Abhijit (John) Singh

Things I wish I would have learnt in school.

A question that has been on the forefront of my thoughts lately is the effectiveness of our current educational system when it comes to preparing us for the journey of real life.

My two cent’s worth is that, in time, we realise that most of the things that life teaches us has not been learnt in school. I feel that we learn most things by dealing with other people and understanding our own underlying personalities; observing how we naturally react in various situations as we follow our passions driven by the desire for gain or fear of loss. Our collective reactions to various situations over time form our experiences which define our habits and values. Therefore in order for us to achieve anything in life, we first need to take a deep look at our own self to understand, accept and plan accordingly.

I often like to argue that the entire educational system needs to be revised. A new way of teaching needs to evolve, one which focuses on the practicalities of life. A new learning process needs to evolve from our collective experience and wisdom, which focuses on the valuable things and one which is more personalised to suit our individual self. A new way which prepares us by sharpening our saw based on our inherent strengths and weaknesses; so that we can all learn to survive in this semi organised and chaotic jungle we call LIFE. 

This question was recently asked by members of TED (a non-profit devoted to ideas worth spreading). Following were some of the responses:

Adam Burk -  I wish I had been given more opportunities to learn about myself and what I am passionate about through experiential, interpersonal, and reflective processes. Then the support to go deeper into those passions. I wish I had been given real chances to create work that mattered--to me, to my community, to the planet.

Fernando Del Valle - I wish then as I wish now, that the education system was more about asking questions than answering them. We have created a system of checking the blocks and moving students on that have no idea of how to ask questions, how to be inquisitive. That has created a society that is bored and unimaginative, it has no skills, it does know how to be innovative. The education system here in the US has become one of molding mediocre minds and not big thinkers; as long as students can check the correct block, it has become unimportant how they got to the conclusion or right answer.

Devon Proudfoot - How to think critically and understand the importance of an event or a piece of writing. After being in college for a year I realized that up until that point I was taught to just memorize facts and dates rather than knowing the importance of them.

John Michael Rice - Critical and Lateral Thinking. Let me explain. We learn how to regurgitate information, but we rarely get taught techniques for applying this knowledge in new and creative ways. Stepping outside of ourselves and seeing the situation for what it is when we are not a part of it. Archimedes talked about levers when he said: "I can move the moon, I just need a place to stand". The process of seeking and finding such a place to stand should be taught in schools.

Laurel Smith - I also wish that I and everyone else had learned how to communicate honestly and with courage directly to those in authority whether peers or teachers in emotionally charged situations. It would have been great if there'd been role playing exercises throughout primary and secondary school that focused on emotional intelligence in the context of hierarchies. Basic financial planning and budgeting would have been great as well.

Tony Gruber -  I wish I had learned better communication skills earlier in my life - both written and verbal.  It's taken some time to realize this on my own: Intelligence and academic knowledge do not ensure success. Effective communication is what separates the geeks from the millionaires,the bookkeepers from the CFOs, the great thinkers from the famous thinkers. Good communication skills can almost guarantee success, no matter what field you choose.

When anyone asks my greatest strength and my greatest weakness, I site my communication skills in both categories. It's the one thing that's helped me get this far, and it's the one thing I need to improve upon the most.

Nivin Thundiyil -  I wish they did many things. For instance, I wish they taught me how not to get left behind and manage stress, how we should question everything and actually allow us to do it, how science can be wrong, about our government and their lies and how we should not sabotage other people's hard work for our success but I guess that's opposite to what the history science taught us to do. I guess if I had to say one important thing that I wish our schools did that would be to learn how to be an individual. The education system wants us to be like everyone, so that it is easier for each individual to be replaced in the society, and so it fails to see what is capable of each student. I feel like I never understood myself and I feel forced into these paths or career choices I have. So yeah, I wish it taught us how not to be ashamed of being an individual and how to actually run with it.

Dennis Hitzeman -  I wish I had learned that it is ok to fail, even in a dramatic and catastrophic fashion. I think we focus too much on succeeding and so we fail to take risks that seem like they might impede success. As a result, our lives become more and more mundane. Sure, we don't fail, but I also think we don't learn and we don't advance. If I could change modern education in any way, it would be to let kids explore, experiment, fail, learn from failure, and grow because of all of it.

Alex Talbot - How to learn by yourself / be autonomous. How to be creative, How to know yourself, How to become a leader, At your own pace, How to deal with the fact that most of it is useless in life.

Janet Pal - Mindfulness and meditation

Timothy Hudson - The 'everyone deserves a trophy' mindset in the modern public school systems is a great detriment to this accord. Excellence should be distinguished from failure, and one promoted while the latter admonished. The fragility of a child's momentary emotion is not as valuable as the long term damage of the 'A for effort' mentality. Of course tact and discretion should be applied accordingly, but a blue ribbon for participation is quite confusing to me.

Martine Rossignol-Winner - That technical knowledge is not terribly important and can be acquired if needed. What's important is to have a clear, orderly mind with enough general knowledge to be able to use concept to reach your goal. But what's REALLY important is to have the willpower to implement it and the skills to communicate on it. The best theories in the world remain only theories if people don't actually put them into practice and manage to win people's support for them. 
Most Schools don't never try to put people in situations where they will have to implement an idea; teaching the art of persuasion has all but disappeared from most programs. We emphasize too much acquiring technical knowledge, and we forget entirely about nurturing natural inclinations, intuition, passion, and effective communication. We create technical clones that can be easily sized up by companies and ignore what individuals less constrained by the "mold" would bring to the mix. In doing so, we deprive ourselves of a wealth of action and innovation. And we hold back the vast majority of the population. What a waste...

Geoff Hart-Jones - The art of positive thinking, why money isn't everything and how image doesn't mean anything - no matter how much the high street wants you to believe otherwise. However these probably aren't practical subjects.

James McFadden - How to be an entrepreneur. Being able to take your ideas and make money and a living would remove our dependance on getting a job. How to manage finances- college is a mine field full of credit card companies trying to sign you up for a credit card without explaining the consequences of using it. I think I got my first credit card because they were offering a free shirt for signing up. It was laundry day, a clean shirt is worth a lot more on Laundry day...

Sabin Muntean -  I think the lesson I wish we all had learned is something on the lines of "really achieving your childhood dreams" as Randy Pausch put it or "how to live before you die" by Steve Jobs. I see a lot of my old colleagues unsatisfied with what they are doing and what they are studying because they made their choice based on what rankings and the economy and their friends and parents and teachers and the media said and forgot to listen to the most important actor of all - themselves. So all in all, the lesson I wish everyone learns and understands before leaving highschool is "do what you love to do".

Kenneth Bell - School is far too focused on learning, with not nearly enough doing

Corvida Raven -  I really wish I'd learned more about finances in school. Math is great, but it's irrelevant to my immediate life in a tangible way for me. Finances are relevant to everyone no matter what's going on in life. I know a lot of people that lack financial literary and I think it contributes to our current economic status, and widening its gaps at an accelerated pace that could be on track to being irreversible. Soo...I wish my school had taught me more about financial literacy.

Feras Almasri -  I hoped if i learned some of physiology since what is talking about Social Intelligence.

Lee Borocz-Johnson - The public education system NEEDS to involve philosophy. I also believe that compulsory four year physical education is needed, and I don't mean gym classes that involve little more than dodgeball and floor hockey.

Yoo Dekker-Lee - I wish I had learned a musical instrument (piano & guitar) and a bunch of foreign languages (German and Chinese).

Cale Sears - I wish I would have learned how our perception of the world is almost as important as the reality, and it often comes our reality. They don't teach you that in school. They don't teach you how much your own thoughts play a part in determining the outcomes of your endeavors.

Carla MM - Personally, I wish I'd learned more about cultivating and nourishing creativity. So much of what's taught is based on traditional, narrow views of what success and making it look like. Teaching children to listen to their creative energies and teaching them how valuable their creativity is in all aspects of life, both personally and professionally, I think would make for happier adults.

David Kris - I wish I would have learned more about how to think critically. I never really had any of my beliefs challenged or learned how to intellectually defend myself until college. This is an important skill that everyone needs to be able to use. One of the intents of education is to make people capable of being a civic person, and the only way this can happen is if students are taught how to think rationally and logically.

Dave Persaud - I wish I had learned more about life and the things to come. How life would take you on a wild an unexpected journey. When it gets too tough, you realize its not the end. If someone reaches rock bottom there is no where to go but up. If they taught this in early high school, it could possibly help reduce suicides, addiction and depression...

Katrin Saage - How to communicate and perform.

Janet Morgan - I wish I had been taught to do everything with a lot of passion and gusto, and to ask for what you want..

Nora Jameson - A lot of what I "learned" in school were facts- read the books, memorize it, recapitulate it. What wasn't taught very often (though I was lucky to have a few exceptional teachers), was how to question the "facts" that are shoved at us, down to questioning the very textbook and pictures we were using. How do we interpret what we know? How do we critically think about and make distinctions between objective claims and bias feelings? How do we proceed with the facts we have and the questions we want to answer? Critical thinking, problem solving, analysis, objectivity, this is what needs to be taught more in schools, at all levels.

