Inspired

Quiet Bloggers - an observation

2012-02-08T13:08:00.000-08:00

According to the book 'Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking', people who are introverts are likely to express themselves more in social media - especially blogs. This brought to mind my fellow B-School bloggers from Kellogg - Orlando (with two blogs now), Dino and Jeremy. All of which were part of the Clear Admit top 10 student bloggers. None of us seem super introverted, but I think on the balance, all 4 are just slightly introverted. I know these results probably don't count as statistically significant, but Susan Cain seems to be on to something!

10 mistakes deck from Tara Hunt of Buyosphere

2012-02-04T14:27:00.000-08:00

The 10 Mistakes I've made...so you don't have to

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Remember when you were a kid?

2012-02-04T14:17:00.000-08:00

Thoughts on Pinterest

2012-02-02T08:18:00.000-08:00

Pinterest is the hot new thing. The new kid on the blog. The new story in town.

On hearing about it from multiple people, I decided to give it a shot. I actually had to wait to be let in and create an account - which made it all the more desired for me! After spending some time in it, I have started to see what makes it so special. Here are some thoughts:

1. Design - obviously, the design is super awesome! But what exactly about the design is so awesome?

As this article would tell you, it is the infinite scrolling and the masonry style layout. Infinite scrolling is a technique used by several new websites, including Facebook. There is no pagination; as you scroll down, the page just refreshes with more content. No effort of pagination needed. The masonry style layout, as the article says, " the most efficient utilization of space possible given varying image heights. It overcomes past layout hurdles and takes vertical height into account when laying out the images, thereby creating a super tight, puzzle piece flow of images on the page. "Simply put, the images are laid out in an efficient manner, and you can scroll forever till you find something that captures your attention.

I will add one more thing; it is the way images "pop." Forgive me for being non-technical, but I am no UI designer. I notice that the contrast of the images to the rest of the page, including backgrounds, comments etc. is so good, that as I scroll down, my eye can dart from one image to another without being interrupted by anything else. That is what makes the scrolling so fast, and great. And the more I scroll, the more I am likely to discover something interesting. And spend more time on it.

2. Positioning and messaging - The positioning and messaging of the site is outstanding. Let's start with the name - Pinterest. I think of pin and interest. I am slightly confused, but interested. And what do they mean by interest? Is it the money I earn from a savings account, or things I like to do/see/experience?

But the confusion disappears the moment I enter the site. It's your virtual pinboard - ah now I get it! I can pin the things I like on the web, just like I would pin clippings from a magazine to a real-life pinboard. The messaging is simple like other great startups, especially Dropbox, which describe itself as a 'Magic pocket in the cloud.' You could drop anything (file) in it, and pick it up from anywhere. Such simple, intuitive messaging ties technology to real life objects, and turns skeptic visitors into people just waiting to try the product out.

3. Great them started - It is so easy to get started with Pinterest. And I don't mean just signup. I mean you have pins and boards to look at the moment you are on. The homepage takes you to the most popular pins on Pinterest. If you have friends on Facebook who are using Pinterest, your are immediately subscribed to them. You can look at what they are interested in, repin the pins, and find similar users/boards and follow them.

4. And keep them coming back - And of course, Pinterest makes it easy to share pins on Twitter, Facebook, blogs etc. Which means even if I have not visited the site, I will see the Pins in some feed and will visit again

So am I an avid user of Pinterest. Not at all actually. Why? Well the most popular pictures are women's clothes, accessories etc. I am not trying to be sexist; it is just currently dominated by items of interest to women. I am sure us tech and business geeks will catch up. Till then, I continue to visit Pinterest occasionally.

Experimenting with Pinterest

2012-02-02T08:04:00.001-08:00

Source: amazon.com via Shobhit on Pinterest

Define your reality

2012-02-01T10:12:00.001-08:00

I continue to be more and more influenced 'Happiness at Work.' One of the concepts that the book lays out is of 'Alternative realities.' The basic premise is that there is no matter how you look at the world, it is one reality, not the reality. You can change your mental model - or how you look at the world - and change what you define as your reality.

