moment for me this year. I soon became a member, learning how to talk more clearly, persuasively but mainly, to keep the focus on my audience, what would be valuable to them. And to ramble less.

    Incidentally, around the same time in March, I got an opportunity to present SAP’s product strategy at a customer’s town hall meeting addressing roughly 150 members of their IT team. I remember spending more time on the question: What do I want them to think and feel, when I finish talking.

    A random tweet guided me to the book about ancient Greeks, eventually taking me to the Toastmasters, on my way to a successfully delivered talk.

    Winning is the (only) way

    Later in July, I faced a sudden bout of confusion and uncertainty about the way my role was perceived at work.

    One book brought back the fighter in me. It wasn’t a random tweet this time, but a slice of podcast conversation with the NBA star Chris Bosh talking about a book that shaped his thinking: The way and the power – Secrets of Japanese Strategy. Its about how a samurai master deals with confusion and uncertainty; one who controls his mind. One who would not lose. I ordered it immediately.

    I can’t say much more. But reading a couple of chapters, it felt as if I had flipped a switch in my mind. I woke up one morning and decided to win. Not merely adapt or survive or manage a situation. To win.

    You want the whole meal, not juice

    Why bother with a book these days, if one can acquire such insights through tweets and podcasts? I sense, reading a book – even skimming through a few pages – is way different than trying to grasp ideas distilled by someone else – a secondary process. It is the difference between eating a wholesome meal and drinking a juiced up version.

    A book could change the way you think about this world. Your world.

    Three sixty five days from now, on another new year eve, I will want to hear from you about the pages and words that influenced you.
    For the ones in my cohort too busy to read: One page consumes three minutes out of one thousand four hundred and forty minutes in a day. A typical book has three hundred pages.

    I rest my case.

  • Explore

    Explore

    What if I tell you, Christopher Columbus was not really an explorer.

    Well, I am not asking you to reconsider a historical fact. Am I even qualified to talk about exploration, while real explorers do their wild and uncertain things, I sit on my lazy ass on a quiet and comfy chair in a corner of my house?

    I am only interested in figuring why exploring is a fun pursuit. Exploration, not in the geographical territory per se, rather the “i want to explore more options before i decide” kind; exploring ideas and insights that change the way we think and transform us. Such a skill is a superpower, especially for knowledge workers.

    Suppose, your boss asks you on a Friday evening to come up with a completely fresh approach or an idea by Monday morning (it could be about a product, sales pitch, presentation or a new venture)

    And assume, that for some reason, google is down, internet connectivity is lost for your whole town during the weekend; however you have access to your bookshelf, your local library and can talk to your friends and colleagues in town.

    How will you go about your research? Which book(s) would you look up ? Who amongst your peers would you go to?

    The idea of (re)search or exploration has been key to our thinking and thus, survival. Often we start with building on existing ideas, contacting known people. If we are lucky, we get useful points, connections between those, and once in a while, stumble upon something new – something we never knew it existed when we began the pursuit.

    We all have been using the term, search so loosely. Tamara Munzner’s book on data visualisation has this matrix / table that made me think more clearly about the vagaries of search.

    Lookup: most of the time, we know what we are looking for, and where to find it – like in your neighbourhood grocery store. You know what you are looking for, say milk. You remember where to go and fetch it. Easy and efficient. Why? So much organising has gone behind the scenes. I am not sure if it is even possible to organise and store information/ideas like a grocery shelf.

    Browse: Sometimes we don’t know what we are looking for, but very clear about where to look. Example: in a library, you know there are enough gems buried inside those pages. All you need is time to browse a bit, and with some luck you might find something relevant. You might even stumble upon something new. This is fun – and efficient at the same time. Perhaps more exhilarating compared to fetching milk from your grocery store.

    At the same time, a bit of organising is a pre-requisite to make this work. You should have accumulated related ideas or books in one location that you can go to. Or subscribed to Netflix, where the algorithm does the job for you – to keep you constantly stimulated.

    Locate: this is like searching for your missing car keys. You know what you are searching for, but don’t know where it is. Also, this is where Columbus comes in. You see, in 1492 he set out “to find a direct water route west from Europe to Asia, but he never did”, landed instead on a different continent. He had his target/destination (Asia) known but the location (route) unknown. Thus, as per this matrix’s strict definition he is not an explorer, just a locator. And he failed at that too. There is even this blog that talks about how his GPS failed him big time. In the end, he returned empty-handed, frail, poor and without any recognition.

    Sorry, I am taking a bit of creative liberty here. My point is: when we set out to find new ideas or insights, lot of time and energy is wasted in looking in the wrong direction. One of my simplest life-hacks is to ask for directions: the “right” colleague who might lead me to the “location” of many useful and interesting things. Because, most of the times, we don’t know what we don’t know.

