[ To Express, To Reflect, To Give Back ]

Reflecting on Qualities of Success

Monday, February 28th, 2011

I have always been self-reflective and conscientious. Though not entirely an introvert, I enjoy time alone, that too quiet solitude, where possible. Most of my reflective time is spent on wondering what are the right things to do as a person or what makes someone a “success”. Naturally, I love philosophy for it needs extensive inward focus.

There is quite a bit of literature on the subject of what it means to be a good and successful person.  My quest has been to find the ultimate answer to the question of success – of course not in a material sense, but in a true human, soulful sense. For sure, I know I won’t find the one answer, so my discoveries continue. I have found a few so far. I write about one below and will write about others soon. [Hint: Dungy…]

John Wooden’s achievements has been unprecedented. He was the genius coach behind UCLA’s college basketball team which won more championship titles than any other college – unbeaten record even today. In his later years, he gave a lecture (and later a book) titled The Pyramid of Success. The pyramid is made of qualities/attributes we must have for winning in life. I love analyzing models, so this pyramid has been a sweet pudding savoring my appetite for a while!

Pyramid of Success

John Wooden's Pyramid of Success

While searching for the graphic, I stumbled upon this article about John Wooden written for a local newspaper in Tennessee by Barbara Gunn. She quotes John Wooden from a Toasmaster article she had read:

“When I was an English teacher, I found out some parents made their youngsters feel they had failed if they didn’t get an A or B. I never liked that definition of success,” he told the Toastmaster interviewer. “I wanted to come up with something that I hoped would make me a better teacher and give those under my supervision something with which to aspire, other than high marks in the classroom or more points in athletic endeavors.”

Thus came his pyramid. The qualities in the pyramid are not about becoming a sports star or going to Harvard business school or being a math genius. They are the time-tested personal qualities everyone should cultivate – be it a pauper or king. Success (material & non-material) and satisfaction will follow wherever we go and whatever we do.

Now, take some time tonight to reflect on the pyramid.

Mr. Wooden lived exactly 100 years (1910-2010) to attest for the truthfulness of the pyramid. Is that good enough to convince us to take his words seriously?

February 28th, 2011 Daily Notes, Lessons for Life, Personal Profiles, Tributes No Comments

I want to live for a million years

Sunday, February 27th, 2011

Yury Liftshits (what a unique name?) has compiled a comprehensive list of online resources that are transforming education today.[via Mashable]

100+ Online Resources That Are Transforming Education

While Internet is still not pervasive in many parts of the world, it will, sooner than later. The online resources listed on the article above are paving the foundation for what appears to be a tectonic shift in the way learning will happen in the future. This GOOD Magazine (I highly recommend) article posits that in future we will know everything we wish to know. I am questioning when was the last time we wanted to know something and couldn’t find googling it. Probably rare. So internet and explosion of every imaginable content, has brought any learning to just a few clicks away.  If curiosity is your game, internet is your arena, go hit some home runs everyday.

Technology is transforming education as we know it.

Undoubtedly, Apple has been spearheading this revolution with iPhone and iPad. It seems there is no end what we can do with these two.  Thanks to Yury Liftshits again, I saw the YouTube demo of this innovative and practically valuable translation app called WordLens [check the demo here]. On a personal note, our neighbor vouches for iPad, after they have seem tremendous progress with her autistic child’s skill development.

Tablet and App Explosion!

With what’s possible through the digital revolution that is unveiling, I am super excited about the prospects for future. There is so much to learn. So much to do. For the goodness of fellow children of Mother Earth.

I am ready to live a million years.

