Abhinav Bhatt

Leadership Dip or Trip

It was a Monday morning at 10 AM in an office in New York. Like all over the world, people had the same groggy look on their faces. To their surprise, when they entered, they saw a big poster on the door of the building. It said

“The person who wanted to stop your growth has passed away. Please join us at 11 AM in the cafeteria to pay respect to the deceased”.

It came as a shocker to everyone. Not only they felt bad that someone had passed away, but they also had the curiosity to know that who was the person who was stopping their growth.

When they reached the cafeteria, they saw a coffin lying in the middle. On top of it, there was a placard which said,

“The person who wants to stop your growth lies here.”

When they opened the coffin, there was nobody. There was just a mirror, showing the reflection of the person who opened the coffin.

Well, the moral of the story is simple: The only one person who can make or break us is we ourselves. It is up to only us, to get ourselves out of the problems we might face.

The person most easily to blame is someone superior to you. Most of us are engineers here and when asked why did they do engineering, their replies are mostly because their parents pushed them to it. True, isn’t it!

And when it comes to their jobs, most of the blame goes towards the managers. Am I wrong? We all know whom to blame for our bad days at the office.

Personally, I got the chance to actually start to lead and manage a team officially only in the last couple of years. Not only I was made the team lead at the office but I also became a Club Officer in my TM club. I always thought that I can contribute my best to the team when I will actually get a chance to lead it. Being a team member, I had my limitations, obviously. But to lead others and take decision for others is more difficult than any team member can think.

How many of you think that you will never be at a position where you have to make decisions for others? The leader is someone who leads and shows the way. You will be a leader at multiple points in life. Even when talking about non-professionally, you will become a parent someday and you will have to take decisions, sometimes tough, for your family.

So, with my experience, I learned a few things. The most important thing is that when you are the leader, you have nobody else to blame. If you cannot make others work for you, you have to try harder. So, how can we be the leader we all want to have? How can we take decisions for others? How can we behave as a leader? What all it takes to be a leader?

With those thoughts in mind, today, I will share some skills with you, which I found in a book I read called ‘Secrets of Leadership’ by Prakash Iyer. These few points really had a huge impact on me and helped me to understand the role of the leader in a much better way. I hope they have some impact on you too.

Analogy is that a leader is like a tea bag.

The real flavor comes through only when the teabag gets into hot water.

A teabag must be porous. They never mind where they are in the cup.

Sometimes, one teabag is just not enough. You need to add some sugar and milk.

Someone else holds the string. Always. It’s all about how good the tea is. Not the teabag!

Eventually, teabags need to make way and get out.

Just as the true flavor of a teabag comes through only when it is dipped in hot water, sometimes it needs pressure and adversity to bring out the leader in you.

—
The above was my speech for Toastmasters Pathways Level 2 Speech 1 for Visionary Communication about Leadership Styles. Obviously, I spoke more than the text above. I have deliberately not written much here as I tried to do this speech on the go, as in I didn’t prepare what I was going to speak. I just relied on the analogies and proceeded.

It went fine.

All the pics used above were courtesy Unsplash.com and Freepik.com.

So I recently read: Deep Work by Cal Newport

Imagine you’re working in your office cubicle. There is a looming deadline at hand and whenever you are trying to concentrate, someone laughs hysterically loud from a distant corner. You mutter some abuses under your breath and try to concentrate harder. You try to mentally block the unnecessary noises along with stuffing your fingers into your ears, to added effect. Even now you can hear the printer, someone walking behind, and generally distracting lights but you tell yourself, it is okay and that you can still read the very important document without which finishing work would be difficult. As soon as you reach the second paragraph, a pop-up window shows up and the right-hand corner of the desktop. That can be ignored, for now, you assure yourself. You reach the third paragraph and then your phone lightens up. There is another joke on your family WhatsApp group which is there just for ruining whatever concentration you had built till now. You move on but before you reach the next chapter, notifications galore. Someone visited someplace on the company’s money and want you to see their airport check-ins on Facebook. Or some political upheaval has happened in the capital, your news alert shouts. Or twitter has just lost it’s, what do they say, collective shit, for the 109th time today. And there goes your concentration out of the window and gives up on you.