    Who Lucky: Jim Collins, the author of the book Great By Choice, has coined this phrase who lucky. “you get, not just luck in life, but “who” luck….And “who” luck is when you come across somebody who changes your trajectory or invests in you, bets on you, gives you guidance and key points.” (quote from Jeff Hilimire’s blog)

    Finally, explore: The dictionary definition of explore: travel through an unfamiliar area in order to learn about it; inquire into a subject in detail. But as per the matrix above, explore is: we don’t know what exactly we are looking for, and we have no clue where to start searching. That sounds like pain. But imagine, if Columbus convinced his Spanish financiers that he is simply out on a voyage to discover something, no promises. He was better off in not setting any expectation, choosing to ride the vessel of uncertainty, with his mate named luck, and serendipity as his diet.

    That would have been fun. The kind of exploration I am talking about.

    However this pursuit is not trivial; not a reckless exercise, not without any structure. Here are a couple of useful techniques to explore:

    Visual thinking. For me, this is less of a technique, more of trying to be human. Once in a while, get off your device, walk outside and look up, locate the sky and browse the many stars. The change in visual stimulus is all you need sometimes. For a more earthly example, if I need an idea for presentation, I google the topic (eg. Technology Platform) and go “images”, and see the many illustrations. Something clicks in the mind, as this post illustrates how creative ideas emerge out of visual thinking.

    Another useful one is Lateral Thinking, popularised by Edward de Bono. An example is Random Simulation. I use this when I need an opening word or a central theme for a speech or a blog. This is how it works: Choose a random number from 1 to 10, say 7. Open a random page of a random book; find the 7th word in the 7th sentence of that page. Reflecting on that word, its meaning, would evoke a feeling, trigger an idea, shape our thoughts.

    (for this blog, that random word turned up to be destroy; no wonder I have been cynical about Columbus all through this piece)

    The power of exploration is: only direction matters. Your curiosity is the direction. Go where that curiosity takes you, following what appeals to you, not worried about the number of steps taken, points collected, victories or failures; not anxious about reaching any destination.

    In any case, as Yogi Berra said, if you don’t know where you are going, you have a good chance of not reaching there.

    PS: This is the final of a 3-part blog post “How to Think Better”.

    Part 1: “How to Think Better – Externalise”

    Part 2: “Uncategorised” aka How to Think Better – Categorise

  • Uncategorised

    Uncategorised

    I bet you won’t continue reading this blog beyond a point, unless you find something new. Right at this moment, in your brain, a bunch of neurons are firing to figure out what this new is. I wonder if you got some ideas from the title, or some of the pictures below which your eyes cannot help scanning. I suspect you have mentally tagged this blog already – technical, boring, long. Interesting (hopefully).

    Categories

    Our brain is wired to perform instant pattern matching and categorisation. Categories have strict boundaries which help us compare a “this” from a “that”.

    This skill helped us survive as we made quick decisions under uncertainty – by differentiating between a branch of a tree and a snake; between a cold, warm or hot object. All thanks to the much evolved part of our brain: prefrontal cortex.

    Now during the information (delu)age, we need this skill even more, as we distribute every bit of new information to various buckets. Worse, we do pattern matching even when the data doesn’t make any sense. Lets attempt this puzzle:

    Kiki and Bouba are two nonsense words from a non-existing language. Can you suggest a match between the words and the two images below ?

    Analogies

    Cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter says categorisation and analogies are the way ALL thinking occurs in our brain. Watch him narrate this (15 minute into this hour long video).

    We have so little control over this process. If our mind always compares and contrasts – as we see, hear, smell, touch and so on – several downsides occur. In a rush to make a quick judgement, we often make the wrong call.

    Prejudice

    I won’t talk about serious topics like racial stereotypes and unconscious bias in this blog. But I share a recent experience at the food court, when a seemingly innocent comment from the lady at the counter made me cringe a bit.

    I sensed her watching me order rice and vegetarian curry with an additional order of papad. The many neurons in her brain didn’t have to perform heavy gymnastics to categorise me, as she suggested “so, you must be a south Indian?” I nodded. She said, feeling settled, “makes sense!”

    She wasn’t wrong this time. No harm done. (maybe my moustache was a give-away). But not all of us are right when we carry out some lazy, sub-conscious thinking. When we assume.

    Cognitive Bias

    Daniel Kahneman is considered the father of behavioural economics. In his work, he underscores the fact that humans are not rational at all while making decisions. The nobel laureatte’s book Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow has made me more aware – if not smarter – as I learnt about various cognitive biases. A sample for you: Confirmation Bias – the tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions. (eg. anti-vaccinators).

    Rob Dobelli’s The Art of Thinking Clearly is another easy-read that I recommend.

