RamGanapathy.com

Category: Musings

  • New Map on an Old Wall

    Three weeks ago, the entire kitchen wall in our office was filled with maps of the world. Diversity and inclusion week was being celebrated. We were asked to highlight the place we were born, by pasting coloured stickers on the map. Australian continent is deemed down under, but we placed Australia at the centre of the world. I mean, the wall.

    Last week at office, I noticed a new map of Australia on the same wall. A different one, with blurred border lines separating a huge number of “states” and “territories”, all highlighted with various colours, with new names. New, to me – a recent immigrant.

    As a child, I loved colouring maps. I was fascinated by borders, routes and names. 

    “Where are the border lines?”

    I always wondered how the boundaries of states and nations were made. I don’t remember much, but I would ask, who drew those lines and how. During trips to a temple in the adjacent south Indian state, I might have pestered my dad or an elder cousin, “Did we cross the border already?”, “Where is the line that i saw on the map?” I wonder if they might have pointed at the river and the mountain ranges as the bus entered the border town. I never understood.

    Years later, the much grown up adult me would figure it out. Those borders on the map are not real. They are a socio-political construct. Nothing to do with geography.

    “Routes that create territories”

    In the past, the invaders and colonisers used maps to discover new territories. To then change the landscape, peoples, culture, everything. They say Map is not the territory. But those conquerors used maps to make new territory. Bruno Latour says, “The great man is a little man looking at a good map”.

    We trust a map so much these days that we are lost without it. We take it literally, or almost fatally, as this German driver did (from a story I read in an old copy of Readers Digest).

    The semi-conscious middle-aged man was being questioned at the hospital after his accident, “Why did you drive your car at high speed directly at the barricades. Didn’t you notice the exit was blocked for repair. That too, on a sunny day?” His reply, “I followed the GPS on my car”.

    Names: old – new – old

    The city I grew up – Coimbatore – is near the foothills of the beautiful hill station, Ooty. Its historical name is Uthagamandalam. The British made it their summer capital of the south. The name was a mouthful though. They tried pronouncing, but made a mess of it, naming Ootacamund. The locals might have resented it, even if they couldn’t have resisted that change. Eventually, it became Ooty. 

    Thirty years after the British left, the local government decided to change the name to its old Uthagamandalam. Still, a few locals resisted this change. But they might have figured:

    If the names could be changed then, 

    the names could be changed now.

    The new (old?) colourful Australian Map

    That map on the kitchen wall last week was to mark the National Reconciliation Week. The AIATSIS map is a “visual reminder of the richness and diversity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australia. It was created in 1996 as part of the Encyclopaedia of Aboriginal Australia project and attempts to show language, social or nation groups”.

    Maps, with its borders, routes and names, decide the way we see the world. They don’t just tell us where we are, they determine who we are.

    Perhaps, we don’t stop with a new map on the old wall.

    We bring the old map back to the new minds.

    (This is from my speech delivered last week at our Toastmasters club on the theme of National Reconciliation Week in Australia, which is all about “relationships between the broader Australian community and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples”. Please note, while I am still learning about this important topic, my attempt was to touch on the related topic of maps, through stories, anecdotes and insights.)

  • Blank

    Blank

    I couldn’t write a blog last month. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to write one of those self-deprecating takes on a life experience and fill it with wise-cracks. I was struggling for ideas.

    I was actually struggling for words to describe the state of my mind.

    Situation in India

    Everyone seems impacted by COVID, not just counting the unfortunate ones invaded by the virus. The visuals on TV last month were striking – ailing men and women standing in long queues to secure hospital beds, oxygen cylinders or anti-virals. Haunting scenes of bodies that lay queued up in front of a crematorium. Social media, especially twitter was abuzz with cries for help, but in equal measure, with quick and life-saving responses from strangers. The state of my mind tasted like a cocktail of despair and hope. 

    Heavenly prison

    As I talked to my parents, friends, uncles, cousins, ex-colleagues, almost anyone from the land that birthed me, I tried to listen more, but found nothing helpful to offer. My wishful words sounded empty. I watched all this nervously from a safe distance, within the safe comforts of a western country that has a much lower population, a better system, and lucky. Also, cocky. Australia conveniently closed its borders and threatened – with a jail term and a ridiculous fine – anyone trying to come back to the country. The state of mind : angry and helpless.

