Acquisition, maintenance and development are different!

Absorb what is useful. Discard what is not, add what is uniquely your own?
Bruce Lee
Last week I happened to visit an old farm house of my friend which he acquired some five years ago. I remembered the keen interest he showed when he acquired. Now I noticed that the property has become very old with bush with full of cobwebs.

We acquire many things in our life. We acquire knowledge, skill, experience, property etc. but, acquisition is just one part. What is even more important is constantly reviewing the relevancy of what we acquired.
We should have the ability not only to acquire, but also to discard and undo and redo something we have done. This is part of the self development portfolio.
Take a look at the following check list:
•    What new skill you acquired in the past five years?
•    What knowledge you acquired in the last five years?
•    What experience you have acquired over the years?
•    Are these relevant anymore?
•    If you have to completely re-profile yourself, what should you discard?
Remaining current and relevant is very important. Any company which does not re-invent itself in every ten years will not exist.
The same applies to us also!
N C Sridharan
www.thetimefoundation.com
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Seeking help is different from asking for a favour!

How wretched is the person who hangs on by the favors of the powerful.
Burn, Robert

We need the help of others to get things done. For the same reason, others also need our help. But many times we feel hesitant to seek help for the reason that we mistake ‘seeking help’ as ‘seeking a favour’. These two are different things.
When we seek help, it presupposes that the other person has the resource to help us without in anyway breaking any rule. For example we need coins for currency note and we go to a bank and request them to help us have the coins.
 

 However, when we ask for a favour from someone, it means that we want something which we are not normally eligible and the other person should break some rule or exercise his discretion to satisfy our request. For example, our friend is in a position of power and authority to employ people and we approach him to hire us out of turn or ignoring a disqualification we have. This is asking for a favour!
We should ask for help any number of times. But we should think twice before asking for a favour since we may be embarrassing others!
Think of an occasion when you asked something from someone. Was it a request or a favour?

N C Sridharan
www.thetimefoundation.com
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Don’t doubt and ignore important feedbacks!

Feedback is the breakfast of champions.
Ken Blanchard

Feedbacks are important information so that we can take corrective action.

A few months ago I had to take care of my aged father who was in his late nineties. He was hale and healthy, but the reality of aging was evident. Towards the last few months, he developed breathing difficulties due to chest congestion. I had a ‘Pulse Oximeter’, which gave a feedback on the oxygen density in the blood and the heart rate which are two important parameters for anyone, more so for an aged person.
One day I noticed that the pulse oximeter showed his pulse as 41as against a normal of about 105 to 110. My doctor said that this is not a good indication, but there was also an element of doubt about the reading of the instrument. A few weeks later, my father passed away! The doctor said that the low heart rate was one of the indications that his end was nearing!
I learnt an important lesson: any feedback is important even if there is an element of doubt. Some feedback could be unpleasant, but too critical to be ignored!
Check: if you have received any feedback about you during the last six months, would you like to reexamine the same?

N C Sridharan
www.thetimefoundation.com
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Mind the content of your mind!

We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.
Buddha

I am sure you value your properties such as your house, your garden, your car etc. Other people could visit and use your properties and I am sure you won’t like anyone to misuse your property. And when they visit and use it, you want them to treat your property with care and respect. If you own a house which is occupied by a tenant, you would like to be paid a reasonable rent.
If someone visits and occupies your property and causes damage, I am sure you will ask them to vacate, forcibly if required.
Your most valuable property which you should treat with sacred and respect is your mind! This property decides the quality of your life. That is it is called ‘intellectual property’.
Your thoughts are the visitors who visit this valuable property. All the points I mentioned above with respect to visitors who visit your other properties also apply to this valuable property of yours!

Be conscious about the type of thoughts which enter your mind. Ensure that they enter your mind only with your permission. Ensure to send out such thoughts which will not enhance the quality of your mind!
Over this weekend, can you ‘audit’ the type of visitors who occupied your mind?

N C Sridharan
www.thetimefoundation.com
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Do not avoid, challenge and conquer!

