BlogSat

Well, I have a good excuse for breaking the post-a-day aim. I was in India! An amazing week personally, but nothing I want to blog about.:) I'm back and find I'm strangely rejuvenated and excited about work. I'm not sure if that's good news (the fact that I'm rejuvenated) or bad news (the fact that I apparently needed to be!) :) An interesting side-note, is that this was the longest I'd been disconnected from email/the Internet etc. for a while. I'd never gone four whole days without even logging on in ages and I was surprised how I didn't miss it.  We ended up doing tons of stuff in Mumbai, but on a movie review front: Bachna ae haseeno : Fun; and better than I thought it would be. Rock On : WOW! Incredibly well-directed, incredibly real and incredibly fun (trailer below)...and now I can't get the songs out of my head either. I still can't get over the fact that they're all supposedly playing the instruments and that Farhan Akhtar sang as w...

Its been mildly annoying to me that I've let work and well...laziness..get in the way of blogging...yet again, but inspired by this post from the ever-entertaining Jeff Atwood , I'm resolving (for the umpteenth time) to blog much more. He makes the point well, but essentially its a well-explained version of "Practice make Perfect." He reference this great story below from the book, Art & Fear "The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the "quantity" group: fifty pound of pots rated an "A", forty pounds a "B", and so on. Those being graded on "quality", however, needed to produce only one pot - albeit a...

The University of Virginia newspaper seems to have pre-announced (if it was supposed to announce at all?) the faculty "unconference" that Google is having at Mountain View tomorrow. So I guess that means I'm allowed to talk about it. I'm excited to have wangled an invite for the all-day do tomorrow. I just got back from dinner with some of the faculty that's visiting and I'm feeling on such a high from the topics, quality and passion of the discussions...and this was just over dinner!:) The topic list is great (lots of stuff I can get excited about!), and I'm not feeling in the mood to be timid tomorrow....now I just need to avoid the temptation to look at work email.

Fred Wilson's post on the effects and perils of blogging, led me to this great personal story by Emily Gould over at the NY Times . A long, long time ago I started, and then soon stopped:), reading books about writing. The phrase read and heard over and over again was "Be honest!" Fundamental to being original, meaningful and affecting others was being truthful and writing from experiences that were uniquely yours. The same applies to blogging; the most personal posts can often be the most powerful. One of the older books I read painted a vision of a better world through creative writing; a world where more people were better understood simply because through writing honestly these people gave others a better chance to understand them. Blogs as a technology and a cultural norm enable that. There is an intoxicating quality to writing honestly about your life and what you think and what you're doing, but the scrutiny that you invite when you make poor decisions, poor ...

During the past week through a leadership training thingy at work, I did the MBTI personality test for the second time; almost two years after I did it the first time; exact same result. I also did the StrengthsFinder test. I enjoyed these, which given my MBTI personality type , is hardly surprising. :) I tend to have mixed feelings about how these are used. I think they're absolutely brilliant tools, but that the results are too often mis-used by people quick to jump to conclusions (:) lol...read my personality type to see why this last sentence is funny.) Both the strengths and the personality type give you your defaults; what you tend to do; what comes naturally to you. The danger is that you (or others) assume that's all you can do, or thats what you always do. Why do I love doing and reflecting on these tests? They tell you, or remind you of, your tendencies and hopefully that's what allows you to adjust. The facilitator in this section was particularly good, stress...

This was a so-so week. I got stuff done, but there were two-three days where clearly I wasn't on my A-Game. I was sleep-deprived and was pre-occupied with a couple of (work and non-work) related things which meant I was a little off. But it made me recognize two things. Its important to: Work and plan as hard as possible to show up with your A-game: sharp, happy, organized, "yourself" Recognize that very often that's not possible. That is key. Acknowledging that sometimes we're not all there, and that we're human, and when stressed/ sleepy/ multi-tasking can't have our best foot forward. Recognize that, and make watching yourself a priority and try to get your A-Game back. Either change behavior based on understanding that you're not all there. This can mean (in my case) shutting up more, or judging less, or concentrating more or objecting less. fake it! Act a little sharper, happier and more organized than you feel. I'm surprised by how often, jus...

Reprised something I've been using on-and-off for more than a few years now: "The meek may inherit the earth...but everyone else is going to screw it up so badly by the time they get it, I'm not sure it'll be worth it." "I officially give up on my one-big-happy-yet-dysfunctional-family theory of organizations today." "Wow. For someone who's supposed to be smart, that was pretty stupid." "I can no longer add any value to this conversation. I'm going to go and eat a cookie."