    Black Swan

    Being aware of such biases helps us avoid an ontological shock.

    In the 2nd century, a roman poet coined the term black swan describing an imaginary bird – since at that time, all known swans were white. That was until the 17th century, when Europeans landed in Australia, when they spotted a black swan.

    Nassim Nicholas Taleb tells this story in his book The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. Note, the book is not about birds, but how we struggle with things that shock us – outliers.

    I particularly loved the irony – these 17th century travellers declined to categorise that bird as a swan at all. In their mind, a swan had to be white.

    Moral of the story: be aware of how we categorise. And, when we encounter a new idea that cannot be boxed onto an existing bucket, it deserves a new category on its own.

    The Meditating Brain

    I mentioned earlier, how prefrontal cortex helps with categorisation. The picture-book “30-Second Brain”, edited by British professor Anil Seth, illustrates how meditation rewires our brain.

    Just after 4 sessions of meditation, it is found that we use less of the primitive areas of the brain, activating the prefrontal cortext that helps us perform higher orders of cognitive functions and intelligence.

    Kiki or Bouba ?

    Did you associate the word kiki with the sharp edged object? You are like the 95% of participants of a famous experiment “Bouba/Kiki effect“.

    We cannot help ourselves especially when we don’t realise we are making these associations. Are we stupid, are we wrong? Should we stop categorisation altogether ?

    I finish with the simple and slightly modified words of a famous Henry Ford quote:

    “Whether you think you should, or you think you should not – you are right.“

    PS: This is the part 2 of a three-part blog post “How to Think Better”.

    Check out Part 1: “How to Think Better – Externalise”

    Part 3 to be written: “How to Think Better – Explore“

  • How to think better – Externalise

    How to think better – Externalise

    If I claim this blog will help you think better, you would wonder why is this guy talking about it. Even if you know me enough, the why part of the above question is valid.

    I am no neuroscientist, nor a philosopher. I don’t even think clearly under stress. I still occasionally lose my car keys, and spend an annoyingly long time to make simple decisions. Worse, I keep changing my mind. What credentials do I have to write about thinking?

    The only trophy I can flaunt is the collection of books in my home library, such as How to Think, The Art of Thinking Clearly, Thinking, Fast and Slow etc. 

    With so much thinking about thinking, when will i ever focus on “doing”, you might ask. Well, I want to share some life-hacks relating to thinking, that has worked for me.

    Particularly, I want to write about three ideas in a three-part blog series. This one is about externalising our thinking process.

    I will cover the last two ideas in subsequent blogs. Categorisation: to put various things you encounter in categories or buckets, and Exploration: to search for information and insights to make decisions. While none of these are my original ideas, I have begun applying some to good effect.

    Externalisation – one way to look at this is: offloading stuff from inside your brain, onto a physical format in the external world. Eg. writing, drawing, talking; in fact, expressing of any kind – singing, moving, whatever.

    Cognitive Load

    In my early thirties I realised I could no longer remember phone numbers from memory, and began writing them down. I thought it was a sign of getting old, but it appears, writing as a way to store information is a method followed since ancient times. Yuval Noah Harari writes about this in the bestseller, SAPIENS – that our evolution as humans may have depended on writing skill – shedding the cognitive load from our brain. Not the other way around. The book illustrates the Sumerian writing system from 3000 BC, as a method of storing information through material signs.

    An interesting part of this story is about the first known “writer” in the world. Was he a poet, philosopher, story teller, king or a teacher? Nah. it was the boring accountant Kushim, the first recorded name of a human, ever. 

    I have written previously about how much of a game-changer it has been for me to write my thoughts, ideas and to-dos regularly. Sorry, I have harped on that enough – but please read along to get more convinced of why you should consider writing more.

    Extended Mind

    This idea of externalisation is more than just shedding something from our brains. It is about expanding the zone where cognition occurs: from the brain itself, to all places external to it, onto our body and even further outside. Stephen Anderson, in his delightful book “Figure it Out: Getting from information to Understanding“, explains the recent advances in neuroscience via a simple illustration of the Extended Mind.

    When you have vague idea or a hunch about something, capture that instantly in a piece of paper, and look at it. Now, you have two things: your thought itself still lingering in your mind, and the external representation of that thought, staring at you as the text or drawing that you just created. This interaction in turn drives additional thoughts in your brain. Cognition powers through during such interactions.

    Think and express, or express in order to think? The important aspect about the capture of our stream of consciousness (often containing incomplete thoughts) in an external format, is this: it is not as if we think clearly, and then express it. Expressing a vague thought – writing, talking, drawing whatever – actually is part of thinking itself. 

