There is a mad world out there!

Disclaimer: Its a long post, read only when you think have some time in hand :P

Yea I know you must have heard a lot about it. Whenever I hear or experience it, it reminds me of my Mom, worried for me all the time, for the amount of pain this experience could give me considering the assumption of an idealistic, unpretentious world I live with.

In my little experience of working with a large IT company, a product based small startup, association with various entrepreneurship based workshops as an organizer, volunteer or participant I managed to meet great mix of people. People with varied interests and perspectives, people who have read about great things, people who are learning great things and most importantly people who practice great things.  Nothing managed to awe me more than the humility of the person and nothing troubled me more than the pretence of a person. The lightheartedness and triviality of pretence clogs my mind to further process the feasibility of any association with the person.  One such excruciating experience I had recently was with a startup I had shown interest in to work with. After the customary process of exchanging couple of mails conveying my story so far and the interests ahead, I was invited for a telephonic interview which was quite subjective in terms of the things discussed (my take on goals, entrepreneurship, challenges, communication skills etc…) I was finally called over to their office for a face to face meeting with an assignment in hand given to me over the call.  Considering I was unemployed at that time I had a lot of time in hand to pull up a hard bounded thick copy of the theory I was suppose to present there, but the three months of sabbatical had rusted my documentation skill and I finally ended up with a four slide presentation. Yes thats it!!

Before I run you through my experience of the meeting I would like to share the expectations and assumption I had before the meeting, since this was a 20+ team startup

1.       I was expecting an office of atleast 3 bhk or a double storey bungalow (they are fundedJ)

2.      A personal interview implies a direct meeting with the founder and the team if we click.

3.      That’s it!

So, as I reached the office I was taken aback by the big conference room/head office (I assume founders’ office) and in my attempt to look for the founder I peeked inside what looked like a big hall adjacent to the office! And OMG it was like a human factory, people cluttered together around multiple tables in front of their computer screen, coding, chatting I don’t know what! AS I peeked in for a second I thought the entire herd was staring at me with an air of contempt, curiosity etc…  I shuddered and stayed outside and decided to sit on the couch outside the fancy conference room. Thousand things running through my mind OMG! they were too many, OMG! Y the heck I didn’t wash my hair today and came with oil stricken hair (did I look bearable) OMG! Were they all coding (techie, geeks)…grhhh. Just when I was going nuts about everything there came a young girl may be in her early twenties (I am trying hard here to make at least someone happy). She was the HR of the company. And I said HR really!!! Just when I thought joining a startup will save me from this HR crap here I was in front of that HR trying to face the volley of questions she was throwing at me. My long term goals, my short term goals, my learning and realizations so far, my priorities in life, hobbies, time I spent pursuing them, salary expectation blah blah…! I realized why am I going through this, I didn’t even knew this female before coming here and she didn’t inspire me to hijack vehicle from my friend and travel 20 odd kms just to see the possibilities of working with this company. How would she know if I am lying when she can’t even make out how disinterested I am to talk to her, nevertheless the first impression was so torturous I quoted double the salary I had in mind (safe escape). But nevertheless the moment came when I got to meet the founder finally (after 45 min..(HR) + 20 mins waiting). He was all suited up (unfortunately that’s not I generally envision founders of a startup to be, I always expect them to be shabby in their appearance, but I agree here that could be too much to ask for J), so as I continued my conversation with the founder, by this time I was already too tired to articulate my story again, after that introspecting HR round that I gave it a miss and DIDN’T answer! I just didn’t care too much but yea I was excited to present the assignment (ppt), wanted some feedback.

I presented it and got a standing ovation…just kidding, I presented and was praised by the founder not because he was impressed by my understanding of the theory/concept but because everything that I explained was crap (It was half baked and was anything but awesome).  I was so disappointed with my performance that now I wanted this job all the more (may be to prove myself that I am good :P) so the discussion lasted for another 1.5 hrs with the founder explaining me the theory, how they practice it in the projects they undertake, how they engage with their clients, how  processed and neat their work is etc..By the end of the meeting I was so exhausted by the explanations given that all I wanted was to run away. But alas once again I was handed with one more assignment (like a pseudo project) to submit as a last protocol to pass through before I hear a YES or a NO from them.

I came back home and as expected a ultra formal mail from the pretty lady with the assignment attached and the deadline mentioned was lying in my mail box. This time I put in a little more effort to at least make it little bearable. I submitted it before time and never heard back from them for almost four days of long impending wait. In the meantime I appeared for one more interview, where I did speak first to the founders for three consecutive hours and then the HR (who instead of grilling me with her questions engaged me with a light conversation, asking almost everything the pretty lady asked about).

