Do you have few mins to find your personality type.. Try it!!

Hi Friends,

Here is a website which gave me very interesting information reg my personality type.
This kind of interrogations will help us understand one step further.

Use the below free link to find your personality type and then google that type , you ll be amazed how much these descriptions resemble your real personality.

http://kisa.ca/personality/

Mine is INFP.( The Dreamer)... Find what is yours??  Have a great week ahead.

Why I am feeling bad when my friend wins??

Hi Friends,

This is one question which was always disturbing me from a back corner of my heart.

Have you ever met an old buddy in FB or somewhere after long years  and came to know that he is doing very successfully now.  Even though you are also having everything great in life now and he did not interfere any way with your life, you feel a sense of defeat, sense of something lost, sense of coming down a bit …. Mm!! then that is exactly what I am talking about!!

This does not mean you are cunning or greedy person.  You are not going to pray/do something for his failure from that moment. But something inside you feels bad about other’s success. It happens not only with just remote friends or only at economical victory sense but, you can see it in many emotional aspects of life too like (One parent feels bad about Child talking favor of other parent, One feels bad about spouse spending more time with his/her family, Team member feels bad about manager mentioned his colleague in a appreciation mail .. so on)

If you search its roots, it is coming from an assumption we all were brought up with like “good things are limited in the world”. Starting from school days you were made to feel like “There is only one No. 1 in a class” that means others are defeated somehow. Then during college days only so many placements are coming to campus “so grab yours fast“. Our society does this silently. Many times this is more widespread in very competitive countries like India.  

When I was reading  The 7 Habits of Highly effective people I see Dr. Covey gave a name for this  “Scarcity Mentality “. He goes on like this in the book ..

"The Scarcity Mentality is the zero-sum paradigm of life.

People with a Scarcity Mentality have a very difficult time sharing recognition and credit, power or profit - even with those who help in the production.  They also have a very hard time being genuinely happy for the successes of other people - even, and sometimes especially, members of their own family or close friends and associates.  It's almost as if something is being taken from them when someone else receives special recognition or windfall gain or has remarkable success or achievement.

Although they may verbally express happiness for others' success, inwardly they are eating their hearts out.  Their sense of worth comes from being compared, and someone else's success, to some degree, means their failure.  Only so many people can be "A" students; only one person can be "number one".  To "win" simply means to "beat."

The Abundance Mentality, on the other hand, flows out of a deep inner sense of personal worth and security.  It is the paradigm that there is plenty out there and enough to spare for everybody.  It results in sharing of prestige, of recognition, of profits, of decision making.  It opens possibilities, options, alternatives and creativity.

The Abundance Mentality takes...personal joy, satisfaction and fulfillment...and turns it outward, appreciating the uniqueness, the inner direction, the proactive nature of others.  It recognizes the unlimited possibilities for positive interactive growth and development, creating new Third Alternatives “

He goes on explaining various positive possibilities of abundance mentality and problems created by Scarcity Mentality.

But how can we overcome this mindset? For that we need to recognize and use the space between “Stimulus” and “Response”. 

1.    Whenever you start having this creepy feelings,  Simply stop for a minute and watch your thoughts. Ask yourself one question “How exactly that other person having something great is preventing you from having something great ?“. Almost all times  “No way” will be your answer. Then there is nothing to worry about. So move on…

2.    Think the person who is better/ has better things as guide, teacher who showed you better possibilities instead of competitor. Take time to be thankful for what god has given you.

If you start practicing this thoughts consciously, you will slowly stop worrying about your scarcity and be focused what you can do it make your life still better!!

Have a great weekend!!

Why in the world we need literature ??!!??

Hi Friends,

This week when I was reading the blog of one my fav Tamil author Jeyamohan (JM), I got one my long time question answered.  From my school/college days I always want to become a writer one day, but then in parallel one more question will come to my mind. That is “What is the use of writing stories/poems?? What value it adds to human life”. In essence “what is the use of literature?”