    In his research thesis, written as a brilliant book “Articulating a Thought“, that has a striking cover page, Eli Alshanetsky throws this paradox: when we express (eg. write down) what we think, we might feel unsure as to what we just expressed fully covered what we thought; on the other hand, without writing (or externalising of any kind), we wouldn’t even know what our thoughts were in the first place! Nevertheless, as Eli explains, the act of expressing our thoughts using language helps, because, language prolongs the thought; it completes the thought; and it specifies the thought.

    Of all the known modes of expression, writing is found to be most energy-efficient way to express – and to preserve our thoughts. But it also happens to be the most difficult. George Orwell’s quote thus haunts us: “If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them.”

    I didn’t write this blog after thinking through everything i was going to say. Infact, the act of writing – putting down my thinking into words and forming sentences – shaped my thinking about this topic. And every time I “looked” at the written text, it refined my own understanding of my own understanding.

    In particular, writing using our hands, compared to say, typing, is proven to help our memory. In this paper, Kate Gladstone explains, handwriting is “far better at providing the necessary level of stimulation”, as it “activates a particular “network of cells within our brains: a “command center” called the Reticular Activating System (RAS)“, which is responsible for attention, alertness and motivation.”

    Outsourcing our thinking to others

    We are social animals. We express our thoughts and emotions with our partners, colleagues, friends and family. So, taking the idea of externalisation further, group thinking becomes very relevant when others are able to build on top of our thinking – as they express their interpretation of our ideas. This is more effective when we capture all of those thoughts and ideas from everyone in an externalised format that is visible to all (eg. writing in a white board).

    I am part of a sales team and thus i often rely on others – experts in various lines of business within my company. Often we brainstorm ideas and decide together how to deal with challenges. This insight that I am not alone, and that i can delegate parts of my thinking to a huge bunch of experts, has been both an exciting and humbling one. I say this when asked if I know about a particular product or a technology. “I know that, because either I actually know that thing, or at least I know someone who knows that.”

    Thanks to the internet, it has become super easy for us delegate this thinking to the whole world (eg. post a question in an online forum like quora, reditt or if you are braver, social media like twitter).

    Walking helps thinking

    I have often found that as i rake my brain to strategise, make decisions or look for new ideas, there is an irresistible urge in my body to jump out of my seat and walk. Walking is now an important part of my weekly activity. Especially after learning about the science on the correlation between walking and thinking. This Newyorker article explains well: article “Walking Helps Us Think”

    “When we choose a path through a city or forest, our brain must survey the surrounding environment, construct a mental map of the world, settle on a way forward, and translate that plan into a series of footsteps. Likewise, writing forces the brain to review its own landscape, plot a course through that mental terrain, and transcribe the resulting trail of thoughts by guiding the hands.” “Walking organizes the world around us…Writing organises our thoughts”

    I hope all this made sense. If not, please write back to me – I will really appreciate that. In the meantime, I will need more time to walk, think, and eventually write about the other two ideas as blogs.

    Getting lost…

    I have always been accused of an over-thinker and, in the recent years, I have been down many a rabbit hole: reading a lot about how to think better, thinking a lot about how to write well, and writing about all that comes to my mind.

    I am actually not sure where this is going, but i enjoy getting lost in such thoughts. Last month, i went walking around the suburb on a newly laid trail into the woods along a beautiful water stream, while listening to a Tim Ferriss podcast. Thirty minutes later I found myself reaching on top of a small hill. I didn’t want to return home using the same path, and decided to try out a new route which turned out to be a dead-end – with barbwires and all that. Eventually, I had to use google-maps to get back home, which felt a bit embarrassing.

    This unexpected detour though, triggered a random idea which helped untangle a mess – that was until then an unexpressed vague thought that was eating my mind that weekend.

    Folks, get it out of your mind. It will set you free.

    PS: Check out part 2: how to Categorise, and part 3: how to Explore

  • Press Any Key to Continue…

    Press Any Key to Continue…

    My boss put two questions in front of me recently, during the half-yearly review meeting. “What is the aspect of the job that gives you joy” – a nice, ego-boosting leading question that lead to a delightful conversation.

    Her next question stumped me: “What is going to be your pet-project?”. “The one activity you could do on your own, during free time. Something you could come home to, when you have had an especially bad day”.

    I drew a blank.

    Homecoming

    This question is significant today, as we perceive time, work and life very differently than just a few months ago. During the pre-COVID era(?), a knowledge worker like me would have separated work and life – at least physically, straddling across office and home each day. We used to talk about work-life balance. These days, there is not much of a discussion about balance. It’s all a blur at the moment.

    A good blur, at least for me. I no longer need to get up worrying about ironing the shirt or to drive to work to be in time for the first meeting of the day. Time is aplenty. (My wife isn’t too excited though – having to come home each day only to see unwashed stained tea cups – one on the table, two lying on the floor and one missing).

    Sorry, I digress. The point is, a different sort of homecoming is necessary to keep our sanity.