An example; I woke up the other day worried about all the things I needed to do that day. I hurriedly got to my computer, started answering emails, doing whatever I could to get the quick tasks done soon so that I have a manageable workload. In reality, I was far behind.

But then I got a reminder email for one ritual I have established - called the morning quiet time. I spend at least 15 quiet minutes every morning, either just sitting with a notebook, reflecting and writing my thoughts down, or reading some notes from on Evernote, which contain some daily reminder. I do this with a beverage (typically chai and coffee, not a bloody mary:)). I look outside, enjoy looking at the morning sunrise, look around in the room, at the cat who is typically either begging for food or sunbathing! This routine helps me slow down, and defined my an alternative reality. Which this day was, that I had 10 urgent tasks to take care of, but only 2 important ones. And if the urgent tasks did not get done - really nothing significant would change. I might have a few responses go out later, a blog post written one day later. And there was more than enough time to do the two important tasks. Life was good!

Whether I am able to carry on this routine when I have to travel for work again - that remains to be seen. It might happen later in the day - but I am committed to this short, but precious quiet time. The time to define my reality.

Human computation games

2012-01-25T11:30:00.000-08:00

Yes, there is an app for that!

2012-01-23T15:07:00.000-08:00

One of my wife's friend's mom recently gave her some advice: if your baby is crying too much, then just switch on the vacuum cleaner. Babies are fascinated by the noise and often start crying. In fact, she went through several vacuum cleaners raising her three children!

My immediate thought was - maybe, just maybe, there is an app for that. Of course! Called the 'White Noise Baby', this app plays car ride, vaccum cleaner, hair dryer etc.! Awesome!

But wait, one glitch. The free version comes with one sound. I wanted to buy the others (just costs 99 cents), but the link on the app gives an error. Please fix it dear White Noise Baby application developers, and I will gladly give my 99 cents.

On internet marketplaces....

2012-01-22T05:49:00.000-08:00

I have written before about two-sided markets.Harvard Business Review has a phenomenal paper on strategies for two-sided markets. I have been observing the emergence of a large number of internet business that generate value by connecting two distinct user groups, and gathering my thoughts on it. Here is how I think about these businesses.

How does the business generate value?
One needs to think about how the business generates value for both groups of users. Value is generated by one or more of the following ways:

1. Lowering costs or effort: Let's take the case of TeachStreet, a marketplace connecting students with teachers. For students, it simplifies the process of looking for a class. For teachers, it lowers marketing expenses and effort; by creating one single site that lists all teachers, TeachStreet can perform SEO much better, ensuring that its pages show up near the top of Google search results.

2. A better match: The other side to the coin is how internet marketplaces can help create a better match.

Let's take the example of eharmony. While you would not see it as a classic 'marketplace,' it is essentially matching guys to girls. No, eharmony does not support men seeking men, or women seeking women (so I heard). Anyway, back to my original point - because of a large number of men and women on the site. EHarmony is able to leverage attribute based matching and proprietary algorithms to get a supposedly better match.

Another example is EBay - you can get the exact product you are looking for, down to model, version number etc. etc.

3. A unique experience: A number of marketplace-like businesses have started provide unique experiences, not available anywhere else.

Skillshare and Sidetour are the first two that come to mind. Skillshare is 'a community marketplace to learn anything from anyone.' Which means that people who were not sharing their knowledge before, are doing so, using the platform. Sidetour, a 'Marketplace for Authentic Experiences,' provide experiences that you cannot find anywhere else. For example. 'Visit NYC's Flower Market and Create a Bouquet with a Floral Designer' by the owner of a Floral Design Boutique who has a lot of knowledge about the NYC flower market (otherwise she would be out of business).

A challenge for these marketplaces is their uniqueness - particularly, how can they scale while maintaining their uniqueness and quality. It is completely possible that as these platforms get more and more popular, more people sign up to teach. But then again, would the quality of people signing up be just as good? That remains to be seen.

