confidence gap

 

“I would like to go back to being a software engineer, earning the salary of a software engineer” - someone at work told me today. She was quite serious about it and was asking why such an option does not exist for someone to be in the same role forever. This is after nearly 18 years in the career. I was suggesting she take the power programmer route, to remain a programmer all her career since she wanted to do programming only, but as a specialist, earning higher and deserved compensation. 

I am not sure whether it is because of lack of confidence or self belief, but this reminded me of this article - “Confidence Gap”. Many of us suffer from “imposter syndrome”, that we will be discovered as faking our roles. But the article says, it is prominent in women. 

I hesitate to suggest reading this article, to be at the risk of “mansplaining” or being a “benevolent sexist” (effect of being educated about the unconscious biases), but I see many painful instances of women dropping off the career journey due to fatigue, health issues, lack of self belief, not being able to tolerate or work with idiots and fight the political battles, guilt of not being able to give enough time to family and lack of family support.

My experience so far is that a higher percentage of women in the team leads to more care for the people in the team, realistic project planning than taking too much risk, calling spade a spade, much more loyalty and respect for keeping time. I hope we can find more ways to reduce the drop off at later stages.          

Evidence shows that women are less self-assured than men—and that to succeed, confidence matters as much as competence.

Compared with men, women don’t consider themselves as ready for promotions, they predict they’ll do worse on tests, and they generally underestimate their abilities. This disparity stems from factors ranging from upbringing to biology.

Men initiate salary negotiations four times as often as women do, and that when women do negotiate, they ask for 30 percent less money than men do.

Women working at HP applied for a promotion only when they believed they met 100 percent of the qualifications listed for the job. Men were happy to apply when they thought they could meet 60 percent of the job requirements.

Perfectionism is another confidence killer. Study after study confirms that it is largely a female issue, one that extends through women’s entire lives. We don’t answer questions until we are totally sure of the answer. 

Women are more likely than men to form strong emotional memories of negative events. This difference seems to provide a physical basis for a tendency that’s been observed in behavioral studies: compared with men, women are more apt to ruminate over what’s gone wrong in the past. Women seem to be superbly equipped to scan the horizon for threats.

Confidence is a belief in one’s ability to succeed, a belief that stimulates action. In turn, taking action bolsters one’s belief in one’s ability to succeed. So confidence accumulates—through hard work, through success, and even through failure.

craft

Yesterday’s word in the Wordle game was CRAFT. 

I came across a couple of ways craft was talked about in the last few days. 

First was Jerry Seinfeld, promoting the first movie he has directed, at age 70. I had watched and loved the show, Seinfeld. I had read somewhere that comedians tend to understand human psychology better since they need to process a lot to come up with lines that are concentrated wisdom that surprise us and make us laugh. I had also read somewhere that you should not take serious life advice from a comedian. But still. 

Jerry must be on a media tour to promote his movie and hence coming up with “thought bombs” that grab attention (in the first article below, he proclaimed movies are dead). But it was a good read and I came across below excerpt:- 

Stand-up is like you’re a cabinetmaker, and everybody needs a guy who’s good with wood.

There’s trees everywhere, but to make a nice table, it’s not so easy. So, the metaphor is that if you have good craft and craftsmanship, you’re kind of impervious to the whims of the industry. Audiences are now flocking to stand-up because it’s something you can’t fake. It’s like platform diving. You could say you’re a platform diver, but in two seconds we can see if you are or you aren’t. That’s what people like about stand-up. They can trust it. Everything else is fake.

He repeats that in other words in another interview. 

David Remnick: It is possible that you've probably made a dollar or two from Seinfeld, and yet you still work so hard. Why?

Jerry Seinfeld: Because the only thing in life that's really worth having is good skill. Good skill is the greatest possession. The things that money buys are fine. They're good. I like them. But [nothing like] having a skill.

Pursue mastery that will fulfill your life. You will feel good. I know a lot of rich people and they don't feel good as you think they...would. They don't. They're miserable. So I work because if you don't in standup comedy - if you don't do it a lot - you stink.

Finally, I came across another one, from recent Stripe Sessions (edited a bit). 

Craft and Quality, and professional grade software.

To me craft is mindset, and quality is the output.

If you think of anything that was built or created, and well done, it's probably because they cared and they knew their craft. They designed it well. They iterated and prototyped. They chose the right materials. They built it well. It's very easy to see when the person doesn't care. The work is sloppy. There are mistakes. It works and likely breaks down very quickly.

