New Blog: Adeologue.com

To all readers,
I am excited to announce my new blog, Adeologue @ www.adeologue.com on how to change the world of students, recent graduates, and would be young entrepreneurs.

All posts from this blog are migrated towards the new blog. Henceforth, please visit the new blog www.adeologue.com for latest posts.

I am sorry for the inconvenience I may have caused to you.

Don't forget to check "One Page Book Review" series on my new blog. Please find the details here: Soar With Your Strengths

See you on Adeologue.com then :-)

Thanks,
Aditya

What makes them Entrepreneurial? # 20

Their Passion!

So clichéd characteristic, right? But the interesting thing is most of us still don’t follow it.

I discussed with many successful entrepreneurs, read many books, listened to many thought leaders, and everybody said the same thing – go for your passion. Sounds like these four words are magic and if I just believe in it, it will act as alchemy.

So I started wondering why only entrepreneurial people require so much of passion. Why being passionate is not applicable for other professionals as well? Or what exactly ‘entrepreneurship’ is and what is it’s relation with ‘passion’?

What is Entrepreneurship?

Many people define this term in many different ways. I found this definition from Kavita Ramdas, Global Fund for Women to be the most interesting one. She defines this term by looking into the roots of its origin from French language. She says that it is the combination of two different French words, "entre" meaning ‘to be in’ and "prendre" meaning ‘to take’. That suggests that ‘Entrepreneurship’ means the act of immersion into something that also takes hold of you.

What is Passion?

After discussing with many entrepreneurs, one common characteristic I strongly noticed that the main driving force behind their entrepreneurial mind was – their passion. It was the passion to innovate the next remarkable product or service, the passion to add value to the customers, the passion to become rich out of the business, the passion to empower the people through generating more employment opportunities, and the passion to change the world! Their passion is a force, sometimes an uncontrollable force that infuses their life with some great meaning and joy. It is that incredibly compelling emotion that enables them to go places others are afraid to go, to try things others are afraid to do and to be the kind of people others are afraid to be! It creates the energy and drive required to do what others think is impossible.

That explains, why we need passion to get immersed into something, which literally takes hold of you. Now, I don’t doubt, that if I follow my passion, then it will surely act as alchemy.

But one thing I would learn from this topic, that it's always good to have passion in any profession. But for entrepreneurship, it is the necessity, whereas for other professions, you can survive without it.

What do you think? Isn't passion is must in any walk of life? Share your inputs if you think you can go ahead without it.

For more articles in this series, please visit: What makes them Entrepreneurial?

entrepreneur startup small business success innovation strategic venture problem idea confidence passion ability failure networking relationships

Why you should do your homework before you ask for help?

I have already written in my previous post about the necessity of doing your own homework before you ask for someone's help. Here is a classy example of why I strongly believe that people should do their own homework before they ask for help or ask for anything. I received a generic message (meaning it was not a specific scrap for me, in short it was a spam) on Orktut.com from one of my friends. The message goes like this –

Scrap me one memory that you and I had together. It doesn't matter if you knew me a little or a lot, anything that you can remember! Don't send a message, Scrap. Next, send this to all of your friends and see how many people leave a memory about you. It's actually pretty cool (and funny) to see the responses.

Well, this exercise sounds interesting to me, but the funny part is, there was no proactive action taken by that user. I wonder, how many such memory scraps he had written for others first before asking others to write it. I would have appreciated his request more, if he would have written a scrap about our memory first, and then requesting me to write the similar one. As I said earlier in my previous post,

The superior man acts before he speaks, and afterwards speaks according to his action.

I think this surely is a fun exercise, but we should set the example before we ask others to take any action for us.

What do you think? Would you write me a scrap about our one of the memories without I write the same about you? Let me know if you think my approach is wrong.

help homework necessity orkut scrap message action proactive

The Present

I just finished reading 'The Present -- By Spencer Johnson'. This book explains very common yet powerful concept in very simple manner. The crux of the book is how to live in the present while learning from the past and planning for the future to achieve happiness in work and personal life. Here are my learnings from the book.

Living in The Present

It explains The Present (Gift) is not The Past, and not The Future, it is The Present moment, it is now. It means focusing on and paying attention to what is happening right now. Usually when you are in the office, you think where else you might enjoy working more, or what you will do when you go home. When you are in the meeting or chatting with friends, your mind wanders somewhere else. So this concept explains very powerful strategy to focus on the present moment and concentrate on the activity which is happening in that moment. When you focus on what is right in the present moment, it makes you happier. And it gives you confidence and needed energy to deal with what is wrong.

