Blog - Page 16 of 44 - A Thinking Man

Who are you?

April 2, 2015 Filed Under: Philosophy

A: who are you?
B: I’m Subramanyam, director of Pasupati industries.
A: No, that’s your job. Who are you?
B: I’m Subramanyam, MBA, Engineering..
A: No, that’s your qualification. Who are you?
B: I’m Subramanyam, from Hyderabad..
A: No, not your place. Who are you?

Who are you? Who am I? Is life a journey we take to answer that question?

The dialogue is from a movie I saw recently – ‘Evade Subramanyam’ (Who is Subramanyam?). That dialogue touched me. Who am I? Can I define it/him/her without labelling it with some external aspect like the job we do, the place we are from or the family we are from? Did you observe any time, when we meet a new person we say, ‘Hi, I’m so and so’. and the next question inadvertently is ‘what do you do?’ or some variation of that. What gives us identity? Job? Family? Education? Are we nothing without them? Or am I something? Do we have an identity just by ourselves? without these external identifiers? Who am I?

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Apple Devotion

March 27, 2015 Filed Under: Personal

Yesterday I met a friend after a very long time. After we settled over coffee I noticed he had replaced his iPhone with a Lumia. I asked him ‘what happened?’. He said, ‘the iPhone broke down. It stuttered and finally gave up. I couldn’t afford another so moved onto a Lumia. My wife wanted to sell it. We could make 5 to 6 thousand, but, I said no, it’s the most memorable experience I’ve had on mobile and I just love it. A Benz is a Benz and ordinary is ordinary. I’m going to cherish it’. I could completely understand his feeling. I sometimes just sit staring at my iPhone/iPad admiring their beauty much to the irritation of my wife. I’ve been in the Apple ecosystem for the last five years which in tech parlance equal an eternity. Why didn’t I look out? Were there no other alternatives? So many, and some too good. Then why didn’t I waver? What inspired such devotion? Was it just marketing? I look back:

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I need it as on yesterday

March 17, 2015 Filed Under: Philosophy

We have a saying at work, ‘I need it as on yesterday’. Everyone are under the pressure of deadlines. We all need to toe the lines drawn by our SLAs. Why? Why are we all in such a hurry? Did you ever call a call center and shout at the person at the receiving side for the delay? Were you ever impatient waiting in line at your local McDonald’s? Do you order online and expect a delivery the same day? We all do right? We all have been in these scenarios. We simply don’t like waiting. We have hell a lot of things to do than wait for something. So, what do companies end up doing? Not just to be the best in customer service but also not to risk losing customers to competitors they have to satisfy the customer ASAP. No wait time. Instant satisfaction. Instant gratification. But, to do this, what do the people working in organizations have to do? Do things fast. Very fast. ‘Think on your feet’, we are told. Shoot first, question later, Bond style. Organizations value men of action. Not of thought.

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Falling off the GTD wagon

February 25, 2015 Filed Under: Productivity

We all want to get our lives in order. At one time or the other we would have had this thought. Some go beyond the thought, and put things into practice. They try to structure their time & subsequently their life. And, given the distractions and information overload we experience everyday it’s become a necessity to manage our time or risk ending up accomplishing nothing. Even if we know to which port we are sailing to, there are too strong winds to deter us from that path unless we have a strong system to guide us. Having a system to manage our time actually helps us in knowing what all commitments we have and gives us a clarity to determine what we can take on additionally. My such choice of system has been GTD. From time to time I’ve questioned this choice but ’ve always felt it to be the most logical way of time management, so, over the years, I’ve invested time and energy into developing the right system for me and painstakingly refined it. But, I still fail. I still don’t do what I’m supposed to do. I procrastinate. I laze around. Why? Did I not do things right? Wasn’t the system supposed to make my life more manageable? Then why didn’t it? Every GTDer knows even the best of the best fall off the GTD wagon at one time or the other. I examined why. The reasons fell into two categories:

Nature of the task
System inefficiencies

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On Relationships

February 5, 2015 Filed Under: Philosophy

No man is an island, and unless and until you are cast away like Tom Hanks on an island, you’ll have to deal with people everyday which is not an easy task. We cannot think, ‘I’ll deal with this person like this’ and get over with it, people change in time. I’ve always had only few friends, ’cause I never believed in befriending every person I meet in life (the prospect of which is very exhausting). But, when I do find people after my own heart, I strive to build and maintain that relationship. I’ve made many mistakes in life, sometimes lost a few good friends due to my hubris and ego or just to plain stubbornness. I still stumble but ‘making mistakes & learning from them’ isn’t it the way to live. Over the years, I mellowed down, at least that’s what I like to tell myself (I can hear my ego screaming, ‘you are just bowing down to others more these days’, but if that’s the right thing to do, then probably, I should) and my thoughts on how to deal with friends/family have changed over time. This is where I stand today. I may be right, I may be wrong, this might not be the place I wanted to be, but probably needed to be. We learn from experience don’t we?

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