Introspection time

This month end, I will finish one year since graduating from Great Lakes. So, time to look back and jot down (in no particular order) some of the things I learnt in B-School and the year after that:

• When under strong emotion, don't take a decision
• Be it anger, frustration, elation... wait till you cool down and then think about what you want to do

• Change the changeable and accept the unchangeable
• Makes life simple and helps you stop wasting time on meaningless pursuits

• While manufacturing/running something, if you are making a loss for each unit produced, then aggressive expansion will only increase your losses
• For example, Reliance Retail will make profit only if each of it's store makes profit. It will not make profit be opening 1000 outlets in one year. 
• This is very useful in analyzing companies that talk about expansion & capturing market share without talking about profits and sales figures (Example: Airline Companies). 

• Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living with the result of other people's thinking
• Read the whole speech here. Very inspiring stuff.

• Don't let your dreams be high-jacked by the incompetence of the people around you
• Many times, we don't get to choose our surroundings, and end up being surrounded by demotivated and lazy people. However, that shouldn't make us give up on our dreams.
• It takes lots of effort and hard work to get the habit of being an achiever and only a few slack-offs to lose it.

• Be sincere, not just serious

• Networking is useful only when you are competent
• No amount of "knowing people" can land you a job/raise/change unless you are competent and deserving.

• Separate out the symptom from the problem
• 90 hour work week is the symptom. Fear to delegate is the problem.

• You need very few things to live a contended life. The rest are wants

• To understand a company look at it's cash flow
• Though I use both twitter and dropbox, still, as an investor I would put my money in dropbox which acquires customers and makes money rather that twitter which just acquires customers.
• Also, I might get good returns faster in Airtel or Idea Cellular where money keeps moving rather than in Tata Communications which has great assets, but, slow money churning.

• And of course the most important and oft repeated one.. There is no substitute for hard work

Some productivity improvement tips

Its a nice 4-day weekend, and I just didn't feel like wasting it. So, thought of writing a post on things that I do in office to improve productivity.

• Listing and prioritizing 

I always have about 20 activities pending and time for 10 of them. So, till I put up a structure to delegate and get work done from others, I like to keep a "to-do" list (day-wise) with the most important and urgent activity on top. This not only helps me remember things, but, also helps me in estimating completion time for all activities.

• Being in the flow

Some of the activities I do, requires me to have tremendous concentration and so I like to be in a flow when I am doing it. The biggest obstacles to this are e-mails and chat pings. So, I normally put a schedule to check my e-mail (maybe once every hour) and respond to pings only if it is urgent or important. 

• Maintaining a proper office timing

I like to reach office before most people arrive (to get some work done productively) and leave at a specific time. This limitation on the time spent in office forces me to respect that time and makes me push myself to achieve more in that limited time. This also helps me maintain some sanity in the work-life balance front :)

• Pushing yourself to achieve more

Which brings me to the next point of raising the bar. If I feel that I can do x activities in one day, then I set myself a target of doing 20-30% more. This is of course with the implicit assumption of not compromising on quality.

• Enjoying what you are doing

I am a strong believer of the theory that the greatest employee incentive is giving work that the employee enjoys. Though there is always some necessity to do boring/routine/mundane work, but, on the whole if the work is not enjoyable, then the productivity automatically goes down. Then the problem is not about productivity & efficiency, but, about the work itself.