Value proposition

Similar to the point above re: value generation, Marketplaces need to have a clear value proposition defined for customers. The value proposition might emphasize comprehensiveness (eBaY - the world's largest marketplace for goods, so you can find anything here), uniqueness (other than the examples above, Etsy - the marketplace for handmade goods that you cannot find elsewhere), cost (one of the main attractions of AirBnB, though so is uniqueness) or quality (TakeLessons.com for example provides customized music lessons by handpicked teachers, to ensure quality).

One value proposition might affect another; for example, comprehensiveness = more buyers and sellers = more efficient marketplace = lower cost.

Revenue model
Several interesting revenue have emerged in marketplace businesses i.e., ways in which the marketplaces themselves make money

1. Transaction fees - from the days of eBaY, this is the most popular model. Fees might be percentage of final price plus flat fees (e.g., eBaY's listing fee, fee for using more than 5 images etc.)

2. Subscription fees - typically, one side of the marketplace is charged a subscription fees, while the other is free. Normally it is the service provider which is charged

3. Other - Some companies have other revenue models.

BetterFly.com, for example, has none :). My guess is that they are aiming to build a large user base at first, and worry about monetization at a later point. This might be a great strategy; once they have regular matches on the website and people contacting teachers, they can monetize by solving various problems for their clients. One might be appointment scheduling - if a user lookup the service provider's calendar, scheduling an appointment through the web and pay up front, this might save the teacher a lot of hassle, and reduce the risk of no-shows dramatically.

NextGuru.com asks all service providers to give a free first class, and charges $20 to the student for the class.

One of the most interesting business models is from restaurant reservation site Savored. Started by SLP fellow Benjamin Kean, Savored helps restaurants solve capacity management issues; essentially, you can reserve a table at a restaurant for an off-peak time, and get 40% off food and alcohol. You get money off the meal, and the restaurant gets to fill in idle capacity and generate incremental revenue. For this, you pay $10 to make a reservation through Savored. As of now, 635 restaurants have signed up for Savored, and the website is reportedly doing very well.

Success factors

So what determines success in this business? Simply put two things:

1. Are you able to build a large user base on both sides of the marketplace?

2. Is your customer lifetime value significantly higher than your user acquisition cost?

Let's look at both factors in detail.

1. Building a large user base: The first problem in building a large user base is getting the initial users. Marketplaces face the chicken and egg problem at first. Why would parties on one side of the platform sign up, without enough users from the other side?

Startups often give one side offers such as free trial period, in which they have no upfront costs, and won't see any costs until they see some sort of indication that they are benefiting from the marketplace. This indication could take the form of people signing up for their service, or even visiting their page.

Sometimes this trial is not enough, especially if it takes some effort to sign up, create a profile etc. Startups can further boost the initial signups by making the process as simple as possible, and providing some kind of value to the user immediately upon signing up. Betterfly for instance providers teachers a set of Marketing tools that allow teachers to market themselves in other venues such as Google Places, Craigslist etc.

Sometimes the trial is necessary for both sides. For example a site connecting buyers and sellers of goods could give the buyers $5 off first purchase etc.

The second problem in increasing the user base is capitalizing on the initial set of users to make sure that your business grows virally. Word of mouth marketing plays a big role in this. In the age of Facebook and Twitter, websites must make it simple for users to spread the word about their Marketplace. For example, if someone signed up for an event through your website? Share on Facebook. The next most emerging channel might be Pinterest

2. Making sure LTV>> CAC: Let's talk about both LTV and CAC with an example. Take the case of a marketplace that matches teachers with students. Let's say the cost of acquiring a student is a dollar through a combination of SEO/SEM/Social Media and Inbound marketing. What will determine the success of the business is whether LTV is much bigger than the the initial acquisition cost. Let's also assume that the revenue model is percentage of transaction - Let's say 5% of transaction.

Suppose the student finds a teacher through the website, and signs up for the first class online. If the cost of the class is 20 dollars, revenue generated is 5% of $20 or $1. Which is equal to the acquisition cost of the user.