February 27th, 2011 Daily Notes, Design, Education, Technology No Comments

Feeding a billion people every day

Saturday, February 26th, 2011

Listening to NPR’s special report yesterday, I was astonished to learn that some of Nebraska’s farmers manage as much as 2500 acres, with help from few humans and monster machines. I hear Nebrasks’s corn belt is booming but I was left to wonder how could just few people farm thousands of acres? I cannot fathom this conquest of agricultural technology – virtually erasing farm labor from the equation. You may also want to know, Twitter too is part of Nebraska’s success story! (more here)

Nebraska's Farming Profits Abound

On the other side of the globe, Indian farmers are struggling to keep up with rising demand on one hand and age-old, labor-intensive agro practices on other. Add to that the dependence on a lackluster monsoon season. For its part, the government of India hasn’t provided the infrastructure support for electricity, irrigation and storage. As much as half of farm foods don’t get to the people and rot even before it reaches its first trading post. This is pathetic and colossal waste of human and natural resources. Consequently, inflation in food prices is at unbearable levels – leaving most Indians to spend all of their income on just feeding the families. Though GDP growth is elevating many out of poverty, many wonder if it is as effective as economic theory suggests.

Such is the state of food production in a country that must feed over billion people every single day. About 250 million of that are adolescents – whose health and nutrition is crucial for the future of India. There is no concerted vision or effort from government or private sectors to address these problems holistically.

India’s problems are manifold and which one is a priority is debatable. In fact, the endless is debates amongst political groups and media is one reason decisions are stalled. I believe the livelihood and as UNICEF attests, the future of the country, rests more on agriculture than on information technology or skyscraper-studded cities. Yet, it appears there is no sense of urgency or apprehension around state of agriculture. No doubt, the decision makers are enjoying a smooth ride on the GDP bullet train. When would they have the time to step back?

Pegging our hopes on India's budding entrepreneurship

There were times when some of India’s leaders had the will, but not all the means to make it happen. Today, there are probably many ways to address this issue within a 10-year timeframe, but a vision, leadership and of course, the will, is obviously missing.

The one ray of hope is the phenomenal power of India’s educated youth. I know they are entrepreneurial (Tarun Khanna, a Harvard Professor claims billions of entrepreneurs here and here!) with the will and capability to take the best from around the world and mix it with the best of India’s past to revolutionize its future. May the almighty bless my wish to come true soon!

PS: Think Change India is a wonderful place to check out and keep track of growth in social entrepreneurship in India, specifically around agriculture.

February 26th, 2011 Daily Notes No Comments

Designing the life of our kids

Friday, February 25th, 2011

The tyranny of choice; Click to read at Economist.com

As current generation of “digital” kids grow up, the one skill they are going to need absolutely is ability to design their life. What I mean by “life” is both at a higher level – who they are, what & who they like/dislike, what they want, what they want to become etc and at the lower, day to day level – what they should do with time, attention and money right now, next hour, next day and how they should go about doing it.

I know that’s way too abstract. Just hold that thought while I present another abstract one.

What I mean by “design” is making the right choice amongst all the options available regarding anything – from small day to day decisions to big life-altering ones in the areas education, money, media, sports, technology, career, marriage, health etc.

With those clarifications, let me restate my assertion: The one skill our kids would need now and in the (near) future, to be happy & successful anyway, is the ability to design their life.

I assume you follow me so far. If not, sorry, let me suggest you take a break.

So why is this so important to our kids?? (I guess it is as important to us grown ups as well!)

The rotary phone I knew well

If you are at least 20 years or older right now, you likely escaped the digital immersion when you were little and growing up. For anyone over 30, and especially if you grew up like me in the developing world, most of our early life, until at least when we were 17, was designed by our parents. Outside of the academic books, we only read what our parents bought or subscribed – mostly for themselves which we read anyway. We only saw what was interesting on the 2 or 3 channels in the television. We occasionally learned how to speak on the black rotary dial phones when uncles call from distant parts of the country. Outside of friends from school and neighborhood, we only mingled with people our parents knew. We played the one or two sports that everyone in the country played.

Good or bad, our parents set up the ‘world’ we grew up in. Moreover, in a majority of cases, our parents hadn’t consciously designed it either. If we are happy and successful today, we should thank the Gods. An environment arbitrarily designed by our parents worked by fluke to get you to be who and where you are today.

