Past Present Future...

I believe the answer is 20-50-30.
There are three components to our lives : looking at the past and reflecting,executing in the present and living the moment and thinking of the future and planning ahead.
While each component has a key role to play in shaping who we are and who we become as human beings (personally and professionally), I believe there does need to be some sort of a balance between the three elements for optimizing our time on Planet Earth (or Mars, if you Martians are reading this).

That answer I believe is 20-50-30.

Really...?

Its interesting how we get hooked onto popular idioms and phrases and proverbs and come to believe them to be true.

For example. "All's fair in love and war." The link below defines it as " People in love and soldiers in wartime are not bound by the rules of fair play."
Really? Why so? Is it just so we can justify our actions?
"Yes, do whatever you can. It's all good, because 'All's fair in love and war'."

Huh?

http://www.bartleby.com/59/3/allsfairinlo.html

I am currently hooked on to...

http://youtube.com/watch?v=yzU9emwvU34

Good work Atif bhai!

What to do, what not to do...?

Strategy Consulting. San Francisco. Healthcare. Operating jobs vs. agency jobs. Brand Management Singapore. High-tech. Start ups vs. behemoths. New York. Non-profits. Investment banking. Ad infinitum ad nauseam.

With a plethora of permutations and combinations of industries, functions, geographies and the like inundating me, I have been at a crossroads in my first few months at business school. While I realized coming in that my school would open the doors for me to explore virtually any and every career opportunity, I have been in awe of the options provided. Like most other students (yes yes, I know there are a few amongst us who knew *exactly* what they wanted to do), I struggled through the process.

I finished up a lunch and learn with the CMO of Kimberly Clark thinking, “Brand management is totally up my alley!”, only to be swayed by BCG at the Operations Consulting panel later in the evening. While a project with a local non-profit made me want to take up a career in non-profits, the ex-CEO of Baxter made me want to try out ‘general management’. Choices, choices!

While navigating through this unending maze, I took a step back to analyze and see if there was indeed a method to this madness, to evaluate if there was a pattern that emerged out of all the chaos. As an engineer by training and a consultant by profession, I had to break it down into a model!

The more I reflected, the more it became clear that there were three distinct pieces to this puzzle. One, was to evaluate what was I best at, i.e. my capability (or ‘core competencies’ for you jargon obsessed folk!) – was it thought leadership, was it managing people or was it my ability to sell? The second, was to realize what I was most passionate about – was it ‘social impact’, was it providing client service or was it managing a P&L? The third was to zero in on what was the best opportunity – financially, geographically, from an overall personal and career growth perspective, etc. And lo and behold, Venn diagrams came to the rescue. As I began to draw out the three circles, I realized that my goal at business school was to hit ‘the sweet spot’, i.e. to optimize my chances of hitting the area between the three circles below.I hope to make the best use of the opportunities that b-school provides to optimize my potential and career growth. I implore you to do the same. Here’s to Venn diagrams!

Steal and rebound...

No no, I am not going to talk about basketball here.

If I look around, some of the most successful Indian marriages in my generation seem to
have stemmed either from a 'steal' or a 'rebound'. In the western context, one would perhaps see such relationships as merely transient. But, my take is that in the Indian context, nothing (well, almost nothing) works better than a 'steal' (for example, the girl stealing the guy away from another girl) or a 'rebound' (I will not insult your intelligence by defining a 'rebound').

Good food for thought in terms of why this may be happening...
(I just didn't have the patience to analyze! :) Feel free to propound away!)

Solidifying...

When we are in our teens, our personalities are formed to a lesser degree and our range of 'acceptable' mates (and friends/people for that matter) is very broad. As we progress through undergrad and live through our twenties, our personality starts getting more well defined, our likes and dislikes start getting more solidified and our range of acceptable mates starts declining. Ostensibly, my hypothesis is that this makes mate finding that much harder as you progress in years. Of course, living in a foreign country compounds the issue! (Assuming you are interested in meeting/mating people of the opposite sex from the same country as yours.) Interestingly enough, my observation has been that some of the most successful relationships either begin in high school or in the late twenties.

What now...?

