And so it goes with God

Firstly, Spoiler Alert. If you havent watched the movie / read the book, please do. It is worth it!

Secondly, thank you Rohan for pushing me into penning this down.

So I have been thinking about realism ever since I saw that movie.. It was one of those moments when all the chatter in your head gets silenced for a bit and you feel  liberated afterwards.. similar to when I watched Forrest Gump. I think it is pretty close to the feeling of "elevation" that  Jonathan Haidt mentions in the Happiness Hypothesis.

Anyways, getting to the point -

In the movie, Pi tells us the other more gruesome version of the story... and then he asks 

"So which story do you prefer?" 

and my dear critical brain immediately asked me 

"So which story is real?"

The more realistic story is definitely the gruesome version as it doesnt not have mysterious islands that ate people up, but then the movie implicitly asked me another question.

"Does it matter which story is real? Which one do you prefer?" 

After a pause, a voice inside my head said quietly "No it doesn't matter. And well, I do prefer the tiger story." All the other voices nodded in agreement and then became peacefully silent. :)

In the movie, Pi said
"And so it goes with God!"

Indeed! 

Always ask / find out what the other person wants..

And put a lot of effort into finding out where you can add value.

Gives you a negotiating edge and lets you tailor your pitch accordingly. 

Seems quite obvious eh? As I learnt recently, it tends to slip our mind when we get too caught up in trying to get our idea across.. which we tend to do when we are really passionate about something.

So when you are really passionate about something and want another person to join you, make sure you actively slot in some "listening time". (Not so obvious now perhaps? :) )

3 things

A good friend has taken to asking people on their birthdays as to the 3 things they would like to do over the course of the next year. I thought it was a good idea, and would be good to put it on record.

So 3 things -

1. Work more intensely 

 Not in terms of time spent, but with high productivity. Once of the hardest things to do as a self employed person is to have a cut-off. It is so easy to keep working all day and then work becomes life. I need clearly defined baskets within which I work with full intensity on 1 thing.. I am starting to experiment with a bunch of ideas toward this goal, will keep a note of it here. 

2. Explore more

  Seek out new experiences. In terms of taking risks, travelling, exposing myself to new things that I am not fully comfortable with.. 

  One of the big advantages of being on your own is the freedom and ability to explore, so I ll actively seek out more adventure this year. If not now, then when? 

3. Be nice (as opposed to "dont be evil")

  I am not an evil megalomaniac, but I am not naturally a very empathetic person either. I have been thinking it is something worth cultivating.. So I will actively try to be nice to people this year, instead of passively trying to make sure i am not being troublesome. 

  

Lactose tolerance

I always wondered why I was seeing so many lactose intolerant people.. it seemed natural to me that humans should be able to drink milk. The thought of it being a mutation definitely crossed my mind. 

Looks like I was asking the wrong question! http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_evolution/2012/10/evolution_of_lactose_tolerance_why_do_humans_keep_drinking_milk.single.html

Quick wins and giving structure to fuzzy ideas

Here I am again after a nearly 4 month hiatus.

I generally come back to write if I have something to say.. there are usually many things, but 1 consolidated BIG idea stands out that compels me to share it. The idea has consolidated in my head over time and I know more or less what it is that I want to say. So its just a matter of writing it down, and it is not so hard. Once it is done, I go back to the world of fuzzy ideas and unclear thoughts. Occasionally I think of writing something but I need to consolidate first and the extra step creates enough inertia that I dont write anything till my next BIG idea moment. 

Would it be a good idea to force myself to consolidate these fuzzy ideas on a regular basis? I dont know. Sometimes these ideas take time.. they need time to develop and really strike home. Sometimes they need more information or a trigger event to fully form. Prematurely consolidating it, might not allow me realize the ultimate lesson that bubbles out.

What I know to be true is that writing down an idea helps consolidate it. I have been experiencing it repeatedly. Whenever I come to a point where my thought process is unclear, I draft someone an email or write it down on notepad or draw it out on paper. What is important to note here is that I dont try to solve the problem. I just look to define the problem, as clearly as possible in written form. But more often than not, the solution pops out by itself.

Another little thing I observed ( I have been studying for CFA these days) is that I find it easier to continue from where I left off previously if there is a quick win in sight. So, instead of finish a day's study at the end of a section, I finish 1 or 2 pages before the end of a section.

With those learnings in mind, I have done 2 things different today.

1. I didnt write about my compelling BIG idea. So I still have a quick win in sight. ( I have also created a doc with some fuzzy ideas so the wins after that are also somewhat easier. )

2. Instead, I just penned down what started out as a fuzzy idea in my mind... in the process, it got consolidated it into 2 definite learnings.

( Recursion, ftw! ;) )

Let us see how this works out! 

The 6am routine

So, I had another of my bi-monthly urge to write a blog post (and I suspect I ll write a few more before I hibernate again)

Why? I woke up at 630 and I felt happy. Satisfied. At peace.

 

I had written before about being a producer in the morning, and I did follow up on it. I have been tracking my wake-up timings almost every day since November '11, and I have been steadily pushing them towards the 630 mark. It was very nice to see so many 6s and so little 8s.. I was exercising regularly in the morning, so I felt healthy. I occasionally took an afternoon nap,  but usually I got some momentum going before lunch and I was quite productive in early June.