On the other hand, just think about the world we are in right now and what we are providing our kids. We are in an unbelievable state of information overload & choice explosion. There is hundreds, if not thousands, of choices to pick for what you want in a toothbrush to what you want in a bed and everything you would need and want in between.

I stumbled upon this fact recently:

An average super market contains about 50,000 items! of which is 15 different types of toothpaste.

Another statistic: there are 9500 banks in the US with $100 million or more in assets.

Another: there are at least 3500 different types of occupations one could take up, according to US Department of Labor.

Another: 150,000 new website domain names are registered every single day! As of today, there are at least 128 million internet sites online! (Souce : Domain Tools)

and the best statistic of all from information economy…

Between the dawn of civilization and 2003 there were 5 exabytes of data collected (an Exabyte equals 1 quintillion bytes). Today 5 exabytes of data gets collected every two days! Soon there will be 5 exabytes every few minutes.

While it may be a good thing to have many choices, too many will eventually bring us down. The toughest thing for us and for kids in the future, is making the choice from the very many!

Too many choices lead to confusion and disstatisfaction - Barry Schwartz

Besides, it appears today’s environment might not only complicated but somewhat damaging than what we had 20 or 30 years ago. Yet, many of today’s parents are not conscious of the world their kids are growing up today. Lets take note of our ignorance: Through our day to day choices, we are designing the environment our children grow up in, and ultimately, the life they will make for themselves. I suppose kids older than 5 are already making their own choices in many aspects that would shape their life – whether parents influence those choices is up on us.

With how fast kids grow up (mentally & physically!) these days, we only have a small window of opportunity to even influence them before they tune us out. I don’t want to boil the ocean by designing every little thing for our kids. But are we thoughtful about what they hear? what and how they talk? what books they read? what activities they do? what TV channels or movies they watch? what clothing they wear? what day care or schools they go? what kind of friends they have? where they hangout? what sports they play? what subjects they are good at? what skills and talents they are building? what their belief system is? what they value and don’t value?

Design your life

All of that depends on how good of a parent we are. And by the way, did anyone teach us how to be a good parent?? We are scrambling to figure out what good parenting actually means! especially in today’s complicated world. By the time we get a feel for it, our first child might have grown past the age to care to listen to us! Add to that, many of us are happily re-living our own life as if we are teenagers – piling up latest fashions, gadgets, gizmos, manga books, animation films and what not.

We – the 20s 30s, 40s with kids still growing up – are indeed in the midst of unusual times. We are learning and designing our own life, while simultaneously designing the life of our kids. If we don’t take it seriously, we will be consciously betting on the same Gods and luck to bless our kids with a well-designed life – unlike our parents who simply did it unconsciously!

PS: I have used the word “design” rather heavily. I believe that every choice we make is in essence designing our own life – as if our life is like an artwork or craft or object one would design bit by bit. Every person is design outcome of his or her past.

February 25th, 2011 Lessons for Life No Comments

How I used the Secrets of a Mind Gamer

Thursday, February 24th, 2011

This article in NY Times is fascinating. Written by Joshua Foer, titled “Secrets of a Mind-Gamer”, It is about how an average person can build supposedly “extraordinary” memory. Calling it extraordinary is validated by the brain-crunching exercises he does such as how many binary numbers he can memorize in a span of few minutes and later recall every one of them, precisely.

The article (and the book titled ‘Moonwalking with Einstein’ by the same author) is more about the biographical journey of how Joshua Foer gets to build mnemonic skills to remember virtually anything and in that process earned the obscure title – United States Memory Champion. The secret is surprisingly simple and practical – use our in-built capacity for spatial memory, use a tad bit of wild imagination, which is also something we are all born with. You may question if everyone is born with ability to imagine wild stuff and be creative but I believe every single one of us is. Whether we exercise it or not is questionable. (Side bar: Creativity vs. Imagination – same or different?)