And I think as a software industry the past decade we kind of forgot the craft. More stuff look like something where people didn't care about the craft. We focused on building larger teams. We then made them run like factories churning out new things at a consistent pace. We validated "quality" by A/B testing and looking at metrics. Lot of software today borderline works.

But we are supposed to be professionals and real companies. We're selling products to people to buy. I think our responsibility is to deliver good products and quality products, not something that is sloppy.

Craft is the mindset that creates quality. But it's not enough. You need to have the right skills and ideas. You need individuals who take their profession and craft seriously, then build teams that work this way together, and have a company that creates for it. 

Great products require consistent, daily effort keeping the quality.

Now in the age of AI, I hope people will still flock to craftsmen (is software development an art or craft is a different debate) since they are not fake. The challenge is how to make people passionate about the craft, how to make them care about what they build, how to teach them to think and how to inspire people to keep learning forever. 

weekly notes - wk 17 / 2024

 

1.

I took a break from work (mostly) for a week. I had felt exhausted, out of energy and was wound up so much that I was easily triggered. I feel this past week quieted the mental chatter, helped reduce the anxiety and somehow feels like the inner waves have settled on a more peaceful rhythm. I had let 12 earned leaves lapse by the end of the March, had to work on India holidays since I was on travel and might have worked myself to the point of burn out. Hope to change that this year. 

2.

I am encountering more and more “hints” or “signs” like this one which says wisdom is gained through “weathering storms in tumultuous arenas of life”. In extreme versions, it is stop reading / listening, start doing. But I hope to have a balance to apply the learnings in life and work and curate my reading / learning to match the problems I am facing at the time or to fill the known gaps. 

3. 

I am continuing to make an effort to find and read good long form articles. Few that I liked a lot this week. 

India Uncut is Amit Verma’s newsletter (host of the podcast, The Seen and the Unseen, which is probably the only regular India based podcast that I am listening to now). He is one other person that I have been following for more than a decade and who gave me the language to understand why right wing populism is on the rise across the world. His article on playing to play - “how we live our days is how we live our life” or “how we do small things is how we do big things” is a good reminder. 

Another one I am realizing more and more now - Amit’s article on male friendships, on normalizing telling male friends about loving them or missing them. I read somewhere recently about male friendships going on pause if friends move away, but when they talk again, it is as if they are starting from where they left off. But women keep track of their best friends even if they move countries, texting, calling, to maintain the context. I was talking to my daughter yesterday - she collects funny instances of her friends (even the ones who moved schools) through the year to make the next birthday collage for them (some even voluntarily sending their funny poses for her collection). 

Another rabbit hole I fell into was on Improv - this amazing skill of people who make up stuff on the fly. It started from here - someone making a freestyle rap based on a story line given to him. Read this article afterwards on brain study conducted on such artists - it seems with practice, they switch off the conscious part of the brain and let free association happen. Bookmarked a book - Impro: Improvisation and the theatre. I had found it hard to do extempore talks, unless it is on a topic that I am intimately familiar with. Over time, I am getting a little comfortable with a few quick ones, congratulating someone on their anniversary, farewell anecdotes, welcoming someone and such, but a long way to go. Something to learn. 

4. 

Watched a few movies this past week - I wrote about Perfect Days. 

The Teachers Lounge (German) - it was a social parody, staged in the setting of a school. How a society intent on vilifying and rooting out bad behaviour, ends up targeting and damaging reputations and gets on the psyche of everyone around. Another one where who and what is right and wrong is left to interpretation of the audience. Well acted by all around and gives food for thought.   

Laapata Ladies (Hindi) - another one which I was waiting for. I had watched director Kiran Rao’s earlier film, Dhobi Ghat and many of the films she had produced. This one did not disappoint - a story of two dulhans (newly married, veiled brides), getting switched in a long train journey by mistake and diverging further journeys of both. Liked the earthy story unlike the unreal glitz of typical bollywood movies, accents and good acting. 

5.

I didn’t listen to as many podcasts in April as previous months - many breaks in the daily walks, phone calls replacing podcasts, due to daylight savings time change, during commute to office. 