The key question is - what happens next? Does the student meet the teacher, and decide to do more classes? If he/she does so, is the transaction through the website, or does the teacher tell the student to just email him/her directly next time, and pay in cash? Or does the startup have a way or controlling, or atleast influencing that the transaction continues through the website? Also, does the student continue to look for other teachers in different subjects? The key is to increase customer loyalty, and prevent leakage. Common ways of doing this are loyalty programs, email marketing.

23 and 1/2 hours: What is the single best thing we can do for our health?

2012-01-22T05:45:00.000-08:00

Alloparenting - or - allo there, parenting

2012-01-22T04:21:00.000-08:00

Steve Jobs on having kids: ‘It’s 10,000 times better than anything I’ve ever done.’

And this was the man who changed the world. Many times. Who am I to argue with him

It's been over a month since our daughter Simran Abigail Chugh was born; and it has been the most wonderful experience of my life. Some of the best moments have been just chilling with her awake, hanging out, making faces. Like here.

But sometimes I wonder, why is it so hard! I mean, think of it? Getting up every 2 hours, diaper changes, walking around with the baby, cleaning up, burping, holding the baby's head up; not to forget coming stages, like school etc. It doesn't seem to be the same way for animals; kittens mature within three to four months, and are off to the races! While we humans take around 18 years to mature (or in some cases, 80). What is it about humans that causes parenting to be so much work?

As it turns out, its the very reason that humans rule the earth - our brain! I am reading this amazing book 'Brain Rules for Baby' for the second time now, and it explains this in detail. Essentially, as the brain developed, and we started to walk upright, the head size increased, and the pelvic canal size decreased. So now there there was a trade-off between the size of the brain and the mother's ability to push the baby out.

Nature's solution? Push the baby out before she is fully developed. The result? Parenthood.

But that is not all. The brain made us all so social. Which resulted in us working as a team, and groups of females each other raise children, with males acting in a supporting role. A phenomena called alloparenting. So if it feels like raising a kid is a five person job - it is. Suddenly the Indian joint family system seems to make a lot of sense.

How gaming can make a better world

2012-01-17T08:11:00.000-08:00

Gamificaiton

2012-01-11T09:24:00.000-08:00

Gamification, or applying Game mechanics to everyday activities, is a trend thats super interesting to me.

Mint.com has already been known to apply game Mechanics to motivate people to achieve financial goals. Just today, Payoff.com announced a $2MM fundraising round. The intent of the site is to motivate people achieve financial goals

Payoff.com Product Explanation from Payoff.com on Vimeo.

Three problems. First, I get this error when trying to add an account to the site on the iPad. That is not good. It does not give this error when used on Firefox on a PC.

Second, effort involved in importing all my financial information (which is already in Mint.com) is too much. Especially as I run into more issues on my PC! For example, accounts were in progress of being added, and then I get this error.

And the third? Just by adding an account, I got a Super Saver badge. I have no idea what this badge means - and unlike a Foursquare Mayor badge, it has no significance to me. Especially since it is not proportional to my action!

The concept certainly is promising, and I sincerely hope that the product gets there too!

A baby Roomba!

2012-01-11T09:09:00.001-08:00

I have been on parental leave for the past 3 weeks, taking care of my daughter Simran. It's been an amazing time! Now having some free time has led to some ideas for products for parents and kids. One of them is baby Roomba.

Roomba, as you might already know, is a robotic vacuum cleaner that cleans your house on its own.It has collision detection sensors and complex algorithm so that it travels throughout your house, cleaning every nook and corner, while you might be away at work. And at the end, it heads back to the charging station.

Now how does this apply to kids? My daughter, and kids in general, love it when you carry them around the house. They love the warmth of you holding them, and the motion that puts them to sleep. While this is one of the best times of the day for me to bond with my daughter, depending on the kid, it can get tiring. Especially if you haven't had time to sleep much.

Enter the Kid Roomba, a heated chair where you strap in the kid, which moves around the house. Similar to a Roomba, it will detect collisions and switch directions; giving the kid a similar experience as being carried around the house. There are already vibrating chairs like this one, why not a moving chair?