I tried to experiment myself with this idea and come to believe it actually works and can be useful too! Though the scale and scope of what I tried is fairly small, it is very beneficial for my day to day life. Here is how it goes. My wife and I are having our morning coffee, talking about some mundane things. In the middle of the conversation, she asks “When you come back down after your shower, can you bring the laundry basket down?”. I say yes and we continue talking about many other things. Fifteen minutes later I depart to perform my usual weekday morning rituals. Three hours later, I am in the middle of a serious discussion at work, I get a text message, “You never got the laundry basket down!!!”. I grind my teeth silently cringing, “Damn! I forgot again!”.

Could the mnemonic principles that brought Joshua Foer to limelight come to my rescue? principles he used to win the national memory championship? and a million dollar book contract to go with it?

I had to try.

The first and perhaps the most important thing to do is to pause as soon as my wife asked that question. If I just nod and we just keep talking then I don’t get to “register” this fact into my “spatial memory”. No mnemonic magic would ever save me. So what I do is take a few seconds pause, right at that moment when I say yes to my wife’s request. I construct a vivid imaginary visual clue. Here is what I say to myself in my mind –“As soon as I open the bathroom door, my father jumps over my head, wearing a spiderman suite. He was yelling that he doesn’t have any clothes to wear and could only find Rishi’s Halloween costume! I bend over my back to thank him for not jumping naked and ask him where all his clothes went. He zooms his arm out like a spiderman, and shoots a spider web pointing at the laundry basket…It’s overflowing and smells vomit…”

Angry dad in spiderman costume scene - Courtesy www.knowyourmeme.com via Google Images

I know! How silly and yucky right? While I am glad I didn’t tell my wife what I was thinking, it really is the point. The imagination & association must be bizarre and far outrageous from anything ordinary and usual.

It really only takes about 20 seconds to build and hear that story in my own mind. As soon as I register this story, my wife and I move on with our chit chat. Twenty minutes later, I walk into the bedroom and as soon as I get the first sight of the bathroom door, I recall the crazy story for just a second, but I don’t really replay the story at all. I just immediately realize that I need to take the laundry basket down. I move it out to obvious place in the room when it will be in my line of sight to take it down after I return from show. That’s it. Bingo! I remembered something I would normally forget. Neat.

An important factor is to associate the angry-dad-in-spiderman-costume scene to a trigger event or object that I will encounter in the future moment when I need to recall the thing I memorize. In this case, the trigger is opening the bathroom door. Of course, there is a chance that right at the moment of walking into the bedroom, I could have been seriously pre-occupied with some other thoughts – such as when I should get my next hair cut or how I sucked with my backhand in last night’s match or how long since I have had a beer or some such important thing. Nevertheless, the mnemonic exercise simply increased the chances of me recalling that funky story and thus helped remember what I needed to do. So it’s worth that 20 second investment to exercise my imagination and creativity!

What I tried is rudimentary in comparison to memory games they play in World Memory Championships. I honestly don’t understand how this basic technique can help remember the exact sequence of a decks of cards within a minute.

If you read the article, you will notice they refer to “memory palace” as the familiar spatial object (your house or street or favorite museum or any familiar physical structure) around which they build the crazy imaginary stories embedded with whatever they want to remember – playing cards or stranger’s names or random binary numbers etc. Do they use the same structure every time? If so, doesn’t it confuse the imaginary stories, mixing up the things you want to remember? How to “clean” the loaded memory of stupid stories? (They say they can!). How do they associate a “Queen of Clubs” to a particular incident and location in the made-up story? I would have created an association with a donkey queen and a soccer club within the story. They seem to simply recall the card as they pass through certain object or event. I just don’t get it. I really have to read more on this fascinating subject.

Meanwhile, why don’t you give it a try? It doesn’t hurt to try and fail since we will be just where we are – as forgetful as we always been.