Catherine Corbett -  I wish I had learned how to generate knowledge and think critically, not just had knowledge transfered from the teacher to me.

Lindsay Duff -  I would have liked to have learned entrepreneurial skills.. How a person can start their own business, the processes that some have followed, what amount of dedication and work it takes, the freedom and hardships that come with being your own boss, what kind of attitude is needed, what kind of funding is out there, how to research it, how to pull together a team, and all other kinds of leadership skills they seem to leave out in school. Currently working on starting a few things up, I find it important to always encourage my children to do their own thing.. "If they don't teach it in school, Google it, you might want to learn more about it and I will be more than willing to offer all the knowledge I have if you just ask," and "Don't dream of working for someone...dream of starting your own company and work WITH people" These are things I tell my 6 and 8 year old on a daily basis. I want to help them to find their passion and develop it as I wish someone had done with me at a much younger age. While I'm learning now, what an amazing gift we can give to our kids by starting them out young!

Yoana Nenova - How to cope with failure ...

Alice de Carli Enrico -  I wish they taught me not just to repeat the lessons as they wanted me to, but to think on my own accord. The faster you learn it, the better you can face every little challenge of everyday life and be fine.

May Shi - Goal setting, time management and emotional intelligence!

Patricia Canellis - I would have loved to have classes of how to behave in society, how to be a mama later (not to complicated things - the basics), how to be a good friend, all the things that we really need in this world. instead we have learned a lot of very unnecessary figures, facts! I believe in giving confidence to the child, in giving him the chance to realize his potentials, whichever they are.

Nancy Jacobs - A course geared towards credit would be fantastic. I feel that if people knew more about credit, how it's earned, how ratings are derived and what they mean - the world wouldn't be in as much of a financial mess as it is.

Carolina Ortega - acting, I'm not an actor but acting classes have helped me relax, listen and communicate better. Yoga and meditation for focus and to fight anxiety. Playing an instrument.

Janka Belanova - We had subjects as you mention - math, scinence, humanities - to make best of ourselves in this fast-developing-growing workspace - no-one has ever showed me how to slow down and relax, and enjoy the moments.

Jason Foster - Emotional intelligence.

Christie Peters - That the academic decisions you make in High School can have a profound influence on the rest of your life.

Lucy George - Public speaking. It's true that so much more can be taught to kids about life, health, the world, managing their finances, getting a job - but the thing that can be the biggest shock when you start a job is that you're expected to speak in front of groups. Even piping up in front of a 5 person meeting of semi-strangers can cause real distress. I'm sure you could get more experience and insight while at school that could help.

Maria Piret - I wish I learned that change is constant in our lives and how to deal with changes. Not that this is a big issue in my life but I think this is one thing that would save humans a lot of grief.

Zachary Zimbler - That school doesn't matter. One assignment or exam doesn't mean anything - it's how you accumulate and understand things in a larger sense. You can always go look up what planck's constant is, but remembering what you use it for is the most important part.

Steven Szydlowski - I wish I had been taught to live with the planet rather than how to exploit it.

Hope you learned as much as I did from other’s insight and experiences on what they value most.

John Singh.

The addiction factor.

Last night before going to bed one thought would not leave me alone. I kept thinking that if I go out of business will I be missed? Will my customers miss me for my goods of services that I contribute or will they simply go to the next supplier and be equally happy using them without feeling the pinch of me no longer being available for them to call upon.

As simple this thought seems to be, it is indeed quite an important one in my humble opinion. Important enough to distinguish between a successful and sustainable business to a one that is a losing battle and a waste of space and energy. We all see too many businesses trying to succeed and often they simply don’t have this key ingredient of success; the addiction factor.

Some questions you can ask yourself as a business owner to know how addictive you are:

- Do your customers line up in front of your store every time you launch a new product or do they not notice or care about you at all?

- Do your customers talk and rave about your brand to all their friends or do they feel sorry that they did business with you in the first place?

- Do your customers call upon you at least once a month or do they only come to you only once and never again once they experience the average product or service you are offering?

- Is your business’s products, service and experience leaps and bounds ahead of the next alternative?

- Do your customers come to you because you have built a deep bond with them over the years you have been servicing them or do they simply come to you because they happened to just stumble upon you or have been attracted by your heavy marketing investments  and most likely won’t even remember your name one year down the track?

- Does your business make passionate love to your costumers in your every interaction with them? Do you make your customers feel very special by providing them am amazing product experience or service?

I feel that one of the secret to success in business in today’s day and age is to have enough gap in the value you provide to your customers, that they simply cannot live without a dose of you once in a while.

Some examples of remarkable vs average businesses in some popular industries:

Apple -  Every time Apple has a product launch, customers line up in front of their store from the day before and stay up all night in the excitement of being one of the first to purchase and experience the new product. Samsung just launched 7 new categories of laptops, I bet you didn’t hear about that or simply don’t care.

Google or Facebook – Just imagine Google or Facebook shuts down over night. You can’t, can you? Do you think they will be missed?

Mercedes-Benz – Is there really an alternative to a Mercedes Benz? Many have tried and keep trying, but there is simply no alternative to perfection. 86% of Mercedes Benz owners never go back to any other car once experienced it, now that’s addiction.

Disney – Imagine if Disney shuts down, will all the kids of the world miss them? Cry for them? Want them back?

Coke – Walking through the food court yesterday afternoon, I saw at least 20% of the people sipping on coke. My guess is that they have been sipping on it for many many years and they will continue to do so for many more years. With over 500 choices in soft drinks available, it’s amazing to see Coke still being the market leader.

I believe that the Addiction Factor doesn’t only apply for big businesses, but even small businesses. May it be your local take away store, coffee shop, grocery shop, tailor, bank, broker, car dealer, taxi driver, bakery, doctor, personal trainer, gardener, computer shop, jeweller or juice shop.

Today, I am going to think about my business and plan all the necessary changes so that I too can be proud of building a business which customers are totally addicted to, can’t live without and talk about me to all their friends; and I encourage you to do the same.

John Singh.

 

2011 - The Road Ahead.

I want to firstly THANK everyone that has graced me with their support and acquaintance in 2010. Thank you to all my family, friends, staff, partners, customers, well wishers and adversaries. I am truly grateful and humbled for all your support and lessons. For your thoughtfulness and generosity, from you I have learned much of life's philosophy - Thank you sincerely.

2010 was a very special year for me personally as I found closure in some of my most difficult adversities which I have been battling through over the last few years. I feel very relieved to have gone though it and come out ok at the other end. As the year ended and the New Year has begun, I feel very strong, motivated, focused and excited about the hope that 2011 brings personally and professionally.

Last few weeks in New Zealand has been simply bliss. It has given me the opportunity to recover from the tiredness of a tough and long year. I feel mentally prepared to work extremely hard and smart in 2011 and achieve all the things I plan to achieve.

My primary focus in 2011 will be focusing on the growth of Macquarie IT. I will be launching a new client acquisation product called xYzed which I have spent the last 4 years planning and building in my lab. I will focus a vast majority of my time in registering new businesses with Macquarie IT and building relationships with them as we continue to help them become profitable. 

At a personal level I will be more focused on my health by eating well, exercising at the gym 4 days a week, practicing yoga 1 day a week, reaching new heights in fitness and dedicating one day a week entirely to leisure & relaxation. I will focus on improving on my current friendships and form new ones as I expand my social network. I will also focus on improving my knowledge by spending a minimum of 1 hour a day on continuous education and 1 hour a day on my writing endeavours (private and blog).

Above all, in 2011 I hope to maintain a well rounded balance in all things and achieve my highest potential in all areas of my life.

I’m very excited by the promise of 2011; the new challenges I will face, the new relationships I will form, the new innovation I will deliver, the goals I will achieve, the fun I will have and most importantly the people I will deliver happiness to.

Regards,
John Singh.

How deep are your thoughts?

You are either a thinker or a talker, if you are a deep thinker then there’s a good chance you don’t know how to communicate your thoughts as effectively as you should due to your lack of passion, which intern is a waste of your talent. If you are a talker, then there’s a good chance that you recycle other’s thoughts, punch drunk on passion and miss the point in every conversation or you are subconsciously more focused on the attention rather than making sense.

The most remarkable people are the rare breed who are a combination of all three, they spend a lot of time in solitude allowing their thoughts to materialise and build a passion for their interests so when they come to the public arena, they are bursting with valuable insights which carry a lot of substance, weight and an honest thought provoking dose of reality.

I’m currently reading ‘Conversations with Myself’ which is an intuitively organised compilation excerpts from diaries that Nelson Mendela had kept while he was imprisoned for 27 years. Its no wonder great men like him have the magical balance and gift of deep insights, ability to communicate their thoughts with clarity in their values, with the help of the most important ingredient PASSION which is built over time spent in deep thoughts.