Listened to a Tim Ferris podcast this week - Martha Beck — The Amazing and Brutal Results of Zero Lies for 365 Days, How to Do a Beginner “Integrity Cleanse,” Lessons from Lion Trackers, and Novel Tactics for Reducing Anxiety (#732). Amazing energy. I was wondering if this is how new age, western gurus speak - she talked about seeing the light, out of body experiences. But the range of experiences people have, adventures, people they meet and the perspectives were interesting. Her experience after deciding not to lie in any form seems to have alienated her from many relationships. I took away that every small lie that we say to get out of social situations harms us in some way, due to the stress and tension of it. It is easier to say the truth, but I need to be better at saying it with kindness and concern for the one in the receiving end.

Listened to another - Infinite Loops podcast by Jim O’Shaughnessy, interviewing Visakan Veerasamy. It is peaceful to listen to such philosophical conversations during an evening walk/run, with the sun setting, with no rush in empty roads. Host of this podcast also is high energy, eternal optimist and as they say in this episode, somewhere intersects the frequency that I tune into.  

6.

A quote that I came across this week. Reminds me to be more intentional in relationships to be able to mirror and magnify each other’s light. 

"The longer I live, the more deeply I learn that love — whether we call it friendship or family or romance — is the work of mirroring and magnifying each other’s light."

 James Baldwin

US vs Europe

 

Yesterday I was talking to a friend who is in Norway, at crossroads about career and where to raise kids. I was telling him about this tweet -  about US vs Europe work culture, education, healthcare, art and culture in general. I read someone else saying tongue in cheek - “France has Mbappe, Mistral..”. 

In India, IT work culture resembles that of the US, with “unpaid overtime” which is taken for granted and similar work life balance issues. NRN was talking about working 70 hrs a week for India to become a developed country, glorifying the unpaid overtime. Meanwhile, emigration is still increasing. Earlier people used to go abroad for postgraduate masters degrees and then continue working there, but now there is a trend of even going for graduate degrees abroad if they can afford it.  

Today, I saw this headline, incidentally from someone in Norway itself saying work life balance apart, “Europe is less hardworking, less ambitious, more regulated and more risk averse”. I had been thinking about this for a long time - with 7.2 hrs of work day, month long vacations, general lack of urgency, over reliance on elaborate processes - how is Europe competitive? 

Like my earlier thought about being nice / kind, building companies for the people to lead a good life - these cultural differences are case studies. What is right in the long term - the US definition of “hard work, ambition” or a more relaxed, community oriented, human centric version of Europe?  

company / community

 

1.

One of the blogs I have followed for more than 15 years, is Matt Webb’s Interconnected. I am not sure how I came across his blog, but it is one I kept track of, as I migrated from blogreader to google reader to feedly over the years. I don’t understand him many times, but like people whom we remember for having given us something in life, I owe him for introducing me to Gregory Bateson’s “Steps to an Ecology of Mind”, all those years back. I came across below in one of his latest blogs. 

"For me, a company is, at least to a degree, for the people in it. Right?

A company that makes not too much profit but is the collective endeavour of many people is a good company, surely? Or rather, it occupies as many people as it requires and allows those people to enjoy a relaxed life.

Imagine a company staffed by people with enough room in their days to build intuitive skill in their work and show empathy to customers. To be not transactional.

And to take long lunches.

That’s good for them and good for the community the company is part of, right?

An aside:

My second job was as Saturday boy at the local ironmonger’s.

One day we cut the hedge and swept the street. We did it for the neighbour too because, as Eric said, that’s what neighbours do."

I had been thinking in similar lines for a long time. I wanted to write down a manifesto of a company which will exist for just the purpose he articulated above - for allowing people who work there to enjoy a relaxed life. Why shouldn’t friends who want the same things work together for life? Instead of the company’s primary purpose as satisfying shareholders and the market, what if one exists for just the people who make up the company. Beyond the rhetoric of “assets of the company walk out every day and come back the next day”, but existing for those assets as the primary purpose. 

2.

I read below in Thejesh’s blog. 

I see that people think being nice is a weakness and never gets work done. It's not true in my experience. I believe not being nice to each other means there are assholes in the surroundings. And they drag down the team. I strictly follow the No Asshole Rule and avoid them at all costs. 

I had been thinking in similar lines the same day I read this. I had thought since long and came to a conclusion that managers in traditional companies cannot be true friends with the team - since if they say everything they know or feel, it might be depressing (same as the way parents may want to protect the children from the harsh realities of the life for as long as possible) and that if you eventually are forced to decide compensation, gradation based on performance, decide on progression of someone’s career under constraints of a limited budget and such, there will be scenarios where it is not possible to be defined as a friend in traditional sense. 