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.
Helen Keller

We live in a society which is filled with good and bad things. There are good people as well as not so good people. We cannot choose to have only an all-good-ideal- environment.

I was speaking to a group of parents whose children were leaving the school to pursue college studies. They will be staying away from their parents first time in their life. The parents were advising their wards to ‘avoid’ bad company, to ‘avoid’ students with bad habits, to ‘avoid’ this and ‘avoid’ that!
Isn’t it true that by avoiding you don’t become mature? It is only by conquering oneself that great people are made.
Have you heard the story of Gautama Buddha? Siddhartha, born in a royal family, was shielded from seeing any human suffering, death, aging and sickness. But at 29, when Siddhartha saw these realities in life, he started questioning why these things happen to human beings and this transformed him in to Buddha! 

So, don’t avoid.
Be in the company of smokers, but don’t smoke.
Be in the company if drinkers, but don’t drink.
Be in the company of indisciplined people, but be disciplined.
Believe in yourself and in your wisdom to choose between good and bad.
N C Sridharan
www.thetimefoundation.com
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Admiration is good, modeling better and implementing best!

I don’t think limits
Usain Bolt

The whole word is an education institution and the teachers are those who teach us how to live. Legends are master teachers, who not only teach but also set an example for us to follow.
The other day I was viewing a documentary on Usain Bolt. After I saw this documentary, my admiration for him multiplied. But we have to go beyond admiration and model those whom we admire. We have to imbibe the qualities in them which we admire. The final stage is implementing those qualities we admire in them.
In Usain Bolt, I admired his hard work and discipline, his perseverance to bounce back after an injury and his attitude of pushing the envelope. I admire that his ‘no limit’ belief!

Enthusiasm drives us into action. Role models give us the enthusiasm. Role models and legends also would have had their own role models. They followed the same path of admiration, modeling and implementation.
If we don’t do this, our admiration will disappear like a soap bubble. Soap bubbles are nice to look at, but will burst!
So, whom do you admire in your field and how are going to model them and implement their model in your life?

N C Sridharan
www.thetimefoundation.com
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Advising is like sowing seeds, first prepare the soil!

It is very difficult to live among people you love and hold back from offering them advice.
Anne Tyler
The easiest thing to do is to give advice. But advising is not an end in itself; it should produce the desired result, because advising is a responsible portfolio.
 We should learn from the nature. No matter how fertile is the soil and the seed, the soil has to be prepared before sowing the seeds. The seed also has to be cured and
cleaned in order that it sprouts in the fertile soil.
This metaphor is relevant to advising. We have to prepare the mind of the receiver so that he is in a frame of mind to receive, accept and implement the advice. Like we prepare the seeds, we should also do some home work on the content and process of advice. We have to rehearse the same, mentally evaluate if the process we have chosen is effective so that we achieve the desired result of advising. Choice of every word is important.
This is even more relevant when the advice relates to a major area involving personal transformation such as de-addition, habit change etc, which are difficult to implement.
In agriculture, you don’t blame the seed or the soil, but blame the farmer for a poor crop. It applies to the adviser also!

NC Sridharan
www.thetimefoundation.com
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Take control of your eyes!

Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.
Henry Ford

We know that an automobile has four wheels and a steering wheel. Think what will happen if one of these five wheels is not functioning properly. No matter how sound is the vehicle, you will not reach he destination!

The same will be the result when you don’t have control on your five senses! Even if one sense lets you down, you are gone.
You should be very careful especially with your eyes which suffers the maximum distraction. Your mind will go where your eyes go. You can take charge by a simple exercise. Try this.
Choose a place where you will not be disturbed. Set the timer in your mobile to, say, fifteen minutes. Choose a music or tune and wear an ear phone. Switch on the music and focus on an object and decide not to shift your eyes for the entire fifteen minutes. Resist the temptation to look at the timer. Keep your open and look at the object you have chosen. Don’t close your eyes, for you are not going to avoid the problem, but to take control your eyes in the open position.
Try this for three weeks. You can improve the duration slowly and stretch and notice what happens to your self confidence!
N C Sridharan
www.thetimefoundation.com
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Check and re-validate your assumptions!

