Archives for November 2019

No willpower

2019-11-22 By Sachin Leave a Comment

A little less than a month ago I said how I needed to lose some weight again. Since then I’ve lost about 5 pounds.

But no more.

This time has been much harder than the last. It’s not the diet, but the time and willpower required just to maintain this. My schedule just does not give me the flexibility to eat mini-meals during the day or exercise how I would like.

Back when I lost weight the first time it seemed so much easier. I mean it did take me some time, but the willpower to get it done was there. I wanted to lose weight.

What’s different now?

I would say the need is just not the same. Back then I was overweight and needed to do something about that. But now, it’s just not that big of a deal; I’m not overweight by any measure.

Also, I was running my own business, so I had much more flexibility. I could run 3 times a week and exercise for an hour a day. Now, it’s much less than that.

And mostly, the priority is different. Losing weight is not as important to me now as it was back then. I didn’t choose to lose weight. Instead, the doctor advised me. The buy-in is not there.

In all, this quest has been abandoned. I will instead continue what I’ve always done – eat healthily, and exercise regularly.

Padat Padam

2019-11-21 By Sachin Leave a Comment

There’s the story of a man who long ago needed to make an urgent journey through the forest to another village but it’s nighttime.
A guru is passing by and asks what is the matter. The man explains his predicament and says he only has a lamp that could only light the way five steps around him and will be unable to see the path before him.
The guru explains to take the lamp and make the journey, and with each step, he would see another step appear before him.
The man does what the guru suggests, and padat padam he completed the journey.

This was a story told to me in a philosophy class a long time ago. Padat Padam means step by step in Sanskrit.

How often do you not do something because the outcome or ending is unknown or uncertain?

How about avoid doing something because you’ve never done it before and not sure how to complete it?

Sometimes you just have to start with what you know. That’s the first step.

Then keep stepping, and as you step, another step will appear.

Don’t let the fear of the unknown get in the way. Instead, have faith in your lamp and your step.

Good at one thing

2019-11-20 By Sachin Leave a Comment

I read an article today in the Harvard Business Review about pursuing a passion outside of work.

Now, I don’t believe in the whole “follow your passion” thing. You should be passionate, yes, but not pursue it. Find passion where you go.

Anyway, that’s not the point of this post.

There is a part in the article that says, “When you stake your whole self-worth on your job, you become less resilient to adverse events, such as layoffs or negative performance reviews.” And this is something I see, and feel often.

When I look at myself, I don’t have other things that I’m good at outside of work – information technology. I write casually, draw poorly, and nothing else.

So this is probably where all my fear comes from. My brain is protecting my self-esteem from being destroyed because I’ve done something that betrays the one thing I may be good at, and everyone finds out that I’m an imposter.

It’s probably why I procrastinate so much at my job. It’s better that they think me unreliable than not good at my job. A bad administrator, but not a bad engineer.

Damn my brain!

So I need to be good at something else. The question is what?

Neglecting myself

2019-11-19 By Sachin Leave a Comment

On Sunday evening I started feeling unwell.

Headache. Dizziness. Brain Fog.

Monday morning I woke up feeling the same way. On a whim, I decided to check my blood pressure and it turned out that it was fairly low for me – 102/62. My normal BP is about 115/75.

Because of the dizziness, I decided to work from home and rest a little. Spent most of the day standing as sitting tended to cause me to feel dizzier. And made sure and ate and drank well.

Today I woke up once again feeling worse. My BP was 101/61, about the same as yesterday. I called in sick this time and decided to check the doctor.

It turns out I was slightly dehydrated. Dehydrated!

How neglectful could I be that I missed drinking water so much so that it affected my health?

This is exactly what I wrote about yesterday about being so busy that I’m missing those small things, like drinking water.

The trouble is what am I being so busy with. Are those things that are truly worthwhile to me? And when I think about it, they’re not.

They why then do I do it, but not find myself being motivated to do the things that will be truly worthwhile, like completing my M.Sc. project?

