Nature does not hurry…
Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished…
Have you ever seen plants or trees try to grow faster than others, Or animals do things faster than their nature! Yet they accomplish everything that they are made for…
Why we humans want to bend things to move or do it faster, grow faster, learn faster? Is it because of comparison with others. Or we will be able to accomplish more if we move faster?
Lets learn from nature, accomplish things with time and enjoy accomplishing it!
Believe in Yourself….
We keep hearing this phrase:- “Believe in yourself” and you can do anything….
This comes back in different phases of life, whether its office, job or school/college. We all know that we should have self-believe and confidence. But the real question is can we learn it? Yes I think it can be thru lot of practice, preparation & hardwork.
As the saying goes “Hardwork is 99% and luck is just 1%”. It’s because if we work hard and do our preparation well, self-belief will automatically come. Yes may be not in first time, it might take couple of tries, not because we have not worked hard, but because we have not pushed our hardwork in right direction.
For example if someone have to give presentation to an audience and have completely memorized the presentation. But still cannot deliver, than hardwork should be to go and give mock presentations infront of as many as people – friends/family/peers possible before the final presentation, thats the right direction of hardwork. Whereas someone may have difficulty in memorizing the presentation but can deliver what he memorizes. Than he/she has to go and learn how to memorize a presentation.
Different people have different problems, hardwork has to be applied where we think we will fail.
And that will give us confidence. So with right preparation and hardwork we can achieve self-believe. Lets go and create Believe in yourself!
Lets make stupid mistakes….
What is the stupidest mistake you have done in life? If you have not done any stupid mistake yet and have no memory of it, you are not actually living…
Imagine the thrill of suddenly bunking a class with friends, and going to a movie in hostal after hours and getting caught. These are some of the memories that you cherish forever whether you are billionare or a normal average person.
If you look back you will find the period which we remember most are the once which have some fun, or mistakes or some adventure not the period which is dull, monotonous but with good money. Visualize what you remember more now your college/school days or your job hours, even though you have much more money in job.
Fun and mistakes generally go hand in hand, so friends go and do some mistakes let it go…for once and live it up….
Why to stay calm?
We already know how to stay calm? but why should we stay calm?
Here are few reasons for it:
1. In general if you do not stay calm at office or home or anywhere, your mind basic reasoning does not work properly. There are lot of scientific explanations but bottomline you are more an animal than a reasonable human being which is not good for you. As you will not be able to do any work or stay focus on something you are doing. So try to stay calm..
2. Sometimes because of this your loved once get hurt as you will not understand what you are saying, so either stay calm or be alone for sometime till you calm down.
3. Last but not the least, it increases tension, blood pressure etc which is not good for your health.
So try to be calm as much as possible.
Problems in Life…
I know this is a generic topic and I am not here to provide solutions to any of the problems. I want to tell you, there is an interesting way of looking at problems. And deciding important path in your life based on how much you like or dislike a problem.
Basically what kind of problems you want to tackle or you are best at tackling is the direction we all should move towards. Lets look at it in our work life(We can take similar examples in different verticals), in general you will have options to either join a big company, a midsize/small company, a startup or open your own (entrepreneurship).
Now each has its own problems or issues and benefits, lets look at each:
1. Big companies – Political drama with lot of push/pull of strings but with a decent pay and good work/life balance, if you are someone who can ignore lot of crap and still manage to work on something you do not like. Not much growth and stagnancy are some of the terms you will be fine with, so this the place for you.
2. Mid size / smaller companies – Again this is same with a bit lesser politics but more work and better than decent pay. So someone with same level ignorance capacity but higher ambitions should look here…
3. Startups – Decent pay, lesser infra/perks but good job satisfaction and lot to learn. Might have some amount of risks but still best bet today.
4. Your own – No pay, no infra/perks, best job satisifaction you do what you feel like doing and when you want to do it. Lots of learning and full chance of failure..
If you look at any aspects of your life you can divide in these kind of segments with problems in each and than decide which once you like tackle most…
Getting your smallest point across is critical…..
Have you faced a situation where u think that if you say something to someone it will be ignored. It can be anything as small as telling your friends “No” for a party or letting your manager know about a project detail to make better decision.
In all these situations we assume that our opinion really might not have changed it. Or would have not impacted in anyway. But these small things matter most not just because of the impact it makes in the current situation but it also becomes a habit.
It matters even if you are best performer in your group, showing concern and giving appropriate feedback is what a Leader or Manager looks at his subordinates.
It is also very critical in household, if you do not share minor fears or thoughts with your spouse or parents how will you make bigger decisions together with them? This is where lot of times it leads to so much discrepencies that it results in either divorce or losing your child or misunderstanding your parents.
Also with this small step everyone will start recgonizing that i can talk to him/her and might get good suggestion or inputs.
So whether you are a friend, spouse, or employee, next time an opinion comes and you think its appropriate to say it, please speak up and be polite even if its not to the other likings they will understand.
And whats more you will feel much better about yourself!
Slow as a tortoise or fast as rabit….
In a Startup, Single question is how to execute well to reach targets. Be it traffic, customer acquisition or revenue numbers. Whether it should be the Fail-fast approach to try everything and learn from failures. Or Steady approach where we try one or two steps and execute it well.
Both have pros and cons:
Fail-Fast Approach:
Try out everything to achieve goals and learn from failures.
Let me start with Cons….
Cons:
I have seen that fail fast approach kills you, frustrates you to the core, it’s like you grab everything that needs to be done, starting from Mobile Apps, Social Medias, Server performance, B2C & B2B and even investors’ whims of launching any new features etc. This leads to failure in almost 90% of things you do, only 5-10% succeeds. And if you have competitors doing well, you are doomed.
Pros:
You learn in each step you take, each feature, market or targets makes you learn immensely, which can be applied to next level. Yes, if things go to next level….
Steady Approach:
Taking one or two steps and executing it well.
Cons:
Since you have taken one or two steps, if you fail you have nowhere to turn to. This failure can lead to close down or shutdown.
Pros:
As execution is key, and you will be focusing on executing one or two things, there is very less chance you will fail. In fact, you can figure out better solutions in that particular field which can be the differentiating factor between you and your competitors.
For me its favoured towards taking 1-2 good steps where you can really crack things up.
Note: – Mind you execution speed has nothing to do with product launch dates, product launch should always be agile and delivered in the fastest way possible.
Watching TV…
Have you ever wondered if we stop watching TV, what will happen? Recently we did it, we completely switched off TV and didn’t renew the channels.
It’s been almost a month now. Here are the things which we feel with the change:
1. Good amount of family time, we keep saying weekdays we do not get any time but once you are back from office, lot of time goes on TV.
2. We have more time for books, music and other hobbies instead of just switching on the TV.
3. Lesser negativity, TV gives a lot of negativity in advertisements, serials etc and things which you have, you don’t have blah, blah. Whereas none of these things actually matter to make you happy.
4. One of the fears for us was how to manage our children ( One son of 7 yrs and other of 3 yrs). But they are happier and spend time with books, sports & reading etc.
Overall more positives than negatives of not having TV…I suggest you also try and see how it goes….