PS: True to his curious spirit that drove him to the memory championship, Joshua Foer is a co-founder of the Atlas Obscura, an online compendium of “The World’s Wonders, Curiosities, and Esoterica.”

February 24th, 2011 Edutainment, Lessons for Life No Comments

Twitter’s brilliant sweetspot!

Wednesday, February 23rd, 2011

I was late to sign up on Twitter but am now convinced it is truly a brilliant idea. It allows me to stay connected and follow anyone who I care about. It doesn’t have to be a person, it could be a firm or brand or whatever meaningful entity that deserves even one person’s attention! It doesn’t matter if that other person doesn’t know me – in most cases they don’t know me, but what matters is I am now as close to them as I virtually can.

In the pre-Twitter days, there wasn’t an easy-quick-and-dirty way to accomplish this – besides visiting websites and subscribing to blogs and news feeds etc. It was even worse in pre-Internet era! All I could wish for was to hope that Esquire magazine would publish an article about Cory Booker for me to know what he is up to. Today? Cory Booker goes above and beyond to keep me informed of what he is doing and thinking. All I had to do is just to follow him on Twitter…How insanely cool is that, especially if he is one of those people who inspires me everyday? He does, for ONE MILLION followers, like me.

Strolling across one of the isles in Barnes & Nobles the other day, I stumbled upon a book called “Procrastination Equation” by Piers Steel. Impressed with some of the ideas he espoused, I wondered if the author is on Twitter so I could stay connected with what’s on his mind. Not surprisingly, he was on and active on Twitter, and in seconds, I was set to keep track of him. Practically speaking, I am all set to stay abreast from one of the best minds on subject of Procrastination. Just a few years ago, that act would have meant writing long letters across the continent! And, no doubt, I would have procrastinated the hell out of writing a letter. Twitter simply eliminated the impulsiveness & the delay in Procrastination. Woh Woh? Hold on. Not clear on that last statement? Here is the Procrastination Equation that Piers writes about:

Procrastination Equation by Piers Steel

Piers thoughtfully clarified the formula (in a footnote in the book) by adding “+1” to the denominator so the division doesn’t go nuts. Motivation=(Expectancy x Value)/[(Impulsiveness x Delay)+1]

With that formula in front of you, now feel free to cogitate on that statement again: Twitter simply eliminated the impulsiveness & the delay in Procrastinating the action of connecting with the book’s author.

Where Twitter becomes a Himalayan challenge is when I start following a lot of people (a lot is say 50 people, at least for me). At that point, I should let go of any intention to “keep up” with everything coming in from everyone I follow. If I try to keep up, I am doomed! I realized Twitter becomes a shallow stream of universal consciousness and all I should and can do is to be content with occasional dips in the stream. I can always selectively dig deeper for particular topics or people – but the stream itself only goes as deep as few days! The world rightfully loses and doesn’t care about last week’s or last month’s or for that matter, yesterday’s state of universal consciousness – tweets!

Even if I am simply using Twitter to just follow – I get so much out of it. When I start tweeting or even better, retweeting some of what I follow, the power and quality of stream multiplies by as many followers as I have and as many people I follow. When everyone start doing the same, this power becomes unbelievably exponential! Not only what I say is heard by some (if not all followers), but I also act as a catalyst in passing every information that needs to be heard! As we have seen in the news lately, that exponential power of Twitter is precisely what is driving social revolutions left and right of Middle East. It first revolutionized the digital world, now it is doing the same for the real world – where revolutions matter the most! So what country is up next? In the universal scheme of tweet-consciousness, nobody knows! Time of course will tell.

Twitter, perhaps unintentionally, ended up in a perfect, irreplaceable sweet spot between one-to-many (radio/tv) and one-to-one (phone/text/IM) and many-to-one (newspaper/magazine) and many-to-many(websites/blogs) communication streams. I am trying hard to imagine what would be next – short of a gift of telepathy for all.

