Live Each Day as if it were your first, and every day you would most certainly be right!

In the much talked about lecture from Steve Jobs at Stanford, he mentions about living each day as if it were your last. I mostly tend to agree with what he says, and appreciate his abilities at the pinnacle of human possibilities. When he refers to the last day, he talks about doing everything you can and everything you want on this day, which happens every day. What an approach to continual rapid growth throughout your life!

I would like to take the readers' thoughts to what we all went through on our first day - for sure! A child prior to birth doesn't even eat or breathe, which are the basic necessities of post-birth life. The superlatively generous mother provides it all for free at no efforts whatsoever. And then they are born.

The world welcomes each child with challenges of survival - starting with asking the lungs to work on something they never knew, with an available learning curve (ramp-up period) of a few seconds. And we all have won the battle. We learnt to breathe within such a short time available. We then taught ourselves right away how to feed ourselves, using all the muscles of the mouth, throat, and what not in such stupefying harmony.

All the rest thereafter was strange - the room, the people, the objects. We started grasping everything and relating things, and we all did it successfully. What made us going were the ability and the enthusiasm to learn.

It's the attitude of struggle and curiosity packed in immense optimism, which allowed us all to win perhaps the most important battle of life - the battle of "Life". Remember, not everyone succeeds, we just happen to see those who succeeded, because it is the battle of "Life".

What bowls me over is the immaculate execution of meridian approach I would have had to achieve what I did on my first day, winning over everything that came my way. If, everyday, we can rejuvenate the same optimism and the same attitude we had on the first day of our life, we would most certainly succeed once again each day.

With all respect to the Stanford speech, what is really important is what keeps you motivated - fear of death, or optimism of birth! Choose your way, and succeed in what you want to do, all the best.

MBA in a nutshell - what's the fuss all about!

As I take my last few exams and close the first half of my MBA, I take a step back to identify what this journey was like. I start identifying the gap between my earlier perception of what MBA's are all about and what I am turning into. I came here to realise my dreams of rising up the corporate ladder, with a belief that senior management does some rocket science to run the company, and that I need to know it all. The traditional notions conveyed strongly that even coal when subjected to intense transformation turns into diamond, and that the rigor of an MBA was just the right catalyst for that transformation. I strongly believed that putting myself into that rigor and doing this MBA would do the needful in pushing me up that ladder.

Was it all true? Yes! And No!

Through this period at B-School, I had no clues as to what I was doing. Deeply embedded into those hundreds of case studies, I had no time to think, and had to catch up with a whole set of subjects like accounting decision making stuff and corporate finance, to name a few areas. To drill deeper into this rabbithole, I wish to identify and sum up what I gained with this all.

I have come to understand that I understand more of more now. With a hands-on exercise on the inside details of what happens in the finance world, economics, global trade, and a learning of corporate strategy, organizational dynamics and marketing through detailed analysis of numerous cases, what have I gained?

A better understanding of the corporate world I live in, the environment and the factors that influence corporate decision making, and tips and tools of decision making - I think that sums it up. Overall, MBA to me now is all about general knowledge (or awareness as we may simplistically call) and decision making. That is what I reckon makes those non-MBA enterpreuners iconic examples for us. They are naturally good at decision making and are inherently curious to be sufficiently aware.

So, MBA is no rocket science, it is plain learning fun - unplugged - simple!

:) Have Fun

Bridging e-reading with paper-reading

"'Go-Green, use electronic media to read books'. I've been trying to implement this since long. It just doesn't seem to work. There is an intangible factor to reading from books which can just not be simulated on this screen. The screen is fine to read casual stuff like news articles, but when it comes to reading books and serious text, nothing matches the paper-back book."

If your experiences with reading have been similar, let us try to churn this new concept.

Some of the major reasons why reading on the screen is not as good are:

1) The disconnect between reader and the text comes from the vertical screen away from you and the third element (mouse) handling the way we read. In contrast, a reader is so very connected with the text when "handling" the book, and it makes it so very easy to learn new concepts and refresh/retain them!

2) You can't handle the pdf/doc the way you do your book. You can't underline, highlight, or scribble anywhere you wish on the e-document the way you do on your book.

3) Other handy facilities like placing bookmarks in the book and folding pages to refer back are so useful.

The good news is that the the signs of above said issues fading out have started coming. We have all the right hardware in place, but are perhaps waiting for the right software. The first problem cited above has been addressed by the likes of iPad, which allow a user to connect with the document as he holds it in his hand, flips pages using touch of his fingers. Still, the comfort zone is far from prevalant. Why?

A software that could allow users to read documents and underline/highlight/mark/scribble using a felt pen(very much a reality) and auto-save any changes made on the fly is just what we need. To all software developers this could sound like a trivial piece of software. Truly so, we really need a trivial simplistic solution. As said earlier, we have all the technology and hardware needed to achieve this; we are just waiting for the right initiatives from the software industry.

Being able to use electronic devices to read books and take notes just the way we've always used paper appears to be coming close. This article is an appeal to technology developers to take the necessary steps to create the needful and help penetrate the same to the masses.

Let's Go-Green!

"Employability" life cycle

Following text presents a hard fact of life, with a solution towards its end. Readers are encouraged to respond.

Employability, or the potential in your profile to be rewarded with responsibilities and remunerations that you expect from the industry, has an interesting trend. It follows an inverted U curve. The law of increasing and diminishing returns seems to be working here as well!

Fresh out of college, you are full of enthusiasm - like the dried sponge, waiting to get soaked into the industry. You are always on top of the latest happenings around the world, take up new technologies and processes on the fly, and with each passing day, become more proficient at your work. In other words, your demand in the job market maintains a steady rise.

Your experience largely catalyzes your employability. As you gain experience(number of years could vary from half a dozen to two based on your industry) you start commanding a position in the industry. This is when the slope of the curve starts to reduce. Newer folks are in the ascending stage while you arrive at a "risky" position. Risky, because, with age, your rate of knowledge enhancement has reduced, your ability to work hard has reduced, and you want a higher salary than those younger people who can perform as good!

At the third stage, you are at your vulnerable best, and the peak has happened by. Your heavy salary packages start biting you, and you are left with two possible options. One, fight it out. Push your mind and body to their limits and try to re-establish yourself. Two, dump your self-esteem and let things continue till your employability is non-zero. Commonality in both cases states it is perhaps too late!

Law of diminishing returns is inevitable. However, the good news is that a solution exists for all of us! Economics teaches, "development and technology can postpone diminishing returns in the long run". THE ONLY WAY OUT of this trap is continuous development and use of latest technological tools throughout the career. If one is able to do just these two things, there is no way that one gets overtaken.

Impact of experience on employability experiences an exponential rise when it gets coupled with continuous skill development and technology upgrades. This is THE solution to make sure you plan your succession at work, instead of getting succeeded because of obsoleteness.

Wishing you an exciting latter half of your career!