Habits

A helper’s high

charity, Habits, Happiness, Human Brain, Karma, mindset

This is a term I learned today while I was reading the book 5 Day Weekend.

I have mentioned in multiple posts earlier how when I am feeling low, I try to see if I can donate something. Even Joe Polish talks about how if you’re feeling depressed – go and help someone. It’s not necessary to do it with money only.

You go to an old age home, or you could go and offer your services to an orphanage etc. When you see the fact that you have something to give and help, it changes your whole body and emotional state.

This phrase immediately struck me because I also feel a high which cancels out my depressive emotions the moment I give to charity.

However I have always felt that there is a Karmic reaction to doing good. When you do good by doing charity it sets in motion a whole set of emotions in your mind.

It improves your self esteem, improves your mood, reduces your stress levels and makes you more calm and peaceful. Since you are on a high by helping someone you also tend to become more grateful.

In the Indian thought process if you are facing a lot of bad luck in your life, then you can slowly start reversing the “bad” part by doing charity, by helping others.

Till next time then, be on a high by helping others and make this world a better place.

Carpe Diem!!!

Prioritizing the top 2 or 3 – the challenge

Habits, prioritizing

In my previous post I worte about how the 80/20 rule is fractal and how you can go narrower to identify those few things which if done consistently can produce massive benefits.

Inspite of my knowing this whole basis of producing amazing results by focusing on a few things, I still get side tracked – whether its my daily activities or my marketing plans.

While there are multiple reasons in my everyday life, its again just a few hinges which move me away dramatically from my set plan for the day and my top 3 would be

  1. Suddenly called meetings by internal and external customers – which not only take up time, because there is no agenda fixed in advance they also end up you not having all the answers, but also ends up aligning one more set of meetings. If there are flare-ups as part of these meetings, then you also end up getting into meetings with your team members immediately to figure out a solution
  2. Lack of sleep – this is another big one. If I don’t get at the least seven to 8 hours of sleep in the night, then my productivity and creativity levels both are at a low all through the day and which makes me sluggish in doing everything.. A double whammy in this is if I have slept late and then got up late but without my 7+ hours of sleep. Then not only am I sluggish, I am also running behind schedule on multiple things which gets me to skip through essential morning routines, which is even more counter productive. Being responsible to teams in different time zones across the world, this is a situation which occurs very often.
  3. Phone calls

Identifying the issues that are derailing you is the first step. Building guard-rails is the next. For the first two I have not been able to figure out really well defined ways to solve. For the third I am becoming more successful on a daily basis. I keep my phone on vibration and don’t pick a call whose number I don’t recognise, as starters. In addition I try to get down to ding calls only after I have finished my top priorities of the day are.

Tomorrow we will look at things which sidetrack the prioritized marketing plans

I would love to hear from you if you have found ways to handle the first 2 challenges that I have listed. Pls put them in the comments below.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Technology Adaption – the next challenge

Habits, Human Brain, mindset, Product Management, Technology

For product management in a technology company, the big challenge after identifying a single niche then targeting it, is the adaption of the technology.

Most technology based products are integration of existing resources. Very rarely are they designed from scratch for every component.

If by chance your product is designed from scratch then this problem is even more acute for you.

If the end user of your technology is not able to adapt your product easily as in 2-3 steps then even the most technologically superior product will be sent the grave. The human brain does not like change and therefore people resist any kind of new products. This is the biggest blockage for new technologies.

Look at Instagram or WhatsApp, such easy to use apps, therefore the adoption is in millions. It does not mean that the product is simple. I am sure the complexity is enormous, but they have kept it hidden from the customer. The user experience is very elegant and easy to use

Similarly the Iridium satellite phones, with the best pedigree and the ability to connect you from wherever you are in the world, bombed.

When doing product management of technology based products, you need to keep in mind if the existing infrastructure willsupport your technology. How much will the user have to unlearn to use your technology. What can be the simple things you can do to increase adoption.

This is a very complex subject so we will cover over multiple posts.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Time is not money…relationships are money

collaboration, Habits, Karma, relationships, Uncategorized

Yesterday I  heard the  amazing statement above, that I could not stop myself from sharing it with you.

All my life I  have heard that time is money because it is one resource which cannot be replenished so you should use it very wisely.

I have worked on improving my ability to utilize my time and am continuously looking for ways to leverage my time. I stopped driving my car for health reasons, but now I feel that driving a car is not the best use of my time and I take a cab so that I can make better use of my time.

I delegate tasks to my team members so that I can work on higher value tasks.

Yesterday during the training from Ilovemarketing mastery program,  I heard the coach from Strategic Coach talk about this. She explained this concept so well.

All time is not equal.  The time spent in building relationships pays many times over compared to any other time spent.

As a matter of fact Richard Koch in his books also talks about this in the 80/20 rule.  While I have read his books but this time the way this coach explained was so awesome that it hit me.

Being in marketing I have always prided myself for the relationships I have cultivated but I realized after this training that I could have achieved an even higher level of success if I had built even better relationships.

Most of my success in my career has been because of the people who supported me and believed in me and therefore gave us business. My own capabilities maybe limited but these relationships multiplied those so many times over

See how you can spend more time on building relationships by first giving because as Joe Polish says Life Gives to the Giver.

Till next time.

Carpe Diem!!!