Uncontrolled Musing

When I start thinking about future, my mind exploding without control, particularly current events and state of our economy. There is no definite answer to following questions.

1. Are we at recession or depression or nothing?
2. Occupywallstreet will become a revolutionary movement or just like tea party, it will also subside?
3.  President Obama able to win job bill or it will go under water.
4.  If we are not in recession, what is the status of this market?
5. What will happen to 401k, IRA and other investments?
6.  Are we bear market or bull market or pig?
7. How many more days (months/years) we need to worry about our job?
8.  When will my home value improves?

The above all are somehow interrelated, a better economy spurs growth which will eliminate all uncertainty. But no one here able to pin point what went wrong and how to fix it. If we know the answer, we could have somehow fixed this mess already.The issues with unable to fix current state of economy are,

Very complicated: This economy structure is complicated than before. Globalization added more complex. No one can predict what is going on in the economy.

Baby Boomers: There are more social welfare created by baby boomers which strains our economy. Politian can’t touch these because fear of losing vote bank

Weak Banks:  Strong economy needs strong banks but now banks are weaker and to make things worse, European banks holds sovereign bonds, those are vulnerable to default.

Aged population: Developed nations are facing more and more aged population, which creates social burden

Other Reasons: Low consumer confidence, deteriorating housing market, high fuel cost, weakness in emerging market etc

What will happen – A radical perspective

So what will happen next, that’s the question pop up everyone’s mind. But most of us and most of the time deep dive into current events to get confused. But I think answer is very clear than we think. We will be like this for some time, 15-20 years.

Japan Model: We are exactly now at the state of Japan model. Since 1980s Japan economy is in very slow growth but it didn’t become depression because some companies did really well. The same thing happening here also, the stocks like Apple, Amazon are doing great in spite of bad market condition. This trend will continue for near future.

Housing market: Price will recover in some places quicker than others, for example, in Midwest some manufacturing activities could spur growth than Sun Belt southern states.

Stock Market: For next decade or so, we can experience some highs and lows of stock market. Stock market will oscillate between highs and lows very often. The conventional wisdom of “Invest in low to make money in high” may be obsolete. The new wisdom is “invest in right companies and forget it”.

Job Market: Job market is something hangs on in middle because cash rich companies have to hire and others also hire because of baby boomer’s retirement. The part time jobs will become big market.

Workalcoholics

Are you a workalcoholic? 

If your answer is “no”, most likely you are an anti social because our culture always praise workalcoholism. Why we are over working? First I thought, work giving some satisfaction and it’s linked some form of happiness. Work place regularly praise Workalcoholics, the instant reward makes a surge of happiness.

During this economic meltdown, most of us become workalcoholics,the ever increasing weekly work hours from government report supports that assertion. So workalcoholicism based on fear, i think the instant rewards now become obsolete but still more and more people over working meaning, workalcoholicism is based on fear.

But unfortunately working based on fear will not yield good results.Its again and again proved that free environment provides creative working culture and more productivity. Most of workalocoholics think of more work hence they won’t think finishing work 100% but open for more work.

How to avoid become workalocoholicsim? 

1.  Unknown leads to fear, fear leads to stress, stress leads to over work, at same time it increases health risks. So always be with knowns. What you good with, be with it.
2. Update with latest improvements. The more you know about latest technology, news, less you worry about current job. This stops fear and over work.
3. Life is meaningful without work also. Most of millionaires are not over worked; they are creative and self employed.
4. Prioritize and prepare. Do some homework. 1 hour of homework will eliminate 3 hours of real work if we plan and prepare for it.
5. Don’t think more you work you get more raise and bonus.

Façade

I usually drive by the million dollar home daily twice. One of the kind façade and fantastic architecture, and flawless house. Yesterday when as usual I drive by, they were painting their mail box which was looking great to me though. I started wondering why they are obsessed with façade, why they want to perfect on everything. I thought I was right, because we are spending too much resource for façades and other unimportant things in our life for me those are show off. After some time, I started realized that those are needed to show our hard work, dedication, commitment and determination rather than show off wealth.

 Life is not to live as we wanted to live but there should be some meaning. We want to show others that we are capable of doing something, doing something unique. It is completely opposite to liberal point of view of everyone is equal. But at same time, most of us not ready to take that part of wisdom, so jump into conclusion based on façade. In order to satisfy all, giving importance to façade is not just show off.

                So a beautiful façade with a weak backyard is okay? But that depends on whom we ask, but conventional wisdom is “Internal beauty can be visible through façade”. 

Inspiration and desperation

We inspire with others, we follow, and we prosper together. But after sometime the trailblazer stops blazing, what to do now? Desperation or continue our journey. Most of the time people stop doing what they did by inspiring others. I spent quite some time but none were discussed about this topic.

