Intellectual Promiscuity

Lets face it! Most of our inboxes have a large number of emails in them. Add to that the high volumes of mails that we keep receiving on a constant basis. And cc’s haven’t made life easier for any of grappling with the problem of emails either!

Almost everyone I have spoken to has come across the problem of high volume mailboxes and the tick of constantly having to check our emails. The eventual outcome all too often is that the emails end up ruling your work life. If you are one like me, you would have tried labels and folders to keep things in order. You end up investing considerable time organizing your emails into neatly labelled folders only to find out that two days down the line, you folders retain pretty much the same form from the day you created it and you are back in the “zone” of checking and responding to emails. And its not until you receive “You have exceeded your storage limit” from your system admin that you manage to get yourself around to delete / archive mails and bring them back again to manageable levels!

Now the problem for me was that it majorly affects our productivity. The key casualties are time and attention, both of which are premium resources. Following are some of the steps I did take after years of tweaking with labels / folders (It really never worked for me).

1. One major shift was moving from my attempts to retrieve mails from organized folders to searching my mails using keywords. I have realized that the search engine approach is n times more productive. Apparently, an IBM research also validates this. Read about it more at “Email Folders Might Actually Decrease Productivity; Just Search for Old Messages Instead” and “Tip: Want to be more productive? Don’t file your email”
2. Conversation views were a great USP when Google first launched it in their email service. It really got really difficult for me once the mail threads starting becoming longer. In any case, I have the mail trails in any single email. So yes, I have turned conversation view off and have gone back to the good old days. I only retain the latest thread in a conversation, rest I delete!
3. And then there is Inbox Zero! This is how the website explains the method: “It’s about how to reclaim your email, your attention, and your life.” You can view the video and presentation at Inbox Zero website. I believe the method can be summarized in just this one slide

Inbox Zero Method - DDRDD Approach

So basically this is how I made inbox zero work for me

• I quickly work through all my emails in 15 mins with the DDRDD approach.
• The ones that I have deferred are moved / grouped into three buckets: Action items, Follow up & Catch up. These are my mind zones.
• At the end of these two steps, my Inbox will have zero mails in it
• Then I take a break for 15 mins and start working away at the action items. Follow up mails are attended to at specified time slots during the day and catch up mails are attended to when I am through with my action items and follow ups at the end of the day.
• I download important attachment files to my Dropbox folder. I use a combination of Evernote & a private FB group to capture the interesting links that I come across.

I wish to know from others facing email issues on the steps they have taken in the effort to be more productive. If anybody has tried or wishes to try Inbox Zero method, I would love to know about your experience.

Let me know!

It has been sometime since I visited Vagamon. The last trip was immediately after my engineering along with my friends during our all Kerala bike trip. Realization dawned en route our journey to the place that its been nearly 7 years since that.

We booked a tree top view room for a day at a resort named Vagamon heights. The manager, Mr Siyad (+91 98471 97150), was a very friendly person. He even offered as a small discount considering its a lean season and since there weren’t any other bookings for the weekend.

We had planned to leave somewhere around 7-8 in the morning from Cochin. But I had some work to attend to and eventually we ended up starting our journey by around 11:30am. The roads were good throughout and the drive was nice. We took about 3 hours to reach there.The place is a 300 acre property. The place of stay was nice and comfortable and while not exactly being a tree top house, the view gave a good feeling of being perched upon a tree top.

Tree top house view @ Vagamon heights

We pretty much ended up doing only relaxing and unwinding almost throughout our stay there. Late lunch, a short nap, coffee and snacks in the evening, some conversation, an early dinner and a good 10 hours of sleep followed by a sumptuous breakfast in the morning. The Manager took us for a brief tour around the estate on his jeep soon after breakfast. We ended up hanging around in our room till about 2pm until we finally decided to start our journey back.

The place was nice, calm and most importantly silent! It feels good to be cut off from normal life and any form of digital connectivity for sometime. And its my second similar experience within a span of 3 months, the last one being Galibore fishing camp in December. I feel recharged and more importantly a lot more at peace with myself at the end of these trips. It gives me time and space think, to calm the voices inside my head and to settle down my thoughts.

On that note, I would also like to refer to an article that I read recently – “The joy of quiet”. I would also go on to cite a few sentences from the article that captures the essence of what it is trying to convey.