Twitter's sweet spot in (information) revolution

February 23rd, 2011 Books I read, New Media, Technology 2 Comments

Reading to be a Writer

Thursday, February 17th, 2011

God knows I want to write more. This blog has been virtually haunting me everyday to do so.

Of late, I have been reading more and practically stopped writing. Except, of course, writing at work. Which doesn’t count in my books as the same writing in this blog.

Perhaps it was the haunting or an intuitive attraction to certain books, I have been heads down reading books about writing. Two of them I highly recommend for anyone, who first wants to read good books, and second, have tender hopes to write – even if its in private.

As it usually happens, I stumbled upon during my usual wanderings in the library, a fantastic book by Francine Prose’s “Reading Like a Writer” (A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them). I ended up overwhelmingly proud of myself for finding this book, rather serendipitously, that I just ordered a used copy of this book to own for life. She dissects some of her favorite books and authors on how they have chosen and written certain words, sentences, characters and story lines. Prose, herself a versatile writer, takes a back seat as a humble reader, to bring to light some of the fascinating writings across English literature. I, for one, have not even heard of most of the writers she mentions. That’s a blessing and curse. Why Curse? May be that’s harsh, but I curse myself because I don’t have the breadth of reading to know many of them. Every writer she brings forth is typically an accomplished person, but one must be a omnivorous (I picked up that word from her book!) reader to have come across all of these authors. Why Blessing? Indeed, because now I know who I can read if I ever run out of books to read. But, hold on, running out of books to read? that ain’t happening baby!

The second book is one I own and go back to every so often. Especially when the demon in me occasionally shows up in deep sleep, only to remind me that all I can do is read, read and just read even more but can’t get my ass to write more! I have previously written about William Zinsser. His most popular book, On Writing Well, is worth every dollar (though you can buy a used one for pennies!) not so much for writing instructions but to be a constant reminder that simple writing and especially writing well, is absolutely doable, be it painful. See, Zinsser is not one of the greatest writers, but he is one of the common, but good writers who exactly reinforces my confidence that I can be one too. If you are interested, Zinsser writes a weekly blog, “Zinsser on Friday”.

I want to write, simply for the purpose of expressing myself in a simple yet coherent way. Besides, as both Zissner and Prose constantly remind throughout these two books, writing well is all about rewriting. It’s not about writing more. It’s not about writing with fashionable and Shakespearean words. It’s about writing and rewriting and immersing ourselves in the pleasure of toying with simple words and sentences, literally crafting it, to get the point across in its most economical, smooth and simplest way.

On the other hand, Prose’s book at times made me wonder how in the world could someone come up with such fantastic writing. She brings to our attention writings by Samuel Johnson, that is so good to the extent of wiping off all my confidence that even I can craft great sentences. I mean, seriously, Samuel Johnson must have been a genius, if he naturally had the flair for such writing.

Here is a glimpse into fantastically crafted paragraph from The Life of Savage, By Samuel Johnson

It has been observed in all ages that the advantages of nature or of fortune have contributed very little to the promotion of happiness; and that those whom the splendour of their rank or the extent of their capacity have placed upon the summits of human life, have not often given any just occasion to envy in those who look up to them from a lower station: whether it be that apparent superiority incites great designs, and great designs are naturally liable to fatal miscarriages; or that the general lot of mankind is misery, and the misfortunes of those whose eminence drew upon them an universal attention have been more carefully recorded, because they were more generally observed, and have in reality been only more conspicuous than those of others, not more frequent, or more severe.

To be clear, I didn’t completely understand the entire meaning in one pass. I must have read it a few times before I digested his point. Perhaps, I am not used to this type of sophisticated 20th century writing, but, every time I read, I pause on certain places, just to wonder about what must have gone through his mind when he wrote those words – “splendour of their rank”. To imagine writers of past have hand written or typed all their writings is unfathomable. I am only glad I didn’t have to hand write my writings – would absolutely end up with no hope for any aspirations to be writer.

February 17th, 2011 Books I read, Lessons for Life 1 Comment