Telling the future by looking at the past assumes that conditions remain constant. This is like driving a car by looking at the rear-view mirror!
Herb Brody
  

We live in era of change and change is the only thing which is permanent! Everything we believed to be true some years ago are wrong.  
Some of our classic assumptions proved to be wrong are:
• That the world is flat
• That human beings cannot fly 
• That an article made of iron cannot float on water
• That no human beings can run a mile in less than 4 minutes
• That ‘Made in Japan’ means poor quality and cheap products
• That it is not possible to speak through wire
In the era of change and perfect competition, we should re-validate and check some of our important assumptions which will decide the quality of our life.
In India, until the 1990’s everyone assumed that their jobs are permanent since their appointment order said so! Based on this assumption most employees had planned the standard of their life. But with the onset of world class competition, many lost their jobs due to cost cutting measures by organisations. 
Over this weekend, write down three assumptions regarding your job and career based on which you have planned your life style and check what will happen if your assumptions go wrong.  

N C Sridharan
www.thetimefoundation.com
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Help others with a grace and elegance!

To do more for the world than the world does for, that is success.
Henry Ford

We live in a world where we need the help and cooperation of others. Others also need our help. We have to work with others and get what we want. We have to establish a mutually respectful and healthy relationship while dealing with people around us. 

Normally a person seeking and receiving help may feel embarrassed or hesitant and the person giving the help may feel proud that he is in position to do so. Hence, 
while helping someone, we should keep some sensitive soft issues in mind.
There has to be a charm and elegance while helping others. Check for the following aspects in you when you help someone:
-without having to be reminded too often
-helping at the right and appropriate time
-not talking about your help to others. Helping in silence!
-without making the person receiving the help feel small or obliged to you.
-willingly and spontaneously with a smile
-not talking about the help again and again
-without expecting anything in return
-giving more than what was expected
We may overlook some of these emotional issues which are very important and add elegance and grace to your help which cannot be explained but only felt – by the person receiving the help!

N C Sridharan
www.thetimefoundation.com
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Emotional imprisonment!

What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.
Salman Rushdie
 
A prison is a place where a person is denied his right to physical movement.  A prisoner is handcuffed and ‘taken out’ and in some cases even chained.

‘Emotional imprisonment’ is where you are denied the freedom to express your feelings and emotions! You cannot show your happiness, anger, irritation, dissent and disagreement etc. In fact there are occasions where you cannot even express your appreciation and admiration.
This is much worse than physical imprisonment!
Consider the following situations when you are ‘emotionally arrested’:
•    Your boss is wrong, and you are not allowed to point out the same
•    Your close friend or relative is doing something or not doing something and you are not allowed to correct
•    Your boss or someone in authority shouts at you in open office and you are not allowed to protest
•    You are angry and the situation is not right to show your anger
•    You feel happy but you are instructed not to express the same
•    You are not rewarded appropriately for your hard work, but you are not able to express your displeasure

You can release yourself from emotional imprisonment by learning to be assertive!

N C Sridharan
www.thetimefoundation.com
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Development is not natural, but decay is!

Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakes!
Carl Jung
 
Development is not a natural process. It is initiated and controlled by us. This applies to self development, organizational development, society development, or any development for that matter. If you want to develop your knowledge and skill, you have to take efforts.

But you have to do nothing to decay. It is a natural process! If you are not developing healthy muscles, you will end up with flesh. While muscles give you strength, flesh gives you health problems such as obesity, blood pressure etc. You have a choice of developing healthy muscles and if you don’t exercise this option, obesity is certain!
If you don’t charge a battery, discharge is certain. There is no such thing as one time charging of a battery! The same thing applies to knowledge and skill. If you are not acquiring knowledge and skill, you are losing them. If you are not developing a garden, you will end up in a forest.
So,
-develop a good personality and character
-develop good habits and traits
-develop your talents
-develop your knowledge and skill
If you don’t develop what is required in order to survive and thrive, you are going to suffer.
So, development is a survival issue, and not a luxury!
N C Sridharan
www.thetimefoundation.com
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On giving advice!