I would like to share one of his letters to his wife Winnie Mandela that he had written in Prison on 1^st Feb 1975:

The cell is an ideal place to learn to know yourself, to set realistically and regularly the process of your own mind and feelings. 

In judging our progress as individuals we tend to concentrate on external factors such as one’s social position, influence and popularity, wealth and standard of education. These are offcourse important in measuring one’s success in material matters and it is perfectly understandable if many people exert mainly to achieve all these. But, internal factors may be even more crucial in assessing one’s development as a human being. Honesty, sincerity, simplicity, humility, pure generosity, absence of vanity, readiness to serve others; qualities which are within every soul at the foundation of one’s spiritual life. 

Development in matters of this nature is inconceivable without serious introspection. Without knowing yourself, your weaknesses and your mistakes, at least if for nothing else, the cell gives you the opportunity to look daily into your entire conduct to overcome the bad and develop whatever is good in you. 

Regular mediation, say about 15 mins a day before you turn in, can be very fruitful in this regard. You may find it difficult to pinpoint the negative features in your life, but the 10^th attempt may yield rich rewards. 

Never forget that a saint is a sinner that keeps on trying.


Regards,
John Singh.

Understanding Loyalty

Ok, so I have a confession to make. I am by nature extremely loyal, which sometimes can be perceived as a contradiction as I also have an experimental personality and never seem to settle for average. Over the many years, I feel quite content with the amount of seeking I’ve done on my quest. I feel a little surprised to be writing that over the last couple of years things have been a little different;  I seemed to have settled for many things which I have grown extremely loyal to, for example:

- I find it hard to make new friends as I feel quite connected to my old ones. (Another reason could be that I very rarely come across genuine and sincere people who don’t have any hidden agendas).

- I sometimes sneak out of the office at lunch times and drive to the city, park the cark at Hilton and run to the Lint Chocolate Cafe for a hit of their amazing iced chocolates and macarons, because they are the best in the world, in my humble opinion.

- I always travel Singapore Airlines when travelling overseas because I like the consistently good service I receive.

- I have been visiting the same doctor for the last 20 years as he’s the nicest man I know, I trust him and I feel like I’ve built a personal bond with him.

- My friends and I very often drive all the way to Auburn to a dingy little Turkish kebab joint because their dishes are totally fresh, extremely nutritious (especially after a gym workout) and very satisfying.

- I travel to Melbourne from Sydney every month for a haircut as I totally love the care I get at Man what a fuss ever since the 1^st day I visited them in October 2005. (eccentric, but true)

- I drive a Volvo as I love what they stand for and I’m totally in support of their mission to build a Crash- proof car by 2020.

- I shop at Kathmandu every month, as the clothes are made of the finest and the most comfortable material. My favourite is the Marino Wool.

- I come home early every evening to spend time with the family as they totally complete me.

- This year I signed off over $300,000 to Google, as the value and the return on investment received was totally worth it.

And the list just keeps going on....

This year I have been thinking about what it really means to be loyal and why we are more loyal towards some things as supposed to others. Why is it that we see some friends that are very happy with their long term partners whilst others are jumping from one to another like monkeys on trees. Why is it that businesses that serve basic necessities just as hairdressing and groceries, are always so focused on pitching to new customers instead of putting more focus on retaining the ones that they already serve.

As a business I believe its more valuable to offer the best quality products and services to win people’s long-term loyalty rather than spend continuous energy on pitching to new customers only to lose them to your competition once they see your substandard approach.

To understand loyalty, one also needs to understand how different types of people behave under different circumstances. A few years back I studied the works of William Marston (PHD in Psychology from Harvard University) who developed the four quadrant human behaviour model (he also invented the lie detector test). Marston’s theory is that to understand human behaviour, there are 4 areas of a person’s observable behaviour that needs to be measured; Dominance, Influence, Steadiness and Conscientious. His system of dimensions of observable behaviour has become known as the universal language of behaviour. Research has found that characteristics of behaviour can be grouped into these four major "personality styles" and they tend to exhibit specific characteristics common to that particular style. All individuals possess all four, but what differs from one to another is the extent of each. The level each people measure in these core personality styles are measured by different internal reactions that take place in various external environments which causes people to behave in certain ways.

People that are low in Steadiness and/or conscientiousness are inherently disloyal and often jumping from one fad to another as they find it naturally easy to change and adapt.

People that are high in Steadiness and/or conscientiousness are inherently the slow adapters and they tend to do a lot of research before giving anything new a shot but once they are used to something, they find it extremely difficult to change their habits and hence appear to be more loyal over the long term.

My brief conclusion on the topic of loyalty is that firstly, I believe that people always see the world as they are, rather than the way the world is. We are prisoners of our own personalities and often guided by our own limitations, strengths, insecurities and inspirations. Secondly, I believe that people are more loyal to things that provide a higher long term value, security, dept and an overall enjoyable experience.

Personally, I am always on the lookout for good things and I continually look at improving myself and my world around me, but once I have found a good thing, I tend to stick to it and grow a progressive relationship with it which is deep and long term.

You are an athlete, you just don't know it yet.

Recently I was talking to a friend of mine who inspired me to write this article. Sitting on a bench one beautiful Saturday afternoon, she was very passionately explaining to me how she and her team of physicians at the St Vincent’s Hospital in Melbourne were working hard towards creating a new industry benchmark in health care by simply being the best they could be on a day to day basis and giving the utmost service and care to their every patient, day in and day out. As she spoke, she was pouring out qualities of an athlete, she just didn't know it.

I remember reading a Nike advertisement on a billboard a few years back which has always stayed with me. It read in big writing, “Our Goal is to make the athletes of the word perform better” and underneath it in smaller writing, it said, “Everyone’s an athlete”. What Nike was trying to say is that if you have a body you are an athlete. I would like to push that message a little further by saying that you don’t need to be a sportsman/women to be an athlete; you can be it in any of your endeavours if you want to be truly excellent at it.

I have been passionate about keeping fit for almost two decades now. I love to hit the gym in the mornings or evenings a few times a week and think I’m in OK shape, but far from many of my peers at the gym. Over the last couple of weeks a friend of mine has been trying to wake me up to reality and boost my self-esteem (which I must admit has had a beating over the years and pushed me right back into my shell). Over the last few weeks I have found the motivation to get into a decent weight training program and I have started to see some improvements already. I have gotten progressively stronger and I’ve had a number of rapturous moments during which I’ve worked out like an athlete should. Prior to this, I was maintaining my gym routine at a very casual rate as I never wished to improve my physique as I was quite content with myself and was only focused on maintaining a decent level of fitness. Truth be told, I always believed that to have a cutting edge athletic physique as the top athletes, I would have needed to be born with special talents and gifts and that the potential to truly excel in any given pursuit is largely determined by our genetic inheritance.

Recently I have also been reading some good books which has powerfully challenged my assumptions and very nicely laid out a guide, grounded in the science of high performance, to systematically build capacity physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually.

In my business life, I have found from my interactions with leaders of various businesses and organisation, that its quite possible to improve any given skills in the same way we do a muscle: by pushing it past our comfort zones and then resting. Aristotle very correctly said, “We are what we repeatedly do”. By relying on highly aimed routine practices, I have seen business leaders improve their skills ranging from specialist talent, to empathy, to focus, to creativity.

Recently I have been studying the works of Anders Ericsson, arguably the world’s leading researcher into high performance. For more than two decades, Ericsson has been making the case that it's not inherited talent which determines how good we become at something, but rather how hard we're willing to work — something he calls "deliberate practice." Numerous researchers (such as Malcolm Gladwell the author of ‘Outliers’) agree that 10,000 hours of such practice as the minimum necessary to achieve expertise in any complex domain.

Coming from extremely humble beginnings in all areas of my life, I find all of this to be very empowering. A ton of research and science backed up with a ton of real life example, suggests that we have remarkable capabilities to influence our own outcomes. I also feel daunted because what I feel is that practice is not only the most important ingredient in achieving excellence, it is also the most difficult and can least enjoyable.

If you are going to be really good at something, it's going to involve relentlessly pushing past your comfort zone, along with frustration, struggle, setbacks and failures. That's true as long as you want to continue to improve, or even maintain a high level of excellence. The reward is that being really good at something you've earned through your own hard work can be immensely satisfying.

After having though about this for some time, observing the results in people and picking up on some points which often get repeated by leading thinkers and researchers in the field, I would like to summarised 6 keys to achieving your edge in whatever you may wish to achieve in life, may it be sports, business or your personal endeavours:

1. Pursue what you love. Passion is an incredible motivator. It fuels focus, resilience, and perseverance. It is the ONLY way you can sustain your efforts over the long haul and become a leading athlete in your field.

2. Do the hardest work first. We all move instinctively toward pleasure and away from pain. Most great performers are a fond of delay gratification. They like to take on the difficult work of practice in the mornings, before they do anything else. That's when most of us have the most energy and the fewest distractions.

3. Practice intensely, without interruption for short periods of no longer than 90 minutes and then take a break. Ninety minutes appears to be the maximum amount of time that we can bring the highest level of focus to any given activity. The evidence is equally strong that great performers practice no more than 4 hours a day.