I joined the latter company on the second day of my interview and rejected the first one after they finally called me (20+45+90 +6*24*60 minutes) for another round of personal interview with another founder. May God bless the perfectionists there who seem to have a huge respect for a candidate’s time.

 

Audio Book Review- Alchemy of Desire

VR0006.WAV Listen on Posterous

Unlike many books I have read where I tend to develop a consistent sense of liking or disliking for the book and the protagonist/subject it talks about, I have had a surreal love hate relationship with this book. When I started of, the first three pages made me feel disgusted with the selfishness and unreasoned honesty of the character.  The cursory transition from an incestuous relationship he shared with his girlfriend, seeking peace and pleasure in her body in times of extreme disgust or exhilarating achievements, to just a perfunctory act made me question his sensibilities and existence of anything real in life. I got harrowed with the justification given for such acts. Though the book discussed the alchemy with utmost honesty and elaborative/seductive/erotic plots, the uncertainty in behavior, attitude, feelings, acts it uncovered at times made me feel helpless and announced the act of controlling things/situations futile.  Just when I summoned the theory it advocated, the youthful and crude description by which he weaved the vivid heuristic assumptions we make for ourselves and world around us took me by an awe, I wanted to critique each one of it but I just couldn’t. I would like to share couple of notes I made from this book

“Each one thought his self-worth was directly proportional to the number of people who read him. It had little to do how much you knew or how good you really were- things outside of yourself determining your sense of yourself.”

”The universal law of men, you are not what you see reflected in the mirror you are who you see shining in other men’s eye.”

“Petty success is a disaster.”

“My life was a lie and I couldn’t suspend disbelief forever”.

 “When lovers bare their bodies they have sex, When lovers bare their souls they taste Godhead’

 “It [Mahabharata] understands the world is powered by desire, and that desire is an unknowable thing. Desire conjures death, destruction, distress. But also creates love, beauty, art. It is our greatest undoing and the only reason for all doing. And doing is life, doing is karma.”

“Desire is a wonderfully promiscuous thing, but when it is trapped in monogamy it cannot survive without love”

I can go on forever here but I would rather let you read this book to understand it better. My takeaway would be “Immortality is farce, the sooner we understand it the better it will be for us to calm down our ever rattling mind.”

Audio Book Review- Alchemy of Desire

VR0001[1].WAV Listen on Posterous

Unlike many books I have read where I tend to develop a consistent sense of liking or disliking for the book and the protagonist/subject it talks about, I have had a surreal love hate relationship with this book. When I started of, the first three pages made me feel disgusted with the selfishness and unreasoned honesty of the character.  The cursory transition from an incestuous relationship he shared with his girlfriend, seeking peace and pleasure in her body in times of extreme disgust or exhilarating achievements, to just a perfunctory act made me question his sensibilities and existence of anything real in life. I got harrowed downwith the justification given for such acts. Though the book discussed the alchemy with utmost honesty and elaborative/seductive/erotic plots, the uncertainty in behavior, attitude, feelings, acts it uncovered at times made me feel helpless and announced the act of controlling things/situations futile.  Just when I summoned the theory it advocated, the youthful and crude description of the vivid heuristic assumptions we make for ourselves and world around us took me by awe, I wanted to critique each one of it but I just couldn’t. I would like to share couple of notes I made from this book

“Each one thought his self-worth was directly proportional to the number of people who read him. It had little to do how much you knew or how good you really were- things outside of yourself determining your sense of yourself.”

”The universal law of men, you are not what you see reflected in the mirror you are who you see shining in other men’s eye.”

“Petty success is a disaster.”

“My life was a lie and I couldn’t suspend disbelief forever”. 

“When lovers bare their bodies they have sex,When lovers bare their souls they taste Godhead’

 “It [Mahabharata] understands the world is powered by desire, and that desire is an unknowable thing. Desire conjures death, destruction, distress. But also creates love, beauty, art. It is our greatest undoing and the only reason for all doing. And doing is life, doing is karma.”

“Desire is a wonderfully promiscuous thing, but when it is trapped in monogamy it cannot survive without love”

I can go on forever here but I would rather let you read this book to understand it better. My takeaway would be “Immortality is farce, the sooner we understand it the better it will be for us to calm down our ever rattling mind.”

Untitled

Book Review-Six Thinking Hats, Edward D Bono.

I recently read this book and quite liked it.

