mohitsawhney – Page 16 – Management T̶h̶i̶n̶k̶e̶r̶ Linker

Do You Shame Or Do You Love?

THE EVERYDAY SHAMING

“I practiced your surnames spellings’ in free time.”, the guard at the office reception said to me smilingly.

I go to this office reception everyday to get my visitor card made. That’s how the work arrangement is for me, I have to get visitor access daily to get in. Have been doing that for over six months now.

This guard, who sits next to the pretty receptionist, is supposed to enter my last name in to the computer which then pulls up my details needed to print the visitor pass.

Now, this guy is not comfortable using the keyboard, not good in English language and not even computer savvy. No wonder he’s terribly slow and unsure. But the pretty lady next to him doesn’t consider that as an excuse and misses no opportunity to scold him gravely for his slowness.

One more thing that makes the guard struggle is the spellings of my last name – SAWHNEY, which are a bit non-intuitive for any one.

Receptionist’s repeated under the belt attacks would have caused enough humiliation to the poor guy who is anyway not well read. So much so that he actually took out the time to practice the spellings of my last name and finally remembered it today.

For the first time, he seemed to have a sense of confidence and pride! I felt like he had been waiting for me to come today to get the visitor card. And it gave him a reason to be happy about himself.

I was touched – How much did this thing which is of no relevance to anyone else mean to this guy! I was glad that I was the cause of his smirk and tinkle today.

It proves the point that each one of us which ever level we might be at, long for a feeling of self-worth and respect.

That is a non-negotiable. We try to get it back if we see our self-respect being taken away. If we do get it back, we get a reason to keep going and if we don’t we fall into a trap. One of feeling inferior and on the receiving end. Being the butt of jokes! We try to act defensive and it shows. Over the time, this leads to serious depression or anxiety issues.

MY PRAYER

I pray that I don’t give anyone a feeling of lack of self worth. I pray that others keep this in mind while dealing with people.

One does have to give feedback but I pray that we are considerate. Let’s not become focused on the individual’s inabilities, let’s focus instead on what is the improvement needed and help people genuinely.

I pray I do my best work but when I fail to meet other’s expectations, they too are considerate with me.

People will not change just because I want them to. I will get into situations when I will be insulted, made fun of or even be yelled at. I pray that I stay strong and in peace in such turbulent times.

I pray that I don’t consider paying them back in the same coin.

I pray that my peace conveys the message to the other person that they are the one who are in the wrong. That it’s their problem and not mine.

I pray that I worry only about what I can improve on and don’t blame myself more than that. I pray that I respect myself and that I’m able to move on.

I pray that I am able to come back stronger each time, and don’t kill myself over what I cannot do.

I pray that I never undervalue my self worth. No matter what. That I am at peace in any circumstance. For the sake of my God, myself, my family and my work.

Amen.

SO, SHAME OR LOVE?

You can either shame someone or love someone.

You can either make the world slightly better or slightly worse.

Every moment.

What would you choose: Shame or Love?”

If you like this post, then show the love by sharing it with friends and family. The best part of writing a blog is the discussion that follows, so do register your thoughts and views below.

Change Your Password Now!

Last Year was perhaps the worst year of my life. I went through a dark long patch of depression, followed by misunderstandings that strained relations with a loved one.

I felt betrayed and disillusioned. Whatever I was doing suddenly seemed so meaningless! I thought I was finished.

Thankfully things got better by the end of the year but I knew I had to do something to keep things on the path of recovery. We ourselves are responsible to a great extent for many problems in our life. Therefore, I had to mend my ways to make things alright and prepare for future.

After some reflection about what I was doing wrongly, I concluded that:

1. I was not being true with anyone. Not even with my own self!

2. I was negative and missing the “moments”.

3. I felt like a failure in life, no confidence left to reach for any new goals.

But what could I do? I had got stuck in a loop of guilt, doubts and fears. To make it worse, there was a pressure which made it even more difficult to get out of this trap – “What example am I setting for my children?“

How would I tell them to perform well at school and in life when I myself was feeling weak in my knees.

That’s when Dinky, my wife told me about THE SECRET.

“Think of WHAT you want to achieve, without worrying about the HOW. Invisible forces would make you achieve your desires.”

What did I want to achieve, I thought. Following popped-up in my head:

1. Resolve my fight with myself about who I am, who I pose to be and who others think I am. This is what Robin Sharma calls “The Integrity Gap“. Kill my Integrity Gap. Make it Zero (0)!

2. Stop running the rat race and savor the present, “the now“.

3. Have a higher self esteem and be in control. I was running negative on that, and it was just crushing me. I had to fall in love with myself, again.