AND THEN,

I took a vacation. Ofcourse you dont track your wake up timings during vacation - and there was this 2.5 hour time difference, lots of excuses and I went back to averaging 8am-ish (still not bad for vacation I would say). And then we took up this wonderfully amazing trek to the Himalayas (written about here and here) and there, nature beckoned me to wake  up at 5am (and I did, much to this poor guy's annoyance). 

But then, I had to come back to normal life (after 2 days of chilling out at home) and I fell sick. And being sick, as we all know is the mother of all excuses.

The last 4 days (includes a weekend) in my wake up log reads : Thu- 9am, Fri- 815am, Sat - 1030am, Sun - 8am and it just didnt feel right.

One of the toughest things about being your own boss, in a early stage startup which is just figuring its way out is that you CAN get away with waking up at 9am. People assume you were working till 1. Nope, I slept at 1130. That's 9 and a half hours on a weekday. I dont know about you, but anything more than 7 and a half hours, totally screws up my energy levels. And it did. I conveniently told my partner I d work from home (you know, to save on bus fare, food etc.), and there I was, a lost soul wandering at the abyss of low energy trying to salvage some work.

Yesterday night, I told myself the magic phrase you got to keep telling yourself when you work on a startup - No more bullshit! New week. Old rules. The wake up log reads 25/6/2012 - 630am and after some nice hot ginger tea and a blog post (being a producer!), I feel like a King! 

Have a great week! :)

The game of life

I lead 2 lives these days.. It has been helping a lot with bringing structure and sanity into my days..

First life (lets call it "work life" or WL) is roughly between 10-6 every weekday. Responsibilities include working on my startup. Building website and other miscellaneous stuff that keep popping up.

The second life (we ll call it weekend life or.. oh that wont work, so we ll go with "Second life" or SL) happens every weekend and during evenings on weekdays. Weekends in particular, where 

WL is totally banned. Responsibilities include figuring out ways to cover my expenses, learning new stuff (currently going through www.pgm-class.org and I love it! :D), reading books (currently reading personal mba / life of genghis khan / art of war. I alternate based on my mood), meeting people, chilling out a bit, and working on interesting side projects.

I havent been able to clearly separate them on weekdays though.. eventually i see it becoming necessary but right now, i sense a balance.. Both have a tendency to get extremely absorbing, so it is important to get the priorities straight. Perhaps I should split my tasklist.. 

Building your life on your own is a lot of fun! It is quite like playing a game.. you got get to get your XPs  and Energy and Gold and keep leveling up! SL generally gives me gold and energy while WL gives XPs and key quest items so I can level up ;)

The hegemony of Apple

It is funny how Apple can do anything they want and get away with it. They have stomped on my nerves twice in the last 2 days.. 

All I wanted to do was to test my iPhone app on a real phone.. because I heard there was a bug in the emulator where you might not be able to edit a TableView.

I had an iPhone 3GS updated to iOS 5.1, and I had the new-ish XCode (4.2) i had paid for sometime back. Should be no problem, right?

: You cant install the app on your iphone because your Xcode does not support iOS 5.1.

Me: Okay, can I download a newer XCode with 5.1 support? 

: No you cant, because you dont have our new awesome OSX Lion. 

Me: Lion? My friend keeps complaining about Lion.. I dont want Lion yet. Plus it costs me $30. So the new XCode doesnt work on Snow Leopard, eh?

: Oh it does! But we ll only let you download it if you buy a developer license for $99. 

Me: ??? Ok fine I ll just downgrade the iOS on my iPhone then?

:Ofcourse you cant do that. Our new products are always beyond awesome. Too bad. You better pay up!

Me:

---------------

Me: Ok, let me just copy this file into my friend's thumbdrive,
: Ooops it's NTFS. NTFS is microsoft.. we dont support that shit.
Me: But I can copy files FROM my friend's thumbdrive to the mac!
: Yeah, because the file is entering awesome-land. We dont allow it to leave though..
Me: So how do I copy the file?
: Reformat the thumbdrive!
Me:

I ll find a way around your stupidity. * Search search * Ah, here is a hack to tell Mac to make the NTFS writable. So it does understand how to write to NTFS then! Bloody poser!
: But that wont work on your macbook air! Whos your daddy!

Me:

Screw you Apple! Even Dr. Greg House couldnt be a jerk forever.. your day will come!

Wonderful quote!

'Variety may be the spice of life, but monotony provides the groceries.'

Thanks to Rohan @ http://www.alearningaday.com/

Being a producer

I have been struggling to wake up before 8am. The days I do wake up, I usually go jogging before I have time to think about going back to bed. Or I have important work to do, and I get right down to it.

I have tried going straight for my phone to check email to get my brain ticking. It has worked reasonably well, because once my brain starts ticking, it knows I must not go back to sleep. But then the days werent as motivating as the days when I went jogging early / did lots of work early.

And today I read this great article : http://www.informationdiet.com/blog/read/500-words-before-8am

It talks about being a producer first thing in the morning. Makes lot of sense!

I am going to start writing down one 30 minute producing task that i will do first thing next morning when I go to sleep and see how it helps me!