Here is the book review

VR0007[1].WAV Listen on Posterous

 

I was amazed by the simplicity of Edward’s theory and the difference it could bring to our day to day life, though leveraging from the theory would require a lot of practice on our behalf.  I was very happy reading about such a singular and channelized framework for thinking, though I was just getting the information about the same but somehow it felt right. My next task was to find out how I can practice it in my daily life what sort of exercises can be built in and around the concept. Here is what I came out with:

 

Every color has its own mantra or one word definition, every time you try to come out with an appropriate approach to start thinking about it! STOP

1.       Go blank for some time and just imagine the color bands we use to see in good old days on Doordarshan when it used to go blank.

2.      THINK of this jumbled word ‘Framework Facts Emotion Problems Opportunities Action Items’  (FFEPOA), I tried coming out with a word for this but could only come out with this “Filthy Freaks Espouse Problems  for Others All the time”, ok I know it sucks but I just came out with it. You can come out with your version of definition.

Here each letter gives the mantra of each hat described in the book:

Framework- Blue Hat

Facts- White Hat

Emotion- Red Hat

Problems- Black Hat

Opportunities- Yellow Hat

Action Item- Green Hat

Once you are done with this exercise start thinking again, and you will notice how naturally you tend to start filtering your thoughts under various hats.  Now consciously try to segregate them. The motive is to streamline the process and make it simpler and not always postpone it for better times or be miserable/impulsive/indecisive with whatever you decide to pursue. You don’t need to be an expert in any of the hats but you should know about all of them while you are consciously investing your time to think about a situation.

It’s a good/effective practice to indulge in sometimes. J

 

Inertia of Crying!

Yes we do think we don’t want to cry/crib about our problems all the time but unfortunately sometime here also we tend to give up for the veiled pleasures crying brings with itself. ‘Coz I’ll be using crying/cribbing a lot of times let’s give it a sexy name just to make the post little happening: P. Let’s call it Robbed (isn’t sexy though!)

Here are some immediate traits/symptoms of getting Robbed:-

1.       Generally happen when there is sudden change in the assumed trail of events in your life and you lose control over things.  There is a spurt of uncontrollable negative emotion inside (cheated/hurt/ agitated/anxious etc…)

2.      The first question that props to your mind:”WHY ME?”

3.      The second question “What wrong I ever did to anyone to get this?”

4.      The third worry “How am I going to survive this?”

5.      Fourth realization “How can I not see this coming?”

Now this Robbery brings with it:-

1.       Immediate love and sympathy from the near and dear ones.

What it means: Some acceptance in your otherwise tormented life.

Expected Action Item from others- Nothing

 

2.      An immediate/long release from your work.

What it means: Ah ha!

Expected Action Item from others - Nothing

 

3.      Assuming you have at least one friend in your life you like to confide in, you get a little time with him/her (which might not be so easily available otherwise) where they are all yours.

What it means: A gaping attention and an authority to be judgmental from your otherwise greatest critic (yea honesty is what differentiates this special friend from others)

Expected Action Item from others-  Nothing.

 

4.      In case you are alone it gives you an opportunity to not be judgmental about everything off beam you tend to get involve in (smoking, overeating, creating a remorseful aura around, shouting etc...)

What it mean: There is just no nagging voice of conscience but self pity embracing your shattered ego. No shaking of comfort zone.

Expected Action Item from yourself: Nothing

 

5.      Emotional turbulence  

What it mean: Which is really sad but it’s just because you still have enough emotions alive and they really seek some acknowledgment in your otherwise fast and monotonous state of life. You just need to fasten your seat belt and stay upright (ok bad joke)

Expected Action Item: Patience till the turbulence lasts.

 

I might be wrong in the analogy I tried to draw here but replacing crying with robbery didn’t feel like a replacement really, instead it explained the similarity between the two just that the former deals with your material belongings and the latter to your emotions. Yes not every loss in life is this easy to take but if we don’t consciously nudge our control system (like we expect from police in case of robbery) we will just be making it more difficult and draining. Don’t just keep blaming the ill fate and the inappropriate lock (no action item involved) but try finding/going after the robber instead and beat the shit out of it.

Happy Crying!

There is nothing as “Out of Box " thinking!

It was one of those times when you subtly try to impress your company by your “out of box” thinking and end up making fool of yourself, just to make the matter worse this time the company was too smart to see my attempts inside out and very brutally dismissed it all! But the good thing that came out of the entire drama was an intriguing discussion on what exactly is “out of box” thinking.  If we are not born with that sort of intellect is there any scope that we can get it/ learn it from somewhere.

The discussion started with the generic interpretation of intellect, not many of us will deny that the guy who scored maximum in school exams was the one who was tagged as “Intellectual” and we complacently believed it. Since then our mind has made this as a boxed definition, a pattern of what being an “Intellectual” mean.