Now that I knew I had to do these, would it work on its own? No! I had to remember these goals for them to settle in my head. And how would I do that?

I was looking blankly at my laptop screen, while thinking what do I do to achieve these little roadblocks just big enough to create a mess in my life. Suddenly the following dialog box popped up:

This pop-up gave birth to an idea in my mind. I changed my password to IntegrityGap@0.

From then onward, every time I unlocked my computer (which is dozens of times daily) using my new password, it was like a subliminal brainwash. Next 90 days allowed me to remove a lot of unspoken baggage I was carrying since many years! It made me a better person, one who was more at peace with himself. True to himself!

I couldn’t wait to change my next password. Changing passwords for security used to be mundane and irritating affair but now it had become a life changing ritual.

My next password was CelebrateLife@100%. 90 days focused on celebrating and being grateful for the moments God was blessing me with. Not thinking too much about the past and neither the present, just living in the moment. 90 days is good enough time to etch these ideas in ones brain.

Some say it takes 66, others say 21 days to form a new habit. Be on the safe side and go for 90 days which is the limit most organizations have before you must change your password.

While this helped, my low self esteem was still coming in my way to live life fully. That feeling that I was not good enough and the fear that someone would soon find out, was killing me.

My next password is, therefore, IAmTheBest#1 .

Like Magic, a few testimonials followed within the next few months. I became a certified interviewer at work, cleared a work interview to move into what I always wanted to do: Program Management et al.

Oops! Did I just share my current password with you?

Never mind, because 90 days come to an end today and it’s time for the quarterly ceremony to change my password again. You too are invited!

If you like this post, then show the love by sharing it with friends and family. The best part of writing a blog is the discussion that follows, so do register your thoughts and views below.

Are You Building Your Platform Toolkit?

If you’re serious about building your platform, then building your toolkit as you go is almost as important as your content. Trial and error or ad-hoc tools will only take you so far.

You could refer to the resources pages / suggestions that experts in the Online publishing world give such as Michael Hyatt, Pat Flynn. As far as I am concerned, I have found the following tools extremely helpful in building my platform. Best part is that most of these resources are free to use or at least try.

Freemake Video Downloader – Easy way to download your favorite Youtube clips as an audio or video.
Free Sound Recorder – Excellent quality voice recording of any length in MP3 format.
Debut Video Capture Software – Another one of my favorites to capture the computer screen, make home videos and convert recordings into other formats.
Facebook Cache Refresh: Shrug off that sticky cache from Facebook before you share your blog-post on Facebook.
ZAMZAR: Convert documents and PDFs into music files (MP3 and other formats) without the need to download software
NOZBE: Best way to keep track of your To Dos.
FEEDBURNER from GOOGLE: RSS Feeds and Email Subscription Management.
Audio Joiner: Lets you cut and join MP3 audio files.
Analyse your Blog’s Headline: Check your headline before posting your blog. Get a score and recommendations!
750Words: I started blogging using this site. I recommend it for those who are getting started to take up the trial version.
Wordle: Create your own word cloud!
Trello: Agile Scrum based Project Management tool. Let’s you manage multiple projects and product backlogs!
YOUTUBE to MP3 converter: Works specially well for long (I was successful in converting a 6 hour video) Youtube video to audio conversions.

Question: What other tools are you using to build your Platform? Please leave a comment below. I’d love to hear from you.

How to Create Two Blogs on Your Site?

For a very long time, I thought there is no way I could create two proper BLOGs on my wordpress site.

What I wanted was simple (at least I thought so):

Blogs related with parenting and relationships appearing as one category.
Blogs related with Platform Building (such as this one) as a separate category.

At best, I could create Menu’s leading to pages (instead of posts). But Pages are Pages are Pages! They are not anywhere close to blog-posts. There is a lot of wasted effort in turning them into something that looks close to blogs.

Steve Jobs once said: [bctt tweet=”If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.”]

Being a hardcore fan, I didn’t settle easily and kept looking. Simply put, here are the steps to create (or give an illusion of) two or more blogs on the same site:

Create two (or more) categories: Go to Posts -> Categories and create two (or more) categories corresponding to the Blogs you would want to create. In my case, I created BLOGS and PLATFORM BUILDING as two categories.
Add newly created categories into the Menu: Go to Appearance -> Menus and click on the arrow to show the Categories. Select the newly created Categories by checking the box against it. Press the “Add to Menu” button to move these new categories into the Menu. (In case you want to change the text on the site for the categories, you can change the categories details on the Menu widget.)
Select the category for each blog-post: Open the Posts page, Edit (or Quick Edit) has the select the category. In my case, I selected BLOGS for my parenting and relationships related posts and PLATFORM BUILDING for posts such as this one.