Advice is like snow – the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper it sinks into the mind.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

It is said that the easiest thing to do is to give advice! But it is not true. Advising others is a very responsible portfolio and if not handled intelligently, will harm interpersonal relationship.

 There is a management tool called ‘5W1H’ which stands for the first letter of the five words Who, When, Where, What, Why and How. When advising someone, we should be clear on the following:

Who: Who is receiving our advice? Who are we to advice? Are we the right person? Is there someone who can do it better?

When: When are we giving the advice in terms of timing and context?

Where: Where are giving the advice? Is the ambiance good so that it is received properly?

What: What advice we are giving? Is it right? What words we are using? Will they produce the expected result?

Why: Why are we giving the advice? Why that person? What is the outcome we have in mind? Is the process suitable for achieving the desired result?

How: How are we going to advice? What is our strategy? Do we have a plan?

Next time when you want to advice someone, go through the above checklist and see the result of your advice!

N C Sridharan

www.thetimefoundation.com 

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Why are you doing what you are doing?

The time I kill is killing me.
Mason Cooley
We have to keep the end result in mind before spending our time on that activity. An activity is not an end in itself, but only a means to an end. We have to ask the question: what am I trying to achieve by the activity I am pursuing just now?

Time is a very limited and scarce resource; we don’t have the luxury of squandering away this precious and irreplaceable resource.
When we go to a departmental store, we see a lot of articles very attractively packaged and displayed to attract our attention. We know that our money is a hard earned and scarce. With this mindset, we decide what to buy and what not to buy.
We have to validate every activity we do with the following check list:
•    What exactly I am doing now?
•    Why am I doing what I am doing?
•    What will happen if I don’t do this activity?
•    Is there any other better use for my time just now?
•    Is there any other more effective way of doing this very activity within a shorter period of my time?
This mindset will release a lot of your time for more productive work!
N C Sridharan
www.thetimefoundation.com
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What do you offer to the society?

What we want to do is to make a leapfrog product that is way superior to any mobile device has ever been, and super-easy to use. This is what iPhone is. OK? So, we’re going to reinvent the phone’
Steve Jobs

What do you deliver to the world? Who are your customers? How valuable is your product to the society? Is it something very valuable and unique? Can someone offer a product or service much superior in quality and more competitive than what you offer?

The answer to these questions will decide not only the future of your product, but also your own future!
Do you want to double or triple your income? It is very simple. Make your product or services double or triple as valuable! If you are offering a cheap product for a cheap price, you will have a lot of competitors. But if you develop a very costly product and sell at very high price to people who appreciate the same, you will have very few competitors! It is very easy to make the decision to reach this position, but very difficult to achieve the same.
If you want to know how to make great products from a simple idea, read the story of Star Bucks, Apple Computers, Disney Land, Honda, J K Rowling etc. You will understand how these people made it! 

If your products are not good, no matter how hard you market the same, you will fail along with your product!
N C Sridharan
www.thetimefoundation.com
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An ideal society is a myth!

To be an ideal guest, stay at home
E.W. Howe

The other day I was in my school reviewing the quarterly performance. The teachers were blaming the parents and the students for non performance.
I went to a hospital. The patients were complaining about the quality of service from the hospital staff.
Yesterday I was in a large departmental store. The store supervisors were complaining that the customers do not put the things they take back in the rack.

Last week I was addressing a group of traffic constables and they had their own stories to tell on how people do not respect traffic rules.
I have only one thing to tall all these people: we are not living in an ideal world! In an ideal society people will behave perfectly; they will do their job perfectly; there will be no need for follow up; there will be no law breakers.
We are not living in a world of robots. We are not robots. We are human beings with feelings and emotions and we have our own habits driven by our own likes and dislikes.
So what is the remedy?
Don’t expect things to be ideal. At the same time let us not add to the already chaotic situation!