    Help?

    I am one of the 18 million Indian diaspora spread around the world. What can one individual do, after all ? Of course, I try to support my immediate family and friends in any which way I can – mostly monetarily, given travel restrictions.

    What else could one offer, beyond money and empty words ? I saw Indian-origin doctors offering virtual services to ailing patients in India. I saw millionaires sending flights-full of useful materials. I read about corporates vaccinating their employees. I came across inspiring stories of nameless individuals helping out strangers in dire need.

    I realised then, my craft as a software engineer is not directly useful to my people at the moment. Or maybe i don’t know what to do with my skills – beyond earning a monthly salary.

    What can i do or make?

    Eventually, I joined a small group of the Indian community here in Canberra, who organised a South Indian vegetarian food fair in the temple, to collect funds for a hospital in Coimbatore. We all prepared idlis at home and sold it at the temple. A decent collection resulted that should be helpful. Well, something necessary if not sufficient. As I did my bit around the kitchen, I wondered if this was all I could do.

    The state of mind: feeling inadequate.

    Coping strategies

    Though my family is largely unscathed (fingers crossed), my parents are yet to be vaccinated. I fear we are sitting on a time bomb. Meanwhile, life goes on; work consumes my days, leaving the night wide open for dreadful anxiety. Often in the middle of the night I wake up to check whatasapp, hoping not to catch a text or a missed call.

    When no actions are possible, I turn to distractions. Movies, sports, trivial news in social media, celebrities, anything. And books, especially on philosophy.

    Kural and Senaca

    I turned to Thirukkural – the Tamil classic text from 300 BCE, written by an unknown author (we call him Thiruvalluvar) who has written 1330 non-religious yet sacred verses or Kurals (couplets), seven words each. These kurals are like morals and commandments covering three key aspects of life: virtue, wealth and love.

    There are 10 kurals that cover how to deal with sorrow and despair, each offering a unique coping strategy. A few explain the nature of sorrow and suggest being realistic. A couple of kurals advise us to defend against the incoming trouble. But, a few kurals insist fighting back: trouble the trouble to make it run away, or something of that sort. But this kural below has the best strategy of it all, and I remember being surprised when I first learnt it:

    இடுக்கண் வருங்கால் நகுக அதனை

    அடுத்தூர்வது அஃதொப்ப தில்.

    If troubles come, laugh; there is nothing like that, to press upon and drive away sorrow. (Translation, courtesy valaitamil.com)

    Laughter is indeed the best medicine. But, the state of my mind ? Not funny.

    The Stoic’s take

    In the end, I got a better medicine from the greek stoic philosopher, Seneca, who is now getting more popular after 2000 years.

    Light griefs do speak; while

    Sorrow’s tongue is bound.

    I figured, my mind was at a state where no words or thoughts could spring.

    Blank.

  • 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

  • Recapturing the Saturday 4pm zone

    If there was an election to choose the best time of the week, my vote is for Saturday. Particularly, i will tick the box : 4pm Saturday afternoon.

    There is competition. Sunday is popular and highly rated. It prides itself as the first day of the week, and a holiday. It is precious – and that, paradoxically, is its downside. The pressure to do something relaxing, while being constantly reminded of the slippage of time, that drags us towards yet another week that is still to be planned.

    Monday stands no chance whatsoever – infamous for its morning blues. Historically, it hasn’t proven to get better during the day, as one bears the brunt of many mails, calls, actions and the sudden realisation: should have worked during the weekend to catch up.

    Tuesday is the day people wake up to the reality of the week. So, it won’t win as there is no time for frivolous elections.

    Some of us are mentally dead by the time we scrape through Wednesday. It is nevertheless a decent contender for the vote, as I have noticed a lot of people pre-maturely celebrating its evening as the beginning-of-the-end-of-the-week.

    Thursday is usually a serious day, when the managers chase their teams to see what could be salvaged for the week. The last chance to “begin” something, as it would take at least two days to do an acceptably shoddy job of what was originally estimated to be a week’s effort. As the philosopher of our times Alain de Botton says, “Work finally begins when the fear of doing nothing exceeds the fear of doing it badly.”

    Friday is like a celebrity who simply expects everyone to vote for her, being famous for the TGIF theme (Thank God its Friday!). She doesn’t realise the truth: people don’t really thank God for giving them a Friday; they are just relieved that the week is soon over.