Learning from The Past

Now focusing on present doesn’t mean that you should forget about past. Everybody does some mistakes in the past. But you shouldn’t keep worrying about those past mistakes. You might keep thinking about that past, and may spoil the present. It is hard to let go of the past if you have not learned from the past. As soon as you learn from your mistakes, you can let that go away and move on in the present. Once you learn from the past, it is easy to enjoy in the present, which eventually enhances your performance in the present. It also tells that one must not live in the past. When you are feeling unhappy in the present, then it is time to learn from the past or plan the future.

Planning for The Future

The common behavior of people is to live in the future and be anxious about events in the future. It explains we should plan for the future but we should not live in the future. Only way we can make our future better than our present is to plan for the future. Planning for future reduces the uncertainty, anxiety and fear about future events as you are actively working on your plan to achieve your goals in the future. So we should visualize a wonderful future, create a realistic plan to help it happen and then take actions in the present to achieve the desired success.

Living for Purpose

At the last, it explains, living in the present, learning from the past, and planning for the future is not all there is. It is only when you live with the purpose, and respond to what’s important about the present, past and future, has all the meaning. Living with purpose means not only knowing what to do, but also understanding why to do. It means rising each day and seeing what meaning it will hold for you and for others as a result of your actions.

present gift future past work personal life purpose success happiness plan live learn

The Foresee (Four ‘C’) Theory!

Question: The most important million-dollar question – What is the best time to start an entrepreneurial activity?

Answer: The best time to start was last year and the second best time to start is right now. -- Seth Godin

Well, this statement is fully valid if you are prepared with the four basic essential requirements of starting a startup. I learned these concepts from Nickhil Jakatdar. I coined it as The Foresee (Four ‘C’) Theory:

1. Critical Problem: Identify the problem that you are trying to solve, how critical is that to the customer. The key behind knowing which problem is the most critical is, asking the right questions to the customers. Customers may give right answers to your wrong questions, but that will not help you to understand the customer’s real need. For example, you may develop a software with highly simplistic User Interface. Now if you ask the customer that are they finding the simple UI useful, then customer obviously will say that yes it’s very helpful. But you missed the opportunity to understand that the customer’s critical problem is to have high performance software.

2. Compelling Solution: Let’s assume that you have identified the critical problem to solve. Now the most challenging requirement is how compelling is your solution. There may be many competitors who are trying to solve the same critical problem, but what are the differentiating factors of your solution that will overperform your competitor’s solution. Once you are able to list down the differentiating factors, then you can say that you have satisfied one of the basic requirements to start.

3. Considerable Market: Understanding how generic is the problem to a particular industry is as important as finding out how critical is the problem. If you talked to only one customer and identified a critical problem, then you are probably not ready to start a company. Talk to many customers and make sure that it is a generic situation and there exists a considerable market, which will pay for your solution.

4. Champion Team: You need to answer – why and how your founding team can develop the compelling solution. In the startup environment, you have to have the intelligent and smart set of people who have abilities to put long hours, bear stress, and perform multidisciplinary work. People with these abilities and right attitude form a champion team. Check whether your founding team members are champions or not.

If you can answer above four points, then you are all set to start. With this preparation, now you should not delay in starting your startup. In general, it is highly advisable to start it as early as possible. I have already discussed why to start ASAP in my previous post.



For more articles on Entrepreneurial series, please visit: What makes them Entrepreneurial?

entrepreneur startup small business success innovation strategic venture foresee idea confidence passion ability problem critical compelling solution market time champion team

Soar With Your Strengths!

I am currently reading this book ‘Soar with your Strengths’ – By Donald Clifton and Paula Nelson. I am about to complete studying this book, but couldn’t resist to mention about it as it is that fascinating and highly thoughtful book. It explains a very phenomenal concept, a ‘Strength Theory’, which basically is oriented around the concept of finding out what you do well and doing more of it and also finding out what you don’t do well and stop doing it.