The only downfall I see is that parents over-use it, and bond with the kid less and less. But other than that - someone should invent it!

Update: Here are some YouTube videos of parents who actually hacked a solution! And rabbits like to rid the Roomba!

Bye Bye Delicious. Hello evernote

2012-01-08T13:54:00.001-08:00

I have been a loyal user of Delicious since early 2010. Finally, I have decided to move on - to Evernote! There were several reasons why I decided to make the switch:

1. We live in a world where we use several services together. For example, I use Read it Later to mark items I want to - well, read later. I also use Evernote for my notes, web clippings, thoughts etc. And I used to user Delicious for my bookmarks. They worked seamlessly with each other - I could mark an item as 'Read later' using my Read It Later web browser plugin, then read it on my Read it Later iPad app, and then save it to my delicious bookmarks list from the app while marking it as read. Until the delicious API started failing on me - especially from Read It Later iPad app. All, apparently because of some changes to the API which broke the connection with the Read It App. Lesson: Please do not break your most basic API services - people will leave

2. When I looked at what my alternatives were, the best one was to just export all by Bookmarks to Evernote. I found an article here that allowed me to export my book marks and import to Evernote with a little bit of work. There was a little bit extra work required, as the Delicious bookmark only returns the first 1000 results, and I had to repeat this process again, passing the argument 'start=1000' to retreive the next 1000 results, to get all my bookmarks. Ultimately, in 30 minutes, I had all my bookmarks in Evernote. Now the tags still do not work properly - but I see this as an opportunity to read through some of my bookmarks and consolidate them, so that I can actually find things I need. A painful process, but well worth the effort.

Now I use Shareholic and Read it Later plugin in my browser to move things where appropriate. So bye bye Delicious. Hello again, Evernote!

Amazon and Customer Delight

2011-12-30T20:02:00.000-08:00

I define Customer Delight as exceeding customer expectations. There have been two recent instances where Amazon did a remarkable job.

One was when I ordered the Roku box from Amazon. I spent an hour with Roku trying to troubleshoot the problem with Roku customer service - which was awful! The guy kept trying to make me reset the box, but the picture was still unclear on my TV. Now I don't have the latest 3D 1080p 240 Hz HDTV, but my TV isn't bad! It's HD enabled (aka 720p) and other players work well with it! Finally, when I gave up on Roku, I contacted Amazon.

Thats where things went uphill. Rather than call a 1800 number and wait for several minutes, they have a form on their website, where they call me! In 5 minutes, I was connected to a human being, and best of all, I spent no time waiting. They exchanged the Roku box for a new one, sent overnight. When that did not work too, I returned it - which meant clicking a link they sent me, printing the UPS label and dropping off to the UPS box.

The second instance was returning a $9.99 pair of sleep pajamas. Unfortunately the sizing on the website did not match what arrived in the email. I clicked on the return button, and it asked me for the reason code. When I entered it, that's it - the return was complete, I was refunded, and got a message 'For being a loyal customer, you don't even need to send back the item.'

It makes sense; the cost of having the item shipped back, processed for return, and then resent to someone else probably did not cover the profit Amazon.com will expect to make from the item. Additionally, they gained loyalty from me, by not making me go through the hassle of shipping the item back.

Now I am not sure if everyone will not get the same level of treatment. I order a fair amount from Amazon, and also am a prime members. Their low prices and great customer service has made me a loyal customer; I pretty much look to order almost everything from them. They must be deploying fairly sophisticated segmentation techniques to determine who they give the premium treatment to. Whatever it is, it seems to be working - I am delighted, and this instance made me an even more loyal Amazon.com customer.

Fab.com's incredible year

2011-12-30T07:16:00.000-08:00

Fab 2011 timeline

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The age of distraction

2011-12-05T08:09:00.000-08:00

One of the biggest struggles I have is maintaining focus. I can safely assume that majority of the readers of this blog suffer from the same problem. We live in age of distraction.

First there is the email. And not just one email - work email, personal email, personal junk email.

And then there is twitter - constant, non-stop updates from your friends, from people that you admire.

