Year-end reflections

2017 will go down in my professional career (till now) as the year I worked the hardest. Personally it will be the year I traveled the craziest (mostly for work) and didn't really have much of a work-life balance.

The way things are getting extremely connected (always-on) we are increasingly immersing ourselves into a work-only culture. The constant checking of email on phone, the buzzing of instant messages from all over the world (office colleagues, customers, partners, vendors - the list goes on). I think it is now time for us to actively disconnect or at least have preset hours in a day where we intentionally switch-off our email and all kinds of messaging services even on our phones.

If you are like me, what can we strive to do differently next year? Well, I have been going through a mid-life crisis of sorts (for several years now) and I am beginning to question my definitions of both - happiness and success. These are highly subjective, overly marketed and poorly defined terms in everyone's life. Unless you really "identify" your definition of happiness and success - you will be endlessly and thanklessly stuck in the rat race called the "fast-paced life".

So, my plan for my resolutions for 2018:

• Identify what is my definition of success and happiness
• Ruthlessly cut down on peripheral activities that do not contribute to either
• Subscribe to the JOMO (Joy of Missing Out) philosophy
• Actively minimize and simplify my life

Wish you all an amazing 2018

Binge Watching

Today will go down in my life history (in Google) as the day I binge watched Conan videos all day! I have binge watched only once before. That one time when we discovered House of Cards and completed Season 1 in one day. But today was different. I was not watching episodes (they have continuity, and that's a reason why we can't stop at the end of an episode cause you are curious to know what happens next!). Today I was just randomly watching Conan videos all day, with my YouTube on auto-play.

Now, I am a big fan of a lot of talk shows. My daily dose of YouTube videos (in no particular order) consists of:

• The Daily Show with Trevor Noah
• The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
• The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon
• Jimmy Kimmel Live
• Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

While all of the talk show hosts are funny and interesting, I guess most of them are very driven by political opinions and current affairs. Conan on the other hand is pretty random, and I love his sense of humor. He has all these random videos of him traveling, learning self-defense, being mean to his staff and generally being silly. I would highly recommend you binge watching him.

Wise Men Dancing

In my quest to stay abreast with the latest music that the current generation is listening to, I still try to listen to the top tracks every week from YouTube. Most of the music is hit and miss for me now. Reflects my age.

I realize that you somehow can only associate with the songs that you heard as a teenager. Songs before that are too old for your taste and the songs after that are just not cool enough. I think every generation thus has a decade of music and musicians that they really like and then everyone else is just okay.

Anyway, while listening to the latest generation, I chanced across this video by Carly Rae Jepsen featuring Tom Hanks (my generation). It is tastefully done, and for some reason I think I really love videos which get popular old male actors to dance in them.

So without further adieu I need to link you guys to the other cool song that I know of an old male actor featuring - Christopher Walken (again) and his amazing dance in the Weapon of Choice by Fatboy Slim.

So I guess, I can safely conclude that - to get a lot of views for your video, you don't necessarily need a lot of cute girls (read K-pop) but you can do it by getting a wise old actor dance for you!