Black Friday Sale in India

 In papers and online advertisements I saw several mentions of Black Friday Sale happening in India. I am truly amazed and astonished at this development.

Black Friday Sale happens in US after ThanksGiving Day. 20 years ago I had seen people queueing up for whole night in chilly cold near Best Buy, Staples and other famous stores to buy discounted items. Many a times I have heard people bought unnecessary stuff, just because they had put so much effort to be there and returning empty handed didn't seem like a wise move.

Now commercialization is making it happen in India, as if Diwali, Dussehra, Independence Day, Republic Day sales are not enough. God knows how many sales are happening and there is mindless consumption.

I wonder if it is happening in India or other major economies such as China, Korea etc. In any case I hope sense prevails.

Book Reading : So Good They Can't Ignore You

 Who doesn't want to be good. I want to be good and succeed in my career. Thus when I saw this book by Cal Newport in my office library, I had to pick it up.

Book starts with Steve Job's famous speech at Stanford, and advises its readers to 

Do what Steve Jobs did, not what he said.

As per author, following one's passion might just be terrible advice. Following passion means that we know from the begining what we love. But people change with situation and so does passion. 

Further it takes time to get good at anything. You have to force yourself to do the work, learn the skill.

Those who are looking for a high paying or highly satisfying job offer, need to have something called Career Capital (the skills which you are offering). Author argues that you need to build this capital over time and you will have to start with something less glamorous. But you will keep working and keep polishing your skill.

Anyone who wants to excel, will have to practice a lot. And in each iteration of practice, it has to be different and pulling out of comfortzone. Then only it will be effective.

Author asks you to put small bets continually. A definition of small bet is as follows

• It is a project small enough to be completed in less than a month
• It forces you to create new value (e.g. master a new skill and produce new results that didn't exist before)
• It produces a concrete result that you can use to gather concrete feedback

In summary, we have to continually hone our skill, do something which others will value, find a mission which compells us to do more and continually innovate or strain for excellence. It is a tough job no doubt, but brave individuals will reap the reward.

Book Reading : Bored and Brilliant

 These days all of us are in constant state of physical and mental motion. Especially with the advent of computing devices (laptop, mobiles etc) we have become like monkeys jumping from one branch to another branch in Internet, of which I am also guilty. So when I found this book by Manoush Zomorodi it was a must read for me. Here are some of the findings of this book.

In a world where entertainment is 24/7 and with a tap or click away (Facebook, Quora, Twitter, Youtube and myriads of such websites and apps). We don't every give ourself a chance to be bored. It would have been great if these activities helped us in getting more mental peace or advancement in life, but it does none of that. Instead of that it leaves us exhaused and confused.

Author argues that we have to give our brain a chance to be bored. Then only we can reflect and think of ideas which can change us and our lives or in a sense make us brilliant.

Have you noticed number of tabs open on your browser. In my case it definitely goes more than a dozen. Why do I have them open? Because I feel a need to absorb information from vastly different number of sources (listen, read, watch). What am I doing with all this information. Probably not much.

People are afraid of boredom, in one study a candidate preferred to shock himself 190 times instead of spending time in thinking. It is becoming ever harder to read a physical book, or even to concentrate on an article and derive learning and meaning out of it. Even taking notes on electronic devices in classroom and meetings are not making us focussed. Taking notes on pen and paper forces us to slow down and think.

People are getting afraid of conversation. They are preferring email/text over face to face communication. But communication over text/email doesn't have empathy. It may appear efficient, but it feels very transactional. Conversation happens because there is history and empathy among the group of people.

PGS (Phantom Gadget Syndrome)  Having a feeling that your phone is budging or ringing even when it is not. It is a symptom of our emotional dependence on these devices.

Enormous amounts of pictures are taken and shared everyday. We spend countless hours on looking at digitally enhanced pictures. It has become a photomania. Author asks the question - "Are we indulging in visual gluttony?"

Video gaming is another tech intrusion in our lives. My 14 year old's favorite is Minecraft. There are many addictive games like Candy Crush, Two Dots. These games suck up your time like anything. If left uncontrolled 10 minute thing will spiral to 2 hours. Game advocates claim to help in improving brain functions, but these claims have no solid scientific backing. Popular advice is to set a time limit of 10-20 minutes (self-regulation), but we know that self regulation is very hard to follow. Gaming and advertising industries are based on mind control.

It is getting harder and harder to do deep work. Work emails, text messages are claiming our attention all the time. In this fully connected environment we don't have time for being alone, which  is reducing our creativity. 

Book talks about challenges for readers. Here are them

1. Observe yourself - Without changing your habit, observe how many a times you are picking phone, browsing internet etc. As they say understanding self is very hard.
2. Keep your devices out of reach while in motion - Dependeing on individuals, but in short it can mean no phone usage while walking.
3. Photo free day - Restrain all your impulses of taking photo that day.
4. Delete that app - Is the app serving me or hurting me? Does the app make me feel bad about myself?
5. Take a Fakecation - Vacation in the form of break from digital onslaughts, which distracts us and keeps us from thinking beyond everyday.
6. Observe something else - Go to some public place. Spend some time there. Observe what is happening there. You can use your imagination to think of what is happening.
7. Bored and Brilliant 
1. Identify an aspect of life which is challenging or confusing to you
2. Do mind numbing or boring thing in isolation for 30 minutes. E.x. watching water boil
3. Now go back to step 1 above, and start writing down in physcial paper on how will you solve it.

The main essense is to bring focus back in our life. If you try to do a bit  of everything, you are going to make a millimeter of progress in million directions.