It’s likely the social peer pressure of work tasks that takes precedence over my private tasks. If I don’t get my work tasks done then I would let down a few people, even get fired. However, if I don’t complete my M.Sc. project then I only let down myself, and I’m no worse off, as I would lose something I never had anyway: an M.Sc. degree.

These weird rationalisations happen in the background causing me to choose activities that don’t provide greater benefits to me. An M.Sc. degree will be far more useful to me than completing that report for whoever.

But again, knowing that these things happen doesn’t necessarily stop it from happening.

In the end, I may still end up doing that report, and not completing my project, or even worse, not drinking enough water.

I hope that I can wisen up before I end up killing myself.

Too busy to care

2019-11-18 By Sachin Leave a Comment

I try to be environmentally conscious.

I try to make greener choices, recycle as much as I could, reduce my consumption and my waste, growing plants and composting organic waste.

But of recent, I’ve found myself not being very involved.

I choose to drive rather than take public transport. My plants are neglected along with my compost. I still recycle, but not very vigilant in ensuring that we’re making greener choices.

This is only one area, but I’ve neglected other areas as well such as my health, my studies and my family.

In the 1970s, social psychologists John Darley and Dan Batson conducted an experiment using seminary students. The students were to give a talk in a studio across campus. One-half of the students were told that the talk was about seminary jobs, and the other half was about the story of the Good Samaritan. The two groups were further given a time constraint of one of three types:

High-Hurry constraint – "You’re late. They were expecting you a few minutes ago…You’d better hurry. It shouldn’t take but just a minute."
Intermediate-Hurry constraint – "The assistant is ready for you, so please go right over.”
Low-Hurry constraint – "It’ll be a few minutes before they’re ready for you, but you might as well head on over. If you have to wait over there, it shouldn’t be long."

Along the way to the studio each student passed a man sitting slumped at the doorway, coughing and appearing and need of assistance.

Would the students who were to give the talk on the Good Samaritan be more likely to help the man?

It turns out, no. The topic of the talk had no major effect on helping, but the amount of hurriedness did.

In Low-Hurry situation, 63% helped, in Medium-Hurry situation, 45% helped, and in High-Hurry situation, only 10% helped. Overall 40% of the students offered some help.

Knowing the right thing to do has no power over the lizard or monkey brain.

Being too busy reduces our ability to think.

We lose "presence" and no longer spend our time in the now but in a space of the past or the future. It causes us to miss many of the latent learnings and details in our lives.

By not being present we’re missing the best parts of our lives and losing sight of what is truly important.

Take time for things you truly care about.

Smart, but not smart enough

2019-11-17 By Sachin Leave a Comment

I’ve written before about my failures. As recently as yesterday.

And while some of these failures are true failures, most of them are partial successes – not achieving the full gains, but did achieve some.

Most of the times I’m a half-full kind of guy, but when it comes to achieving goals, I’m more of a half-empty person.

This sort of perfectionism often leads to me suffering from Imposter Syndrome. From Wikipedia:

Impostor syndrome is a psychological pattern in which an individual doubts their accomplishments and has a persistent internalized fear of being exposed as a “fraud”.

Many people suffer from it, even very successful people. The challenge with this feeling is that it gets worse as you gain more and more success. We’re all there waiting for the other shoe to drop and people would finally discover that we’re not as smart or good as they thought we were.

So I procrastinate and engage in self-defeating strategies, like not delivering on time, or purposefully taking on too much so I have an excuse for lack of quality, delays, etc.

Then there are the failures that caused me to feel more like a fraud. That I don’t belong where I am. So the fear sets in where I afraid to make a move else I will fail again, essentially ensuring that I will fail.

Like a deer in the headlights.

What bothers me the most, is that I can’t get past it. That I can’t overcome this limitation that keeps me average.

So I keep looking and trying. An answer or solution should not be this hard to find. Or am I overthinking it?

Behaviours for the future of work

2019-11-16 By Sachin Leave a Comment

The world of work is changing. There is no place where this is truer than in the world of Information Technology.