    But, a pet-project ? You see, this phrase has two words that sound dangerous to the lazy-me: a pet needs maintenance, while a project needs diligent work towards completion.

    Spend, Manage or Invest ?

    On a serious note, what would i do with a bit of extra time ? Time = Money, they say. There was this crude poster i saw recently that compared how the poor, middle-class and rich deal with money:

    – the ones who have less, SPEND.

    – the ones who have moderate amount, MANAGE.

    – the ones who have excess, INVEST.

    How do i invest this little excess time? Typically i am bored, i look for interesting things in twitter (will write a blog one day, about the gems i discovered by following a few interesting people in twitter during this year), read a bit of philosophy/self-help books, watch movies (these days i’m into Turkish rom-coms). I also play a bit of amateur sports. However, i’m not serious about any of these things. I dabble.

    Making Choices

    To be serious about a pet-project, i have to generate a list of options, make a choice, invest time and energy, report on its progress, and show some result.

    Choice! If i have a, b, c, and d as choices, it is mainly a question of what appeals to me the most. What if there is something outside this list that suits me better? How do i know what i don’t know ?

    One would argue, it is not easy to make decisions even with clearly defined, discrete choices. The red or the blue pill, as Morpheus asks Neo in The Matrix.

    When my daughter and my nephew were toddlers, they used to fight for the best toy. Once, faced with a red and a green plastic trumpet, the kids couldn’t come to an agreement who gets what. It ended like this: my girl grabbed both the trumpets and offered the guy to choose one of those. As soon as he decided on the green one, she knew exactly what she liked. She snatched that very green trumpet from the hands of the baffled boy, and threw the red one to him.

    What to look for ?

    Life is easier as a child. I am more indecisive than ever before and struggling to answer a simple question, with no clear list of options, nor a play-mate to try out a decision tree.

    Perhaps this question should be framed as: what would you “work” on, given unlimited time & resources without any constraint whatsoever?

    I looked around for some quick inspiration – maybe mentors could help? Or the so-called thought leaders – like Paul Graham – who says in his blog, What Doesn’t Seem Like Work, “The stranger your tastes seem to other people, the stronger evidence they probably are of what you should do.” He ends by asking, “What seems like work to other people that doesn’t seem like work to you?”

    Unbounded and Unflattened

    When i look back at my life so far, someone or something has always driven me somewhere. A rank to achieve, a course to finish, a job to get, a project to complete, a step to climb in the corporate ladder, a problem to solve for a customer, etc. Even when i indulged in creative pursuits, there had always been constraints or a boundary.

    I am not sure how to wrest myself out of the set path – even if it is just for a hobby. Something different and random but not trivial; a pursuit that delivers pleasure but no expectation (i certainly don’t want additional responsibility and having to justify to anyone – including my nice and well-meaning manager, who surely will be reading this blog with a chuckle).

    Anything, that amounts to something in the end.

    Anything

    This reminded me of a story about Compaq computers: In the 1980s, their customer support team had to spend a lot of time explaining first-time computer users, who called up to ask “Where is the Any key in my keyboard?”. The users were confused by the message in the computer monitor that instructed them to “Press Any Key to Continue”.

    Where is my “any” key ?

  • Checkmate, Stress!

    Remember that weird state of your mind when you woke up many years ago, totally unprepared for a test? Or while suffering through an impossible and never-ending project that had a huge bearing on your career. And what Federer might have dealt with as he was clutching at straws facing a seventh match point at the Australian Open last month (you might say, his wife Mirka was more at pain, with her hands clasped and eyes closed in a quiet prayer).

    Stress is a bad word. It is so vague, it means everything and nothing at the same time. Im no expert in psychology and have no intention to write a “how to beat stress” blog. I thought of narrating a few personal insights and a lot of borrowed learnings that helped me deal with this beast.

    When i picked up Mind Master – Winning Lessons from a Champion’s Life, i expected World Chess champion Viswanathan Anand’s book to contain sophisticated mental strategies for career growth. The now fifty year old master was once a child prodigy. I am only half way though the fascinating book, but Anand opens up like a friendly mentor. He portrays his vulnerable self when facing a daunting opponent like Gary Kasparov and appears an emotional wreck after a jolting defeat. Beyond his insights on risk taking, persevering towards goals, contextual memory and developing curiosity, i loved the emotional human behind the intellectual genius.

    There are solid lessons from the seemingly quirky, nail-biting warrior’s many duels – most, against his own mind.

    Dealing with Emotions and being fearless

    He talks about how emotions come in the way of clear thinking and decision making. Especially, “After a defeat, it pays to completely change my surroundings, find something new and compelling”. “The mind only recovers emotionally when it can replace an old memory with a new, more pleasant one.”