1. The more ways we have to connect, the more many of us seem desperate to unplug.
2. The urgency of slowing down – to find the time and space to think – is nothing new, of course, and wiser souls have always reminded us that the more attention we pay to the moment, the less time and energy we have to place it in some larger context.
3. “All of man’s problems come from his inability to sit quietly in a room alone” ~ Blaise Pascal
4. “When things come at you very fast, naturally you lose touch with yourself.” ~ Marshall McLuhan
5. We’re rushing to meet so many deadlines that we hardly register that what we need most are lifelines.
6. The central paradox of the machines that have made our lives so much brighter, quicker, longer and healthier is that they cannot teach us how to make the best use of them; the information revolution came without an instruction manual.
7. A series of tests in recent years has shown that after spending time in quiet rural settings, subjects “exhibit greater attentiveness, stronger memory and generally improved cognition. Their brains become both calmer and sharper”
8. Empathy, as well as deep thought, as neuroscientists have found, depends on neural processes that are “inherently slow”

Maybe I should now try a vow of silence for a day and see how it feels!

This happened sometime during my PGPM days. Idling away the leisure time I was awarded with thanks to the re scheduling of sessions, I came across a book during one of my random visits to the library. The title of the book itself caught my attention and stoked quite a few thoughts in me : The Road Less Travelled.

I then proceeded to check out what was the book all about. Interestingly it talked about one of those topics of life about which I have myself spent innumerable hours; thinking, experiencing, practicing and many a time avoiding.

“Confronting and solving problems is a painful process which most of us attempt to avoid. And the very avoidance results in greater pain and an inability to grow both mentally and spiritually. Facing our difficulties – and suffering through the changes – can enable us to reach a higher level of self – understanding.”

My mind instantly drifted to the words by a fairly renowned Sculpturist, during one of his talks during my high school days: “It is only by pain that birth (creation) happens, it is only by going through the pain of labour that lasting beauty is created.”

Didn’t take me much time henceforth to decide to get the book issued. And the person in-charge of issual, not surprisingly, gave me a look as if he is seeing an alien in his territory.

Getting back home I hit the bed with the book in my hand. And the very opening statements made the book a worthy read. And this is how it read. You guys may wanna take a look at it yourselves…

” Life is difficult… This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult – once we truly understand and accept it – then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters”

I once had the opportunity to attend one of the TEDx events that happened in Chennai as I was invited to be the official blogger for the event. The talks I attended there were both interesting and inspiring. The inspired thoughts thread is an attempt to recreate the ideas and the experiences I was exposed to at the event.

TEDxYouth@Chennai opened with a interesting talk by Saundarya Rajesh, Founder- President, AVTAR Career Creators. Soundarya is one of the earliest voices to speak on Diversity & Inclusion in India, is a winner of the SCOPE Woman Exemplar Award 2006, the Yuvashakthi Entrepreneur of the Year award 2007. She urged the audience to aspire and acquire generational competence, the skill that empowers us with the knowledge and understanding of various generations. She encouraged the youth to seek out generational competence and to leverage its power in our everyday lives. This, Soundarya notes,” .. is an idea worth spreading”

Next up was Balaji Sampath, Founder of AID India, a non-profit organization working on Education and Rural Development. He enlightened the audience of the need to get the parents at the bottom of the pyramid to get involved in the education of their children. Balaji envisions getting people engaged as the key to fundamental and structural transformations in both education and health. Getting people engaged would be perhaps THE best way to get the government run schools accountable. This would in turn lead us to enhanced quality of education, Balaji reminded.

Armendra Kumar is a man on a mission. He dreams of making India as Clean as Switzerland in one year. He is a great believer in the power of markets in solving the challenges facing the society. Armendra is a founder and missionary in chief at CleanCredit and a Research Scholar in Public Policy @ IIMB. While explaining his concept of “Trash is Cash” he appealed to the audience to ponder why in a society like India where littering is the order of the day, why is it that dont we find beer bottles and newspapers in any of the garbage. He theorizes that the answer lies in the fact that there exists a market for beer bottles and newspapers but not for other kinds of trash. As a concluding note of his interesting and thought provoking presentation, Armendra appealed to the audience to participate in the online Satyagraha, which he names Satyagraha 2.0, and pave way for a cleaner India.