And then there is facebook. What is your social circle up to?

Not to mention blogs, TV, the news etc.

So why is it that these distractions have such a powerful hold on us? The book 'Focus: A simplicity manifesto in the Age of Distraction' downloadable for free here, gives several reasons why this is the case:

1. Immediate gratification: getting an email brings with it immediate gratification. Someone remembered you! You are part of a social group! And resisting the urge for immediate gratification takes a fair amount of mental energy.

2. FOMO: or fear of missing out. What would happen if you got left behind your blogs? Next time you meet you your friends, would they make fun of you? Or would you not be able to contribute to conversations as much because you did not catch up on your blogs/news?

3. Addiction: once you do something enough, it becomes a habit; an addition

The book suggests a few steps to achieve focus despite the distractions:

1. Set some ground rules: For example, email checks once an hour, on the hour. These ground rules should be setup based on your situation. For example, if your boss expects you to check email frequently, either communicate to him/her that you will check email less often to increase your productivity, or expect to get a lot of crap! Recognize when you break rules, but do not get disheartened. These things take time; often, a lot of time!

2. Shut off notifications: In words of a great philosopher (not sure who) "The human race progresses by making more and more behaviors automatic." We all have a limited amount of willpower, and it is a reservoir of energy that gets spent every time we use it. So shut off email notifications, twitter notifications, the red light on your blackberry (if you live in the 19th century like I do). Also, some softwares help a lot. For example, with TrayIT is a piece of software that lets you minimize windows to the System tray rather than the Taskbar is super helpful. Also, 'Rescue Time' is a software that runs in the background and monitors your computer behavior, rewarding you for productive applications and taking points away for negative behavior. And you can see what your time sink is (for me, its become Amazon.com shopping for Holiday deals!)

3. Be energized: sleep well, exercise, eat well etc. etc. The more energy you have, the more willpower you will have and will less likely be distracted.

4. Clear things: off your desk, desktop. Only have things you need to work: this includes internet applications. Do just the minimum

5. Slow down: slow down and take your time with every task. This will likely help you concentrate, and the work will get done faster.

Hope this was useful. For more details, read the book mentioned above. It truly is amazing, and its free to download the pdf (how awesome is that!)

Excellent post on Customer Acquisition for startups

2011-12-01T12:00:00.000-08:00

Customer Acquisition & Monetization - Keys to your Business Model

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Web Innovator group demo companies

2011-11-30T20:02:00.000-08:00

The Web Innovators Group started by David Beisel been one of my favorite Boston startup events for several years. I last went to one in 2008, and one event in which PunchBowl presented. Now having moved back to Boston, I found myself at the Web Inno 32 meeting.

The event maintains the same format: there are 3 main dishes: startups that present on the main stage, and several side dishes that have demo tables available to them. Selections are made by David, I assume.

The event has grown massively in size since 2008, reflecting the enthusiasm for startups in the Boston area. The caliber of the entrepreneurs presenting also seems to be much higher. Here are my reviews of the main dishes:

1. Best Vendor helps people discover business applications for tasks ranging from marketing to accounting; from note taking to personal productivity. Sign up is simple; you mention your 3 favorite apps, log in via LinkedIn, and you get application recommendations. The more you add applications and fill in your profile, the better your recommendations become.

The platform solves a legitimate problem; for businesses, it is not easy to find the best applications for a given category; for the companies making these applications, the cost of customer acquisition is pretty high. While the revenue model for Best Vendor is a little unclear, presumably they will likely depend on fees from the application providers in return for cheaper customer acquisition.

The one thing that was a bit lacking was the demo itself; I love demos that tell a story and present the application in Clayon Christensen's 'Job to be done' format. The idea is simple, but profound. Every product is hired to do a job. Present what job your product is doing, and then demo how it is doing that. Demo done. Instead, the demo featured on a bunch of features and moved haphazardly through different screens.