    He then narrates how different Kasparov was in dealing with a similar situation. The all time great champion was struggling one day in 1987 during his match against Karpov. “Instead of striking his head against the washboard over his predicament, Kasparov spent the entire night playing cards”. The next day, he woke up late, had a lazy lunch and told himself he was just going to keep going.

    As i read this, i got reminded of a similar story narrated by the Sri Lankan cricket captain Arjuna Ranatunga, about his team’s state of mind on the eve of the 1996 world cup finals against the mighty Australians. His team were the underdogs but had played a fearless brand of cricket all through the tournament. Staying in the same hotel in Lahore along with their opponents, he noticed the Australian team having a quiet dinner, while his troops were no were to be seen. When he later found many of them shopping carpets and sarees for their wives, he comforted himself, the cup was theirs: A team so relaxed, cannot lose. And they didn’t.

    Around a year before this match, i was faced with an anxiety attack on the eve of my year 12 chemistry exam. I was hoping to refresh my memory of all things chemistry during the two day break after the physics test. I had to get close to 200/200 in each of physics, chemistry and maths, to have any chance to getting into the tier-1 engineering college in South India.

    I had toiled the whole year on physics, but i messed up a twelve-marks question. Returning home, i felt defeated even as my dad tried to calm me down. The two days before the chemistry test felt like eternity. After spending forty of the forty eight hours self-loathing, fretting and fuming, the fear of failure made me hopeless. But with just a night to pass before the test, i suddenly felt better since i had lost already. I told myself, “I won’t get into the university i yearned for. Let me just have some fun”. I still remember, i was one of the very few who had a smile in the face before, during and after that three hour test.

    Viswanathan Anand too explains how his occasional shift in attitude – embracing fearlessness – landed him spectacular victories. “i have played my most inspired games when my enthusiasm for the sport resurfaced, without the bindings of titles or wins or ratings”…”to play a good game”..”excited about learning something new”.

    My battle was no way comparable to his. Still, when the results came two months after my exams, i shocked myself and my chemistry teacher, scoring a perfect 200/200 – a tough feat at that time, especially in my school.

    From Checkmating to Note taking

    Anand’s suggestion in taking notes as a means to deal with emotions and stress is another revelation. “putting down my observations right after a defeat when the pain was raw and the sting was fresh, I stumbled upon the solutions I had seen but didn’t act upon or the ones I had overlooked.”

    I am no big achiever yet, but i can vouch for this. For the last couple of years, i have been diligently writing down notes in a daily (sometimes, hourly) journal. I make a note of what’s in my mind, what i’m thinking, more importantly, the raw emotion at that moment – feeling fearful, inadequate, blessed, clueless, bored etc.

    Poring over these notes – a treasure trove – i have become a lot more objective, grounded and relaxed. (many of my blogs were born out of those).

    As Anand says about his 40+ years of notes, “without that”…”my experience [is] almost incomplete.”

    Second Brain

    A zillion things go on in our mind at any moment. Offloading much of that – thoughts, ideas, shopping lists, pending tasks – to another system is a stress buster. For the uninitiated, David Allen’s book/methodology Getting things Done is a great place to start. Along the way, i discovered, Tiago Forte’s Building the Second Brain (BASB) techniques quite useful. If you are looking for a contemporary note taking app/tool, i suggest Roam Research – this has been a game changer for me.

    Don’ts

    A few physical techniques like simple exercises, breathing techniques etc, can be transformative no doubt (eg. Paul Taylor’s Mind Body Performance Institute), and i’m not even venturing into the possibilities in the spiritual realm.

    For me, confronting the raw emotion face to face has been an effective way to conquer it.

    One thing i learnt not to do when your loved ones are feeling it, is to suggest, “please don’t be stressed”.

    It is as useless as saying, “please don’t have a headache”.

  • The Karate Lies

    “Say two statements to describe yourself: a truth and a lie. Let the team guess the right one”. A silly but surprisingly effective way to spend a quarter of an hour of an otherwise boring day of sales planning sessions. It was also a chance to get a new perspective about colleagues that we assume to know well. Everyone tried to be clever; a few stated one attribute about themselves super quick while hesitating or scratching the head for the next, which gave them away.

    At my turn, I claimed two achievements: 1) represented my college Tennis team 2) hold brown belt in Karate.

    No one was right about me. Having to assess the lazy, lean, slouching and unimposing fellow, they all could be forgiven for not associating me with martial arts.

    What was your guess ?

    Now, I don’t remember any of the karate stances or techniques, and I for sure cannot punch without hurting myself.

    My father introduced the 8 year old me to karate. He just didn’t enrol me to a class; he would talk to the karate master frequently; watch me train, as he sat on the side-lines. He would attend every belt ceremony. While he encouraged me to be physically fit – he had built up a few muscles himself – i was a lazy kid looking for excuses. I did well academically and insisted holding a book rather than dumbbells and plates (he had custom-built for me). If only I had 10% of his passion.