    What is special about a Saturday? At one end, we have the morning, which begins with a “hangover” of the arduous week – the unfinished business still lingering – followed by weekend chores and errands. Saturday nights at the other end, have a special significance in the popular culture – a time set aside for entertainment, a chance to catch up with friends. All of this require planning, scheduling, coordination. Effort. But there is something about an undemanding, effortless Saturday afternoon.

    Illustration by Sowmya Ramanathan

    It is that period, when it would be too late to finish anything pending for the current week, but too early to worry about the upcoming week. A golden, yet fuzzy time space that overlaps the boundary between the weeks. A land without rules, ruler or expectations. A zone to indulge on a meaningless pursuit where no one keeps track of your time. No one cares.

    I have cherished the memories of many such blissful Saturday afternoons of my childhood days (late 80’s). Life was simple. Less TV, no social media, and there was such a thing called boredom. A scene from a typical Saturday 4pm: My mother eager to prepare the perfect afternoon snack, enthused by her weekend wish coming true – being taken out for shopping earlier in the day. My younger sister quarrelling with me over trivial things. Me being physically outmanoeuvred by her yet again; we end up disrupting my dad from his well-earned nap after a gruelling work-week. The unimpressed grandma admonishing us for making a fuss. All of that brought to a peaceful end by the spattering sound of the spicy bajji and the smell of filter coffee. The nourishment for not just the body.

    Growing up, the sweet Saturday afternoon zone got shrinking. Weekend homework increased, priorities changed, we all got busy. Still, those afternoons were a medicine, a recharger of sorts, where time stood still for a brief while, preparing us for the countless weeks ahead. It was all about leisure, less focus on doing anything specific and more about just being together, often spent talking about a random, point-less matter that appears meaningful when I look back.

    2020 was a tough year on many respects. Nevertheless, it was a blessing in disguise. After many years, i sense to have re-acquired this “zone”. The recent year-end break was a great time for me, my wife and our daughter to do what the younger-me did with my family during those Saturday afternoons: be together and do nothing in particular.

    I did something after all. Picked up a few of the books that were staring at me for a while. One in particular blends with this Saturday 4pm mood. Work: A History of How We Spend Our Time, by James Suzman is all about how we humans have completely misunderstood what Work means, missing out on what our (hunter-gatherer) ancestors had an abundance of: Leisure.

    Stepping into 2021, i promised myself to dwell more often on this Saturday 4pm zone that i voted for.

    What is your vote ?

  • 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.

  • Bookshelf tales – Hard landing on a Tipping point

    (This is part 2 of my Bookshelf tales. For part 1, click this link).

    All the preparations didn’t go in vain. I passed the interview and received my first job offer. With a lot of excitement, I moved to a new city to begin my career with Baan (a great company) along with three of my classmates and forty others in that batch (a great company).

    The day we landed, I noticed my friend unpacking more books than clothes from his luggage. He filled out half the wardrobe shelf with his books. Seven Habits of Highly effective People was one of the first books I borrowed from him. I remember feeling inadequate at that moment – after having ignored a friend’s dad’s advice before I left home. He was reminiscing on his bachelor days in Hyderabad many years ago and suggested that I avoid eating out and to do a lot of reading. I perhaps paid more attention to be one own’s cook than to pick up a book.

    Eventually, I began collecting (and reading) some books. I write about three of those, that provide colour and context to my first four years.

    “The Goal” (…and how my trainer eliminated the job of a canteen clerk)

    “What is the goal of a company?”. Mr. Karan Rastogi, the trainer asked us as he began unravelling the concepts of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). Most of the answers were around producing goods that are useful to society or something in those lines. Mr. Rastogi clarified however, the main goal of any enterprise was to make money.  To be accurate, to create value – for shareholders, employees, and the society at large. It was all going over my head anyway. To make it easier for us, he narrated a story from his management consulting days.

    He was once asked by a major manufacturing company in the northern part of India to identify ways to reduce cost of operations. He learnt that all employees were provided subsidised food and tea at their canteen. A clerk was employed to manage tokens and the cash register. Initially, the workers were quite happy – being able to buy a meal for less than 50% of the cost outside. Soon there were complaints about the quality of food and the long queues in front of the billing counter. Mr. Rastogi initially performed a lot of algorithmic calculations based on Operations Management but soon came to a simple conclusion: it is best to fire the clerk and eliminate his job function, and provide free meals. The loss of revenue was more than made up by the increased employee morale (when they pay nothing, they didn’t complain even when the food was terrible).