Has it ever happened to you?

Or as they show in ads, are you fully frustrated with distractions, notifications, social media nonsense, and inability to concentrate for the attention span now almost nonexistent?

If yes, this book is the perfect antidote you need for your addiction to social media, the poison of modern-day life.

Does your office appear like a fair to you where people are just moving incessantly for no reason whatsoever?

Deep Work by Cal Newport tries to do only one thing. It tries to reassure and encourage you that if you really want to do some productive work, which he calls ‘Deep Work’, you have to really boycott everything you think isn’t relevant to the work. The book has several examples of people who really mastered the art of Deep Work and produced astonishing work of literature, science, art, and so on. All they did was to cut themselves off from the material world and concentrate. They trusted their brain to do the knowledge work, they had set out to do and when their brain got free from all the mess around, it produced the desired results and the satisfaction which is often missing from the work. For example,

“Mark Twain wrote much of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in a shed on the property of the Quarry Farm in New York, where he was spending the summer. Twain’s study was so isolated from the main house that his family took to blowing a horn to attract his attention for meals.”

The book repeats several times, that social networking (and mobile phone), is nothing but a poison which is damaging our culture and innate mindset of humans that we are getting consumed by it and not the other way around. It mostly takes the example of modern knowledge workers, say, people who code, write, think, and create.

It also tries to propagate a beautiful fact which is totally unlike what you have been told till now. We are told to be approachable and we are expected to reply to every message, email, text immediately. Deep Work suggests becoming hard to reach. Not only it would make you better at what you’re currently doing instead of wasting time replying to things which can easily be dealt with later. But it also makes others understand that you treasure your time as equally as money.

Reading this book coincided with my getting fed up with social media and I feel no remorse whatsoever not being a regular on Facebook and Twitter.

You can buy it from here: https://amzn.to/2zs9nRL

Landing at Mars soon

NASA mailed me this a week ago:

On Monday, Nov. 26, 2018, just before noon PT (3 p.m. ET; 2000 UTC/GMT), NASA’s InSight mission will land on Mars! The spacecraft will plunge through the thin Martian atmosphere, heatshield first, and use a parachute to slow down. Then, it will fire its retro rockets to slowly descend to the surface.
Yours is among 2.4 million names that will be on Mars when InSight touches down. Once on the surface, InSight will study the deep interior of Mars to advance our understanding of the early history of all rocky planets, including Earth.
NASA

Actually, some time back, I saw a post from NASA on my Instagram feed. It said that the Insight Mission which is going to land on Mars in November 2018 will carry names of people who sign up via a form. Just the names, no DNA or anything. They don’t want to contaminate Mars (further). I had signed up without giving another thought. And the day is here!

Today (tonight), hopefully, my name, along with 2.4 million others will land on Mars. To put in percentage, out of 7 odd billion people, only
0.03% of people would have their names landing on Mars tonight. I am not joking. Can you imagine how exciting this actually is? Although the mission is not about that. But having your name on a different planet is a feat in itself, right?

But on a serious note, after Curiosity this would be the first mission which actually lands on the Martian surface.

Check out a very detailed and entertaining post by Oatmeal about the Insight mission here: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/insight

Read about the complete mission here: https://mars.nasa.gov/news/8384/nasa-brings-mars-landing-to-viewers-everywhere/?site=insight&utm_source=iContact&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nasa-mars-outreach&utm_content=mars20181119

Auto!!