    Still, I kept up with the karate lessons for the next few years. Getting up at 5:30 am thrice a week, cycling through the dark alleys to the next suburb, I would meet ten more of my sleepish class mates and our no-nonsense karate master smiling at us. He insisted on warming up – made us do knuckle push ups on a hard, sand surface. The actual karate stances (katas) will be taught much later. He emphasised learning discipline, mind control and self-defence, before acquiring skills to flex, punch and kick. “Be alert, block and defend. You will do just fine”.

    Occasionally, he will organise sparring – fighting an opponent – and I would be the worst of the class. I did well on theory and trembled on a real combat. I survived quite a lot of those sparrings by employing my defence techniques (A little bruise here and there wouldn’t count).

    I once had to face-off against a friend – a bulkier boy who happened to be my mother’s colleague’s son. After the fight, as we both walked back home, my mother spotted a bulge on his lips and wondered if he had hit his face against a wall or something (she obviously ruled out the possibility of me ever hitting another human being). “It was a punch”, was my friend’s reply, a clever usage of passive voice. My mother appeared confused as she took that word for a similar-sounding Tamil term “panju” (cotton). I then narrated to her: As he began attacking, I got nervous, crossed my hands and closed my eyes. Perhaps he lost balance and tripped. His face fell onto my hands, landing his tender lips on my tight fist.

    My next “fight” was a real one. During my year 6, a close friend Velan changed character, began teasing and bullying me as he joined a new bunch of mates. He was tiny but challenged me for a real man-to-man fight that evening. I was half thrilled and embarrassed to face-off against my own friend. I was scared too. After school, walking up to the soccer goal post, we looked at each other taking positions. By then, a crowd had formed to witness the spectacle of two bony structures about to create collateral damage.

    Velan punched. I moved my limbs in the air, more on impulse. Next thing I noticed, everyone running towards a crying Velan who had blood on his face. I cried much louder – maybe due to the impending loss of friendship, and also the tasty paruppu vada (fritters) his mom serves.

    These minor victories were exceptions on an otherwise vulnerable bunch of early-teen years. Feeling physically weak/inferior was part of growing up, especially being amongst intimidating (and bullying) class mates. Karate didn’t help achieve any level playing field with them – I stopped mentioning, to avoid being a laughing stock. Even during the many friendly encounters with my younger sister, I remember being easily out-manoeuvred. She never did any karate and had no fear.

    Meanwhile, I quickly progressed from white, to an orange and a green, then blue, a purple and eventually the brown belt. More self-doubt crept in. I looked myself in the mirror, imagining how it would feel to be ridiculed by one and all if I donned a black belt. While dad insisted to keep going, an unfortunate leg injury from a slightly-more-than-minor accident made me miss some classes. That was the excuse I needed to quit, and I never went back to the karate class.

    My father was quite disappointed. My karate master too caught up with me once during a neighbourhood event. I evaded all their attempts and buried my face in books.

    As I kept focussing on my studies and then, career, I have forgotten the karate kid in me. While my friends pumped iron, ran miles and bent their bones in yoga postures, I didn’t bother to move a muscle. I hit rock-bottom during my early twenties. Once with a group of us – boys (men?) teasing each other, I made a fool of myself announcing my brown belt credentials. One of the guys asked me to show if I had still got it – offering to receive my kicks on his body. The more I pushed and slapped with my slender legs, the louder he broke down laughing, as if he was being tickled. Worse, he was the thinnest of us all.

    I did win the truth/lie test at office the other day, but it will certainly be a lie if I claim any karate accomplishment. After all, when confronted, I have had more more losses, hardly any wins and occasional draws.

    As I calm down, I do realise that the real truth is somewhere in between. Karate was not all a losing cause.

    A few years ago, I caught myself in a road rage incident in Bangalore. My car hit an auto-rickshaw while I took a narrow turn, and it was all my fault. With my wife and kid in the rear seat, I got nervous as the thug-like driver ran towards me, signalling at me to lower the window panes. He hurled a few expletives and began to throw punches at my face. Six or seven hits, if I remember correct. My heart was racing, the girls were screaming, but I noticed him getting frustrated.

    All his hits were misses. Turns out, my forearms crossed up and blocked each one of those. My karate master must have been proud.

  • An Original Copy

    “Can you prepare a document in two weeks’ time that maps our product offerings to the customer’s context?”. I didn’t understand why I was excited at this ask from the senior colleague. You see, in the past few years, I had been more assisting others to produce content – be it a solution proposal or a commercial document – as opposed to creating something on my own. Recent changes in the team meant I do a different role – one that requires me to prepare a collateral of innovation ideas, sales plays, case studies and customer stories.