Most of the times, our approach is to fix our weaknesses, as we assume that by fixing those, we will become stronger. But this is a fundamentally wrong assumption. For example, Hemingway was a great author but was very famous for his poor spelling and syntax mistakes. But he did not spend his time in correcting those mistakes as he knew that that is not going to make his writing great. Its his thoughts which make it the excellent writing. He worked with editors to take care of the grammatical aspect of his writing. He focused on his strength i.e. his rich thoughts.

So the key is, excellence can be achieved only by focusing on strengths and managing weaknesses, not through the elimination of weaknesses.

Also, the common assumption is if you are good at something, then you do not need to work on it as strengths will develop naturally. Its not practice makes a man perfect, its practicing strengths makes a man perfect. The idea is, if you develop your strengths to the maximum, the strengths become so great that it overwhelms the weaknesses.

I highly recommend to read this book as it explains how to identify your strengths, how to solve the dilemma of multiple strengths, how to manage the weakness, and lot more in very simple manner.

I hope you will find this theory interesting. Go work on it, you may unleash the whole new ‘powerful you’ with your real strengths.

strength weakness practice manage education improvement development focus work job study organization leadership

If you are not falling over, you are not working hard enough...

“If I ever finish a speech, and I can still standup, then that was a lousy speech”, says Tom Peters.

It’s that last drop of energy and the immense vitality of a person, which she puts in her performance makes that performance an outstanding one. When an actress performs a theatrical show, she acts on stage with fullest possible of energy, and as she walks off the stage, she falls down. Same is the case with a football player, a dancer or a speaker. They put every possible bit of their energy when it’s the show time.

The same approach is applicable to other professionals as well. Let it be your corporate full time job, let it be your entrepreneurial venture, or let it be your part time non-profit project. If you are not falling over at the end of the project, then remember that you are not working hard enough on that project.

Everybody is aware of the intellectual capital or the potential talent of an individual who is contributing into a project. And that’s why those individuals are assigned to that project. So we don’t have to talk about that aspect any more. Now it’s the actual energy and the dedication that someone is putting into any particular project, will make that project the great going project.

Remember these four words, and I am guarantying you that they will change your life – “No Pressure, No Diamonds!”

I had taken a part time course to hone my professional skills while working full time for my company and doing bunch of other things parallely. It was very hard at times to manage so many things and many times the thought ‘why did I take this course’ did pop in my mind. There was a period when I was not spending enough time on it, as I wasn’t finding it very interesting.

But for the last 3-4 days, I slogged very hard and covered all those things which I missed for last many days. Today I appeared for it’s final exams. And I literally fell over as soon as I came out of the exam hall. The grades may not matter me a lot now, when I know that I gave my best possible shot and I learned a lot from that course. I was satisfied.

multiple project time management education energy enthusiasm passion hardwork performance entrepreneur startup study exam hard work job corporate

What makes them Entrepreneurial? # 19

Their ability to build ‘Quality Relationships’!

As I mentioned in my previous post, that entrepreneurs are sales people. And one of the vital aspects of sales process is to grow your contacts and build the network. Many people visit a networking group, talk to dozens of people and gather as many business cards as possible, follow up on those business cards and develop some more connections. But it’s not important to have only big quantity of your network. Entrepreneurs focus on building a quality network while maintaining the quantity aspect.

As they say,

• Whom you know is more important than what you know.
• How well you know them is more important than whom you know.

While building the network (actually I hate to call this effort as networking effort, so let me call it as ‘relationships’), so while building the new relationships, entrepreneurs focus on following key aspects:

1. Frequency Matching: It is very simple to understand that the best results can come from attending the appropriate networking events, which are related to your particular industry. If you are individual business owner, then it makes sense to attend conferences or clubs where small businesspersons meet. On the other hand, if you are looking for merger and acquisition deals, then executive level conferences and CEO associations makes perfect sense. Also, by attending tradeshows or business conferences, entrepreneurs develop contacts with potential clients.

2. Quality versus Quantity: Attending relevant networking sessions or business conferences is not enough, as there are many other people who are also attending that event to develop some more contacts. Some people just keep their eyes roving around the room, seeking for their next victim and collecting business cards than establishing a relationship. Entrepreneurs know before hand that with which types of people they want to develop the contacts. They know how to get quick introduction from a new person and identify if that matches with their objective. They don’t waste their own time as well other person’s time in just building one more contact which may not be useful for both of them.