4. Seek expert feedback, in regular doses. The simpler and more precise the feedback, the more equipped you are to make adjustments. Too much feedback, too continuously, however, can create mental overload, increase anxiety, and interfere with learning.

5. Take regular renewal breaks. Relaxing after intense effort not only provides an opportunity to rejuvenate, but also to metabolize and helps with the learning process. It's also during rest that the right brain becomes more dominant, which can lead to creative breakthroughs.

6. Ritualise practice. Will and discipline are wildly overrated. Its human nature and common sense that we don’t have much of it. The best way to insure you'll take on difficult tasks is to ritualise them — build specific, inviolable times at which you do them, so that over time you do them without having to waste energy thinking about them.

I have been weight training consistently over the years, but never for the several hours a day required to achieve a truly high level of excellence. What's changed is that I don't criticise myself any longer for falling short. I know exactly what it would take to get to that level.

I've got too many other higher priorities than building a perfect physique that needs attention right now. But I find it incredibly exciting to know that I'm still capable of having a perfect athletic body and fitness level — or at anything else — and so are you.

Who is the world's worst boss?

Want to know who the worst boss in the world is? Take a walk up to the mirror, there's a good chance you'll be looking at him/her.

Even if you're not self-employed, your boss is you. You manage your career, your day, your responses. You manage how you sell your services and your education and the way you talk to yourself and the odds are, you're doing it poorly.

If you had a manager that talked to you the way you talked to yourself, you'd quit. If you had a boss that wasted as much as your time as you do, they'd fire her. If an organisation developed its employees as poorly as you are developing yourself, it would soon go under.

I'm amazed at how often people choose to fail when they go out on their own or when they end up in one of those rare jobs that encourages one to set an agenda and manage themselves. Faced with the freedom to excel, they falter and hesitate and stall and ultimately punt.

We are surprised when someone self-directed arrives on the scene. Someone who figures out a way to work from home and then turns that into a two-year journey, laptop in hand, as they explore the world while doing their job as they continue to make a couple of hundred thousands of dollars every year. We are shocked that someone uses evenings and weekends to get a second education or start a useful new side business. And we're envious when we encounter someone who has managed to bootstrap themselves into happiness, as if that's rare or even uncalled for.

There are few good books on being a good manager. Fewer still on managing yourself. It's hard to think of a more essential thing to learn.

I'm currently reading 'Harvard Business Review on Managing Yourself' which states that before you can effectively manage others, managers have to be adept at managing themselves. That requires truly understanding their own passions, motivations, strengths and weaknesses. The book offers sage advice from business greats, including Peter Drucker and John Kotter, on how managers can improve personal performance and productivity and, in the process, become better managers for those they lead.

I want to recommend this book to all my blog readers. You can grab it here from Amazon. If you dont have the time or not convinced if it can help you, let me know and I'll buy you one for Christmas.

What would the child I once was think of the adult I’ve become?

Having been asked this question over lunch a few weeks back by a friend, it got me thinking...

That is a difficult question, not only for me but I’m sure it’s difficult for you too. I will however try and brainstorm my thoughts here and hopefully I can find the answer to this question.

Walking up the hill next to our house in Bombay on our regular Sunday Morning climbs with dad in 1987 I remember my dad asking me, “son what do you want to be when you grow up”. It is my first memory of the question being asked to me and I vaguely remember being puzzled with the question for a little while. My first reaction to him was that, “dad, I never want to grow up. I’m quite happy the way i am”. I kept walking up the hill huffing and puffing and after thinking about it for some time; I told him that I wanted to be just like him by the time I get to his age in the sense that I would love to be talking my son for a long hill walks every Sunday morning. I remember dad asking me what I wanted to do for a living when I grew up. After him giving me one of his very serious looks, I did think about it for some time and then finally told him that either I wanted to have my own chain of restaurants in every city of the world (so I can eat yummy food and travel the world) or I wanted to become an air force pilot. I remember my dad being very angry at me as he disapproved of both those professions and he ended up giving me a lecture on how I should concentrate on my studies so I can be an engineer just like him. I was 7 years old and my dad was 31.

Many years went by and over the years I grew up becoming quite the humanitarian; always putting people first and helping them at every chance I got. I also ended up becoming very creative and entrepreneurial. Growing up, I found some aspects of school very easy whilst I struggled at other aspects. I was very experimental and artistic but a lot of that was suppressed by Dad’s strict single dimensional point of views and rules which despite all my efforts of holding myself back and trying my level best to please him; at times my natural self would take over and subsequently rebel.

Today, I run an web consulting firm in Sydney. I am also currently working on launching an online portal which I have invested my every bit over the last 4 years and I hope it to be my life’s legacy as I wholeheartedly  believe that it will change the game of the web industry and lead us all to a better future; if I am lucky enough to execute it in a way I have planned to over the next couple of years.

Over the last few years, my only regret has been that I found my feet in where I belong too late in my life. I very strongly believe that I could have achived a lot more both personally and professionally if I had the alignment of my natural strengths with my professional and personal endeavors earlier in life, instead of having to battle though it at every stage and learn life the hard way.

Over the last few years, one topic which has been of great interest to me is the topic of Parenting. I have grown to believe that it is a sin for parents not to educate themselves on how to best raise their children to give the children the best possible future. Its saddens me that most parents stunt the child’s natural potential to flourish and often cause a lot of damage by raising them based on their own aspirations rather than the child’s natural strengths and aspirations.

If the child from that day I was walking up the hill with Dad was to come and visit me today, I believe that he would have at least 5 things to say to me:

1) I hope you never lose the child like sense of wonder and the courage to experiment and seek until you have found.

2) I hope you’ve learnt by now that you can’t catch butterflies and keep them in your briefcase as you did when you were young and always wondered why they didn’t live for too long. Butterflies belong in the gardens and it’s about time you build your own garden.

3) I’m happy to see that you have kept your free spirit in all that you do and I’m happy that you have learnt to make your own decisions in life where you feel it to be right without being obligated to follow other’s rules which you believe to be obsolete.

4) I am sad to see that you have not yet started a family as you’ve always aspired to. I hope that you will soon think about this very seriously and find that perfect butterfly glowing from her inner beauty, that you've always been looking for.

5) You didn’t end up in the Air force and you don’t have your own chain of restaurants. I hope that once you feel settled and satisfied with your contribution and service to your IT endeavours, in the next few years, you will follow your heart and invest in a boutique restaurant just the way you’ve always wanted to. Call me a 7 year old foolish kid, but I know that it will bring you a lot of satisfaction and happiness as it was always your childhood dream.

I believe that the child that I once was would have mixed feelings about the adult that I have become and he would encourage me to follow my heart and have the courage to do things that would make me happy, as foolish as it may sound or be...

Abhijit.

Chocolates, Wrappers and the Sad Death of Innocence.

I have a small problem; actually it’s quite a big problem. I have been a victim of too wide an exposure in the short 30 years I have been alive because of which I am compelled to challenge the truth in everything I do or see. I am an absolute compulsive seeker of the truth (quite scary sometimes) and I just can’t seem to settle my mind until I seek it in my every quest. In my search I have falling deeply in love with purity that lies in simplicity and with every day moving forward, I have reorganised my thinking and life so that I try and maintain purity in all that I think, do and am.

When I was young, life was rather simple. In India our family was quite poor and my parents had me when they were still students. My dad landed his 1^st job in a different state to where the parents were settled and he decided to take my mother and me with him. His wages was equivalent to $15/month which was barely enough to feed me milk, one meal a day for the family and rent in a small studio apartment. Some evenings the meals were skipped for obvious reasons. I remember when I was around 5, once a month my dad would take me to the local markets to buy me chocolates, it was one the most exciting and anticipated events of my month, in fact the only thing I looked forward to. Chocolate was like gold to us kids, I used to talk to my friends about it in excitement the whole month and bring back the wrappers to show off to them otherwise they simply would not believe me. In those days, chocolate meant Cadbury 5star (which was a small chocolate bar). That was it, that was the only ‘Chocolate’ we knew of as it was the only chocolate on the market.

As dad progressed in his job, with his tremendous dedication and hard work, things slowly started to improve. By the time I was around 8, we could afford non-vegetarian food once a week. Every Monday, I remember running home from school knowing that dad would take me to the markets to buy chicken. Every Monday we took a trip to the chicken shop and buy 2 pieces of drumstick, one for me and one my parents would share. Some weeks, we could only buy one piece which we would all share and often the parents would give me the excuse that they didn’t feel like meat and preferred just the potatoes which was cooked with the drumstick curry so that I could eat the whole drumstick all my myself. I still remember the taste of the drumstick curry that mum made every Monday evenings and haven’t tasted anything as good for a very long time, I don’t know why?