On one fine Saturday morning, I was waiting at BTM Bus Stop. With only 30 minutes for the movie to start, I was in a rush to reach PVR at Forum Mall in Koramangala, which was just 2 KM from there. If I had taken a bus, it would surely have taken me more than 30 minutes or so, thanks to the place where time just slows down. Yes, the Silk Board. I had no other option but to take an Autorickshaw which could zigzag its way from the lanes and take me to my destination in time. After waiting for some time, I found one empty Autorickshaw coming my way. I waved my hand to make him stop. Despite being vacant, the driver just glanced at me but didn’t stop. Maybe he was in a hurry himself, maybe I wasn’t enough good looking, maybe I didn’t have Maybelline. Another Autorickshaw was passing by. I shouted “Auto!”, he stopped. When I asked him, he just said “Neh!” and moved along, still vacant on the same road where it could have taken me easily and earned money. In a minute another one came. I asked him whether he will take me or not. Nonchalantly, he said, “Oh Forum aa? 200 Rupees!” without any shame or regret on his face. He demanded 200 Rupees as if I had asked him to drop me at the Airport. I said, “It is just 2 KM”. He got disappointed to see that I knew how far it was. He said nope and went away. I decided to walk towards my destination find an auto on the way. There was supposed to be an auto-stand half a kilometer away as well. When I reached there, I found 3-4 autos standing there. I went to one and asked “Sir, Forum?” The driver who was reading a newspaper gave me looks as if I had asked his daughter’s hand for marriage. I said sorry for disturbing him and chugged along. I asked another one, he said “Ok, 20 rupees extra. Lot of traffic there!”. I was getting impatient now. I sighed “Let’s go.”. Finally, I reached in 20 minutes.

I’m sure this must have happened to you as well? Right? When you were just refused or were asked
for an exorbitant amount or had to shelve 20-30 Rupees extra?

Fortunately or unfortunately, Auto Rickshaws in India are the most common mode of transport, aren’t they? From small towns to big cities, you can find them everywhere. In fact, if you want to draw a picture of a market Scene in India, your picture will be incomplete unless you show a small yellow black toy looking 3-wheeler adorning the side of the road. I happened to read a blog post by a journalist Anand Ramachandran on Yahoo sometime ago. He, originally from Chennai, had just moved from Mumbai to Bangalore and he had an acute observation about Auto Rickshaws of all these cities. He said that while auto drivers of Mumbai are businessmen and part-time tourist guides, auto drivers of Chennai are basically gangsters. In Bangalore, they are hobbyists Autorickshaw drivers. He said that unlike other cities, Auto Rickshaws in Bangalore are just for aesthetic reasons and decorative purposes and serve no actual function. Maybe they are already very rich real estate owners themselves so they just don’t really care. To top all that, they live under a huge misconception that IT guys are rich people. IT guys and rich? Autorickshaws are going to take you for a ride, when they take you for a ride. Auto Rickshaws Drivers have personality of Dhanush but they carry the Attitude of Rajinikanth.

Love it or hate it, auto rickshaws are something which actually works in a place like India. They are small enough to get into any lane, no matter how narrow it could be and big enough to carry 3-4 people and even more if the driver decides to allow. He himself will sit in the smallest area possible to fit a human backside but if there is shared auto possible, he will easily fit 5-6 people without breaking much sweat. And the way they drive? They don’t really care how narrow or busy the street is. They still drive like James Bond and as a passenger, you have to hold whatever is available possible to save yourself. I had thought that after the inception of more buses, or cab services or even Metro, the attitude of Auto Rickshaws will improve but all in vain.

Did you think that through my speech I was going to present a solution to the menace of Autorickshaw Drivers? Nope. When we cannot improve after so many years, how will they? I guess, Autos in India suit our sensibilities as a nation. I just think when I will get fed up with my life as an IT engineer, I would become an Autorickshaw driver myself. And when some will call me to take them to any destination, I will demand at least 100 Rupees extra, just to see how it feels.

So I recently read: Off the Corporate Bus and into the Creativity Boat

A Confession

I started reading this book at the beginning of this year and finished it only a week ago. No, it is not that big a book but this year has been particularly bad about book reading for some reasons. I had to give reading up time and again and got involved in one thing or the other. Yada yada yada, I want to apologize for not finishing it earlier. Sorry, Ashoo Ma’am!

But that cannot stop me from writing a review now when I have completed it, finally!

This book is one of the most unique ones I have ever read. It is a non-fiction and a fiction book combined into one. To sum it up, the book revolves around a conversation which 2 people have about a person lost on an island and from that conversation, the author discusses ideas which form the basis of the concept of creativity.