2. Kibits Labs was probably the coolest of the bunch; it is a IPhone application that enables rich group messaging. You really need to either see the demo or download and use it to experience it. The demo itself was presented very well; the CEO Matt Cutler discussed some real life use cases;he is a very successful serial entrepreneur and mentor at Techstars, and it is obvious that he has done this before. In particular the Thanksgiving case appealed to me. Let's say you have extended family, all of which cannot get together to celebrate. Instead, you invite everyone to a Kibits group, and its easy to share pictures, videos and keep it separate from all your other texting/email junk. The application shows updates, shifts between items effortlessly. With the coolness factor. Kibits won the Audience Choice award by a narrow margin.

3. My favorite was restaurant reviews site Tasted Menu. It solves a legitimate problem; how often have you asked a friend, or the server at the restaurant 'What is good here?' Well, hello Tasted Menu. It is very easy to find restaurants on the site, and look up top rated menu items. They are coming up with a mobile app soon as well. Currently they are based in Boston, but will expand to other cities shortly.

I find the team to be pretty impressive; a pretty young HBS grad as CEO, a UI designer from TripAdvisor, a Ranking and Reputation engineer from Google and a Food Anthropologist (yes, those exist) managing the food taxonomy. They have been around since 2009, and are likely to do very well.

So here is to the next batch of Kick Ass Webb Inno companies!

Real Work

2011-11-25T08:04:00.000-08:00

I am always questioning myself - how can I do better work in a better manner? A TED talk by Jason Fried of 37 signals and author of Rework, talks about why work doesn't get done at the office. The first premise is that work is like sleep; when you go to sleep, you actually go to sleep in different phases till you actually hit deep sleep. The same is true of work, especially creative work. It is very hard to do high quality work when you are being constantly interrupted by managers and colleagues.

So what's the solution? The first step is to recognize that its these involuntary interruptions that are often more of a problem than voluntary interruptions like Facebook and Twitter. Jason rightly points out that no one would stop you from taking a 15 minute cigarette break. Why should companies stop you from taking a 15 minute Facebook break.

The next step: solve the problem by:

1. Encouraging uninterrupted work periods by using more passive methods of communication like email and IM rather than tapping someone on the shoulder and interrupting them. Doing so requires two aspects: using these methods, and also not being interrupted by these methods all the time. If you are someone like me who is constantly checking email (and trying to get rid of the habit), then an email interruption is as bad as someone tapping me on the shoulder

2. Set expectations: emails will not be answered instantly. As a manager, don't hold a grudge against an employee who did not drop everything and respond to your email. If there is something truly urgent, call the person.

3. Hold less meetings. Invite fewer people to meetings. Think of how much time is wasted in meetings. Schedule meetings at a more appropriate time e.g., early mornings might be a better for people to get their work done, so schedule it later in the day.

For more, see the video below...

Sports

2011-11-13T17:06:00.000-08:00

Now I admit it, I am not the biggest sports fan. Monday night football - what football? Baseball? Check once a month - I am all set. But my mind went back to one instant my life where sports - specifically, the game I love most, Cricket - taught me several things.

I was in the 11th grade. Or maybe 12th. I was part of the cricket team of my section vs. other sections. We played in a cricket field between the junior and senior school buildings. The ground was relatively small, so batsmen enjoyed hitting bowlers - especially fast bowlers - for lots of runs. Lots and lots of runs.

I was probably the shortest of the medium pace to fast bowlers. I didn't have the swing or the pace to trouble batsmen on that pitch, and my peers were being hit left, right and center for lots of runs. That is when I decided to take a different strategy.

Rather than run in and bull with full pace, I ran in slowly, bowled at a slow pace and kept a good line and length. The ball would typically stay low, and batsmen found it harder to hit than the other fast bowlers.

My team did pretty well, and my performance as a bowler was pretty steady throughout the season. Our captain trusted me, and the umpire - who also happened to be our class teacher - came and complemented me on my work. Until the crunch time.

In the last match of the season, we were playing against the odd-on favorites. They were close to a victory and needed a few runs off the last over of the day. Our captain trusted - ME! I was delighted at this opportunity and ran into bowl, confident that I could contain and even bowl out the other team. The first ball I bowled was - well, it was wide. That's when I began to lose my cool. The second ball was - again, wide! The next two were rather easy to strike and the opposition team hit a couple of boundaries to win the match.