A year later, dad decided to buy a television for the house. He had tricked us by telling us that he had to go to the office one Sunday and sent us to Juhu beach for a day out, when he secretly   stayed back to buy a 9 inch black and white TV. I still remember the excitement I went felt on my return. I remember running around the neighbourhood collecting all my friends and bringing them back home to watch a show of ‘Chitrahar’ (equivalent to an hour of MTV). Once a month, we rented a video cassette player and the latest bollywood blockbuster and gathered up a whole heap of people and sit on the floor and enjoy the movie on our new TV. My memory of those days are of very happy days as we really did enjoy the simple life, giving value to all things and maintaining a very deep relationship with everyone around.

We were only allowed to watch TV on the weekends and the condition for that was that we had to study two hours every evening and do well at school. Dad was very highly educated, topping his school in his state and receiving scholarship into IIT which is still recognised as one of the best universities in the world and then receiving further scholarship to complete his masters in Engineering at the Asian Institute of Technology - Thailand before returning back to India to land his first job where he took us with him to start his journey. Dad’s thinking was always that in a country like India, if you came from a poor background without any support from the parents, it was only though education a man could rise and succeed to a level where he could provide a high living standard for his family; his journey has been a perfect example of his theory.

A year later, dad broke the news to us that he was made assistant manager of the IT department of India’s leading motorcycle manufacturing company ‘Bajaj’ which also meant that along with the position came a driver, but we didn’t have a car. After much convincing from my mom and myself, dad finally decided to buy a car. In those days there were just 2 options, either a Fiat Premier which was the common man’s car or an Ambassador which was often used by government officials. My dad was not a fan of Indian politics, so the choice was quite obvious. I remember shopping around with dad and finding the perfect car which was light green in colour. I remember the whole neighbourhood joining us in the prayer of the new car after which we cranked up the loud music and had a small party around the new car. I still remember one of the songs we had played were the latest hit from the movie Dil; “Humne ghar choda hai, sapne ko tora hai”. The only problem was that none of my parents knew how to drive and the new driver was given the task to teach them and often he secretly taught me also. Mum was the quickest to learn how to drive the manual car, I remember dad taking a few months to get comfortable with it.

The last 2 years we spent in India, were quite a ball. Our living standard had slightly improved and we could afford to go shopping to our general bazaar for clothes one a month. Our non veg shopping increased to a whole chicken once a week and a trip to the fish market once a month for fresh fish. I was given 2 Rupees pocket money every week which I used to buy a cricket ball every week. I was a fan of playing cricket and I always managed to lose my ball hitting sixes over the factory compound wall which we had no access to. It was hard to hold myself back from hitting sixes whenever I saw the opportunity, even if my ball was only one day old. I always knew that I would have to forgo my turn in batting for the whole week if I was to lose the ball. But that never seem to stop me, as the excitement I got in hitting the perfect shot was well worth it.

It was a simple life and it consists of some of my best memories. We really did enjoy the value in the little things and appreciating everything that came our way. Everything was a novelty as we truly came from humble beginnings and personally I found a lot of happiness in the simplicity life had to offer us growing up.

When dad broke the news that his application for skilled migration visa to Australia was approved, we were ecstatic. It was our first taste of success and real progression in our life and I simply cannot do justice to the excitement we felt by describing it here in a few words. Little did we know that with success often comes the death of innocence, and we most definitely were not ready for the dynamic change we were inviting into our lives.

Despite the trouble we had adjusting here in Australia, the experience started to open our eyes to a much diverse life than we were used to or had imagined. I personally had a lot of trouble adjusting to the change in culture, going from a place where everyone knows everyone, to a place where we don’t even know our neighbours despite years of living next door to them. What I had most difficulty with was the level of choices that was offered in everything. Even to this date, I get extremely dizzy going to the supermarket to buy groceries. Walking through the aisles trying to select simple items such as breakfast cereal is quite a challenge for me. I still miss running to the grocery shop in India and telling ‘Mittal’ the shop keeper or his son (who was a school friend of mine) that our cereal had finished and he would hand me a box and as I would leave I would shout at him, “don’t forget to add it to our bill”. I never even realised the brand of cereal it was. All I remember is the very pure corn taste that I used to enjoy when eating it with milk every morning. 

Over the years here in Australia we slowly started to merge into the foreign lifestyle to the extent that after ten years had gone passed we never ever felt that we were anything other than Australians. Our family was quite well balanced with mum maintaining strong Indian traditions and dad a complete foreigner who never looked back to his Indian roots as he continued to rise the heights of his professional endeavours.

 Being a very simple person at heart, I was quite confused for many years and found it quite difficult to adjust to all the noise and choices and change that I was going though. I often found peace in my dreams thinking about living on the farmhouse back in India where everyone knew everyone; I still have those dreams sometimes.  I found myself drifting for years without being well grounded to anything.  At school I slowly grew up from being extremely quiet to being quite the popular kid, the kind other kids would come to for help for other than academic reasons.  Being dyslectic, I struggled through school although I managed to pass with reasonably ok grades, mostly with my very hard work and some creative persuasions with my teachers. 

Ever since my teenage years I was always very popular attracting girls, although I never had much interest in them. I found it very hard to deal with most of them as I could clearly see the shallowness in most of them. Over the years, I didn’t end up dating girls primarily because most girls that I was attracting were the typical very beautiful model types who lacked depth, substance and purity which I have always been attracted to and ironically enough the real girls seemed intimidated by me. Being a compulsive seeker of purity, I just could never show any interest in any of them, often to my friend’s disappointment. Lately I'm very lucky to have found a lady who has become my best fried as she shares the same background, vision and values. We married last year and hope to live a life of happiness as we both sail together towards our endeavours; living one day at a time, overcoming one obstacle at a time, moving forward into the unknow with the pride of having each other's love and support.

Studies finished and instead of taking the conventional root of working my way though the corporate ladder, I decided to follow my heart and natural strengths and go into business. It took me 9 years of successes and failures in business to understand and learn what a business really is and how businesses feed our economy and what is needed to run a successful business. I admit I have always been a slow learner but always quite persistent. I took a natural liking in marketing, psychology and the Internet and self educated myself though to a level where I can call myself a qualified consultant in some niche areas of business consulting. I have spent the last 9 years understanding myself at great length and injecting a whole range of experiences with dealing with people from all walks of life. I have been through some of the most adverse and extremes of situations and I have met the best of people and some of the worst of people. One thing experience has taught me is that to truly experience life, our experiences need to be very diverse. My personal experience in all walks of my life has also taught me that it is only when we have been through the deepest valleys; we know how magnificent it is standing on the highest mountains. My dad often tells me that I have lived more of a life in experience in the last 30 years than he has lived in the last 50 years.

I have made a lot of money at times and I have lost a lot of money at times. Over the years, what has kept me going is my constant quest of self improvement, one step at a time, one day at a time especially knowing the humble beginnings I have come from and my own intellectual and other shortcomings. Nothings has ever come easy to me and I have accepted to view all things with a clean set of lens and if I am convinced of it, I work very hard in learning it and persistently achieving it. I have learnt to take one topic every year and try and study it to the best of my ability. I have self taught everything I know by very closely observing every fabric of life and relationships. Over the years I have learned to have a very good relationship with myself and others around. I recently came to a realisation that I will never be an expert in all things, but if I can focus on being an expert in the only thing that really matters which is PEOPLE and understand the very dept of people, I can have a very realistic outlook in life and it can help me find the truth that I seek. I am deeply connected to nature and appreciate every aspect of it. I also believe that everything apart from nature is the product of our though and I have made it my personal interest in understanding the man behind the thought which shapes our world.

Along with the awareness, knowledge and experience business life has given me; it has also exposed me to brutal realities which are often hidden from everyday people. As an expert in marketing, it took away my innocence to learn that in today’s day and age the wrapper was more valued than the chocolate inside it. It deeply hurts me that we often judge people by the way they look or dress. It puzzled me for a very long time me why people are attracted towards very expensive cars, when a simple car did the job equally well.  And it totally confuses me to see the choices we have in everything ranging from cars to shoes. I miss the days where we valued people for their thinking and purity rather than their bicep or breast size and I totally miss the day we had a choice of just 1 chocolate and 2 cars rather than the choice of 4000 new models of cars that were released this year.

It saddens me to see people so brainwashed with the challenges of the modern day life and I often crave inspiration that I receive when I see a person who have an objective outlook on life and its values and hasn’t been affected by the insecurity our modern life instils. I always find myself walking left when people are walking right, not because I crave to be different, but because I often see though the flaws in things that attract the masses. I don’t get attracted to extremely beautiful women who try to be overly fashionable and trendy because I see the shallowness in their personalities and quite clearly understand what they are tying to hide, which makes me genuinely feel sad to see them infected with the insecurities which are eating their purity. I have always been very attracted to pure and passionate women that glow from the inside, not oil paintings as I have always been attracted to athletes or movie starts who focus on their game as supposed to attracting feel good attention.