3. Starting Short and Sweet: As I mentioned in above point, that entrepreneurs keep the introduction short but sweet. The introduction explains what you do and for whom in very crisp and clear manner. Of course, there is a preparation that goes behind this approach. Each of these introductions needs to be well-rehearsed so that they can recite them at any time and under any circumstance. The crux of these powerful introductions is how authenticate they are. The more genuine they are, the more passion and clarity the other person sees through. And as we know, we have only one chance to make a great first impression, being sweet is an essential attribute of entrepreneur’s effective start. Their firm handshake, confident facial expressions, straight eye contact, genuine smile and their interest in the other person makes their introduction the influential ones.

As we all know that, relationships are very important in any walk of life, it is very important that we build long lasting, and quality relationships. Entrepreneurs very well understand that today building a business is not a one man show. As Rajesh explained me in the morning, that to develop his new startup, he has to work with 16 other companies. And it’s a no brainer that it can not be possible without having lasting and quality relationships.

Highly recommended reading: Rajesh Setty’s ebook on ‘Lasting Relationships’.

For more articles in this series, please visit: What makes them Entrepreneurial?

entrepreneur startup small business success innovation strategic venture problem idea confidence passion ability failure networking relationships tradeshows event meeting

Email Communication - Handle with Care!

My two heroes, Tim Sanders and Rajesh Setty talks about the same topic: 'Don’t say no over email' in their blog posts.

Here is what Rajesh has to say,

“Breaking bad news by email: Everyone loves a surprise but only if it is a positive one. Nobody wants a negative surprise. We don't know where people read their emails and what questions they have when they read that email. There is a bad news already and you can only make it worse by breaking that news by email.”

Read Rajesh’s original post on 10 Desperate Acts to Avoid.

Here is a video recorded at my own alma matter, USC campus in which Tim expresses his thoughts about email communication:



I did these mistakes several times, but now I learned a very powerful message – use personal communication medium to convey negation.

But, who will teach this message to HR people, recruiters, scholarship officials, admission authorities, and many more?

If you think about this, all your most of the declinations come through email only.

For example, you may have 1-hour phone screen interview, but you will never expect a 10 minutes call from the same recruiter explaining why you couldn’t clear the interview. A plain text email works with them, as if they really don’t care about the candidates’ emotions. In other situations, if you are getting an offer, they do have time to give you good news over the phone.

Recruiters do 2 things wrong:

1. They break this bad news and say no to job offer or further interview rounds through email.
2. They don’t explain where excatly candidate did the mistakes. How on this earth candidate will learn that where he/she did wrong and what are the areas he/she needs to improve? I never understood what are those "corporate" policies which stop recruiters in discussing the weaknesses of candidate and providing him/her a chance to improve?

So saying NO over email is very common, especially if you are expecting good news to come out of that communication. And I have seen many incidences when people draw 'n' numbers of conclusions from that 'no' email and waste their time in analyzing the unnecessary stuff which makes their situation worse.

Today we both learned about this very vital aspect, now its in our hand to spread the message and make more and more people aware of this critical practice.

email communication effective emotional job recruiter admission scholarship company education improvement

Under New Management - Counterview

Seth Godin, discussed very interesting practice -- putting a sign: “Under New Management” on someone's store.

Seth says,

“If I liked your store before, now I'm on notice to be careful--it might not be as good. If I didn't like your store before, why on earth am I paying attention to your little sign and why should I go out of my way to take another chance?”

With all due respect, I want to argue with Seth on this observation. My understanding is, most of the times, the situation to have a new management will occur only when the old management is not performing great. Having said that, Seth’s second observation holds valid, as most of the customers must be unhappy because of bad management.

Very unlikely, the great going management, which is making customers happy needs to step down and have a new management on the board. The probability of Seth’s first observation is very less.

So if I am a store owner with a new management crew, then I would definitely like to tell my customers that we have a new management and we have a confidence that we will manage this store in better ways than previous management. All I am telling to my customers is that, you have one more chance to get happy again.

If I fail to do so, then you have nothing to loose as you are already unhappy and you may not come again to my store. But if I am able to meet the promises, then you, as a customer are going to get benefited by it.

In short, I will not buy Seth’s argument that

“The sign is about the owner, not about the prospect.”

I think it’s about promising the prospect to the customer. And customer should give a chance to a confident promiser.

marketing customers seth godin management small business improvement strategy

What makes them Entrepreneurial? # 18

Their ‘Good Health’!

