Slingshot

If I told you about the following quote is attributed to the Dalai Lama, what would it make you think? Apparently it was in response to the question, “What surprises you the most about humanity?”

Man. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money.Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then he dies having not really lived.

What does it do to your perception of the lesson inherent in the quote when I tell you that the Dalai Lama never said this, and in fact the quote was misattributed to him in an image that went around Facebook a long time ago, but that since it went around so fast and spread so far, this quote has since been misattributed to the Dalai Lama ever since?

From what I’ve read of the Dalai Lama’s thoughts, I don’t believe that he would allow himself to be so critical of man.  He constantly surprises by seeing the positive in things, and I think he would have wrongfooted the asker of any such question far more comprehensively than this particular answer manages to do.

Nevertheless, the answer above outstrips the question in terms of insight.  There’s something to be gained from it, and although the lesson is not particularly subtle, depending on who you are, it can remind you to stop and open your eyes from time to time.  There’s real value in the message being communicated.

So my thought for the day, for you to meditate on, is whether a piece of insight or knowledge is more or less valuable depending on its source.  To what extent are we able to see insight or wisdom for what it is, and benefit from it, and to what extent are we distracted by the cult of personality that surrounds certain individuals, imbuing their public thoughts with more weight than they occasionally deserve, and in counterpart reducing our ability to benefit from the wisdom that might come from the mouth of a child, or a colleague, or – to give a better example – a representative of a political party we would never vote for?

Surely the Dalai Lama would hear the wisdom in the words of even those who would oppress him, if that wisdom was there to be found.  How hard is it to keep an open mind?

Is this where you want to be?

The train stops in the tunnel on the way to work, chipping away another moment of your life that is lost forever. Five minutes later, an announcement telling you there’s a problem crackles over the speakers. Several people sigh as though that was disappointing. As though they hadn’t figured out that there was a problem all on their own. The smell of your fellow passengers is almost stronger than the stale smell of overused train carriage. It’s hot, even though it’s winter, and a single trickle of sweat can be felt, making its way down your spine. In a moment, your shirt will begin to stick to your chest. The girl on the other side of the carriage looks like she might be about to throw up. Sadly, all this brings to mind is the length of the subsequent delay as the system grinds to a halt because of a sick passenger. You turn up the volume on your MP3 player. Anything to pretend you’re somewhere else.

Is this where you want to be? Read the rest of this entry »

A lion in the Forbidden City

It’s freezing cold in the Hall of Heavenly Purity. How the emperors managed to maintain their dignity in the middle of winter in these huge open spaces I have no idea.

After wandering around the Imperial Palace in Beijing for a couple of hours (and I’ve barely seen half of it), I’m finding that the spectacular visual feast is more than just a photo opportunity – it’s good food for introspection.

Standing in a place like this breaks the illusion that we are the lead character in our own little drama.  We’re small actors in a cast of billions, and those of us who manage to get enough distance from our own little existence will be the only ones to really understand the story of our times.  It’s hard to see the whole stage when you’re constantly under the illusion that you’re at the center of it.

Read the rest of this entry »

How Facebook sees the world (Source: Facebook, Dec 2010)

A Facebook intern recently used the information from the website to draw a map of relationships across the world.  When plotting all the friendships by their geographical location, a map of the world shows up that, apart from being just plain nice to look at, has some interesting geopolitical characteristics. Read the rest of this entry »

You study a lot of stuff when you go to business school, and much of it defies application in the real world.  Nevertheless, some of the things you learn are incredibly leveragable if you can find a way to transfer them out of the academic environment.  These valuable things are not necessarily the precise subject matter of the courses you’re following, sometimes they’re organising principles that are not explicitly taught.

I have long wanted to understand how I was able to do so much, with so little time and so little sleep, while I was at Wharton, and yet I can’t seem to find any free time, nor the energy to do anything with the free time I do have, when I have to work for a living.  The contrast between the two is remarkable, and I’d love to get at what the causes of the difference are.

I think it essentially boils down to three things.  Self-organisation, timeliness/predictability and variety.

Self-organisation is the fact that I choose how to deal with the demands made of me by a business school.  Those demands are severe but the requirements are clear, and the manner in which I produce the correct output is entirely up to me.  This allows me to self-determine how I tackle the time constraints rather than have to contort my approach to fit the work schedule someone else has designed.

By Timeliness/Predictability, I mean the simple fact that things begin and end on time, and at clearly defined times.  I also mean that things don’t last longer than they need to.  At Wharton, we never spent 3 hours doing a piece of work that could be tackled in 90 minutes.  Meetings were not a place for idle speculation, we expected everyone on a team to have done their work ahead of time and to be able to express clearly their point of view.  At work, meetings turn into insufferable and intermlinable talking shops that consume your day with meaningless to-and-fro conversations that lead nowhere and seem to serve peoples egos more than they do the project.  When things begin and end on time, the value of the time in-between the meetings you have is multiplied by a hundred because you can reliably plan to use that time.  If you work in a culture where nothing begins or ends on time, you never leverage the time in-between meetings because you never know with any certainty whether you’ll really be free or not.

Variety refers to the fact that although you may be working solidly for 6 hours of the day in classes, it’s 4 different classes and the different subject matters keep you alert.  You’re not being asked to switch gears every 5 minutes (which is what happens in my office because of constant interruptions from nearby colleagues, the telephone or ‘urgent’ emails), but nor are you required to review the same 80-page contract for a solid 5 hours, which is a skill only lawyers are genetically programmed to be able to complete.  The variety of tasks and subjects allows you to stay alert.

So how to transpose this into your work life?

1/  Take control of the work you do.  Don’t let others organise you.  This means taking ownership and responsibility for the projects and your input into them because otherwise you become a cog in a machine, and you’re forced to work at the pace set by others.

2/ Impose your schedule on others.  Don’t accept meetings outside your working day unless there’s a real need (someone else’s heavy schedule isn’t a real need).  Start meetings on time, finish on time, tell people you have something else afterwards.  Don’t let meetings be open-ended.  Use agendas.

3/ Don’t answer the telephone when it rings.  People abuse their ability to speak to you whenever they choose.  Filter your internal calls, answer external calls where necessary.  Shut down your email program and restart it when you’re ready to check email, rather than dealing with stuff as and when it arrives, and allowing it to set the pace of your work.  Flush your blackberry down the toilet.

Easy principles to state.  Harder to put into practice.  But when you look at how much we are able to get done in a regulated environment, the payoff from this sort of approach is staggeringly large, both in terms of productivity and lifestyle.