Now the connection to niceness. I had come across the difference between being kind vs being nice - being nice could be interpreted as avoiding unpleasantness and conflict, but being kind could be to put something in a way that conveys the message that is useful to someone but without being an asshole. I was thinking whether the standards are lowered, people not realising their potential and raising their level when everyone is being nice to each other. Compared to the “tough love” of a strict teacher or a boss who demands excellence and won’t settle for anything less or the “hairdryer” treatment managers were known to give to underperforming team mates. I was mentally comparing different groups whom I had known where the collective standards are higher vs lower. Danger is that many times this can slip to asshole territory and become toxic, like the movie “Whiplash” with a teacher who drives the students to the edge of madness in pursuit of perfection. So the question is where is the line and what is the right thing to do. 

I also had come across this line from Naval Ravikant, that I adopted - that one should aspire to work with peers, all relationships as peer relationships, no hierarchies. 

Now combining this, being nice/kind, all relationships as peer relationships with the earlier concept of a company existing for the people - how should the ways of working be? 

3.

For the third and final thread in this is, this story about places where people live the longest. 

"The Chorotega also have a strong sense of community, with the whole town coming together to build each new house. It's a concept called "mano vuelta" which roughly translates as "work for the collective benefit".

"People look for tricks to live longer," Ezekiel said, "But you can't live a life of consumption and greed, then balance it out with superfoods. You have to live in an integrated way: an active life; a kind life; a community life.

"When someone in the village needs a new house, we all come together and build it. When someone slaughters a pig, we all come together and share it. No-one eats too much, but we all have enough. And we take it in turns to provide."

"During my life," he said, "I was not a grand person – a person of significance, or anything like that – but I have always been a good friend. You have to love yourself, and others. Because if you love a friend, you cannot wish anything bad on other people. That stops things going bad for you from the inside."

As we left, he patted my hand and nodded towards Dre. "And it's very important to love a good woman," he said.

I had read about these longitudinal studies where people are followed for decades from childhood to find out what makes people happy, successful. My gist of the takeaway from all that was that, at the end, it is only the relationships that one had which matters. In current times, when the sense of community is degrading, we could be missing out on the critical elements of what makes us happy in the long term.

Now if I combine the sense of community also to the conditions before - company existing for the people, creating conditions for a strong community bonding, being kind to each other, maintaining peer relationships - how should it work? Is it utopian? Does it violate any of the fundamental nature of human beings in which case such endeavours would ultimately fail? Need to take this thought experiment further some day. 

Perfect Days

I have been waiting for one movie to come out on any of the OTT platforms, seeing the praise from many in my “circle” and finally got to watch it - Perfect Days, a Japanese language film, by a German director. It is about a man who goes about his days cleaning toilets in Tokyo. Its dialogues could be printed in a handful of pages, very little is said. It shows the routines of a normal life, simple pleasures in life such as music, nature and books, not worrying about the tomorrows but living in the now, not living to others expectations, needing little, not taking on commitments for the sake of it and being satisfied with what one has. 

I had written “change one thing a day” at the top of the daily journal, to remind myself to change some part of my routine every day, to avoid getting into comfort zones and declining. But this is the opposite - having the exact same routines every day. Same morning routines, same coffee, listening to 70s or 80s songs from cassette tapes, doing the work well, having same food at same place, looking at the nature and its small changes, cycling in the evening to a public bath, eating at the same restaurant, being served the same food with same comment from the same friendly waiter, reading a book till getting sleepy and entering a peaceful sleep.

I had been watching a few movies that just shows lives unfolding, but doesn’t explain, leaving the interpretation to the audience. “Show, don’t tell” philosophy. Afterwards I go into rabbit holes of online discussion forums like reddit to read interpretations, sometimes surprising ones where I missed noticing something. But it is good to make each of these our own, with our own interpretations. Most directors also want the same from their audience.   

In this one, why does he stay alone? Is there something from the past that drove him to this way of living? Is the future going to be the same or will he want change? What about loneliness, needing human connection? He doesn’t react to people wanting to initiate connection, is that deliberate? What does the final scene mean - when the song “life is good” is playing in the background, is he crying from the happiness of his perfect days or mixed with sadness of the effort it takes to maintain his peace? 

