Archives for October 2019

What could have been

2019-10-31 By Sachin Leave a Comment

Many years ago I met the owner of a small business. He was telling me how when he was now starting up, there were times he was not sure how he was going to afford to buy groceries.

At that time, his business was doing okay and he wasn’t worried about how he was going to be eating that evening.

A few years later I see him again… driving a brand new Audi Q7. Well, certain should have been eating large then.

I always think about this. It was one of the things that kept me going while I was running my own business. It gave me hope.

Unfortunately, I never reached the stage of driving that Audi. Of course, I never did reach the stage of not knowing if I could afford groceries either.

Sometimes I do wonder if I stuck with it where would I be now. Would I have eventually overcome and become amazingly successful? Or would I have just dug myself deeper into a place where I really couldn’t afford groceries?

And sometimes I wonder what would have happened had I not left my well paying job to start my business. I would have had a lot more money saved, that’s for sure.

You never know what could have been, but you know where you are now. I can’t change the past, but I can influence the future.

Stay present.

We Cannot Go Back and Start Over, But We Can Begin Now, and Make a New Ending.

~ James R. Sherman

I don’t know what has happened since to the businessman, but I know he’s still around. I am too.

Must… Write… Something…

2019-10-30 By Sachin Leave a Comment

I’m super tired right now. Can’t think too straight.

Went to bed late last night, and up again early this morning. Then spent 12 hours at work.

I’m spent.

The thoughts aren’t flowing, so I’m just writing. Writing whatever comes to mind.

Just to write something. Anything, really.

It doesn’t have to make sense. Who’s reading this right now and wondering, "Where is he going with this?"

Nowhere.

I’m just writing. And writing still.

Still writing.

Not a hundred words yet.

I’m running out of things to say.

It was a fairly productive day I think.

There… one hundred words.

Can’t say I didn’t write something today.

I hate being a manager…

2019-10-29 By Sachin Leave a Comment

… then why do I read so many management books? Or read management blogs? And take online courses for leadership training?

This is just a paradox for me.

Or maybe it’s not that I don’t like being a manager. Maybe I just don’t like managing people…

… then why do I read so many team building and coaching books? Or read managing people blogs? And take online courses for people management?

Or maybe I just don’t like managing projects…

… then why do I read so many project management books? Or read project execution blogs? And take online courses for project delivery?

It doesn’t make sense, does it?

It seems that it’s not that I don’t like being manager, or managing people, or managing projects. I do like those things.

What I don’t like is failing gloriously at it.

I’ve made some successes, but it’s easy to focus on the negative. That’s human nature.

I should reframe my thinking.

Focus on making a difference. On improving someone’s life. On delivering what I promised.

And I try. But it’s hard coming home feeling emotionally drained. And still not having anything to show for it.

But I’m told that’s what comes with the job. And that sucks.

And that’s why I hate being a manager. But I will continue to try to be a better one.

Rewarding the unimportant

2019-10-28 By Sachin Leave a Comment

I’ve been looking at ways to improve my productivity, especially around how I manage my tasks. So I’ve been reading The 5 Choices and it uses the Covey’s Time Matrix as its foundation.

One of my challenges right now is trying to stay within Quadrant 2 (or Q2 for short). The Quality Time quadrant. This is where your time spent has a multiplier effect on the value returned. Things like learning, planning or spending time with family.

Most of my time is spent in Q1 or Q3. I do spend some time in Q4, but mainly after spending so much time in Q1 and Q3 that my willpower is spent to do something in Q2.

As I was reviewing my annual appraisal, it came to me that we encourage behaviour that puts us in Q1 or Q3.

Think about it for a moment.

People get praised for helping out in crises and emergencies. When someone calls a member of my team for "urgent" (not urgent) issues, and they get help, they are thanked and my team member feels a little good inside.

These actions provide the person with a hit of dopamine, causing the person to want to repeat that action for another hit. And thereby encouraging the behaviour. Instant gratification does its magic.

However, Q2 activities are long, with outcomes that are sometimes uncertain. These are things that may show up in an annual appraisal, which is still a long time away from the "instant" praise they may get for solving someone’s issue on the phone.

One way that you may deal with the Q2 issue is to break down the task with smaller tasks that you can hit regularly. But even this is not so instant unless you can get this down daily or smaller. All the while, you’re still getting bombarded with Q1 and Q3 dopamine hits regularly.

And if you try to dissuade the Q1 and Q3 behaviour? You get hit with "poor customer service" because you’re not answering the phones, or you ask that they call back later when you’re not working on an important task. After all, the customer has also been conditioned for instant gratification too.

The challenge is to change the mindset and reframe the thinking. I could work on this one item that will help this one person, or I could work on this other item that will help a hundred people. Which would you choose?

It’ll still come down to which I will get praised faster.

Damn you instant gratification.

Respect religious belief

2019-10-27 By Sachin 1 Comment

Today is Divali, the Hindu festival of lights.

I’ve said before that I’m an atheist. My mother is a Catholic. But we grew up in a Hindu home, with all the traditions and such.

Even after my grandparents passed away, we tend to still follow the Hindu traditions. Including lighting deyas.

The fasting (abstaining from meat), not so much, but we’ll still not eat meat for a couple of days.

Now, you may ask that since I’m an atheist, why bother with any of those things? Well because my mother still believes. So I do it.

I think it’s still important to be respectful of others’ reasonable beliefs. As long as it doesn’t infringe on my rights.