There are many ways to live life and I do feel happy to see that in recent years, marketers have jumped on the health and wisdom bandwagon and made it a trendy thing. Fashion influences us far more than many things and I hope to see fashion leaders taking the responsibility of leading us all in a direction that we need to be taken, rather than the direction they have been leading us so far. I have always tried to maintain a reasonably healthy lifestyle every since my early teenage years with regular weekly visits to the gym and other sports. I have over time learned to place value in working towards the core body strengths as supposed to the show pony exercises that we often see people do at the gym. I have also over time learnt to see the value in building core strength in all areas of my life, may it be my business or personal relationships.

I believe that every person despite their title is a leader and we all need to take the responsibility as leaders to seek the reality underneath all the noise and understand and improve our selves and the world around us. We all need to find our passions in life and surrender ourselves completely to it by giving it our best. We all need to understand our family and friends better and grow deep rooted unconditional relationships with each other and help each other become better people. We all have the responsibility to help and guide the ones in need so that our society can collectively prosper and we all need to dig a little deeper within ourselves with the help of peaceful surroundings. 

One of my most favourite things in the last 3 years has been stillness. I have been in love with peace and quiet as it has helped me understand the content of my own mind which I have untangled through and learnt to bring it to complete stillness so I can see the clarity in all things. It is my humble suggestion that we all take a little break, rejuvenate and reset and start the next chapter of our lives moving a step closer towards purity leading towards fulfilment and sustained happiness.

Abhijit.

Time to check your alignment.. No, not your wheel alignment silly.

Yesterday evening my Bikram Yoga teacher got me thinking when he was explaining how important ‘Alignment’ is when practicing yoga. The reason he was giving was that the circulation of vital force, blood, lymph & cerebrospinal fluid is improved when the body is well aligned when carrying out the yoga poses with perfection. He was explaining that on the other hand, if our postures were not carried out properly by the poses not being aligned correctly, it will increases the chances of strain and damage. He was trying to explain that the strain is not only not beneficial but also unsustainable and quite harmful in the long run.

I spent the drive home after my class and pretty much all night thinking about how important Alignment is in all areas of our lives. This morning I thought I would try and clarifying my thoughts on the topic.

Being a very family oriented person, I have always felt that every family member needs to be well aligned with each other in our understanding and supporting. When we feel that someone needs help or a little push, we should not be asked for it, we should make it our responsibility to sense it and offer it. When we see that someone is going down the wrong track, we should not react but have the inner balance to respond in a way that would make the other person wholeheartedly understand the realities in prospective so they can themselves make an informed decision (Even if we need to step our of our comfort zone to do so). In family life as in any other relationship, the biggest alignment needs to be in the honesty and purity in the threads that bind the relationship together without allowing emotions of insecurity or other inhibitions to creep flaws in the relationship.

In our work life, in order for us to reach our highest potential in our chosen field of endeavour, it is important that our natural strengths are aligned with the work that we spend doing the bulk of our time. At our workplace, it is important that we are all in sync with each other working towards a common goal. It is important that our relationships with our customers, partners and stakeholders are well aligned and subsequently progressive and successful.

Majority of people keep jobs that they don’t like all their lives and unfortunately suffer its repercussions such as stress leading to all kinds of diseases. Traditionally, society has pressured people into conformity; however it’s very pleasing to see that this pressure towards conformity is lessened as we grow the awareness in the strength of diversity and natural alignments.

The law of attraction states that our thoughts become our reality, meaning, we become what we think about most of the time. I have also come to believe that our thoughts subconsciously and subconsciously dictate the reality of our lives and it’s extremely important that our thoughts are constantly aligned with our desired outcomes. This strategy is best used by athletes. If you are a golfer, you are trained to think about the perfect swing through out your day. A boxer is trained to perform mental rounds with his opponent, a cricketer is asked to think about his perfect shorts. I remember as I was training for competition twelve years ago, my trainer constantly asked me to spend hours performing mental kata and kumate rounds, which I can speak from first hand experience that it definitely helped me sharpen my technique which subsequently helped me rise up to national championship victories.

I think it’s also important that we have the ability to acknowledge, study, grow, understand and course correct towards natural alignment at every stage in order for us to achieve sustained happiness in our lives.

Abraham Hicks once summarised the power of alignment very nicely when he said:

“Someone who takes the time to understand their relationship with source, who actively seeks alignment with their broader perspective, who deliberately seeks and finds alignment with who-they-really-are, is more charismatic, more attractive, more effective, and more powerful than a group of millions who have not achieved this alignment.”  Touché

John Singh.

Building a remarkable organisation, but how?

People often ask me what my biggest lessons have been over the last 8 years I have been in business. I’ve been subconsciously thinking about this over the last few days and this evening I decided to stay back in my office to write down my thoughts on the topic.

I made a conscious choice to go into business in my very early twenties without any experience, support or guidance which most people think was a very foolish move. But the way I look at it, I didn’t choose it, it choose me. I was a natural fit for it; foolish, passionate and full of energy and believed that I can make a difference. I believe that either you are the type to live by other’s rules and there's nothing wrong with that OR all you is know is how to make your own, I am naturally the later and I don’t think anyone can or should try to fight nature.

Going down the path of business was a choice which lead me to quite a lot extreme life experiences; many of which I don’t think many people can ever comprehend or will ever believe me when I tell them the stories of how I survived the first 5 years. The experience did leave a lot of scars or one may call them lessons mostly about people and their behaviour, about choices and its consequences, about managing failures and extreme hardship, about the joy in achieving triumphs and most importantly about the importance of having strong core values and never compromising them.

Reflecting back on the rise, fall and again rise of a few companies I have been involved in building, for me personally it has been quite a character building experience. If I was to imagine ten years ago, I will be the way I am today, I would simply have a laugh at myself. If I was to know the hardship I would have to go through by choose an unconventional path, I’m sure I would think twice about it.

The experiences that I have gained can simply not be learnt from any top business schools or employment. Having said that, if I was to guide someone else wanting to choose a path I did, I would summarise my wisdom gained into 10 different lessons and assure them that if they follow them, the ride would be a lot easier (I just wish someone was there to teach them to me when I really needed it):

1) Play to your Strengths

If you are a hunter, don’t stay on the farm all day it will just frustrate the hell out of you. You need to be out hunting. If you are a farmer, dont try to do a hunter/gather’s job, stay on your farm and work your magic. Most people spend a large portion on their life in understanding what they are naturally good at. It’s like anything else, the answers to most of our problems are obvious, we simply need to cut down the noise and learn ourself first before we embark on understanding the world. We need to see things for what they are and if needed we must be humble enough to ask for help.

2) Build your core values and never compromise on them.

You cannot play a game without knowing the rules and often most people don’t challenge the rules and instead blindly follow them only to later find out that the rules were fundamentally flawed. The WHAT’s are important but before you agree to the WHAT you need to understand and agree to the WHY and shape the WHAT based on the WHY. You cannot live a life or run a business without knowing the deep meaning behind why you want to do what you want to do. Spend time to understanding your purpose behind your contribution and finetune that first and create your core values which you wish to play your game on and never compromise on them.

 For example, earlier on in business my foremost core values was ‘Maintain Profitable Relationships’. I was hell bend it making sure that I maintain relationships with businesses and people who had the highest potential for profits. Very quickly over time and experience I understood that there was a fundamental flaw in that approach and I have changed my business’s foremost core value to ‘Deliver Happiness’ and I’ve modified our business model so that the product that we sell is actually happiness. We make sure that we offer a pleasing experience to all our customers and finetune all our internal processes to ensure that we deliver on this at every stage. This modified approach has proven to be more profitable and fulfilling so far and I’m sure I will write more about this in a few years when I have a substantial amount of proven results which I do feel that I will.

3) Think long term.

Experience has taught everyone that nothing happens overnight and those who run after overnight success also only last overnight. 90% of small businesses fail in the first 3 years and one of the primary reasons for that is that they are based on short term business models. The only good thing that can happen overnight is an inspiration or an idea but it takes perspiration to turn an idea into a reality and make an sustained impact. I’ve learnt to work on 3 year plans and do things today with the hope to reap its rewards 1000 days from today. The 1000 day habit is one of the secrets of success, which I will elaborate on some other day in a standalone article, but for now all I can say is that make a 3 year plan and role up your sleeves and get ready to sweat.

4) Invest your efforts in ideas that have durable competitive advantages.

Dont start a business selling things which many others are already selling on ebay, that’s a recipe for failure. Even if you are a world class manager, the law of technological advancement and competition will eat you out unless if you have a lot of buying power and the ability to rapidly change business models.

Either you are a specialist or you are an opportunist. If you are a specialist, be the best at what you do by continuously sharpening your saw, you don’t succeed in today’s market by simply being average. If you are an opportunist, kill out all the noise in your life and learn to look at structures, systems, the market place or the economy with a clean set of lenses and a child like wonder. There are always ways to improve the system or reinvent the marketplace; eBay did it by connecting merchants in new type of market place. Google did it by better organising the world’s information and keeping the most complex things simple. Apple has done it by showing the world the products of love and passion. Toms has done it by donating the same pair of shoes to the poor that it sells to the rich. Doing things that many others do will only frustrate you, if you can’t do something different which will offer an enormous value by improving the current ways of life, just don’t bother doing it and spend that time thinking and drifting instead, but as soon as you grab a valuable drift, go for it and secure it for yourself.