I liked that he is treating his job as something to be done perfectly. Someone remarks that the toilets will get dirty again, so why be perfect in cleaning it? Why create custom tools for it? Why look under the surfaces that no one might see, with a handheld mirror and clean there too? As a contrast to a co-worker who cleans absentmindedly, while looking at the phone or wanting to rush and finish so that he can take a girl out. Like Steve Jobs’ philosophy to do a good job with the side of a piece of furniture that is not seen by anyone, that is closer to the wall maybe, but even that to be polished just right. Or everyone who contributed to the Mac machine signing the motherboard of the computer - why make the innards of a gadget look good? There is personal satisfaction in that - to do a job well, that may not be seen by anybody, but just because it is the right thing to do.   

“The world is made up of many worlds; some are connected, and some are not.”

The man and his niece were talking about him and his sister (her mother) living in different worlds. I used to think there are worlds or universes around us. Even entering a building that we might have passed by hundreds of times, but never entered - if we look out from there, to the familiar streets, it is a new perspective that we never had before. I used to try and look at my town with the eyes of a foreigner - what would they see and think? Or each person who passes us by - they are living in their own worlds, which may be very different from what I experience. If we enter the kitchen of a restaurant, the staff quarters of a hotel, inside of a football coaching centre, college for deaf/mute or an arts school - there are an infinite number of such worlds that don’t intersect with mine. 

“Next time is next time. Now is now.” 

They were talking about following the river to the place where it meets the sea, but he said next time, without planning when that next time will be. About living in the present, not in the past or future. Not making elaborate plans for the future. Being ok with what we have now.   

I love the way songs are used in such movies, giving it new meaning or as a way to subtly explain the emotions of the moment. These days people make playlists that are helpful, such as this one. Incidentally the man asks which place is Spotify when his niece asks if the songs can be found on Spotify. Slow living it is - free of devices, social media, not knowing the latest meme. I read somewhere that over the years, the words in the song lyrics are becoming similar. Just like fashion, people, cities, books, movies, colours all becoming similar and trending to the average that the majority likes. It is time to rediscover older songs that were made when the lyrics were not written by a committee that tests it against a target group to predict the next super hit. 

weekly notes, wk 16 / 2024

 1.

Few of the routines like daily journal and walk/run got broken with the travel and recovery. It is a difficult time of the year, with the oppressive heat, uncertainty introduced by a confusing economic situation, many challenges for the people around me and some degradation of relationships and structures. I am planning to take a week off to rest, reset and hope to get back with more clarity and rhythm. 

2. 

Finished 7th book this year - Tomorrow, Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. This was a different premise that I had never come across before - the world of game designers and developers. I didn’t have a computer during school and college, but had played games like road rash, doom and few such varieties of shooter, racing and such. But did not get hooked further, never owned a Wii or Playstation or Xbox. But had seen glimpses of the sophistication of newer games, parallel worlds of people and cultures of gamers. I have followed one of the legends in game development - John Carmack - for some years. This book follows a boy and a girl, both nerds, who met at the age of twelve or thirteen and follows their life and career till their forties. Korean, Japanese, American - a mix of cultural elements too. It is their story of creating games, building a company, about how people change with situations that they never might have imagined when they make childhood promises, while still some of the core remains the same. 

Story had a couple of pivot points where the main protagonists drift apart and then come back together again. It made me wish the misunderstandings between people are not based on silly premises. Since we get only this one life, why would we not fight harder to mend broken relationships. If it is broken, it should be because of deeper or meatier issues, but guess it is not often so. There were passages, especially in the stages of the story where they were figuring each other out, that I felt were beautiful - like fiction revealing the truths about the human condition. It dragged towards the end, like many good things where the creators struggle to figure out how to end it. Highly recommend this one though - for the unique characters, for the unique premise and some introspection about relationships. 

3. 

Watched two movies. October (Hindi) - picked this up since I saw someone recommend that this was a poetic film, but didn’t resonate with me. Felt contrived, forced, not serious enough to explore the complexity of characters going through traumatic life experiences. 

