It’s About Time

In their annual letter, this year Bill and Melinda Gates write about energy and time. Among other things they describe the importance of opportunity cost of time. Opportunity cost is the next best use of a resource. If instead of doing what you are doing right now what ‘other’ thing could you be doing? That ‘other’ thing is the opportunity cost of your time. The letter highlights opportunity cost of time for women, especially in South Asia and Africa, who are doing unpaid, menial chores instead of spending that time getting education, better health and pursuing income-earning opportunities.

Opportunity cost analysis of time is also very important for you. It can serve as a lens for introspecting about your life. Ponder on what you are doing vs what you could be doing different to enrich your life.

Usually when we think about time we think only of time management. How can we do more with the 24 hours we have in a day? How can we become more efficient, effective and productive? Then we come up with all kinds of strategies to make the most of our time like learning to prioritise, or as students we make a time-table and might adopt techniques like pomodoro or the wedge technique and most frequently we create 'To Do' lists. 

This view of time management I think is a micro view of time. It is important but we also need to have a macro view of time. What organisational psychologist Elliott Jacques calls ‘Time Span of Discretion’ – the longest time a person is capable of spending on a single task.

At Level-1 of Time Span of Discretion are people capable of spending just a few months on a task. At Level 2 to 4 people can invest between one to five years pursuing their intent. At Level-6 are statesmen and business leaders who have a time horizon of 20 years to accomplish what they have imagined. Level-8 are people who have a vision that will have a 100 year impact. Finally, at Level-9 are people like Gandhi and Einstein whose work has an impact for centuries because they “planted trees under whose shade they did not expect to sit”. From Mandela to Obama, Gandhi still has huge influence globally and the recent observation of gravitational waves bears testimony to Einstein’s thought experiments done a century ago.

No doubt micro aspect of time is important, especially in today’s world where technology allows you to fill otherwise dead time productively. Like the time spent commuting in buses, trains and airplanes, or simply waiting can be productively filled by reading, listening or watching something on your mobile phone. Or, in such moments simply watching your breath, as advocates of ‘living in the moment’ will tell you, is a type of meditation that makes you more conscious and aware.

However, most of us seem to be losing sense of macro aspect of time – ability to have a life pursuit with a very long time horizon, with success not guaranteed. I think reasons for this are many. In our hurry to become socially successful (more money, power, fame) we have become slaves of time. Time is money. And FOMO or Fear of Missing Out makes the ‘time is money’ phenomenon even worse. “There is money to be made in the booming e-commerce sector in India – start-up today, IPO tomorrow. Don't miss this opportunity.” This sort of peer-pressure escalated, comparative approach to life makes it extremely difficult to pause and ponder if we are making investing our time wisely.

To makes things worse we believe the way to live life is sequentially: “I will first make money, then have a family and after I retire from my active income generating pursuits I will do some socially relevant work.” Nurse Bronnie Ware, who worked for several years with terminally ill patients in the last weeks of their lives records “The Top Five Regrets of the Dying” in a book with the same title. The most common regret her patients had was, “I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.” Male patients who missed the growing up years of their children and their partner’s companionship lamented, “I wish I hadn't worked so hard.” “I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends” was another of the top five regrets. 

Learn from the words of the dying! Life is better lived in parallel. The wheels of life turn more easily and smoothly if you give time and energy to all the spokes – social success, physiological success, psychological success and spiritual success.    

Based on such an opportunity cost analysis of your time rewrite your ‘To Do’ list. Consider the importance of all the spokes of your life and whether you would like to reach a much higher level in the ladder of Time Span of Discretion.

And remember, success of your new 'To Do' list hinges on it being accompanied by a 'Stop Doing' list!

Ooch Before You Leap!

Couple of days back I met a 15 year old. He mentioned that this summer holidays, after his GCSE examinations, he would like to do a short internship in a bank or a tech company to get a feel of what life is like in these professions. He is interested in economics and technology and he figures that such an exposure will get him a better sense of what pursuit of these subjects can later lead to.

In their book ‘Decisive’ authors Chip and Dan Heath describe what this young student wants to do as ‘ooching’. Ooching is dipping your toes to test the waters before you dive in. You may have pre-conceived notions about a job or a profession – the glamour of being an actor, or the money in finance but rather than basing an important life decision on your notions it is better to test your assumptions, to the extent possible.

'Decisive' authors highlight that some colleges are making it mandatory for students to get some work experience to become eligible to apply for a course. For example, Hunter College at the City University of New York, for the undergraduate course in physical therapy, does not admit students unless they have spent at least a hundred hours observing physical therapists at work.

Ooching sounds great but I do not know how feasible it is for a 15 year old to get a summer job in a bank or a tech company. He is a minor and large corporates will have strict rules and regulations about engaging a minor even for a short, unpaid internship, plus they will probably not be very keen to take on the associated hassles of insurance and other legal and risk issues.

