Convert your Stress to Nervousness!

It’s an important topic to discuss and I also feel it’s a lot more relevant to the current generation homemakers, entrepreneurs and middle management executives. We all know that we are living in an age of multi tasking, and we also know what happens when we try to multi task (especially if you are not good at it). In spite of being busy all day, there is a high chance that you might end up doing nothing. That’s the power of multi-tasking! With technology advancements, we are constantly disturbed by the innumerable notifications and messages that pop up every minute. Fortunately, some of them are turning into business opportunities, but at a certain cost. I wouldn’t get into that as it’s another topic altogether. But in the process of trying to be everywhere, you lose focus on those one or two things that you want to master. When you don’t get there, your mind starts developing something called anxiety.

A sales guy is under pressure to achieve his monthly or quarterly sales target. A project manager is under pressure to finish the project before the deadline. A businessman is under pressure to perform and grow quarter on quarter. Not only them, a housewife is under pressure to wake up early and prepare food for the family and work on other chores. A policeman, an advocate, a doctor, a politician, a celebrity, a sport person, every body in this world is under pressure. The good news is, its good to be under pressure. Yes, you heard it right.

 A project cannot be completed before the deadline, if that deadline is not specific. A sales guy can never close a sale if he doesn’t have a target to achieve. A batsman will never hit a six if he is not playing the game to win. Nothing can be achieved in this world, if there is no purpose. So, I relate pressure to the very purpose of doing something or achieving a goal. And it is called positive nervousness. Its good to be nervous, because that is the minimum pressure your mind would need to perform a particular job faster and better. That’s how we progress in life and that’s one of the secrets of life. Nervousness is also the very reason for many inventions in human history, otherwise people would just procrastinate everything.

Then what is stress? Stress is exactly opposite of nervousness. In simple words, nervousness is organic growth, and stress is inorganic. One fine day if you wake up and tell yourself to climb the Everest. You will be in stress from that very moment. Neither do you know how to climb nor do you have a choice. What happens when your boss comes to your cabin and says you need to achieve your yearly target in a month? When both the kids fall sick, what happens to the housewife? When the pitch is turning a lot more than you expect, what can a batsman do? So, in a way, when a lot of things are dependent on external factors; or if you want to achieve a lot more in less time, that’s when stress kicks in. This is dangerous and harmful to your body as well as mind. This could also lead to health issues.

4 tips to convert negative stress to positive nervousness:

1. Planning: My wife has a weekly breakfast calendar. This drastically reduces pressure on her mind early in the morning since she already knows what to cook. Likewise, if you maintain and follow your weekly calendar, you can bring down a lot of stress and convert that to positive nervousness and complete tasks on time.

2. Circle of influence: I would like to mention Stephen Covey’s theory. Study your environment and understand things that you could influence or control. Work on those things where you have a larger control on, so that you can convert the work pressure to nervousness, instead of stress. You could find some interesting info on http://uthscsa.edu/gme/documents/Circles.pdf

3. Focus: A bird in hand is better than two in bush. Focus on one thing that you could complete, instead of three or four things that simply hang in air.

4. Celebrate: Mind is only as powerful as the attention that you give it. If you don’t pat its back, it’s not going to work for you. Keep acknowledging and incentivize so that it stays calm and happy; and in a way helps you to control your mind more than vice versa.

So next time when you are under pressure, use the above techniques to convert that stress or anxiety to positive nervousness. Trust me, life will be a lot more easier.

The world of Internet

What happens when suddenly the whole world starts depending on just one thing? When the world starts depending more on that than even oxygen or water; when the power centers start fighting for that, instead of gold and diamonds; when asylums become empty; but every home has that tendency. What would really happen if this becomes the reason for the third world war? And you would be dragged into it, whether you like it or not.

I am generally not a pessimist, but for some reason this is giving me a bad feeling. I am a person with principles and discipline. My diet, workout, habits, sleeping habits, everything is regulated. I believe in doing right things, than doing it right. So, for a person like me who come from this school of thought, an unbalanced world looks very weird. Its difficult for me to digest the fact that how can the world be so unbalanced!