I recently read that one of the vital reasons why entrepreneurs can sustain in the race of stressful competition is that they are healthy people.

Happiness lies, first of all, in health. --George William Curtis

Being physically resilient and maintaining good health is probably an inherent aspect of successful entrepreneurs. Healthy entrepreneurs can work for extended periods of time and they can handle stressful situations comparatively in more composed manner. While they are in the process of building their business, they hardly fall sick.

They very well know that they can not afford getting sick, so they take atmost care of maintaining their health to maintain their status in the startup race.

A man too busy to take care of his health is like a mechanic too busy to take care of his tools.

In startup environments, you can not afford to support a dedicated staff to cover all business functions, and therefore entrepreneurs perform multiple tasks and for that, they need to work long hours. At the end of the eight-hour day, when everyone else leaves for home, an entrepreneur has to continue working in the evening, especially on the innovation aspect.

After finishing day’s routine work, they need to spend more time in the evening in identifying the innovative approaches in their business and technology products. To create a remarkable product or service, they need to be more creative at the end of the day instead of getting exhausted.

Having good health and maintaining an appropriate balance in life makes them sustainable entrepreneurs in this highly competitive startup journey.


For more articles in this series, please visit: What makes them Entrepreneurial?

entrepreneur startup small business success innovation strategic venture problem idea confidence passion ability failure health life creative

An inevitable attribute of growth – Confidence!

I shared one of my thoughts with my friends -

It is optional to become confident because you are successful, but it is mandatory to be confident to become successful. --Aditya Kothadiya

Success is a very vague term. Most of the times, we define someone’s success based on society’s common criteria - money, position, and power. Let’s assume that this is an acceptable measure (though its highly debatable topic to define someone’ success measure). Based on these criteria, we can easily identify who are successful people and who are not.

One thing I always observed that someone who is successful (based on our earlier assumption) doesn’t necessarily mean that he or she is confident. I strongly believe that it is mandatory to be confident if you want to become successful. But not all successful people are confident.

Now you may ask that how it is possible to say that someone who is successful may not be confident if being confident is the first step for being successful.

My observation is that initial success can be achieved with some little confidence level, with some luck, or may be with initial efforts. But then success is not a destination, it’s a journey. With consistent and conscious efforts, we have to make sure that we are continuing to achieve different milestones of this journey one after one.

When we achieve initial success milestone, it is necessary to boost your confidence level based on that success, however small and trivial that achievement may be. We should learn to cherish these small achievements, and increase our confidence level. This positive feedback acts a strong fuel and helps us to work diligently to achieve next success milestones.

Not all people build their confidence after their initial success. It is hard to grow as a person, without growing your confidence level.

Identify your strengths from previous achievements, appreciate yourself for those achievements, boost your confidence, and prepare yourself to conquer next milestones. Linear growth in confidence is inevitable attribute of personal growth and success.

success confidence growth management education improvement feedback life achievement grow journey money position power successful win positive development

5 Inspiring Quotes # 3

#1. If everybody's thinking alike, somebody isn't thinking.

#2. This is as true in everyday life as it is in battle: we are given one life and the decision is ours whether to wait for circumstances to make up our mind, or whether to act, and in acting, to live. -- General Omar Bradley

#3. Great ideas and compelling market opportunities are fine starting points. But the real recipe for success is when they are shaped and refined with the help of experienced and committed partners. -- Bill Davidow

#4. Learning is not compulsory, neither is survival. -- W. Edwards Deming

#5. Tragedy of love is not death or seperation, tragedy of love is indifference.

quotes inspiration dedication commitment planning execution perfection love learning ideas opportunities

What are you grateful for?

I already talked about how to start your day with a positive thinking in my previous post - my blood says B+ve. Tim Sanders talks about how to keep thinking positively especially when negative energy takes control of your mind. Read original post by Tim at 'Let your thanks be your shield'. Enjoy his powerful piece of advice!



positive attitude meditation thinking life

You can run away from a problem!

For last couples of weeks I have been going through certain dilemma. There were certain problems and there were some solutions. But solution I was trying to follow, was also giving me a hint that I am actually not solving a problem rather I am running away from it.

They say that the best way to escape from a problem is to solve it. And I was feeling guilty about running away from the problem instead of solving it.

One of my friends helped to solve this dilemma. After a discussion with him, we actually concluded that the problem I am seeing as my problem is actually not worth for me to solve that problem.