Second point that was discussed was “When do you practice thinking?” I was anyways not very comfortable with the question, why the hell do I have to practice thinking it’s just a means by which you try to sort out your problems, isn’t it? I remember ever since I appended startups as my area of interest I am trying to find out problems that my amazing idea can sort out for people and hence make money from it, I am restlessly trying to excavate problems just to come out with a good business idea. Although back in my mind the initial idea behind Twitter did distract me sometimes thinking as to what problem did it sort and why did it even start. Anyways getting back to the point I answered I practice thinking to solve a problem. I thought that was the most concise and clear reply I could give for this question but to my surprise he (company) laughed and declared “I can never think Out of Box”. Honestly that really hit me considering already I was deeply saddened by the absence of Chocó brownie missing on my plate which he ate while I was trying to think.

What I realized is that my mind has boxed thinking as mere “Problem solving technique”, it may be because we never had Thinking as a subject in our school/college etc... And we always practiced it while we are on some issue which

1.       Needed urgent attention

2.      Promised immediate gratification if solved successfully.

So in our day to day practice we try to gather information around the problem and try to eliminate the patterns which are new to our mind and choose the solution that best fits the pattern already set in our mind through our past experiences, knowledge or previously locked assumptions. We very graciously eliminate any new assumption and thus bolt our self in the existing dominant patterns/boxes. However Thinking in reality has many facet to it, problem solving is just one plot where we practice it extensively.

 In order to make an “Out of Box” statement you have to carve out your own BOX first. We very often misjudge creativity with randomness/chances but I was surprised to discover creativity can also be constructively practiced with various design models (Six Thinking Hats/ CORT method), it involves change in perception, taking risks, provocation.  Horizontal thinking implies our dream stage and vertical stage implies the methodical implementation/execution stage, design thinking lies in between these stages.

So I guess Twitter was not launched to solve any problem it was launched to experiment one of these newly designed boxes (different medium of communication) and all the risks paid off today. As for my restless mind I got some respite in the fact that I can stop identifying JUST the problem to start and try practicing to carve a NEW BOX J.

 

There is nothing as “Out of Box thinking”!

It was one of those times when you subtly try to impress your company by your “out of box” thinking and end up making fool of yourself, just to make the matter worse this time the company was too smart to see my attempts inside out and very brutally dismissed it all! But the good thing that came out of the entire drama was an intriguing discussion on what exactly is “out of box” thinking.  If we are not born with that sort of intellect is there any scope that we can get it/ learn it from somewhere.

The discussion started with the generic interpretation of intellect, not many of us will deny that the guy who scored maximum in school exams was the one who was tagged as “Intellectual” and we complacently believed it. Since then our mind has made this as a boxed definition, a pattern of what being an “Intellectual” mean.

Second point that was discussed was “When do you practice thinking?” I was anyways not very comfortable with the question, why the hell do I have to practice thinking it’s just a means by which you try to sort out your problems, isn’t it? I remember ever since I appended startups as my area of interest I am trying to find out problems that my amazing idea can sort out for people and hence make money from it, I am restlessly trying to excavate problems just to come out with a good business idea. Although back in my mind the initial idea behind Twitter did distract me sometimes thinking as to what problem did it sort and why did it even start. Anyways getting back to the point I answered I practice thinking to solve a problem. I thought that was the most concise and clear reply I could give for this question but to my surprise he (company) laughed and declared “I can never think Out of Box”. Honestly that really hit me considering already I was deeply saddened by the absence of Chocó brownie missing on my plate which he ate while I was trying to think.

What I realized is that my mind has boxed thinking as mere “Problem solving technique”, it may be because we never had Thinking as a subject in our school/college etc... And we always practiced it while we are on some issue which

1.       Needed urgent attention

2.      Promised immediate gratification if solved successfully.

So in our day to day practice we try to gather information around the problem and try to eliminate the patterns which are new to our mind and choose the solution that best fits the pattern already set in our mind through our past experiences, knowledge or previously locked assumptions. We very graciously eliminate any new assumption and thus bolt our self in the existing dominant patterns/boxes. However Thinking in reality has many facet to it, problem solving is just one plot where we practice it extensively.

 In order to make an “Out of Box” statement you have to carve out your own BOX first. We very often misjudge creativity with randomness/chances but I was surprised to discover creativity can also be constructively practiced with various design models (Six Thinking Hats/ CORT method), it involves change in perception, taking risks, provocation.  Horizontal thinking implies our dream stage and vertical stage implies the methodical implementation/execution stage, design thinking lies in between these stages.

So I guess Twitter was not launched to solve any problem it was launched to experiment one of these newly designed boxes (different medium of communication) and all the risks paid off today. As for my restless mind I got some respite in the fact that I can stop identifying JUST the problem to start and try practicing to carve a NEW BOX J.