Here is how JM narrated what he thinks the answer for this question. Below lines are an abstract from him Tamil speech during a Singapore Tamil Conference.

He is saying to answer questions like this; we need to approach the situation from very basic objective point of view. To illustrate the approach he quotes about a book “The Naked Ape” by Desmond moriss. In which the author try to understand human behavior from animal point of view. Desmond just sees humans as hairless ape. Desmond wonders about two big radical changes in human animal than other animals. They are, It can even kill himself for others (suicide) and whatever learned by one ape becomes asset to the whole community. That book goes on like this…

The point is you can analyze the need for literature also from an external point of view like this. JM ask us to imagine if there are aliens come down to earth and start making report on humans they may report like below.

Humans are very interested in seeing themselves again and again.  You can even call it as an obsession. Their cities are filled with posters and bill boards of human pictures. Their cinema, Television and internet every thing is filled with human pictures. They can see this picture and movies round the clock with out any boredom.

Human are continuously making one type of noise. They call it as “Talking”. If you learn you can understand it has meaning.  Humans are always “Talking” about something.  If you understand that closely, they always talk about what they did or going to do. They keep talking about what they do every day.  When that is not enough they add imagination to their daily activities and talk about that as if they already did it or going to do.  They are not tired of talking. Don’t know the use of it but they need it like breathing.

Every man is always thinking about himself. They are always processing many events and scenarios keeping themselves in center.  They call that as “Mind”

Humans are always thinking about their life in many dimensions in their imagination. They write elaborately about their lives and read them.  They are acting their life as movies and see them again and again. They are keep talking about the life and listen to them again and again.  If that imagination is closer to their real life, they celebrate that as great creation.  In this way, every human is living many many lives using this imagination.  Every kind of life they want live can be lived through this imagination. They multiply, their happiness /sadness into many folds though this imagination. 

Basically for humans their biological life is not enough. They multiply their lives though this writings, movies and all creations called arts and literature. We see 300 core human lives in earth but there are 300 thousand lives are lived here.

In a nutshell literature gives man the freedom to live beyond his one life and experience eternity. It helps the author live much longer than his protein shell (Human Body).

You can read the original version of JM’s speech in Tamil using the below link. http://www.jeyamohan.in/?p=46

The above imaginative discussion JM gave me liberated understanding about why we need literature. Hope it excites you too... Catch you next week…

Courage

Hi Friends,

Wish you all a very Happy Pongal.  I still remember the taste of my village Pongal holidays..  mm.. Yummy … Few things never leave our thoughts right!! Miss you Kadayam...:-(

Let us come to our this week topic. "Courage". As I was listening last few chapters of “7 Habits of Highly effective people”, I heard Stephen covey saying the following

“Courage is not absence of fear; it is the awareness that something else is more important than this threat”

As I was rewinding that words in my memory again and again. I felt a new understanding of “courage”. Dictionary.com defines the meaning of courage like below   “the quality of mind or spirit that enables a person to face difficulty, danger, pain, etc., without fear; bravery.”

But it does not tell you, what is that "quality of mind" makes you stand up and fight for your right.

What makes a Hen to face an Eagle when its children are threatened?

What makes a mother to carry the weight (about a ton) of debris of a big building while safeguarding her son under her body (During Japan Earth quake)?

What makes sub inspector Tukaram Omble (on 26/11 armed with only Lathi) to catch Ajmal Kasab live by bearing rounds of bullets from AK47 in his stomach but not leaving the terrorist??

I sincerely belive, It’s the awareness in your heart which says “This is more important”.

Next time when you face a threat, or in a place where you want to speak up ... just think about the cause and its importance, I am sure you will get your words…

Pareto’s Rule (80-20 rule) and its practical usability

Hi Friends,

Hope you all had a great time putting yourself in the wheel of work again after a relaxed holiday break. I know it’s tough to go back to work after so much fun filled days at home...  Just like my son did not like going to daycare after a long break.... I was also not ready to go to work again...!! But, Can’t help it!!