    He suggested that we read a novel by Eliyahu M. Goldratt: The Goal, which is rated as one of the top 25 books in Business Management. Read how the central character in the book learns complex concepts like Theory of Constraints, Bottlenecks etc, from real life experiences as he resurrects his career as a struggling Shopfloor Manager. In particular, I enjoyed the part where he goes on a mountain hike with his children and their friends, as they follow each other in a sequence on the way up. Hours later, he finds the last few kids arriving much later than others – due to a fat kid in the middle who slowed down everyone behind. With the insight: “A chain is only as strong as its weakest link”, he goes back to work and fixes his production chain, thereby reducing inventory and increasing profit, thereby keeping his job and getting back with his wife.

    “The Tipping Point“

    As I was browsing through a book shop, I picked up this book that was at the end of the shelf and about to fall. What an odd (but appropriate) title, I thought. Tipping Point. A tip is a point after all. And the author’s last name is Gladwell. Well, I didn’t regret buying it though. It introduced me to the world of social sciences, especially how influential ideas spread virally in a social network (long before the age of Facebook). And more importantly, to non-fiction books that are as gripping as novels.

    “The Power of now”

    A bit of hard landing occurred in the first job as I struggled to deal with expectations. It was much easier to shine as a topper in a class room but not so in the real world. I also had to deal with a literal hard landing.

    One morning, I found myself flat on a hard, newly laid tar road, thrown from my Yamaha RX 135 bike as I narrowly avoided colliding with a patient exiting from an eye hospital, riding his bicycle across the road (he was still carrying some bandages in his face). I had four seconds to respond and I thought I did well not to kill him, even when he unknowingly tried his best to come straight at me with a single eye.

    In an eerie sort of coincidence, I had bought this book “Power of Now” only a couple of weeks before. While I was recovering from a surgery to my broken wrist, I thought it wouldn’t a bad idea to dip into this book about mindfulness and stuff. I couldn’t resist wondering why this happened to me. What if I had joined my friend in his bike that day. What if I had paid more attention during those four seconds. Or maybe earlier.

    A colleague tried to assuage me, “in our roads, even if you are 100% careful, you are only 50% safe.” That made me laugh while still at pain. My uncle’s friend saw me reading this book and said, “Kid, you have many years to go before you indulge in philosophy stuff. You need to do earthly things and struggle in life first.”

    That rang a bell. A year later, I was married and it was many months before I touched any book, especially philosophical ones.

  • Bookshelf tales – the first few pages

    Bookshelf tales – the first few pages

    A friend asked me if I could recommend some of the interesting books I have read over the years. I used that chance to finish an activity I had been running away from – to sort and categorise the books in my shelf. After a nice breakfast on the new year’s eve, I spread all books down on the floor. Looking over them, I wondered how I ended up with such a wide collection of bound pages containing many others’ thoughts and ideas, that I must have inhaled via tens of thousands of words over many a quiet afternoon. Some of these books were gifted to me; a few, I bought on friends’ recommendation; a lot were picked up at random, while waiting to board a train or a flight. Many of the pages are still to be read. A few, to be re-read.

    A couple of hours later, I ended up with a much cleaner bookshelf. And with a dust-triggered-repeated-sneezing-and-running-nose. Also with a mind-refresh of some hilarious but life-defining experiences associated with these books. I share some of these stories as a blog series, starting with this one.

    These books helped me once hide my insecurities and inferiority complex, pass a job interview, to converse better with strangers and to broaden my thinking. Also, to brag about stuff from time to time. More importantly, they made me = me++.

    Urgent: improve your personality. Interviews are coming!

    I look back at myself – Ramanathan of 1998. An eager but shy university student in Coimbatore, anxious about the upcoming season of job interviews. I was shaping up to be good engineering graduate alright, but I struggled to finish speaking a sentence in English – especially when standing in front of my class. We were expecting a couple of IT companies to visit our college to hire final-year graduates. They were going to test us on our math, analytical and verbal skills. They might also check if we were good at engineering. Most of us were worried about getting exposed on our (lack of) communication skills.