Major A.K. Ravindran better known by his screen name Major Ravi is a former Indian Army Officer and a Malayali Indian filmmaker, recipient of the President’s medal, joined the Indian army as a jawan in 1975 and graduated from the Army Cadet College to become a commando in the year 1988. He led the mission codenamed Operation One-Eyed Jack to capture suspects of the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, the experiences of which inspired him to direct Mission 90 Days (2007). Major Ravi choose to fly down from Mumbai to address the audience and essentially to inspire them to follow their dreams and live life to its fullest. He took us through his life, right from the time when he dropped out of school in 10th, to his present passion of moviemaking. The journey was both inspiring and in my opinion would also make for a great script for his next movie..

The way of the world is a simple plan; a template that when followed will yield good dividends for those who can’t or don’t want to think. A simple plan which gives life a purpose and a sense of achievement by means of mutually agreed upon societal approval.

The simple plan alas is not meant for the liberals, free thinkers or the pure mavericks, who might find themselves constrained and caged by the plan and at large by society. And as a direct consequence, they seek creative and cognitive expression.

One of the preoccupations and obsessions of civil society and human race is with classifying things, people and events into bad or good; black or white. This classification or stereotyping ranks high up in the umpteen cognitive biases of the human mind.

This particular characteristic of ours used to be (and to a certain extent still is) really helpful considering its significance in the biological evolution of our species. Our brain has only so much resources and it has to employ every bit of it optimally to ensure our survival and well being. When we come across new information, our brain immediately has to decide whether its good or bad for us and accordingly prepare our entire system for fight or flight responses. And it has to do it in the fastest time possible and with the limited information available. This the brain achieves through heuristics based on associations. The crucial role of this behaviour cannot be overestimated in our quest for survival.

Modern civilized society has moved well beyond its survival threats that used to haunt our primitive civilizations. We still function with heuristics. Our brain is programmed to overemphasize associations. This per se is good, provided we make a constant effort to update and rethink our deeply held assumptions and prejudices. For these form the basis of our categorization of what is good or bad for us. For civilized society today is essentially a fleeting amalgamation of hues of grey.

The challenge of modern society in this regard, is to tune our instincts, update it from its pre programmed biological survival mode,  to be in sync with our times; the knowledge age. Classification or conviction about people and things and events is not more capable enough to provide us with a roadmap to navigate the complex turf of modern human social life, for it has moved beyond the plain black and white canvass it used to be, to the myriads of shades of grey that it can afford to be today. What it calls now is for understanding and acceptance as the essential dashboard to this gift of ours. This fundamentally needs to be part of our social fabric to be well integrated and unleash the broad spectrum of possibilities that modern civilized society holds potential for. There in lies the pathway to substantially improve upon the collective social wisdom accumulated over the years and collective social capital and scale human civilization to greater heights. It’s also time to conjure up a paradigm shift in defining what we term our right to live.

To recall the statement I read somewhere that puts these thoughts into context, “Conviction, it turns out, is a luxury of those on the sidelines”

Why is it so hard to get yourselves to write something? Is it just me or is this an across the board phenomenon? Ive been wanting to start a blog for a little over three years now. Two domain registrations and 1 post in my first attempt later, I find myself staring at a blank page with my domain. Trying to ask myself and understand what all could be the possible reasons and which among them would best explain this predicament. Lack of inspiration, laziness, concern over writing / contributing something worthwhile or just plain old procrastination are some of the top suspects that come to my mind.

In any case, any of them could not or rather should not have accounted for the long 3 years that took me to reach this point. In a bid to find a niche or writing something worth sharing, I pushed myself to a position where I ended up contributing nothing. Clearly, that approach wasnt working. And now I have told myself to try and look at the whole thing a bit differently. The thought process now is to just start contributing, in Seth Godin’s words to just ship it, without getting overtly concerned about what Im shipping and why. The attempt this time around is to attain some level of momentum and a critical mass of contributions, beyond which the positive vibes created around the process; the amalgamation of collective thoughts and energies of the people around me, would be incentive enough to sustain.

And between, this just cant be a writer’s block, because by definition, you got to be a author / writer first to be able to hit the block apparently!!