No way out (English) - rewatch, since I didn’t remember watching this at all earlier. Kevin Costner in his young days and Gene Hackman - it was like a pulp fiction watch, the likes which one can use to defuse some tension. 

weekly notes, wk 15 / 2024

I wanted to capture some memories, atleast so that it comes in google photos a few years later as a reminder. I was in London in the past week for work and had seen only the hotel, office and the restaurants either in the hotel or below the office. Now on my way back to the airport, in the taxi, was trying to click some photos and ten second videos to save as proof that I was here this week. 

Early greenshoots of the spring were on the trees, pink and white cherry blossoms and the flowery mat it lays down next to the trees in the parks or streets were beautiful. It was a sunny day, unlike other cloudy or rainy cold days of the past few. People were out for a run. I didn’t realize cycle lanes were so common now in the city. I had lived and worked in the UK for nearly a year, but maybe about twenty years back. I had done the touristy things in the city then - visiting the Big Ben, London eye, Buckingham palace and the likes, but don’t seem to remember anything about the city to know how much it changed. I was thinking a city that is hundreds of years old might not change in decades, but someone was remarking that in the last 10 years or so, so much new construction had come up. There were modern glass buildings with different architecture styles sitting next to heritage buildings.   

I was thinking about building codes that enforce colour palettes, keeping the Thames river clean, what might the people who go for a run in the middle of the day be doing for work and such random rabbit holes. I had put on Discover Music playlist on Spotify which brought on “Entammede Jimikki Kammal” song, thought about skipping, but then listened wondering where they got such quirky lyrics from - lyrics go like “My father stole my mother’s drop earrings, my mother drank up all my father’s brandy”. 

Then the driver decided to strike up a conversation by asking where I was travelling to. He always wanted to go to India, but couldn’t and now he has two boys aged two and three, so travelling with them now would be a nightmare on long flights. He asked if India has a lot of poor. I said inequality is rising thinking about the graph that I saw a few days back with diverging directions of economic growth of Top 1% and Top 10% going up and bottom 50% going down or flat. 

He liked the chapatis made by his neighbour, likes “curry” but can’t take so much spice saying our taste buds must have been fried long back. Just a day back a colleague was talking about being taken to a restaurant that had the best fish dishes in the area and being served such bland food that she said she wouldn’t have eaten even if she was starving. I am not sure what is the right palate, it is just the way we were trained to eat.  

I don’t remember using London taxis in the past, so this was the first trip where I used the cabs that had the one rear back seat row separated from the driver in a glass enclosure with just the opening like a ticket counter. Uber was not working for a couple of days and I had some sort of phobia of entering train stations and figuring out the tickets which actually turned out to be misplaced. Technology seems to have evolved to an extent we could just tap in with a credit card or the likes of google pay in the turnstiles to the underground and it deducts a charge based on where we get out - ticketing done easy. But sorting out the trains to the airport while dragging a bag, knowing London weather is unpredictable, was why I decided on the taxi (the same colleague I mentioned above had said London weather is like its women - unpredictable, hence a gentleman always carries an umbrella).  

In the last two days, I had a good time travelling and figuring out trains with another colleague whom one could say was rip roaringly funny. Eventually what remains in the memory on such trips is not the actual work that gets done, but the moments like these. He was self effacing, was told he appears apologetic while introducing or even talking about something he is good at, seemed not bothered by any such, making fun of himself and in his own way making the life of everyone around brighter. I am jealous of such people who don’t take themselves too seriously, dripping with effortless humour. I can’t be funny like that, but I can play the amplifier role, jamming with a lead artist, building on their lines and creating a mini band. Hence the three of us had laughed through London buses, trains and taxis for two days, talking about his brain freezing when anyone tells him directions, still leading the way, wanting to sing London Bridge is Falling Down after getting down at London Bridge station, talking in Bengali with a cab driver and a lot of deadpan humour. 

The driver wanted to know if cows had the right of way in India and whether it is a crime if we hit them accidentally on the road. I could only say I am from the south of India and it is different in south vs north. At this rate, I was wondering when he would ask if snake charmers are still around in India. Luckily our conversation shifted to my line of work, artificial intelligence, whether it is going to take away jobs soon and the dangers of it, Jaipur and why it is called pink city, when will the monsoon start, climate change, floods and such. 

I was answering questions which is not the same as making a proper conversation. I know the theory that “being interested, not interesting” is the key to good conversation, but still haven’t figured this out even now. Much later while overhearing the long conversation the strangers in front of me in the plane were having, I was thinking I should learn the skill of small talk even though it is not natural to me - the sounds to make that shows interest and encouraging the other person to continue, asking questions back (not worrying if it is prying, but knowing everyone want to talk about themselves) and connecting it to something I can offer to augment. 