    A week later, the excitement turned into a bit of nervousness. Up early on that weekend, I was coming to terms with the reality: I actually don’t know anything about this customer. Equally bad, I am out touch with recent innovations and product offerings. The feeling soon turned into anxiety, as I realised I have just a week to go and I hadn’t gathered certain details about this customer that I had expected to receive from a colleague.

    You can now imagine why I didn’t publish any blogs recently.

    Finishing a cup of coffee at 5:30 am, a moment of serendipity ensued. I gazed around the bookshelf and spotted my project report from the post-graduation days. Bayesian Theory based Troubleshooting Tree. We didn’t call it Machine Learning back then. “I did create a lot of content back then”. Rewinding further to the under graduate days, the mind wandered around the times of second year engineering, particularly of those anxious days before the Computer Programming exam.

    “Help me with Math and I teach you Computer Science”, a great deal offered by my class mate who was a computer nerd but (surprisingly) dreaded the mathematical elements of the Electro Magnetic Radiation course. He had some past experience in writing code, while here I was, having never touched a keyboard. I had to deal with this upcoming test on C, C++ and FORTRAN, while still confused by some basics of programming. For instance, I never got the difference between an “IF” and a “FOR” construct.

    I duly followed my part of the deal. We spent couple of weekends before the exam working out many mathematical equations and more importantly, some techniques in constructing answers to impress, and pass, of course. He was elated.

    When it was his turn to help me survive the programming test, however, he acted weird. Suddenly his PC went kaput. The subsequent weekend, his mom gave him an errand. Or he fell sick. I was left with facing a prospect of failing an exam for the first time in my life. I realised my class mate had ditched me. Prayers didn’t help either.

    On the day of the exam, seated on the front row of the bus to college, I still had an hour to do something. My neighbour was next to me – who was not (yet) a friend but one who went to the same college – and was busy going over a rugged old book on computer programming. I wondered out loud, how learning a different programming language (BASIC, if you remember) will help him write exam on C language. He then lectured me on how programming is all about logic, common sense and algorithms, and that syntax is just a means to an end while semantics is all that was important. As the time was ticking by, he shared some techniques like drawing boxes and arrows to construct a flowchart, and alerted me to write English sentences in a pseudocode before writing complicated coding statements in C++.

    All those things my bus friend taught me ended up saving my soul that day. I just had to translate what he said to the questions. I took quite a bit of creative liberties in answering that day. I wrote and wrote; didn’t finish until the last bell rang at 3 hours and 1 minute.

    How do I do it again, 25 years later for a different test ? A second bout of caffeine infused a bit of hope. I told myself, i can prepare that document, if I just stick to those exact techniques from those college days.

    I perhaps need more reminiscing from the past.

    I remembered how I made my own version of subject notes, in those days before internet and google: by corralling content from the original Russian author who wrote complex stuff about electron devices, simplify the language and complement by adding notes borrowed from those always-diligent-girls in the first row of our class. And splattering the boring textual content with mathematical equations, electronic network diagrams and name-dropping of jargons here and there.

    I also recall how a few class mates who had never interacted with me otherwise, would come up and say thanks. Little did I know that copies of my notes had reached far off places.

    This wandering trip to the past was just the kick I needed to get started with the document. During the next three hours, I googled and found many interesting details about this customer and their goals, strategies and what not. I also searched for content from internal corporate sites. Eventually I came up with a decent package. It was much easier than I had thought. The moment I realised I was creating something that does not exist, I began feeling lighter. And like those engineering subject papers, I ended up producing a comprehensive document that I felt proud of: an appealing construct of words, images, ideas and proposals.

    In the end, the deliverable was reasonably well received. While I still have apprehensions whether this is going to be greatly useful, it did serve a purpose: to make a start, a pitch and create something original, if I dare say that word.

    Because, it is quite controversial these days to claim anything original. We are inundated with content created by millions of people past and present. The fonts, colours, words, ideas and possibilities – are all out there. You just need to make a new sentence. Create a new perspective by mixing up things. There are several techniques in Lateral Thinking and Design Thinking that justify, or even encourage this copying – or building upon ideas from others.

    I sense what makes your copy original is the context that you bake in. Its a paradox, we all have our own signatures in our stories, creations – whether they are mails, documents, presentations, talks, even texts.

    Remember, you are unique.

    Just like everyone else in this world.

    PS: the scores from the Computer Programming exam from 1996: The mysterious class mate made 88 out of a 100. I surprised him as well as myself: a cool 78. Unfortunately, the bus friend who helped me out, ended up with much less. Perhaps, he stuck to the truth while I wrote a novel. In the end, he turned out be a better coder than many of us and is quite successful in the silicon valley nowadays.