To solve the problems of today, we must focus on tomorrow. --Erik Nupponen

If there is not high ROI involved in solving that problem, then it doesn’t matter if I solve it or not. So I decided that I can run away from this problem without feeling more guilty about it.

So whenever you are facing some problem, get into its depth and first analyze whether is this a real problem for you and what’s the ROI involved in solving that problem.

When solving problems, dig at the roots instead of just hacking at the leaves. --Anthony J. D'Angelo

If there is less ROI in this solution compared to other options, then you can run away from this problem to solve some other real problems.

problem solution real ROI critical future life root personal self

Doing Vs Saying

Do you see some of your colleagues boast hell lot of things which they actually never worked on?
Do you pity some of your colleagues who work hard but never mentioned about it?

I find such people in many situations – let it be your colleagues from professional world or let it be your friends in personal life.

Some people actually do very small things but while presenting it, they say lot of unnecessary things showing off how hard they worked on it. On the contrary, some people really work hard and implement many things, but do not find it necessary to explain every details, so never speak about it.

I think these both practices are absolutely wrong.

Bullshitters:
Just boasting about small actions and selling stories in which you were never involved is nothing but a bullshitting. You will be doing crime if you are showing off your little work and are expecting rewards for which you have not worked on.

Ignorants:
Whereas, working diligently and not conveying it appropriately is foolishness. Action is always respectful, but sitting quite after that is not. Your supervisor or colleague will never understand what potential you have unless you let them know about it.

Performers:
We want to be in the corner where you are first doing the things, and then saying what exactly you have done.

• You should speak so that people around you can learn from you.
• You should speak because people can tell you whether you are doing right thing or not.
• You should discuss your work so that people may come up with better ways of doing it.
• And finally, you should speak because you are entitled to get rewards and recognition for your hard work.

So hence forth, make sure when you are achieving something, speak about it – that’s how your performance will get noticed.

The superior man acts before he speaks, and afterwards speaks according to his action.

boast saying doing performance action success reward recognition work education friends

WebGuru # 2 : From Concept to Reality

By Mr. Nickhil Jakatdar, Cadence Design Systems

COEP Foundation’s Silicon Valley Chapter conducts a series called “WebGuru: COEP Foundation's Distance Guidance Initiative”. As the name suggests, the motivation of this initiative is to provide guidance to the students in COEP through live video conferencing seminars by eminent personalities in USA. The talks in the current seminar series are focused on making students aware of opportunities available in different career paths.

In this talk of the series, Mr. Nickhil Jakatdar presented his insights and experiences on his entrepreneurial journey - ‘From Concept to Reality’.

About Author: Nickhil is a Engineering Group Director in Cadence Design Systems, USA. He co-founded Timbre Technologies when he was studying in a graduate school. He sold that company to Tokyo Electronics for handsome amount of money. He also served as president and COO of Praesagus. Nickhil completed his MS and PhD from UC Berkeley and BE from COEP, University of Pune.

This is 1 hr. 20 mins. talk, but it is a must watch video especially if you are on the verge of getting into an entrepreneurial journey.

I hope you will enjoy this learning session!

entrepreneur startup small business success innovation education engineering train coep seminar career idea webguru reality entrepreneurship phd

What makes them Entrepreneurial? # 17

Their “Don’t Fear” Attitude!

I learned this concept from Tim Sanders’s speech. I will not try to write it down because I may not be able to replicate his passion. You enjoy the video as it is. It’s a must watch video. For more details about the background of this video, please read Tim’s post on his blog.

For more articles in this series, please visit: What makes them Entrepreneurial?

entrepreneur startup small business success innovation strategic venture problem idea confidence passion ability failure motorola tim sanders paul galvin

What makes them Entrepreneurial? # 16

Their ignorance in knowing their “Limits”!

I learned the other day that there is nothing called ‘pessimistic’ entrepreneurs. ‘Optimism’ is an inevitable attribute of any entrepreneur. They think that all things are possible and they can achieve that. Read my previous post on how entrepreneurs are overconfident about their abilities.

Since our childhood, our parents, our friends and our teachers always warn us about our “limits” and guide us to sense those limits and take steps accordingly. Since childhood, we develop this sense of limits. These are the limits of what we can and cannot accomplish.