Growing up, we always had a certain well defined path. As I have said in one of my posts before, 9th grade gave way to 10th, undergrad gave way to grad school or a job and so on. It is right after the three to four year mark as a YUPPIE that it hits you - What do I do now? I have gotten a decent amount of work experience, I am doing well in my career, the cash flow is sweet, I have bought most of the gizmos I ever wanted, I have checked most boxes in life - be it Europe or scuba diving or a threesome! ;)I have even booked a plus 3 bedroom flat, I have done my fair share of dating, I have taken all the classes - be it guitar or salsa or cooking that I ever felt the need for. Seriously, what do I do now? Do I go back to school? Do I 'settle down'? Jeez, I am *so* lost. Welcome to the quarter life crisis!

We are constantly seeking news highs and new forms of excitement. This theme runs constant through most of undergrad and then the early parts of your career. But then, at the aforementioned point in time, we find ourselves at a crossroad in life (obviously that point in time differs for different people - but you do hit that point methinks). It is my opinion that as you get older and 'see' more of the world, the highs in our life start getting less high. We then start having issues coming to terms with th efact that life flows at an even pace after an eventful, tumultuous, exciting, nerve wrecking 25 + years on this planet. It is upto us to accept that such will be the pace of life. Granted, there will still highs and lows, but those will become less dramatic and few and farther between. We must begin to look forward to smaller things in life (which arguably provide more happiness) to keep us going. Perhaps over time a re-calibration will occur, whereby those smaller things will start appearing more and more exciting and provide an equally high high as did the events during our first quarter in this world. Indeed, to a generation that is slowly reducing its attention span, this realization might be tougher to achieve.

I am a sucker for articulation...

Back in the day when our forefathers were gatherers and hunters, their need for survival not only led to the development of 'weapons', but also a mechanism to perform basic communication. Ostensibly, this led to the creation of symbols, signals, gestures and finally, the spoken word. As our ancestors evolved, the spoken word, while invented for perfunctory means, began to take shape on its own. Words pieced together, with a dash of grammar and syntax, became language. The more right brained ones (Of course, one could argue whether people with such abilities are more right brained versus left.), with fertile imaginations, saw the beauty in the concept of language as a means of expression of thoughts, ideas and philosophies, resulting in elegant works of authorship.

I love words and the notion of language (if that wasn't already apparent in this piece!). Words such as rejuvenate, rekindle, inculcate, imbibe, cogitate, elegant, eloquent, and catharisis are music to my ears. I for one, value people's ability to piece together words to cogently and elegantly articulate a thought or a notion. It is immensely pleasing to either express or hear someone express their views using the beauty of verbiage and/or the rigor of logic.

In short, I am a sucker for articulation...!

PS: Is articulation getting a rarer trait amongst us?

Tolerance, anyone...?

We humans like humans like ourselves - be it people of similar interests, tastes, region, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation and the like. Owing to this trait, since time immemorial, people of similar backgrounds have 'clung' together and formed groups or sub-groups. While this has resulted in strong bonds and communities, it has arguably perpetrated fear and loathing of 'outside' groups or clusters. The belief that people who are unlike you will destroy you and undermine your existence has been sub-consciously imbibed or actively promoted.

The Arab-Israeli conflict, gay-bashing across the globe, Rodney King riots in LA, the demolition of the Babri Masjid are a few events in recent history that reflect this growing intolerance.

When will we realize the need to accept our differences and agree to disagree?
Yes, there are all kinds of people in the world. People who do NOT subscribe to your way of life and who are NOT similar to you. Why is it hard for us to accept that? Why is it becoming more prevalent among us humans to immediately perceive threats to our being and foster hate and intolerance to offset the same? Why are we so insecure? What do we think this will achieve?

Perhaps I am an idealist, who thinks peaceful co-existence would be utopia. While I strongly believe in survival of the fittest, I am not certain that the aforementioned differences really epitomize 'fitness'. Perhaps there is more to conflict than is apparent on the surface - maybe its not about skin color or religion or caste; maybe its about greed, sloth and the rest of the seven sins that are manifested in the conflicts mentioned above. Perhaps these immutable basic human instincts will continue to drive the change and equilibrium in the world...

Thoughts...?