That’s it! You’re all set. Open your site and you’d see two (or more) menu items – “Blogs” & “Platform Building” in my case.

Resources That Helped Me:

Video on the BobWP site. Follow the link.

What’s on Top of Your Mind?

Daddy, I have a surprise for you!”

Tanav, my 6 year old son, shouted from inside the living room, as Champa, our helper was opening the door for me. It was about 6 o’clock in the evening and Deepti and I were just back from work.

“I cant imagine how happy you’d be when you know what it is!”, He said.

I was more happy to realize that my little son is now grown up enough to give me surprises! It just fills your heart, you know!

He ran to his toy room and came back with his hands wrapped around something just enough to tantalize me.

“What is it, Tanav?”, I asked curiously.

He unwrapped his little hands from around it and what I saw really amazed me.

It was my lost and now found pen!

“What’s so special about a pen?”, is what you are thinking, right?

Well, nothing, except when it is my pen. I have several and love each one. Each one has part of my life in it. If I lose one, it hurts. No, it bleeds!

Ask a writer what his pen means to him.

You may still be trying to come to terms with my unique obsession, but my little boy, Tanav knows it very well. To tell you a little secret, and to warn you: I have kleptomaniacal tendencies when it comes to any stationary items!

“Wooow!”, I said.

Nothing could have been a better surprise for me. Not at this time, for sure!

This was an expensive pen which I had gifted myself a few months back. It was lost a few days back at Mussourie, where we’d been on a vacation.

Perhaps the room cleaners misplaced it, or stole it. That couldn’t be true though. Why would any one want to steal a pen? Not unless they really intended to play with my emotions.

Heartbroken, I had written it off. Collateral damage! But the images of it had kept coming back even to this day.

And now, it was in front of me! Like a dream come true.

Tanav had found it in his pouch while he was playing with Sohana, his 2 year old sister.

My little son knew what’s my top of mind.

Do you know what is at the top of your wife’s mind, your son’s, your daughter’s?

I bet you don’t. Because our minds are usually preoccupied with useless thoughts, such as:

..the bad bad world.
..what will they think?
..he/ she (sometimes even the spouse!) is trying to walk away with all the credit!
..the weather!
..death and what happens after?

Do these thoughts help you or your family in any way?

While we are focusing on fear, worry, or hate, it is not possible for us to be experiencing happiness, enthusiasm or love.

If you’re still thinking what is your loved one’s top of mind, let me just say,

he that seeketh, findeth!

My wife’s top concern is the WIFI on her MotoX phone which hasn’t been working. It’s been over 2 months. I have been coolly ignoring it. It’s not my problem, after all!

But the smile it would bring to her face if I do get it fixed would be worth the effort. This week. Or a new phone.

Be present. Know the top of mind of your loved ones. And be intentional about doing what you can once you know it.

Your little effort may give them the wings to fly or at least get them an inch closer to their dreams. You never know!

Learn from your kids. If my 6 year old son can, what’s wrong with you and me?

If you like this post, then show the love by sharing your thoughts below.

What’s The Best Thing That Happened Today?

A Day in My Life

As I entered the living room, I felt drained of energy. Only so much of it left to leave my body for a free fall on the couch. I was just back from work, and the clock was showing 7:30 PM.

Then something changed, an adrenaline rushed through me – as my seven year old son, Tanav, came towards me full of excitement. “It must be because I was home after a long day’s work and he’d been waiting to see me”, I thought.

I couldn’t be more wrong!

He had been waiting for me, but not to see me. He was waiting to have my phone so that he could play on it.

As I handed my iPhone to Tanav, my energy levels plummeted again, to levels lower than before.

Tanav started playing Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. The name says it all – this game to which Tanav is hooked, is full of violence, blood and profanities.

However, I was left with no energy to stop him. Besides, he was left with no reason to talk to or listen to me any more, after having my phone.

Years ago, Subhash Chandra Bose had asked the country’s youth, “Tum Mujhe Khoon Do, Mein Tumhe Aazadi Doonga!” (You give me blood, and I promise you freedom).

It’s payback time now I guess. Our next generation is asking us now in a slightly different way, “Tum Mujhe Phone Do, Mein Tumhe Aazadi Doonga!” (You give me your phone, and I promise you freedom.)

So, I traded my phone for some rest. Deepti, my wife, looked tired too – working at home and managing the house ain’t easy.

As Deepti handed me a cup of tea, I wondered: “Can
this situation be made better somehow?”

FAMILY RITUALS

A wise man has said – “Our days are your life in miniature.”