Knowing your limits is about being realistic. Many times, it is not based on any logic but is a purely emotional decision. These are the reality checks, which tell us that – whether are we capable of accomplishing it; are we good enough to make it work and are we passionate enough to make it long lasting. We always question our ability based on our sense of limits.

Entrepreneurs don’t!

The difference between an entrepreneurial person and a non-entrepreneurial person is that non-entrepreneurial person has its own limits. -- Aditya Kothadiya

Entrepreneurs either don’t have this sense of limits or they know how to fight against it. Sky is the only limit for them. Removing the sense of limits unleashes the creativity and innovative approaches, which are the key factors of a successful entrepreneurship.

There are no speed limits on the road to excellence. --David W. Johnson


For more articles in this series, please visit: What makes them Entrepreneurial?

entrepreneur startup small business success innovation strategic attention limit venture problem idea confidence passion ability

Did you say you worked for 8 hours?

Clive Thompson wrote interesting habits of tech workers in an article “Meet the Life Hackers”. The article is 6 pages long and mainly explains how high-tech devices affect the productivity of tech workers during office hours.

Every morning you go to office with full of energy and ready to check off your to-do list – but all you get throughout the day is endless stream of interruptions. As soon as you start working on one task, your friend or colleague emails you; when you are replying to that email, someone pings you in your instant messenger (especially the browser based IMs like Gtalk), and the moment you finish these tasks and are getting back to your main work, your cell-phone rings. At the end of the day, you will observe that you have got constantly distracted with other things and have accomplished only a fraction of what you decided to do.

This article covers lot of interesting statistical analysis on how human-computer interaction happens and what are the future innovations in computer systems to make life less interruptive and more productive. As this article is too long, I am highlighting very important points here.

“Each employee spent only 11 minutes on any given project before being interrupted and whisked off to do something else. What's more, each 11-minute project was itself fragmented into even shorter three-minute tasks, like answering e-mail messages, reading a Web page or working on a spreadsheet. And each time a worker was distracted from a task, it would take, on average, 25 minutes to return to that task.”

Yes, you may argue that distractions are not just a plague on our work - sometimes they are our work. So it might be acceptable if you reply to such work related emails or messages. But most of the times you are getting interrupted by your friends or non-office related colleagues. Emailing and chatting with friends make you feel alive. It's what makes you feel important. You just want to connect, connect, and connect. But what happens when you take that to the extreme? You get overconnected. We have to decide when, how fast and how many times we should get connected to external world.

“How fast are you supposed to reply to an e-mail message? Or an instant message? Computer-based interruptions fall into a sort of Heisenbergian uncertainty trap: it is difficult to know whether an e-mail message is worth interrupting your work for unless you open and read it - at which point you have, of course, interrupted yourself.”

Consider this observation as well –

“Once their work becomes buried beneath a screenful of interruptions, office workers appear to literally forget what task they were originally pursuing. Researchers find that 40 percent of the time, workers wander off in a new direction when an interruption ends, distracted by the technological equivalent of shiny objects. The central danger of interruptions is not really the interruption at all. It is the havoc we wreak with our short-term memory: What the heck was I just doing?”

This article also states that what research activities Microsoft is conducting to make these interruptions less interruptive and making users’ life more productive.

“Instead of pinging us with e-mail and instant messages the second they arrive, our machines could store them up - to be delivered only at an optimum moment, when our brains are mostly relaxed. With artificial intelligence, computer designers could re-engineer our e-mail programs, our messaging and even our phones so that each tool would work like a personal butler - tiptoeing around us when things are hectic and barging in only when our crises have passed. Horvitz's (a researcher at Microsoft) early prototypes offer an impressive glimpse of what's possible. An e-mail program he produced seven years ago, code-named Priorities, analyzes the content of your incoming e-mail messages and ranks them based on the urgency of the message and your relationship with the sender, then weighs that against how busy you are. Superurgent mail is delivered right away; everything else waits in a queue until you're no longer busy.”

Wow! Microsoft is really doing some solid stuff in making human-computer interaction more productive and easier.

Now you must have realized that how less time we spend on our actual office work and how more time we spend on personal work. Now days, I follow this methodology very strictly – close your browser during actual office hours and check emails only in the morning, during lunch break, during afternoon coffee break and at the end of the day. At least it is working effectively with me. See if it works with you as well.

office corporate interruption work productivity microsoft research artificial intelligence email