But I realise how much our society allows religion and religious institutions to do just that.

There’s an evangelical church close by my home, and every Sunday morning they would blast their service through loudspeakers. They don’t care what you believe or don’t believe, you will listen to their sermon.

No police would stop them.

The Hindu pooja services in temples or the Muslim call to prayer is no different.

But why do we allow them to get away with that?

Because we are all superstitious people. Even I can’t sometimes shake my upbringing.

Which is why religious belief is so often used in arguments to deny rights. And we continue to give credence to it. Religion continues to be used as a form of control of large groups of people.

That is slowly changing with studies finding that the world population is becoming less religious — but still in a high majority. Religion may never disappear though, thanks to our brain’s need to look for patterns and causation in all events — God’s will and such.

While we wait for more people to become truly "enlightened", we should be careful about how much respect we give to religious beliefs.

Need to lose weight again

2019-10-26 By Sachin Leave a Comment

I wrote already how I lost 35lbs a while back.

However, with the high stress I’ve been under, I’ve found myself regaining the weight.

I’ve continued to exercise and eat fairly healthy. When you are under stress you tend to suffer muscle fatigue, so my exercise intensity has reduced. Further, you crave sugary stuff, and I haven’t been watching the food I eat (although I don’t think I do too badly). Willpower is sometimes just not enough to get me through.

I haven’t gone back to my former weight, but the doctor asked me to try to lose 10lbs to 20lbs. I’ll aim for 15.

At 2lbs a week, I should lose that in about 8 weeks.

This is the first week. And already it’s been challenging.

It doesn’t help that it’s Divali time. So there are sweets, roti, prasad and other foods. Don’t let the fact that it’s vegetarian fool you. That shit is calorie-dense. And the sweets… yum. I just ate a few kurmas and I’m craving more.

But there are always ups and downs in weight loss. You just try to have a few more ups than downs (or should that be more downs than ups?).

So here I am. Willpower being tested once again. Another 60-day challenge.

One week down. Seven more to go.

Need for status

2019-10-25 By Sachin Leave a Comment

I drive an old beat-up car. A 2005 Grand Vitara.

It has a few dents, the engine makes a weird noise, and the brakes squeal for whatever reason (they’re newish). My friends make fun of it.

I like it. It works for me. It gets me from point A to point B.

But still can’t feel judged by it when I roll up at work.

In my position, I’m entitled to a company car, but opted not to and instead take the cash. And when I park by my coworkers with their brand new car, including luxury ones, I can’t help but feel lower. Even though I made the choice.

The feeling is worst during company meetings when everyone else rolls in with their new vehicles and smack in the middle is this beat up Vitara.

We as humans crave social status. It drives us.

In a study by The Harvard School of Public Health asked a series of questions. One of the questions asked respondents would they rather have an income of $50,000, where everyone else earned $25,000 or have an income of $100,000, where everyone else earned $200,000, assuming prices of goods and services were constant in both examples, and therefore purchasing power is the same.

It turns out 56% prefered the first option of $50,000 even though they would have earned twice as much in the second case.

This is similar to another study where persons were asked if they would rather live in a $400k house in a neighbourhood where all the others are $100k, or a $1M house in a neighbourhood where all the others are $4M? And again, many chose the first option.

Status is illogical.

It is also hardwired.

And so is inequality.

If others in society see someone doing better while they are not, then a negative response arises. This is seen in toddlers, and capuchin monkeys too.

So it’s interesting that we would have evolved to first seek elevated status, while we also feel contempt for those who have elevated status to us. It’s as though we grew up to succeed for others to drag us down.

Or perhaps we haven’t done evolving yet.

Perhaps our next step is where we evolve to grow upwards, and then pull others up too.

Even so, I’m not there yet.

I feel "unfairness" although I’ve made my choice. And I crave status too, even though I’m better off than the majority of people in my country.

Knowing that this is an inbuilt emotion doesn’t diminish the feeling.

Value-added

2019-10-24 By Sachin Leave a Comment

When I first joined the company I’m currently working, I spoke to the team about the work that they were currently doing.

I told them that much of their work was operational non-value added work. That is work that happens but does not add value. Work like adding rules to the firewall, or adding users to active directory. And that many units thought that they were not adding value to the services being offered.

I said that we needed to start doing more value-added work.

The team left and went about their work.

Many months later in one of my one-on-ones, this thing about non-value added work came up, and the team thought that I meant that they were not valued or that the work they were doing was not valuable.

I was taken aback.

One, that they equated value-added with being valued.

And two, that this came up so long afterwards, meaning that the team sat and ruminated on this for a long time.

I had to explain that this had nothing to do with them not being valued, but that the work they were doing was mainly transactional.

Value-added work, on the other hand, would have a multiplier effect on the effort.

For example, instead of creating shares for every user who requests it, create a shared folder accessible to everyone and show people how to create folders and specify permissions. Instead of unlocking and resetting passwords, use software to allow self-service unlocks and resets.

The work you’ve expended creates far more value to users and also frees up your time. You will be creating fewer shares, and unlocking fewer accounts.

To this day some members of my team bristle at the term value-added. But hopefully, the majority of the team gets it.

They’re still doing much non-value added work, but I’m starting to see some sprouts of value-added ones coming about.

I remain optimistic.

Archives for October 2019

What could have been

Must… Write… Something…

I hate being a manager…

Rewarding the unimportant

Respect religious belief

Need to lose weight again

Need for status

Value-added

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