But today there are several other ways to ‘ooch’ what different professions feel like. A tech or a fin-tech start-up might be a more conducive place for a minor, as would be many non-profits. In fact, I personally think for a young person volunteering their skills and talent for a good cause is excellent experience.

Or, perhaps this young person could request mentoring meetings with professionals and if he can frame the right questions he can get good insights into what a day in the life of that profession feels like, what it entails to get into that profession and what it takes to succeed. To make this mentoring meetings more disciplined this young person could perhaps start a blog. Writing and editing what he learns in an interview will lead to more introspection. Each new interview will also improve quality of questions asked. The ‘Cut to the Chase’ interview series we had run last year had the same objective – to give a feel of a profession, what it takes to get into that profession, what it takes to succeed and how the profession might change few decades from now - http://timelesslifeskills.co.uk/interview/ 

This youngster could also collaborate with his friends, conceive an idea and crowd fund it. The idea could be development of an app, or a tech project for a non-profit, given that IT is an area of his interest. Or, he could do crowd-based fund raising for a charity. I know someone who, for her Diploma in Rural Management, is planning a crowd funding project to get Android Tablets for a rural school in India. While such a project might not get insights into a profession and it might even fail to raise the target amount, it will definitely give useful experience of conceiving, planning and executing an idea – great competencies to have in the 21st century.

In today’s world reputation matters. The open-source hardware movement has led to large communities forming around electronics and micro-computers. Arduino and Raspberry Pi communities are two examples. This youngster could actively participate in such communities, imagine and share innovative, problem-solving projects and guide others. This way he will gain experience, have a portfolio of projects and build an online reputation - stuff that is pretty useful for college admission. And, imagine all the fun he will have!

Or, this young person could take inspiration from Amol Bhave. 17 year old Amol, from the small town of Jabalpur in India, did MIT edX’s MOOC on Circuits & Electronics and scored 97% The follow-up course on Signals & Systems was not available as a MOOC so Amol, along with two friends, created their own online course combining videos lectures, discussion boards and elements from MIT courseware. 1100 students from around the globe enrolled, enough to impress MIT to offer him a place for the class of 2017.

Reality-testing different professions and your perception about these professions is definitely a great way to improve your decision-making about your career. And, the second decade of the 21st century offers many ways to ooch.

When Watson is Not Sherlock’s Mate - How Future Ready Are You?

 If you are of a certain age you may have learnt your English alphabet reciting – A for Apple, B for Boy, C for Cat… If you were to say this out loud to young kids today they will think you mean – Apple, the company and Game Boy, the gaming console. They might still be in sync with you about cats but only because that is a popular theme on YouTube.

Now let’s check how Future Ready you are today. For example, if to you Amazon only connotes the river in South America then on Internet Timescale you are pre-historic and the future does not augur well!

As you read the following 15 statements pause and check if you said to yourself, “Yes, that’s correct. What’s all the fuss about?” or did you exclaim, “Ah, I know the new meaning!”

1. Deep Blue is a colour.
2. Watson is Sherlock Holme’s mate.
3. Square is a figure with four equal sides and four right-angles.
4. Box is a physical container.
5. Quill is a bird’s feather, used for writing.
6. Raspberry Pi is what you eat.
7. Arm is the upper limb in your body.
8. Deep Learning is what you do when you study hard.
9. Risc is risk misspelled.
10. Oop(s) is an informal way of saying sorry.
11. Java is an Indonesian island famous for coffee.
12. Thimble is a protective cap you put on your finger while sewing.
13. Uber means a supreme example.
14. Oculus means an eye-like design.
15. Tencent is a US coin.

Now total up for how many of the above you knew the ‘new meaning’ and see your future:

• Got only upto 3 ‘new meaning’: Futurus Bleakus
• Got upto 8 ‘new meaning’: Futurus Securus
• Got upto 12 ‘new meaning’: Futurus Brightus
• Got more than 13 ‘new meaning’: Thrivus Maximus

Other way around, if for most of these words you only know the ‘new meaning’ – i.e. Square to you means a mobile payment company and you know FourSquare is not a more powerful mobile payment solution but a real-time location sharing service, BUT you haven’t a clue what I mean by ‘square is a figure with four equal sides and four right-angles’ then congratulations, you are an ultra cool digital native with no historical baggage!

In the 21st century only the curious shall thrive! So go ahead and Google to find out the ‘new meaning’ for statements where you went, “What’s the fuss about?” Chances are bright that Google will throw up the ‘new meaning’ in the first few search results, validating that if you don't know this ‘new knowledge’ you are not quite future ready!

It’s About Being In Your Element – But How?

Have you heard the joke – my heart was a scalar, till it found you. Now it’s a vector. ‘Being in your element’ is like being a vector, an entity that has both speed and direction.