It’s late and I’m too tied to finish this off today so I will go home now and continue this post at a later date.

Still to come..

5) Keep innovating and never settle for average.

6) Build a strong team of people with a well balanced and complementary skills set.

7) Celebrate small wins

8) Never fight nature.

9) Commit yourself to delivering happiness.

10) Repeat


Yours Sincerely,
John Singh.

 

JohnSingh is about to Expire - Renew Today.

I got this email today and it made me think...

Life always gives us warnings regarding what is to come and its often kind enough to gives us ample time to fix the things that are wrong.

Its time for you and me to think upon what is wrong in your our life or business which will cause an expiration to take place and its time to do something about it.

One friend I was talking to last week admitted to the fact that his terribe dietary habits will definitely cause him to have diabetes and other diseases within the next 10 years and he had accepted that fact and had decided not to do anything about it. Not deciding is also a form of a decision. Recognizing and not acting to improve is sheer laziness and foolishness but the most important thing is to 1st recognize what is wrong and then take active steps to improve it and fix it and leave yourself better than ever before.

We have an obligation towards continues improvement not deterioration, may it be our personal lives, our professional lives our the relationships that we maintain. 

Not living a life to your best ability is a sin and the only person that gets punished is you and you always have a choice. 

Go ahead and make your decision and choose between average or remarkable, the choice is yours and the consequences are also yours. 

Regards,
John Singh.

Secret to Success-80/20 rule

Ever wondered what success is? I think Success is the culmination of a long cherished dream. It is not at all easy to define success in one line, there is no formula of success, had it been there everybody would have been successful. There are plenty of factors involved in success. There are some who are born in such an environment that nurtures success, some have the strong desire to achieve success, they turn the tide in their favor by their deeds.

It’s unbelievable but true! Warren Buffet works for only three hours a day, but he is among the wealthiest men on this planet.

Another dynamic and very successful personality is uncrowned king, Bill Gates.  He doesn’t possess any engineering or other higher degrees from any prestigious college like Cambridge or Oxford, but went on to establish one of the most prosperous corporate companies in the world, Microsoft.

Ronald Reagan was never interested in toiling hard but he was the man credited for the down fall of Communism.

Mother Teresa was an ordinary lady but she carved her name in the annals of world history by her pious deeds.  

Now question arises, what was the mantra of success for these iconic figures?   

There are several factors which have contributed to their success. Crystal clear objective, focused approach and determination to make it big in life are some of the major factors which are very crucial in success.   

Although humanity has progressed in leap and bounds but still it is plagued with enormous difficulties. There are plenty of works to be done and challenges to be meet.

You may wish you had few extra hours in your hand to fulfill your tight schedule and demands. Though, contemporary science has made a miraculous progress but still lots to be done. Just by clicking at the mouse one can straight away browse any subject on the net. Mobile cell in your hand keeps you in touch with your friends but who will find the solutions for other grievances. Probably we should start working hard, fast and more. Is this the solution? No! This can not be a solution.

Let’s discuss about a very popular theory which is as old as nature, but very much practical even today. It is an amasing theory which is not absolutely used pragmatically. We are talking about 80/20 Principle of success. This theory has been proved time and again through scientific research as well. Its importance can be seen in several corporate as well as social situations.      

According to this theory 80% of results, productivity or rewards are spawned by 20% of efforts. To be more precise, only few certain things are important for getting desired results others are just secondary. This 80/20 Principle is very popular among corporate philosophers and management gurus, reason being that it is straight away relevant to different corporate circumstances.

Perhaps, you have heard that 80% of profit of any concern generates from 20% of its customers, we can elaborate this sentence in another manner as well that 20% of staff of any concern spawns 80% of its productivity. Let’s understand this through following examples:                        

• 80% of the crimes are committed by 20% of thieves.
• 80% of car accidents are committed by 20% of drivers.
• 80% of resources are used by 20% of population of any community.

 If we consider our own personal lives, then we will find: 

• 20% of the time we spend in our office work relates to 80% of what we achieve.
• 20% of our clothes are worn 80% of the time.
• 20% of our home’s carpet gets 80% of the wear.   

 Above mentioned interesting statistics reveal the essence of this 80/20 Principle. This theory can bring dramatic change in our day-to-day lives as well, provided we are goal oriented and sincere in our approach. We should use most prolific 20% of our potential in every situation of our lives.  

Introspect yourself and recognise the things which are most vital to you and your life. Focus most of your potential and energy to such things. When you will understand this theory in totality then you will realise significant changes in your life; lesser time will bring more and qualitative results for you.  

At times people wonder, if it is so much effective, then why it is not used worldwide, to accomplish success and meet challenges of the society. One of the reasons is that it is against the traditional norms of the society; moreover, we are deep rooted in 50/50 philosophy. We think that hard work will bring definite results for us.   

80/20 Principle is completely against this approach. According to this theory hard work is not always rewarded. There are some who have not worked hard at all, but went on to become very affluent multimillionaire. We have been brought up in an environment where we are supposed to put in around 8 hours in a day even when our most productive results are spawned in 2 hours or so.    

So, what is the bottom line? By identifying our goal and strengths and focusing on them, we can achieve success and bring diverse modifications in our lives.  

In modern life we are confronted with several demands and difficulties, by meticulously using 80/20 Principle we can find amicable solutions to all these problems.  

John Singh

Intelligent Management - The power of leverage

"Bernard of Chartres used to say that we are like dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, so that we can see more than they, and things at a greater distance, not by virtue of any sharpness of sight on our part, or any physical distinction, but because we are carried high and raised up by their giant size."

Be a Low Pressure Persuader
Management can be defined as "getting things done through others." To be a manager you must be an expert at persuading and influencing others to work in a common direction. This is why all excellent managers are also excellent low-pressure salespeople. They do not order people to do things; instead, they persuade them to accept certain responsibilities, with specific deadlines and agreed-upon standards of performance. When a person has been persuaded that he or she has a vested interest in doing a job well, he or she accepts ownership of the job and the result. Once a person accepts ownership and responsibility, the manager can step aside confidently, knowing the job will be done on schedule.

You Have Two Choices
In every part of your life, you have a choice of either doing it yourself or delegating it to others. Your ability to get someone else to take on the job with the same enthusiasm that you would have is an exercise in personal persuasion. It may seem to take a little longer at the beginning, but it saves you an enormous amount of time in the completion of the task.

Motivating people properly will bring out their best
Since you have built self-esteem and self-confidence in your employees, sales and output have been on the rise. When I started unlocking the full potential in all of my employees, performance and output have increased.

The Best Form of Leverage
A key form of leverage that you must develop for success in today’s information rich world is other people's knowledge. You must be able to tap into the brain power of many other people if you want to accomplish worthwhile goals. Successful people are not those who know everything needed to accomplish a particular task, but more often than not, they are people who know how to find the knowledge they need.

What Knowledge Do You Need?
What is the knowledge that you need to achieve your most important goals? Of the knowledge required, what knowledge must you have personally in order to control your situation, and what knowledge can you borrow, buy, or rent from others?

Two Calls Away
It has been said that, in our information-based society, you are never more than one book or two phone calls away from any piece of knowledge in the world. With on-line computer services that access huge databases all over the world, you can usually get the precise information you require in a few minutes by using a personal computer. Whenever you need information and expertise from another person in order to achieve your goals, the very best way to persuade them to help you is to ask them for their assistance.

Don't Be Afraid to Ask
Almost everyone who is knowledgeable in a particular area is proud of their accomplishments. By asking a person for their expert advice, you compliment them and motivate them to want to help you. So don't be afraid to ask, even if you don't know the individual personally.

Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.

First, multiply your output and rewards by persuading other people to do the job for you and do it well. Delegation is the key to personal leverage.

Second, identify the most important knowledge you need to do an excellent job and then concentrate on finding and using that knowledge.

The person who can find the knowledge in others is often more valuable than the person who possesses it.

Regards
John Singh

Small Additions - Just for today.

We all have our addictions? No? You disagree? What about the Cola drink we shouldn’t be drinking? Or the chocolate bar that we shouldn’t be eating? Or perhaps we are watching too much mindless Television? Whatever it is we all have these small addictions that niggle away at our peace of mind and create pointless guilt.

Well here is a humble suggestion on how to break those bad habits. I call it the “Just for Today” technique. Let us look at an example. Say you are addicted to chocolate. Everyday you go to the dispenser and buy a bar with a guilty conscience. Well you could say to yourself “Just for today I am not going to buy the chocolate bar”. All you have to do is not buy the bar FOR TODAY. Then when you awake the next day you say to yourself the same thing i.e. “Just for today I won’t buy that chocolate bar.”