I won’t go into the fictional part of the book but rather I would like to focus on the non-fiction part. Most of us, I would like to believe, have a creative side of us. That gets overshadowed and becomes latent with age due to various reasons like responsibilities, family, education, and society. This book tries to evoke the dormant part of our brain which deals with creativity and encourages the reader to explore it again.

After each chapter of the fiction, there is a lesson learned which discusses various forms of creative expressions. This deals, with a lot of conviction and scientific logic, as to how our minds form ideas. Examples from Photography, Writing, Art, and Music are explored with a lot of research.

You can read this book in a couple of days while sipping tea and enjoying the rain. I am pretty sure that a book like this would appeal to everyone’s senses who feel that they used to be creative but then life happened. Certainly, this can be the trigger to reinvigorate the hidden creative part of you. You might take out the instrument you bought long back but didn’t play or finish the incomplete poem you wrote long ago and pick up a new hobby if not done yet. Although the book’s title says ‘Off the corporate bus…” but of course, not everyone can leave their jobs and become artists. But one can take some time out and try to do a bit about their hobbies which they used to have in their childhood. Sometimes, to break the monotony of life, one has to do go back to their childhood and do the thing which made them happy. That is what the book aims for.

If you want to read this, you can purchase the book from here: https://amzn.to/2wUzTB0

P.S.: My name is mentioned in the credits of this book as a contributor to the illustrations. I am so glad I could be of use for a book like this. The illustrations I made were certainly not a piece of art but rather diagrams, to be frank. When I was making them, I had no idea what they would be emoting. But after reading the complete book, I understood the clear picture, as the protagonist of the fictional story within the fictional story of this book was told, that sometimes to see the clear picture, take a step back and observe again. You might find them showing a lot more than what they depict.

Thanks to Ashoo Khosla Ma’am again!

So I completed 10 Years working

Life always comes a full circle

The line above is not just a trope. It happens more often than one might believe. On August 10th, 2018 I completed 10 years working. I joined my first job on August 11th, 2008 thinking it would be a part-time thing for a couple of months. But it extended for 15 months thanks to the economic debacle of that year. That happened because I lost 2 job offers I had earned in my college campus. I had earned those 2 offers after quite a struggle after failing to crack various rounds in 4-5 companies. Not that I wasn’t good, it was just not working out due to one reason or the other. One of the reason was honesty, another was ego, and one was a just plain failure in some aptitude tests. But then both of the 2 job offers which had been buried already came back and I took one of them after 21 months. I had lost my patience after a year of working as the job I was doing was not very satisfying, to me. Anyways, I have written a huge lot of text on this blog about Recession and things. Read the bonus section below for the full circle part.

Basically, I have a decade of Work Experience now. Being a not-so-much-of-a-risk-taking-computer-engineer (that is leaving my job and becoming a full-time graphic designer, starting a company, a writer, a blogger, and a traveler), I’ve mostly been working in the Information Technology companies. A part of the first ever job was also being an artist as well but it was primarily a menial Photoshop HTML job. Since 2010, it has been pretty much similar sort of experience but fortunately, I have got the opportunity to work on a variety of software, some new technologies and came across a variety of people.

If I were to summarize these 10 years, I would do this through the following few points:

Time Flies

It does. I have grown 10 years older in no time. I still feel that 90s were a decade ago while they aren’t. When you work for a full day and days are almost the same, you cease to remember the details. I vividly remember last days of college but I only faintly remember last days of companies in which I had worked.

People are generally nice

Surprisingly yes. And may be it depends on how nice you are to them yourself. Have there been bad experiences? Yes but rarely. I have been fortunate enough to always work with people who have been good to me. Thank You people!

Not everyone puts their best efforts

When we complain about how less we are getting paid, we never tell how less or more we have worked for it. Of course, the rate at which our expenses grow, our salary doesn’t. Should I be earning a lot more than what I am doing? Hell yes! But do I always give my best, at everything I do? Not all the time. I try my best but I have not really reached the peak of my productivity yet. So haven’t you so stop complaining and start doing.