Terence Tau is a vector. When he was two he watched Sesame Street, like many children do, but unlike most he used the television show to teach himself how to read! At age 3 he was solving equations, at age 9 he was attending university level mathematics courses, at 16 he had got his Masters degree, PhD at 21 and at 24 he became a full professor at UCLA. To top this he won the Fields Medal at 30, which is considered the Nobel prize of mathematics. 

But most of us are not Terence Tau. We don't have an epiphany about our passion. So the question becomes how can we find our element? How do we find something that we are not only good at but also love doing?

For young people the first step is to cast the net wide to discover what is it they are deeply interested in (at least at that point in time). Passion for any academic subject will most likely get discovered at their school, however discovering passion in non-academic areas becomes a challenge. One route is to try out different Clubs, if their schools offers these, or by joining activities offered by private enterprises, if these are available and affordable.

A word of caution for parents here. Karma they say is not about the act but the volition behind the act. You will earn good parenting karma if you encourage your child to try out different things with the underlying volition that you want them to go on a voyage of self-discovery. But if you do this in a super-competitive, better-be-better-than-our-neighbour’s-son, or any other Tiger mom volition then your Karma ledger does not augur well! 

The other Karma caution is that you should not be prejudiced against any form of passion - “Why are you wasting your time on X. That will never get you a job.” To appreciate why bias against a passion will not pay off we can draw an analogy with the Periodic Table of Elements. During Napoleon III’s reign important guests dined with aluminium cutlery while those lower in the social hierarchy dined with mere silver. This is because till the 1880s it was extremely difficult to extract aluminium so it was considered a precious metal. Then invention of electrolysis and better ways of melting aluminium oxide made extraction significantly cheaper and aluminium was no longer considered precious. What is of ‘value’ can change very rapidly with changing circumstances so a passion or talent considered worthless today may well become most precious in the future, especially given the rapid rate of change we are witnessing. More importantly, passionate talent creates its own opportunity which a non-enthusiastic, non-energetic life pursuit never does.

Casting the net wide to explore varied areas of interest and finding your passion by a process of trial and error also includes cultivating hobbies. These days you can take a deep dive into a new hobby with DIY learning using online resources. For my upcoming workshops in April I am teaching myself robotics. I have found hundreds of free online tutorials on robotics and even a free MOOC on edX on micro-controllers. Plus, the required components are available quite easily now and are not too expensive.

Another way to discover your passion is through self-observation. Find out in what pursuit do you get so immersed, so involved and so enjoy yourself that ‘time seems to stop’. What Hungarian psychologist, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls ‘flow’ and gamers call ‘being in the zone’. You could keep a diary for a month or longer, where you note down what activity you were doing and what was your state of flow. A sufficiently long period of observation might give you insight about your element. 

Do note that if you explain this to the young, as I have, the cheeky amongst them will tell you that time seems to stop for them when they are watching television! To which you have to patiently explain the difference between consumption and creation and how consumption alone does not lead to longer-term life satisfaction. You could even suggest ways of supplementing lean-back television watching with lean-forward creative acts like writing a review of the shows they watch, how these shows compare to other shows, or how these shows could inspire them to write their own piece of fiction.

Inputs from mentors can compress the time to discovery of your element. Teachers, parents or experts in a field who have observed you can opine about your aptitude and ability for a particular field.

‘A day in the life of’ observation could be another way to discovering your passion. Many offices now encourage ‘bring your child to work’ day. Use such opportunities to explore how a ‘day in the life of a profession’ feels like. Last year my wife took our friend’s daughter to her bank for a day so that this teenager could observe what a ‘day in the life of a banker’ feels like and see what do bankers really do (though what bankers do is a dark secret of the Universe, very hard to figure out!).

If viable, students could take a gap year after school and go on an adventure of self-discovery to different places, volunteering, or perhaps trying out different apprenticeships. Organisations like GapYear.com help with planning such sojourns for a fee but you can plan this on your own too.

For an adult the litmus of ‘being in your element’ is whether you think what you are doing is ‘just a job’ or do you jump out of the bed every morning eager to do what you do. It’s like that story of three men cutting stones. When asked what they were doing the first one grumbled, “I am cutting stones.” The second one stated, “I am making some money for my family.” The third enthusiastically replied, “I am building a cathedral.”

Often the reasons we don't live our lives in our element are - fear of failure, fear of ridicule and lack of confidence. The alchemy of these three concocts thoughts like – ‘I am not as good as this other person, so if I try this new thing I am bound to fail and then what will others think of me’. A dose of ‘non-comparative self-confidence’ is needed to overcome this way of thinking.

I hope these ideas give you a sense of possible ways to discovering your element. You can also read two book written by Sir Ken Robinson on this topic.

Go forth, explore, find your element and become a vector!