I still remember an article that I wrote about 12 years back where I mentioned that though there is a lot of scope to increase the internet bandwidth, we really don’t have good content that can enhance the growth of internet penetration. I also mentioned that the next decade will need a lot of content and only then all the money that is being spent on building a robust and heavy infrastructure would make sense. Frankly, I didn’t see this coming. And today, look at the amount of content that is being generated!! Some of it is truly remarkable, while a lot of it is mediocre; but that’s what happens in any revolution.

We have solved many problems with the advent of internet in the last decade. Be it in health care, communication, transportation, retail industry, manufacturing, pharma and even in our day-to-day life style. There is not even an iota of doubt that internet is a boon to mankind, but like every other successful industry, this is also being compromised. More so because, this is now at par with the value of oxygen, if not more. This is so very powerful that when companies like Tata, Birla, Reliance had taken two to three decades to build billion dollar companies, while in today’s internet world, companies like Flipkart, Paytm, took just a quarter of it. This is the greatness and true power of internet. Well, I haven’t compared Google and Facebook yet. From a student in a remote village who could now learn rocket science directly from NASA; to a merchant sitting in a small town in India can sell his products to a buyer in New York are just few examples of how internet has evolved and helped millions fulfill their dreams. So my point is, like how you don’t advertise or make a business model out of oxygen, let internet also be used for the right reasons, not sell it.

With the advent of smart phones and tablets, we now have a million reasons to be busy, for no reason. The amount of games that are being developed is a fact known all, be it for smart phones, tabs, Xbox, Wii or PlayStation. Unfortunately, today’s kids like to play tennis, fly kites, practice boxing and many more games only on TV. While the intent is good, the outcome is a little sad. I feel that the people living in villages are lucky for still being in touch with nature and I find them a lot happier. They teach us that happiness is not money, internet or a bungalow.

Recently, in an interview, Larry Page said that compared to the true potential of internet, we haven’t really reached anywhere, even in the last 15 years of its inception. He talks about how Artificial Intelligence is such an interesting subject and the true power of it can take us to greater heights. Well, my only worry is that we shouldn’t see a day where we need to send a signal to the chip on the wrist via wifi asking it to lift the glass of water and pour it in the mouth. I definitely don’t want my clone with all my intelligence to go to office as my proxy; while I am busy playing games on the lazy couch at home.

 

Ideas, ideas everywhere but no idea to execute

If you fail to plan, you are just planning to fail. It’s that simple understand; yet so complicated to implement. There has been a lot of innovation in the last 30 years in several industries across the globe. While few succeeded, many failed in this game of entrepreneurship. And most of the time the success or failure is neither attributed to the idea, nor the fancy business plan with a witty GTM strategy. It is only and only for their ability or inability to implement and execute the way they envisaged before the start.

When a scientist develops a molecule that can eradicate the worst of the diseases, it should become popular by default. After all, you are solving a big problem and is of great use to the entire humanity. But very few see light and are able to succeed to distribute to the society at large and make a difference. Many others fail because they don’t know how to roll this to a large distribution and channel them to reach to the rest of the world.

This is a known trend in every revolution – be it about a country fighting for its freedom, a religion fighting for its existence, industrial revolution, technology revolution, or any other revolution in the history of mankind. While majority of them participate for the sake of participating sacrifice their time, money and efforts, just wanting to be part of the wave; for the benefit of those small minority who come out with flying colours. This phenomenon is inevitable! But the beauty of nature is remarkable. Since we don’t know exactly who is going to be that small minority, everyone tries to do their best. You might know that Usain Bolt is a default winner of the race, but Tyson Gay will try his best to beat him. What is the one thing Usain & Tyson keep doing? Execute, Repeat.

Something similar is what I am noticing in the current entrepreneurship revolution that’s just started in India. We are all running our best and everyone of us wants to come out with flying colours. But my submission here is that instead of participating and trying your luck, I would recommend you to focus on ability to innovate & execute. This would pretty much guarantee your success, more than just depending on a fancy idea or a witty business plan. Ideas are easy, cheap and common; everybody has them. Ideas are worthless without execution. Ideas are just multipliers, while the execution is the real value.

Ideas are dime a dozen… It’s the execution that’s important to build a company.