Thank you all so much for your responses, likes, and comments for my first blog entry. You guys really inspired me to go further. Thanks again!! I am really excited and looking forward for ideas worth sharing with you all. The below topic was the one which came to my mind ...   This topic can be found in all the time management books I read so far. Hope you will find this interesting and useful too... So here we go...  Pareto’s Rule (80-20 rule) and Practical Usability.

Most of you might have already heard about this rule at some point in your reading. It is an inexact rule (rule of thumb) which says “80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes”. Vilfredo Pareto an Italian economist came up with this rule 100 years ago,  when he observed  80% of lands in Italy was owned by 20% people and  80% govt tax revenue was generated from 20% of tax payers.  Even in today’s world this kind of economic inequality is proved by data, time and time again.

As per an recent world GDP distribution chart

Quintile of world population	Income
Richest 20%	82.70%
Second 20%	11.75%
Third 20%	2.30%
Fourth 20%	1.85%
Poorest 20%	1.40%

Even though there is no magic about the number 80, in many practical scenario the number of outputs (70 to 90%) you get from any system usually caused by 20% of inputs.  I wanted to apply this logic to my last week's activities and see what it tells me.

I usually work 10 hrs a day (7 to 8 hrs in office   and 2-3 hours working from home in the night or early morning). Last work week had 4 working days. So I had 40 working hours.  When I made simple time log which keeps track of my activities, I observed the following

Below were the actives in which I spent time in last work week.

It shows only 50% of my time was spent in value added activities. If we remove "Important docs preparation" and "Status meeting with PM" from  my activities list, the time spent on providing value addition to client comes down to only 37%. When I analyze where the remaining time was spent, I found the following . It was spent on repeatedly checking work email, responding to some non result oriented emails, Unimportant meetings, Going for coffee, Chat with colleague or clients and Surfing internet (dinamalar, FB, blogs).

Hence it’s appropriate to say, more than 90% of my last week’s value added work came from nearly 37% of time I spent. So the learning here is if I consciously work to reduce the 63% of time wasters to improve the quantity of time I am spending on value added activities and at the same time improve the quality of work done during 37% of current productive time, I will be able to improve my productivity and get more quality work done.

Here are some thoughts on using Pareto’s law to improve this numbers

1.    First you need to know your value added activities, so please create personal /official goals for the day by spending 10 mins as first task . So that tells you what you wanted to get done today as per your larger goals.(With out this you cannot get out of this time sucking activities).

2.    Find the most important job/task from your activities list. Most Important Job is the one which makes you feel that you have achieved your goal for the day when it gets completed. It does not mean that it has to be a high priority or urgent task. Set a goal to complete this Important job/task before 11:00 AM.
3.   Also, Log your activities and time spent on them in a simple excel sheet or notepad for a week or two, to understand where you are spending time and is it in alignment with your goals or not. ( It’s fun to review this log!! Believe me the above pie chart is well filtered J)

4.    Once you observe your time killers, use pareto’s law as constant reminder to make sure the time you  are spending is aligned with your goals (your personal value added activities).

5.    I know it’s difficult to change our regular mail checking habit but try to reduce the times you open your email. Most of the time we are checking some unwanted mails (corporate mails, group mails, just FYI mails, request from some non- value added work).  Just keep your IM and phone ON so if there is any real emergency people will catch you in that. But just check your mail only twice a day, other times just continue what you planned to  work. Try this for one week, it works!!

6.    Last but not least, if possible change your proxy settings for good, to limit yourself from accessing internet. If you think twice, checking the news (dinamalar, FB) every 1 hr is not really adding any value.

In a nutshell, be aware of where you are spending your time and do first things first.

Catch you next week...  As my fav RJ Garrison Keillor say … Be well, do good work and Keep in touch.