For example, U.S.A is leader of world, they led all war and other’s followed and fought with them. Now in Libya, U.S.A due to internal pressure not leading and war against Gaddafi stalled. The leader stopped leading others and all are collapsed or not effective as before. Why this is happening? How to avoid it?

1.       Don’t abuse leaders: When leaders leading something, don’t take everything grated rather use the opportunity to learn and document it.

2.       Document all the advice: When leaders giving advice when they are leading those are not just advice, those are insights and priceless piece of wisdom and document it.

3.       Don’t question leaders: Leaders say something with in context always, don’t ask question and don’t ignore those. All are very effective because leaders won’t talk for talking.

4.       No middle ground: If we inspire with others, we have to align with leaders all the time. There is no middle ground. The actions which are taken by leaders should be committed. If we follow leader without committed we can’t repeat it when leaders not present.

Actually once we start following leaders, we have to become that leader after some point of time. Leadership main objective is creating as many as leaders.

How to live Happy?

1. Nothing is constant. Be prepared for changes. One day driving Benz car may not be same next day, we may have to drive bi cycle. Life is full of changes.

2. Don’t try to change others unless they are willing to go through transforms which is very rare.

3. Don’t say what ever we think through our mind. There is always some polish needed for good personal relationship.

4. Plan it, invest it, make money work for you, not that you work for money

5. Daily read some spiritual books or tell mantra.Keep your brain clean from negative thoughts.

6. Be honest with everyone, if can’t, if we have to tell lies then that’s sign of withdraw from that entity.

7. Don’t afraid of destroying some. I mean liquidate somethings.

8. Tell good things about others, may some extra also fine.

9. Keep time, bond with it, time will give you health and wealth.

10. Last but not the least, always smile even when we are in dire situation.

Negativity & English

We witnessed Team India's classic way of losing a Cricket game against modest form but talented Cricket team yesterday. One point of time, we were looking so good to win the game but next moment we weren’t. Historically if we take most of Indian Cricket lost, 90% of time (hypothetically speaking) team possessed greater chance of winning at some point of game but still managed to lose.

Why we are suddenly become negativity?

Why we are losing even though all are pointing to right direction?

Why we are still stuck with service industry but not booming in technology?

Why we can’t think positive always, if positive why we think negative next moment?

I’m thinking about it ever since I can think but the answer still elusive, but based on my opinion, the way we acquired English language from British contributing most of our Negative thinking.

My conclusion is,

When British colonized India they carefully spread negative words, in many cases, they want to look better than their peer Indians hence they used lot of negative words which become custom in Indian English language.

Passion vs. Addiction

I never ever heard the word ‘passion’ from Indian English language.  If one is very much into something not socially acceptable then we labeled them addicted NOT passionate. Just imagine, passion is something positive, encouraging but addiction is something negative which make the target thinking negatively.

Determination vs. Adamant

Something like Passion, determination is not a common word in Indian English but we substitute wrongly adamant. But determination is a very positive word but adamant created a negative feeling.

I can go on and on, but matter of fact is, people who ever speaks pure form of their mother tongue  used very less negative words, they naturally very positive people. But who speaks mixed form of language (50-50 English and mother language) are the one tilt to negative.  I’m here pointing out why we become negative when we are absolute positive not the trait of positive and negative person.

Jack in the box

“You are lacking out of the box thinking?”, the statement very common in our white collar profession. The statement mostly used when politicized situation or performance review. Actually what exactly is “out of the box thinking”, as per Wikipedia

“Thinking outside the box is to think differently, unconventionally or from a new perspective. This phrase often refers to novel or creative thinking.”

There are several engineers, developers’ gets this feedback regularly but honestly they don’t know what exactly the reviewer meant. Based on my opinion, “out of the box thinking” is something innate ability or one has to go through elite schooling to get that, so who ever lucky to born with that are the best? I think there is something wrong with this notion, we are pushing people who are not really lacking “out of the box”. But there is something they are missing too. What is that? I think the answer is, most of them are “above average but narrow minded”. Narrow minded is not a bad thing; it is just a trait which can be easily changed.

Even a law written by several top-notch lawmakers and reviewed by several pundits, we have loop holes here and there. So are they missing “out of the box thinking”? I don’t think so, law should cover all possible permutation and combination but most of the law lacking this, which is, mainly because some “narrow minded” compromise and some "narrow minded" people genuinely missing to see some big picture. The same applies to software development also, developers miss to big picture due to narrow minded not because “out of the box thinking”. What we need is training to change that character not unnecessary overloaded labels which are unable to change.    

Above & Beyond

Last decade’s most successful NFL organization is without a doubt New England Patriots (Pats). Even though their Super Star is Tom Brady, but Gem of New England Patriots team is Kevin Faulk. First of all, why he is called Gem of Pats?