I was looking at the strange people all around. This is why they say travel opens up the mind. Breaking from routines, sleeping in beds that we are not used to, eating differently and meeting new people. For example, the guy in high platform shoes which looked like a raised stage on which concerts are held, tall, wearing tight fitting red leather or spandex pants and top, walking while eating a twelve inch subway sandwich. Or the guys who look like the English version of rednecks, but with moustaches, some looking a bit like Freddy Mercury of the band Queen. Or the chubby Japanese girl who had heavy makeup on, holding a huge bunch of beautiful flowers. I wish I could take a notepad out and keep notes.

Eventually, I got dropped at a wrong terminal which I had confidently told him was the right one, forgot my jacket in his car and ended up on a long walk to another terminal. Just the right end to a trip which seemed like a simulation, not reality, where I kept forgetting different things - like the glasses I forgot in a Uber cab which I managed to get back a day later since the guy was really helpful in coordinating how to get that back to me or the manner in which I rushed through the ticketing, packing, all at the last minute. No major disasters other than two sleepless nights in Mumbai airport in just one week and three days of non stop headache that I am trying to shake off. I hope the mini sacrifices and the trouble will be worth it this year. 

weekly notes, wk 14 / 2024

1. 

I took a session to the team this week on High Agency. This concept that we can influence the course of events around us and make change, rather than be a victim of the circumstances. I feel the number of people who are self directed, who will not give up when faced with challenges, who will find a way through ambiguity, are rarer now. I read a few articles, listened to podcasts and watched any available videos to prepare for this and hope to collate the content around this to one place for future reference. Hope to continue to find a way to strengthen that attribute in me and people around me. 

2. 

I have often felt that when I am worried about a topic or a line of thought, I will find signs of that everywhere. I call it my version of deja vu, knowing it maybe that once I find something, I look for the same or find associations in what I see, so the serendipity is probably made up my mind, but would like to think of it as the universe trying to tell me something. This week it was two things. One was that “words are cheap, look for actions to know what someone really feels”. I was trying to assess myself with that scale - are my actions meeting my words? I came across this in a podcast (Invest like the best - Robin Dunbar, of Dunbar number fame) as well as a random tweet pointing to a life coach advising on relationships. 

Another was about “pathless path” - this book about creating our own path, deviating from the default paths on which we might be sleepwalking now. I was thinking about this constantly while sitting through some mindless sessions, thinking if the business of software development is disconnected from the actual pleasure of software development. Came across this in another article which beautifully described how the brain gets lulled into a comfort zone by choosing paths of least resistance, the need to fight that by changing things, and avoid choosing autonomous paths which we will end up regretting much later. It is a recurring theme I am coming across now. 

3. 

I am labouring through the book “48 laws of power” - it continues to disgust me, but I am continuing thinking I should know the dark secrets too and maybe even write a counter to it one day (maybe a fantasy). 

I am a third of the way into the book “Art of Loving” by Eric Fromm. I wish I had read this much earlier and maybe such subjects should be taught in schools, for people to have a better understanding of ourselves and treat each other much better than what we would have otherwise in our clumsy attempts at learning such lessons through failures that end up hurting one another. It is not an easy read, but I found it fascinating that we love because it is the only way we realize our humanity, escape from the human condition of loneliness, that love flows from freedom and independence and it needs care, responsibility, respect and deep knowledge of another person.  

4. 

I keep dropping into rabbit holes and burrow farther in. I happened to read an appreciation tweet by Pico Iyer about the actress Carey Mulligan and her movies. I looked up many of her movies, read one story that was turned into a movie in which Carey Mulligan acted (An Education) and ended up watching two of her movies. She Said (Netflix) was about investigative reporting that brought down Harvey Weinstein and launched the metoo movement across the world. It is mind boggling to know the level of sleaze which was condoned by many people in the industry to allow people like Harvey Weinstein to destroy people for many years without any repercussions. I like this genre of movies about journalists battling odds to uncover important stories (The Post, All the Presidents Men, Spotlight) and this one didn’t disappoint. 

Another was a much more mellow affair, The Dig (Netflix), about an archaeological excavation of burial mounds and people who dedicate their lives to such quests, like the extremely long rabbit holes. Slow movie, but just the kind I like.