Does it make a sense?

N C Sridharan
www.thetimefoundation.com
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Get into details!

A man’s accomplishments in life are the cumulative effect of his attention to detail’
John Foster Dulles

There is a presupposition in NLP which says ‘anything can be accomplished if broken into small enough chunks’. The ability to go into details is a prerequisite to ensure quality. While we should have an overall perspective of what we are doing, we should also develop a micro focus on what exactly we are doing at this very second.

An eye for details does not come to us naturally and we can develop this by doing certain exercises.
Do this exercise.
Take a very broad look at this page. Then take a paragraph and understand the content. Take any one sentence and understand. Then focus on the use of words to convey the content. Let not your mind wander here and there. 
Similarly fine tune your ears and listen to every sound and focus on any one sound and notice the same as tough nothing else exists in the world. 
Set aside some time everyday or every week for this type of exercise and over a period of time you will develop this critical skill. This is also a kind of meditation and mental gym. 

This is the quality of focus world class legends bring to their work! They become what they do! 

N C Sridharan
www.thetimefoundation.com
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Own your mistakes and learn!

A man should be big enough to admit his mistakes, smart enough to profit from them, and strong enough to correct them.
John C. Maxwell

How do we handle our mistakes is very important.
The other day I was in house where the mother prepared a dish which was not good. She is a very good cook and it was very unusual of her to have messed up the recipe.
The husband reacted very sharply and was angry. I noticed that the wife was even more upset not because she messed up the dish, but because her husband got angry!
We should understand that we cannot decide how others should react and respond to our mistakes. We may expect others to be considerate and not get angry and ignore the same. But the problem is when we get upset if our expectations are not met. In fact we are unfair in our expectations!

The best thing to do in such occasions is to accept and unconditionally regret our mistake and take others’ reactions and response as very natural. This will help us in two ways, one, we will be very careful to avoid such mistakes again, and two, we will not lose our rapport with others.

May be it is a good idea to reflect how you behaved in a similar situation in the recent past!

N C Sridharan
www.thetimefoundation.com
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Are you squeezing the right tube?

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Albert Einstein

The other day I had a very disturbed sleep. Got up half asleep, entered the bathroom and wanted to have a quick shave. I took my shaving cream and was squeezing and was surprised to get tooth paste! Then I realized that I was actually squeezing the tooth paste tube instead of the shaving cream!

This reminded me about a question that was asked by one participant in my time management seminar. She said that she wanted to triple her income in her present business. When I discussed with her I understood that her business has very limited scope for the type of profit she was aspiring. She was continuing in her present business because it was easy to continue what she has been doing for years! 

I advised her to choose the right business to get what she wants. 

We should be very clear what we want and where to get it and what resources we need! 

If we continue to do what we have been doing, we will continue to get what we have been getting! To get something drastically different, we should be willing to take the risk and do something drastically different!  

Think: Are you in the right place? 

N C Sridharan
www.thetimefoundation.com
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Impossible situations are ‘I’m possible’ opportunities!

It always seems impossible until it’s done.
Nelson Mandela
Can you think of a society without any challenges and problems? Intelligence and hard work have a place only when there are challenges.

If you take the history of the world, for everything that was impossible, someone said ‘I’m possible’!
Have you heard of four minute mile? Once it was believed that no human being can run one mile in four minutes time. It was first achieved by Roger Bannister on 6 May 1954 at Oxford University’s Iffley Road Track. He ran one mile in 3:59:344 minutes which is about 15 miles per hour. Even today you can see a plaque to mark this ‘I’m possible’ human achievement!

After Roger Bannister, in the last 50 years several people have broken his record. Today the world’s fastest man Usain Bolt’s speed is about 28 miles per hour!
According to scientists, human beings are biologically designed to run 40 miles per hour!
This is true not only in sports, but in every field. Every scientific invention will prove this to be true. See what has happened from Graham Bell’s ‘impossible’ feat of speaking through wire to the internet phone where you don’t even need a wire to speak!
Do you now believe that impossible is rightly I’m possible?
N C Sridharan
www.thetimefoundation.com
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A feel good thing need not be good!