Some risks should have been taken

Any regrets? Who has time for regrets? Just move on and continue doing the work. Keep learning and continue acting on it. Were there some risks I should have taken? Like becoming a professional designers? I don’t know. I could have known only after doing it. But that would have mean not being responsible for some people. Taking a financial risk is always difficult than advising someone to do so. But I haven’t stopped earning from the designing work I did in the past, yet. Which means, if one has a hobby and one cannot risk their jobs for that, one still has time to pursue it.

I hope we will have more posts like this after 5, 10 and so on years later.

Bonus Section

Before I started studying Computer Science, I had appeared for an Engineering Entrance Exam for a relatively popular engineering college. I didn’t clear that exam though. That was sometime back in 2004. 14 years later and after a decade of working, I got an opportunity to go to the same engineering college and recruit students from there. This was my first time interviewing anyone. I should write about this in detail soon. Till then, it was a small victory, I guess. *punching-air-emoji*

Thoughts after 5 years of working here.

Photos by

Samuel Zeller on Unsplash
Heather Zabriskie on Unsplash

So I recently watched TVF’s ‘Yeh Meri Family’ and I regret it immensely

Because it is so good that I shouldn’t have watched it alone away from my family.

Sigh.

TVF has already created multiple shows which have made a huge impact in the Indian Web Series Scene, I don’t need to mention that anyway.

“Yeh Meri Family’s” trailer appeared nice but it also was aiming to the touch the familiar overused and now a slacking string of nostalgia. We have already discussed how easy it is to trap people by feeding them fake bits of nostalgia by rehashing the then popular stuff, adding some spice to it and then presenting it in a new remix packet of today’s times. But, this show was not rehashing anything. Rather, it was based in the 90s and genuinely they didn’t attempt any remixing. So, I gave it a go.

And I immensely regret it.

Sigh, this show feels like they took a chapter out of my life or the life of people like me or like you or like everyone who was truly a 90s child. Based in the year 1998, the main protagonist/narrator of the show ‘Harshu’ is the same age as I was then. But I am also an elder brother so I could see this as both a story of my own life and my younger brother’s life. Each and every episode felt so genuine and honest that nothing felt contrived. There was no attempt to unnecessary use the 90s to make the ends meet. Rather, the innocence of the time when families talked to each other face to face and not on Whatsapp was rather very refreshing and felt real. There is a charm in the shows or movies about kids of 12-13 that they always make you want to see them again and again. Movies like Stand by me, shows like Stranger Things are examples of that. For sure, they have to be good. And ‘Yeh Meri Family’ is surely a good one.

I regret watching it because of so many moments sprinkled throughout the show, it had me traveling back in the time and reliving them again and feeling a shower of sweet and sour punches in the guts. Each and every episode had humor in the right quantity, nostalgia in the right proportion and heartfelt writing in every scene. I am mostly a very solid individual when it comes to emotions (coughs). But maybe the timing of this series is peculiar that I couldn’t hold back myself from being watery in the eyes multiple times. Sigh. Getting older is turning out very weird in fact, weirder than turning a teenager, probably. I have been living alone for 2-3 months and this family or lack of it feeling has shown me a new side of myself. THANK YOU to the idiot geniuses of TVF.

Moreover, I was hit a bit more by the fact that the show was based in Jaipur, had black number plates with White letters, had plenty of glimpses of Saint Xavier’s School (which was not my school but right next to my school so I had seen those corridors) and of course the attention to detail treatment of all the things of the 90s.

Each and every cast member does top notch work. I could see myself in both Harshu (the younger brother) and Dabbu (the elder brother). I could relate to the parents. I could understand the innocence of Chitthi. And I was totally bowled over by one of the best child characters of all time, Shanky. Shanky to me does equally brilliant role in this series as Dustin does in Stranger Things.

Highly recommended to those who feel that there is no honesty and naivety left in today’s TV/Web shows. If you search for it, you will definitely find it.

I am sure many of the folks who have seen this would be recommending this to their family. And probably missing them a lot too. Bloody Kota and JEE nonsense ruined us all.

Featured Photo by Franck V. on Unsplash