It was a rather embarrassing moment for me - after a season of doing well, I had failed when it mattered most. But now that I look back at that episode, I realize several things:

1. It is hard to decide whether a particular event is good or bad. On the surface, this was a terrible outcome - my team lost, and I was to blame. But if we hadn't lost, I don't think I would remember this instant some 13 years later, and I certainly wouldn't have learned much. They say failure is a great teacher. I agree

2. Second, I remember the incident as great not because of the outcome, but because of the process. In that season, I gave it my all. In general, I came up with a pretty good performance, but also failed. What matters to me at the end of the day is the process I went through - deciding a different strategy than other bowlers, being consistent and persistent - rather than the outcome. And so I am happy - and follow the philosophy of investing in the process, not the outcome to this day

Procrastination

2011-10-24T05:42:00.000-07:00

Somehow the subject of procrastination has interested me a lot these days. I just have happened to come across books that address the issue in one way or another:

1. The Now Habit, which gives a system a reduce procrastination

2. Linchpin - by Seth Godin, which also talks about the procrastination involved in creative work, and the discipline of 'shipping' as the key differentiating factor between average and outstanding producers.

There are two aspects of procrastination that fascinate me:

1. The more creative and risky the work you do, the more the likelihood that you will procrastinate. We don't procrastinate because we are lazy; we largely do so to protect us from the risk involved in the work i.e., the risk of failing, the risk of being judged by others for work that did not meet their expectation, and sometimes, even the risk of getting more difficult work when you complete the current work

2. Sometimes we procrastinate unpleasant tasks which turn out to be not so unpleasant after all. As an example, I have to cancel a credit card for a while for which I have no use (and of course there is an annual fee involved). I postponed the task 5 times, thought about it a few times and I am sure wasted some mental energy thinking about it. Why? Well, there is a the unpleasant task of talking to the credit card "retention" rep to explain why I am not using the card, listen to their sales tactics and still say no. This morning, I had 5 minutes break so I just called. Guess what? It took 3 minutes. That's it. Just 3 minutes. Some of the credit goes to Chase for not employing high pressure tactics (trust me, that makes me much more likely to bank with the firm in the future). So what was I procrastinating for?

Happiness equation

2011-10-23T14:16:00.000-07:00

Happiness = wanting what you have(gratitude)/having what you want (gratification)

Think about it

Stay hungry. Stay foolish.

2011-10-09T15:08:00.000-07:00

Yes, as you might have guessed, this post is about Steve Jobs. I was deeply saddened at the passing way of this legend. And at a young age of 56.

Bloomberg Businessweek has a special issue dedicated completely to Steve Jobs; his life from childhood to his passing. Did you know that

Steve smoked pot and hash as a high schooler, and reminded employees and reporters over the years, dropped LSD.
He stuck around Reed college for one and a half years after he dropped out, sleeping on friends' floors, depositing bottles and living off the money from that.
He was fascinated with Buddhism and traveled to India with his friend from Reed College

The more I read, the more I realized - the Apple commercial below is all about Steve - the crazy one.

Oh. One more thing. I also saw the TED talk by Elizabeth Gilbert - the author of "Eat, Pray, Love." Her message is that none of us is a genius. We should instead think that we "have" a genius within us. But Why?

Being creative carries an inherent problem - there is a high risk of failure. A high chance that no one would care for your work. And even if you succeed, what happens after that? Is your biggest success behind you? Are you never going to be as successful as you were before?

This is a great burden to carry for anyone. That is why she advocates believing in a that you have something within you that 'creates' the creativity; something you can not completely control. And it is not your burden to be creative, but joint responsibility with the genius within you.

I am not sure if Steve believed in this philosophy. But I believe that he probably did. This is why he had all the success that he did, one after another. And this is why when he passed away, it was not because of anything to do with his creativity. So cheers to the genius within all of us.

P.S. Some of this blog post might be cryptic unless you see both videos