1.    Loyal to his team, 11 years with Pats.
2.    3,550 rushing yard.
3.    16 rushing TD
4.    424 receiving and 3,667 receiving yard.
5.    Receiving TD 15

Based on his statistics, one can easily jump into conclusion that he is all-round player; hence he is qualified for Gem of Pats title. But the truth is different, Kevin started his career as Running Back, he was an excellent running back. During his tenure with Pats, over a period of time, his coach asked him to do other jobs also like full back, punt return. Those are not glamorous position in NFL, but Kevin took those jobs without any hesitant rather than quit to join other team as Running Back, which made him a Gem of his team with his astonishing all round performance.

Kevin’s success story makes me think something else which is very important to our changing world and lifestyle. Now we are living in a flat world where the luxury of doing one task per one human is gone. We can’t say “my job description is XYZ and you are asking me to do ABC”. The tasks outside of job description also have to be done as long as we can do it with or without some self-learning. 

There is nothing wrong that a developer tests an application, a architect helps developing some small piece of code, a manager runs some test scripts, a QA engineer debugging a code, a store manager checkout customer while sales clerk out for an emergency.

Advice – It’s all free

If advice is a commodity then it is mostly freely available/exchange commodity in this world. We are all ready to give advice to others about many things. In fact, based my unscientific research, 70-75% of our communication is advice but without advice one can’t reach our goals also. Because most of us inspire with someone who are capable or scholar and their advice are sermon to us. But the point is what to take, what to ignore are real challenge.

Advice from following topic from unprofessional can be ignored straight-out.

1.     Medical: This is no brainer, whenever we seek advice from a group of people, say 10 people; we would get 10 different advices from 10 different people.

2.     Investment: We all know about this, we had bitter experience again and again but we need to follow advice as is from professional or let them handle our finance. Most of us burnt our money because of half-cooked professional advice.

3.     Office politics: We should not take other’s advice anything related to workplace politics. Because workplace politics are very unique and no one in a position to determine what exactly happening inside a private organization, hence outsiders can’t fathom exactly what is happening to us, to make a judgment or advise us for better.

4.     Kid’s Education: This is also similar to Medical, 10 people gives 10 different advice. But we should about our kids and we have to make plan or assist them to choose their future.

5.     Time Management: We all have our unique way of doing our day by day activity hence we should not take other’s advice what to do what when how etc. We have to use our instinct to perform our activity.

6.     Shopping: Each one has their own opinion about what to buy where to buy and when to buy. Getting advice won’t help much. There are some instance where i bought some stuff based on my wife's advice but later on i wasn’t satisfied with it but i couldn’t throw it away because she might feel bad and i couldn’t use it because i didn’t like it. 

7.     Web sites: There are one trillion web sites are there now. Each of us comfortable with some, taking advice which one is good and what to read are not good.

Bottom Line

Any advice from spouse, parents, siblings, close friends, and well wishers (personal level) peers and supervisor (professional level) are considerable. We have to make fair judgment based on their advice, all others can be carefully consider if we are not sure about it, ignore it.

Cheer up

As soon as we are into New Year 2011, we are all some kind of jubilant mood and after some time it fade away. It is very natural but based on my research New Year is the one which creates lot of enthusiasm but won’t keep up. One of main reason is, weather wise January is dull month and most depressive day of the year falls on January 25^th that is exactly a month after Christmas, to add salt, all credit card bill start arriving on around last week of January which has most of our Christmas gift shopping.

As a blogger my job is to encourage all of you to keep up your new year resolutions and cheer up during these depressive days. 

Here are some tips.

1. Normal people set 1 or 2 goals and try to achieve at least 80-90% of end result. So don’t set some aggressive goals.
2. The average times before people to quit smoking are 9. So believe me, if you couldn’t keep up resolution please don’t depress try again and again.
3. Do most of fun activity during first months of a year. For example, i started blogging regularly from a January month which was very relaxing moments to forget weather and mind concentrated on one activity, now i’m helping my son to complete his Star wars Complete saga Xbox game, again believe me his yelling at me when i screwed up anything is really fun.
4.  Plan for spring and summer during January and February. Whenever i say plan that doesn’t mean that step by step project plan kind of thing. All we need is, if our resolution is weight less, and then read about bicycle, trails information’s,explore groups and get a complete picture of bicycling.
5. Resolutions are not made for New Year’s only. We can set resolutions any time of the year like birthdays, father day and anniversary etc.
6. Resolutions aren't final either, modify/add based on our own choices.
7. If your resolution is related to money/saving, then please use good money management software or use your bank’s online services.
8. Donate money to charity or volunteer during these initial months A) this time of year elderly and poor people need more help B) the satisfaction from that keep on us to roll this entire year.