If that is true, looking at my days tells me there is something terribly wrong in my life. If I let this pattern go on, things will soon go out of control. I will lose a much needed connect with my children. I do need to get into action now to do something about it.

I realized something while trying to steer my way thought this messy situation. We had been very clear in telling children what not to do:

[bctt tweet="Don’t play with the phone. Don’t watch so much TV. Don’t fight. Don’t do this and don’t do that…”]

What we didn’t even know is what should they be doing! And we hadn’t taken the time to figure out. Kids often asked this question, “What should I do now?” I didn’t once have a convincing answer for them.

That’s when I figured that there was one thing all families which bonded well did: Family rituals.

Some fun family rituals, could make our days more fulfilling. Each family member would look forward to this time together. It would even provide a safe environment for family members to share their innermost feelings. And yes, it doesn’t require all the time in the world and so busy working parents could do it too! All one needs is intention.

Recurring things such as: Prayer time, a morning hug, a chat before meals, or even having the dinner together, would all qualify as family rituals.

We’ve started a ritual before dinner time where each member is asked – “What is the best thing that happened today?“

But was it easy?

Hell, No!

Just to bring everybody together at dinner time was an uphill task. It’s only after a lot of perseverance that our family finally embraced it. No one was interested the first time I asked.

Tanav’s response was, “There is nothing good that happened today, Dad! In fact everything was so bad that I can’t remember anything good.”

I tried rephrasing the question, “.. and among all the bad things today, what was the one ‘not-so-bad’ thing?”

But it didn’t help either, “Stop irritating Dad. Can we talk about something else?”

When I asked Mom, she bounced back as if I was ridiculing her life situation. “Nothing good happens in my life at all. Everything is so bad that I don’t want to talk about it, please!”

It’s not easy to start a new family ritual, but it’s so worth it at the end.

THE BEST THING TODAY

Change is hard. But we kept going. Imperfect progress, as Lysa Terkeust calls it.

Yesterday, Sohana, my 3 year old daughter, asked Deepti, “Papa hasn’t asked the, ‘Best Thing Today!'”

Deepti said, “Yes, he hasn’t. Let’s ask Papa and do that now?”

Mom also joined in, “Yes, of course, let’s do that!”

Tanav ordered, “Let’s start from grown-ups today!”

Dad, who is mostly engrossed in NEWS at the time, was okay to switch off the TV. No mean feat that is!

Everyone happily shared a part of their days with everyone else. There were chuckles and laughs which will remain in our memories forever.

It takes away the stress from our minds each time we do this little ritual. It gives us a reason to switch off the idiot box. It lets our minds to focus on what’s working in our lives and being grateful for it rather than the usual my life sucks syndrome.

Most importantly, it drives us towards a stronger family bond, which means the world to all of us!

So, now I want to hear from you. What are your family rituals? If you liked this post, then show the love by sharing your comments and likes below.

The ‘Research’ Trap!

Every presentation goes through three phases before it is ready for delivery:

Research– That’s where we research the content
Structure– Create our point of view (PoV) and structure in our head/ paper/ mind maps/ other tools
Package– Put it together in MS Powerpoint / Prezi/ other presentation tools. That’s also where we review and improve it further

(not necessarily in that order, there is usually back and forth.)

The problem I have seen is that it’s easy to be lured into getting stuck in Phase 1, ‘researching’ – Google, talking to colleagues, VOX, BOX, crowd-sourcing, Google, Books, Google, emails and more Google… ! There are so many sources and so much material available after all!

To make matters worse, one tends to digress into other seemingly more enticing topics. We end up not even looking at a lot of that downloaded research!

BEWARE – This is “the infinite research trap!”

Nothing wrong with researching, in fact it is an important part of a good presentation. However, one has to be conscious that time to deliver is limited. The temptation to research more eats into the time that should have gone into Phase 2 (Structure) and Phase 3 (Package). These two phases are equally important for your overall success.

If you have 10 days to complete your presentation, this trap can lead you to a point where:

You spend over 9 days researching and
Still having a feeling that there is lot left to download until
An uncomfortable feeling tells you something like, ”Shit! How will I present tomorrow!”

With only few hours left, you will try to put something together, anything that can get you through this time. “I will do better planning next time” syndrome. You find anything even remotely close to what you needed and convert it into the organization template. You may add some random pictures to get by.

This creates a shoddy presentation which is nowhere close to even your own expectation.

If this sounds familiar, then congratulations, you are a victim of the research trap!

The good news, though, is that you can prevent yourself from getting into this trap with nothing more than a little discipline.