This trains your mind to stay in the present. It doesn’t matter about tomorrow or yesterday but just for today you are going to do things differently. If you fall of the wagon then that’s ok too as tomorrow is another new day and another chance to do something “Just for today”. Those small days build up and before you know it a few weeks have gone by and you have broken the habit of buying that chocolate bar.

Give it a go! It’s worked for me in the past.

John Singh

My Notebook Habbit.

I have been a long time fan of using a notebook as a tool for self-improvement, as a serial entrepreneur bursting with ideas and creative thoughts or just as a place where I can do some brainstorming. Here are 10 different things I like to write in them.

1) New words that I have learnt that day.

2) Mind maps of my goals for the week, month, year.

3) Creative writing such as poems and short stories.

4) Mental stresses and tensions that I notice I feel during the day, the thoughts I felt that caused those stresses and alternative more positive thoughts in order to reduce those stresses for the future.

5) Sketches to exercise the right side of the brain.

6) Reviews of movies, music or television etc.

7) Books I want to read in the future, movies I wish to see and music I wish to listen to etc.

8) General “dear diary” prose including my observations, thoughts and feelings relating to the day.

9) Any physical tensions and what may have caused them.

10)Ideas for my blog.

John Singh.

The Power of Clarity.

Clarity accounts for probably 80% of success and happiness. Lack of clarity is probably more responsible for frustration and underachievement than any other single factor. That's why we say that "Success is goals, and all else is commentary." People with clear, written goals, accomplish far more in a shorter period of time than people without them could ever imagine. This is true everywhere and under all circumstances. The Three Keys to High Achievement You could even say that the three keys to high achievement are, "Clarity, Clarity, Clarity," with regard to your goals. Your success in life will be largely determined by how clear you are about what it is you really, really want. Write and Rewrite Your Goals The more you write and rewrite your goals and the more you think about them, the clearer you will become about them. The clearer you are about what you want, the more likely you are to do more and more of the things that are consistent with achieving them. Meanwhile, you will do fewer and fewer of the things that don't help to get the things you really want. The Seven Step Process for Achieving Goals Here, once more, is the simple, seven-step process that you can use to achieve your goals faster and easier than ever before. First, decide exactly what you want in each area of your life. Be specific! Second, write it down, clearly and in detail; Third, set a specific deadline. If it is a large goal, break it down into sub-deadlines and write them down in order; Fourth, make a list of everything you can think of that you are going to have to do to achieve your goal. As you think of new items, add them to your list; Fifth, organize the items on your list into a plan by placing them in the proper sequence and priority; Sixth, take action immediately on the most important thing you can do on your plan. This is very important! Seventh, do something every day that moves you toward the attainment of one or more of your important goals. Maintain the momentum! Join the Top 3% Fewer than three percent of adults have written goals and plans that they work on every single day. When you sit down and write out your goals, you move yourself into the top 3% of people in our society. And you will soon start to get the same results that they do. Review Your Goals Daily Study and review your goals every day to be sure they are still your most important goals. You will find yourself adding goals to your list as time passes. You will also find yourself deleting goals that are no longer as important as you once thought. Whatever your goals are, plan them out thoroughly, on paper, and work on them every single day. This is the key to peak performance and maximum achievement. Action Exercises Here is how you can apply this law immediately: First, make a list of ten goals that you would like to achieve in the coming year. Write them down in the present tense, as though a year has passed and you have already accomplished them. Second, from your list of ten goals, ask yourself, "What one goal, if I were to accomplish it, would have the greatest positive impact on my life?" Whatever it is, put a circle around this goal and move it to a separate sheet of paper. Third, practice the seven-step method described above on this goal. Set a deadline, make a plan, and put it into action and work on it every day. Make this goal your major definite purpose for the weeks and months ahead. Get ready for some amazing changes in your life. John Singh

Financial Independece

More than eighty percent of self-made millionaires began with nothing or in many cases, less than nothing.

More than eighty percent of self-made millionaires began with nothing or in many cases, less than nothing. I can certainly relate to that because when I was growing up and right into my early 30s, I never had any extra money with which to start a fortune. It seemed to me that there was always enough, if not more than enough bills, to absorb every penny I earned. I was always in debt. Be Ready for Your Opportunity And even if a great business opportunity did come along, I wouldn't have been able to do anything with it. As I began studying financial success and self-made millionaires, I noticed that almost everyone around me was in pretty much the same boat. The idea of becoming really wealthy was a distant dream with very little possibility of coming true. You may be in the same situation, with more bills than money or assets. Look at the Numbers The statistics are a little scary. Of 100 people who reach retirement age, according to insurance industry statistics, only one will be wealthy. Four out of the hundred will be financially independent; fifteen will have some savings put aside. And the other 80 will be dependent on pensions, still working or broke - this after a lifetime of well-paid work in the most affluent society in human history. Now why does this happen? Why People Retire Poor There are two main reasons why people retire poor. First, they never decide to retire rich. They wish and hope and pray, but they never make a firm, unequivocal decision that they're going to do it. Second, even if they do decide to retire rich, they procrastinate until it's too late. They always have some good reason for putting it off. Start With Desire and Decision If you sincerely want to beat the odds, to achieve financial independence and retire wealthy, there are four critical steps that you must take, all starting with the letter D. The first step is desire. You must want it badly enough to make an unshakable commitment and to be willing to make sacrifices. The second D is decision. You must make a decision right now to do whatever is necessary, to be willing to pay any price, go any distance, to achieve your goal. Practice Determination and Discipline The third D is determination, which is to keep at it until you succeed in spite of all the problems and obstacles you will experience. And the fourth D is discipline - the discipline to master yourself to develop the habits necessary for achieving financial independence. Those are the four Ds. Desire, Decision, Determination and Discipline. And you can measure how successful you're going to be in the future by measuring how well you&'re doing in each of those on a scale of one to ten. Action Exercises Here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action: First, make a decision, right now, that you are going to be financially independent, no matter what obstacles you face in the short term. Then write it down, make a plan and start to work on it every single day. Second, resolve in advance that you will persist in the face of every setback or obstacle you face. You will never give up. You will keep on moving forward until you finally achieve your goal. John Singh

Relax & Recharge

Regular relaxation is essential for a long life and personal effectiveness.

Regular relaxation is essential for a long life and personal effectiveness. Here are some techniques for relaxing physically that are used by the most successful and highest paid people in America. Take Time Off Every Week First of all, work only five or six days per week, and rest completely on the seventh day. Every single study in this area shows that you will be far more productive in the five or six days that you work if you take one or two days off completely than you ever would be if you worked straight through for seven days. Get Your Mind Busy Elsewhere During this time off, do not catch up on reports, organize your desk, prepare proposals, or do anything else that requires mental effort. Simply let your mind relax completely, and get busy doing things with your family and friends. Maybe work around the house, go for a walk, engage in physical exercise, watch television, go to a movie, or play with your children. Whatever you do, discipline yourself to shut your mental gears off completely for at least one 24-hour period every seven days. Get Away on Mini-Vacations Second, take one three-day vacation every three months, and during that time, refrain from doing any work. Do not attempt to catch up on even a few small things. If you do, you keep your mental gears in motion, and you end up neither resting nor properly doing work of any quality. Take Big Chunks of Down Time Third, take at least two full weeks off each year during which you do nothing that is work-related. You can either work or relax; you cannot do both. If you attempt to do a little work while you are on vacation, you never give your mental and emotional batteries a chance to recharge. You'll come back from your vacation just as tired as you were when you left. Give Yourself a Break Today If you are involved in a difficult relationship, or situation at work that is emotionally draining, discipline yourself to take a complete break from it at least one day per week. Put the concern out of your mind. Refuse to think about it. Don't continually discuss it, make telephone calls about it or mull it over in your mind. You cannot perform at your best mentally if you are emotionally preoccupied with a person or situation. You have to give yourself a break. Go For a Walk in Nature Since a change is as good as a rest, going for a nice long walk is a wonderful way to relax emotionally and mentally. As you put your physical body into motion, your thoughts and feelings seem to relax all by themselves. Eat Lighter Foods Also, remember that the process of digestion consumes an enormous amount of physical energy. Therefore, if you eat lighter foods, you will feel better and more refreshed afterward. If you eat more fruits, vegetables, and whole-grain products, your digestive system will require far less energy to process them. Be Good to Yourself Since your diet has such an impact on your level of physical energy, and through it your levels of mental and emotional energy, the more fastidious you are about what you put into your mouth, the better you will feel and the more productive you will be. We know now that foods high in fat, sugar, or salt are not good for your body. The lighter the foods you eat, the more energy you have. Action Exercises Here are three things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action: First, plan your weeks in advance and build in at least one day when you will relax from work completely. Discipline yourself to keep this date. Second, reserve, book and pay for your three day vacations several months in advance. Once you've paid the money, you are much more likely to go rather than put it off. Third, decide that you will not work at all during your vacations. When you work, work. And when you rest, rest 100% of the time. This is very important.

Brian Tracy Interview.

Download TracyInterview.pdf   

Please feel free to download the PDF file which contains the very inspirational interview with Brian Tracy.

Enjoy, John Singh