    As part of preparations, a bunch of enthusiastic class mates got together to organise group discussions. Candidates are seated in a group and given a topic to talk about. They are judged on what they spoke, but also the way they influenced the group’s final decision on the topic. While my smarter companions debated complex topics like Kyoto protocol, democracy, impact of foreign aid, etc. with ease, I would find myself blabbering nervously. I didn’t just struggle for words. I would often mis-pronounce even when I fished out a word for the occasion. Often, I didn’t have much to say, as I felt out of my depth on many worldly matters.

    It was clear. The “test” was not just going to be about one’s measure of arithmetic, vocabulary or ideas. It was a judgement on the whole personality. And here I was, a clumsy, slouching lean fellow who wouldn’t shave very often, bite nails when nervous. That was most of the time.

    Once I was in an activity where each one had to speak on any topic for two minutes. The group would take notes and provide feedback for improvement. I chose an easy topic: Time Management. I had made notes while I waited for my turn and when I spoke, I was able to explain the various techniques like planning, keeping a sense of time etc. They said I spoke reasonably well but were brutal in their assessment of my appearance: I was dibbling my finger, didn’t look at the audience and they also pointed out that I overshot my allotted time by three minutes as I laboured on about time management.

    My friends shared some tips and tricks, and alerted me about my annoying habits. For instance, it took a whole month of practicing to avoid retorting with “aaaah?” or “whaat?” instead of “Pardon, me?”.

    A class mate suggested that we organise a Personality Training Session for the whole class and gave me a reference of Mr. Suresh Punjabi, an expert who (even this day) conducts trainings for students in Coimbatore. We decided to try this first on our second year juniors. I got permission from our shy and equally nervous professor – he possessed enough weirdness to qualify as typical nutty-professor (would write a separate blog series on him one day). When Mr. Punjabi arrived at our college, I observed that he didn’t wear a turban. I also observed my professor being more eager to introduce him to our newly joined Principal. I wasn’t sure. I had not met this new principal yet and was pretty sure that would be the case with my professor too.

    Soon, we both welcomed our guest and ushered him into our principal’s room. The four of us were standing but no one said anything for a good five minutes, each waiting for some one else to break the silence. I assumed the principal waited for either me or the professor to tell him who the stranger is. Mr. Punjabi looked at me. I was looking at my professor who appeared shy, nervous and embarrassed at the sudden attention that he created for himself. With a quiet voice, still facing down, he threw these words towards the principal, pointing his finger roughly towards a direction between me and our esteemed guest. “Sir, please meet Mr. Suresh Punjabi”. The principal looked at me and shook my hand, “Thanks for coming, Mr. Punjabi”.

    Eventually, when we let him begin his session in the classroom, Mr. Punjabi took us through some of the basics of communication, appearance, manners and stuff. He also emphasised on learning how to wear a tie. Conversing with him on the way back, I felt more assured about myself. I vowed to never let the principal-room-situation occur again: to never be that invisible. To never stand there just blinking and being tentative.

    Around the same time, I found an interesting book in my father’s bookshelf that usually had a collection of Dale Carnegie’s books and old copies of Readers Digest. How to Read a Person like a Book, was all about non verbal communication, body language – and the mastery of it. It had all the answers for me.

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    Twenty years on, I still preserve this book. Yeah, the pages are rugged but the lessons are fresh, and still being learnt. Few years ago, when I switched roles from being in product development, to more of customer-facing project management, I paid the price for forgetting some of these lessons.

    While at a customer site, representing a group of engineers, I was annoyed by the customer who mistook my colleague as the project lead, talking to him most of the time, while I was left to wait for emails. It took a while to figure out: my colleague would always present himself in a suit and a tie, while I would often land in a semi-formal attire with a casual demeanour. That was a game-changer moment for me.

    But in 1998, this book enabled me to punch above my weight.

    When my class mates arranged for another round of preparatory group discussion, I felt I would fare better. Partly because the topic sounded easier, Also, by then, I had avoided keeping my hands nervously in my pocket when speaking; I no longer feared making eye-contact with class mates and didn’t bother if they faced me with a smirk. I slowly began opening up.

    I remember the feedback from the class mate – the designated judge that day. “Your gestures were awesome. You listened very well, often nodding your head positively, encouraging your opponents to speak. You didn’t interrupt anyone but, you didn’t say anything till the end”.