Apply the 30:40:30 RULE:

Spend no more than 30% time in research!
Spend no less than 40% time for putting together your viewpoint (pov) and structure. This is most important and most ignored step.
Spend no less than 30% time in packaging – putting it on PPT, self/ peer reviews, changes, improvement. Use this time for include more examples/ graphics/ Speaker notes which creates a powerful presentation.

If you have 10 days to deliver a presentation, spend ~3 days on researching, ~4 days on structure and ~3 days on its packaging.

This approach requires discipline but ensures timeliness and quality. I try to follow this rule and whenever I am able to, it serves me very well. This simple discipline can not only save you from embarrassment but it creates world class presentations.

Do try this and share your experiences. What other techniques work for you while creating presentations? Looking forward to hear from you.

By the way, this comes as a learning from my ex-employer where we did Quick Consulting. It was a mandate to follow this rule. Had to be, when the expected turnaround time for presentation submissions was 1 day!

If I Can Write, You Can Too!

I love to write blogs in my free time. Well, actually, there is no free time in life.

Don’t you hate it when someone pings and says , “Are you free?”

(Yes, I’m completely free. I was just waiting for you to ask. Thank you so much!)

One has to make time for everything one wants to do.

Haven’t called your good old college chums in years?

You didn’t have the time? Well, reality is that you didn’t make the time. Possibly because it was way down on your priority list.

It’s life. It happens. No need to feel guilty about it. If you wanted to call, you would have.

The point is, if you want to write, then all you need to do is make time for it. And if you are able to do just that, then congratulations! You are already a writer!

I am happy to share my writing process with you. Your’s could already be or could end up being better than mine. Please share with me if it isn’t too confidential.

My Six Step Blog Writing Process:

1. Capitalize on Your Trillions. There are trillions of thoughts that run through our mind each day. All I do is be conscious of these and not let all these thoughts just come and go. I draw a vertical line on my notepad to capture some of these ideas as the day progresses. I call this notebook section ‘—live streaming—‘!

2. Bring it Down to a Title! These are still many random ideas and thoughts. One can’t possibly use and write about everything. I capture over a couple dozen such thoughts per day. I let these thoughts play together in my head generally in the alone time. The time when I am taking a walk or driving alone. After some playtime, I pin all these down to a “theme”, followed by a “title”.

3. Speak it Out. Crazy as it may sound, but it works! Don’t prepare before your recording. All the madness automatically arranges itself in a beautiful fashion. The relevant ideas crystallize and the unimportant filter out. Fresh new ideas add! It’s like magic!

4. Use Your Toolkit. I use many tools. One Note, Mind-mapping tools like IDEAS i-Phone app, Quotes app, InStatus. Use whatever works for you but don’t get carried away or go overboard. If a journal does it for you, that’s perfect too. This is just to help add toppings on top of your pizza when it is ready.

5. Let it Cook! Don’t do anything for a while about this. May be go to sleep. I do that and when I get up, I play my recording and write it down verbatim. While I was asleep, my subconscious mind had done a lot of processing on its own.

6. Garnish It. Your pizza is now ready. Add the toppings. Read it like someone from your audience was reading it. Request someone else to review it. I ask my wife. She always beings in a different perspective! Add some quotes and images.

That’s it!

Press the Publish button. Post the link on Facebook and Twitter!

Celebrate and be thankful for each like and each comment you get.

Consider the feedback but don’t kill your self or your blog over it.

Many people stop writing after one critical comment. Worse still, many people who get wonderful feedback think this writing was their life’s masterpiece. So, even they stop writing!

Remember, this is just the beginning and there is no end…!

Well, that’s it. Welcome to the club. The Blogger’s Club!

Hope you like this post. I am so looking forward to hearing about the method you use in your writing.

Until then, keep writing..!

SLOW SLOW SLOW

(Based on a real story, story by Tanav Sawhney, when he was 7 years old)

Once there was a boy, a very slow boy, called Nayan Bajaj.

He was very thin, weak and had short brown hair. He was so weak that he wore warm pyjamas under his school pants to save himself from the cold, even when it wasn’t too cold!

He was slow in everything – in writing, in running and in all sports. He never got selected in any school sports day races.

One day, his class teacher, Mrs Sunita, walked up to Nayan and said, “Be Fast, Bajaj!, Sorry sorry, I mean be fast Nayan Bajaj.”

Nayan didn’t like his Mam calling him ‘Bajaj‘ but he replied, “OK Mam, I can try!”

He tried but he couldn’t become much faster. Every one kept asking him, “Be fast!“, even his family members.

Nayan could never become fast… but he never stopped trying.

The best thing about Nayan Bajaj is that he never gave up. Isn’t that something that we can learn from Nayan?