With these changes, being technically sound is not good enough, there are behavioural, or soft skills that will be required.

It’s one of the reasons that when I started my new position I stated that I didn’t have a technology strategy in so much that I had a behavioural change strategy. One where that no matter where the technology went they can be ready.

Change the behaviour and change thinking.

This behaviour strategy revolved around introducing DevOps and development of these four areas that I consider to be critical for the future of work.

1. Analytical and strategic thinking

As things change quickly, you need to think ahead, and then be able to put the pieces in place to get there. For this you need to be able to look at all the trends and analyse it, then put a strategy in place to take advantage of the opportunities.

We need to think of the entire process as a system and see how we can increase productivity and flow through the process. Let’s call this… I don’t know… systems thinking.

And use data to make better decisions or to just make a damn decision.

This aligns with the 1st Way of DevOps, thinking from left to right.

Skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been. – Wayne Gretzky

2. Think of the end customer and user-centred design

In the world of automation, the things that will make humans, well, human, is our ability to connect. We often refer to this as Emotional Intelligence.

This is going to be a key skill in the future of work. It will allow us to develop services that help the customers and not cater for ourselves, such as novel technological solutions that add little value to the customer. Yeah, that’s a pretty cool server, but did it reduce the wait times of our customers?

Take time to speak with customers, even if there are no issues or projects ongoing so we can understand them.

This aligns with the 2nd Way of DevOps, increase and amplify feedback loops.

We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them. – Albert Einstein

3. Creativity and innovation

Creativity and innovation is a key part of ensuring that we can stay relevant. This means thinking of new ways to use emerging technology to meet business and personal goals. It also means doing experiments and trying new things.

This aligns with the 3rd Way of DevOps, the development of a culture of experimentation and learning.

If you want something you’ve never had, you must be willing to do something you’ve never done. – Unknown

4. Active and Purposeful Learning

In a fast-changing environment, you need to keep up with the new technologies otherwise you may get left behind. This means actively taking time to learn new things, and also learning from mistakes.

It also means not being afraid to make mistakes and developing a growth mindset, whereby you don’t believe that your abilities are fixed, but that you can change.

I’ve also encouraged my team to be purposeful with their learning, in that don’t learn as they do, which is reactive by nature, but choose to learn something even if it’s not actively in use. And also teach others so that they may learn as well.

This also aligns with the 3rd Way of DevOps, the development of a culture of experimentation and learning.

Learning is not compulsory… neither is survival. – W. Edwards Deming

The end result

The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry. – Robert Burns

Unfortunately, all my plans didn’t go as expected. Much of the team became frustrated, and I too in return, because things weren’t coming along. Some members of the team have become disengaged and just going with the flow, which I’ve been told is to be expected when implementing change. That didn’t help me feel any less that I’d failed them.

Time was short, but I was hopeful nonetheless.

Fortunately, I’ve had success with at least one of them, which could hopefully open a gateway for others to follow. That is to be seen.

Being Average

2019-11-15 By Sachin Leave a Comment

I like to think of myself as being smarter than the average person.

I’ve done no kind of study to come to that conclusion, but certainly, it’s how I feel.

But when I look at much of the evidence around me, I don’t really excel at anything.

I’m pretty much average.

I’m average height, of average weight, average shoe size, with average clothes sizes.

At work, I have average performance, with average pay, and I am part of the middle class.

As I look through the years, I’ve never really been above average at anything.

So why do I think that I’ve above average intelligence?

Welcome to the Superiority Illusion, or Illusory Superiority. A cognitive bias where people overestimate their qualities and abilities as compared to others. And as a cognitive bias, we aren’t aware that it’s present.

We all suffer from it (well, except for people suffering from depression). It probably exists to protect our self-esteem, which I need a lot of.

But I want to be above average and do great things. To be remembered as someone accomplishing great things.

Being average sucks. Few people remember the average Joe.

The biggest thing that sucks about being average is that every time there’s a sales in clothing stores, they’re out of your sizes pretty quickly if you aren’t there early.

I need better clothes.

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