If merely ‘feeling good’ could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience.
William James

By nature we like pleasure and avoid pain. Choosing to feel good will give us pleasure.
There are many things you can do to feel good. There are also things others do to make you feel good. But just because it makes you feel good, it need not do good for you!

Consider the following situations:
•    You feel depressed and take alcohol and you feel good!
•    You commit a mistake and others do not point out the same to please you and you feel good!
•    You are not working hard enough, and people feel embarrassed to correct you, and you feel good!
•    You yell at people who cannot retort due to your position in life, and you feel good!
•    You have no discipline and act the way you want and, and people do not correct you. You feel good!
•    You over eat and feel good!
•    You are overweight and skip morning jogging and feel good!
Now, honestly reflect if the above feel good factors will really do good for you! The other alternative is not to feel good and face the reality.
Isn’t it wise to avoid feel good things if they are not good for you?

NC Sridharan
www.thetimefoundation.com
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The problem is not in the problem, it is in the understanding the same!

If I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about the solution.
Albert Einstein
In my life skills seminar, I keep repeating that there is no such thing as problem, but is the lack of understanding an issue which creates a challenge.
The first step in any problem solving process is understanding the problem. You would have heard the adage ‘well begun is half done’. The same applies to problem solving also. Once we understand the problem, we can take it that the problem is almost solved.

If a patient goes to a doctor with high fever, the doctor wants to understand why the body temperature shoots up. The same thing applies to blood pressure going up or pulse rate going up. The doctor is not bothered about the symptoms and he knows that they are just symptoms. But, for us the symptoms are the problem! We cannot cure the fever, since we cannot understand the problem!
This principle is applicable to life also.
One problem solving tool which the Japanese gave to the world is root cause analysis. They recommend that whenever we see a problem we should ask ‘why’ five times and then only we will understand the problem. Else we will be addressing the symptoms only and the problem will remain a problem forever!

N C Sridharan
www.thetimefoundation.com
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Do something for which people will remember you!

 The key to immortality is first living a life worth remembering.
Bruce Lee

Are you going to be missed when you are gone? Are you going to leave behind your ‘signature’ for which you will be remembered?
It need not be on a national or global level. It can be in your organisation or even your department. It can be at the community level or even at the home level.
I have noticed these people who were missed:
•    A home-maker who will leave a ‘Thank You’ note on the trash can which will be picked up by a valet trash person every night!  

•    A class teacher who sends a birthday card to every child throughout the year, including holidays and vacations.
•    A grandpa who clears the trash and does dish washer everyday without having to be reminded even for a single day
•    A Managing Director of a large organisation who will greet every one with his name and he knows the name of ALL his people!
•    A very busy surgeon who will telephone his patient every year enquiring about his health for three years after the operation.
•    An insurance agent who will make a ‘just to say hello’ call to his clients every month whether there is business or not.
How about you!
N C Sridharan
www.thetimefoundation.com
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Are you using your full capacity?

There is a way to do it better- find it!
Thomas A Edison

Brain power is identical for all. But the ability to think and act innovatively makes each of us a different personality. In order to be at our best, we have to think creatively.

In any situation we should try to enhance our productivity per unit of time. This is possible only if we tap into our hidden potential.  This yearning to be at our best will put us in a hall of fame one day.
It does not require a large organization and a global task to apply our innovation and creativity. We can aim to be at our best even in our day to day life.

 

This morning I was cutting vegetables in my kitchen. I had to do it quickly. I tried stretching my ability to cut one at a time to two at a time and ultimately to three at a time. I realised that all these days, even though I could have turned out more in less time, actually I was turning out less in more time!

Over this weekend, take any activity that you do and think if you can cut the time and triple the output.

Creativity is finding better way to do anything! It’s all about attitude!

N C Sridharan
www.thetimefoundation.com
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