The Mask un-mandate

 Long term readers of my blog know that I loved to wear masks even before wearing them was a thing (read - pre-COVID). So I sort of did not feel bad wearing masks for the last 2+ years. Besides all the other benefits of masking up, one big benefit is - I can hide my face and be fairly anonymous in a crowd.

Anyway, now most outdoor places in my vicinity are sort of asking people not to mask up anymore. This has become highly uncomfortable for social recluses like me! I hope mask wearing becomes a fashionable thing just like how we wear shoes, and people who want to wear masks are allowed to do so forever.

Acknowledge ephemeral happiness

 In our relentless pursuit of happiness, I realize that most of us have stopped acknowledging the ephemeral happiness we derive from small wordly moments every single day. 21 years into the 21st century we actually experience a lot more happiness on a daily basis than anytime in the history of homo sapiens. Most of us experience unprecedented levels of comfort, access to amazing healthcare and nutrition. Yet we as a society have now become increasingly divided, unhappy, irritable, stressed and unhappy.

While curbing societal pressures and controlling stress is something beyond everyone's reach, acknowledging happiness is definitely something we all can (and should do!). Ideally, throughout the day, we should learn to pause, acknowledge and appreciate the simple pleasures in our life. Complex things like airconditioners, refridgerators, microwaves, telephones, internet, televisions and simple things like hot water, taps, electricity etc. etc. all have enriched our life by leaps and bounds. We have completely stopped acknowledging the level of ease we have gotten used to, and constantly think of the next thing!

As you read this blog, I hope you think about all the little comforts that you have gotten used to, and starting today, pause and appreciate these fleeting moments of happiness as life passes by at breakneck speed!

Sum Totalled Life

 Every once in a while I have this epiphany about what my life is all about because I read a book or read a tweet or a blog. This is one of those tweets by Tim Urban.

The way I interpret this tweet is - your life is a sum total of all the things that you have ever done (or to be more poetic - a sum total of all the paths you have taken). Which for me means - the books you have read, the blogs you have followed, the movies you have seen, the random tweets, facebook posts, tik-toks you have consumed as well as the people you have spent time with, the jobs you have worked on and the schools you have gone, the places you have visited and the friends you spend time with.

Now the good part of the diagram is - you still have a million different paths to go on after today. So rather than having a defitist mentality, you can still be an optimist and "optimize" the paths that you take, the things that you do, the time that you spend on going forward. Starting now, you can still choose a better path than you ever did before. And this could then be your lowest point in your life!

Letting it go

 As I grow older I realize one of the most important part of the "being an adult" experience is the ability to just "let it go". In not so positive words - it is literally getting used to the feeling of helplessness.

I had an amazingly protected childhood. I generally got what I wanted and I grew up with this attitude that I can get what I want if I work hard towards it. So, my childhood was all about, setting a goal and working towards it. Then adulthood happened and as I grow older I realize - you can't achieve a lot of things that you think you can. It's not that you are not putting enough effort or you are not focused, but there are a billion things beyond your control.

As I sit and ruminate on my present state, I think the most important lesson that I have learnt over the last decade or so is that - you have to try hard for whatever you want to do or achieve. But if you can't you have to gracefully let it go. The "being adult" part is the letting it go and moving on part. The more you can do it faster, the better your life is going to be.

The Knowledge-net

 So this is like a follow-up to a blog post I wrote in 2014 about learning online. By now, I hope you have realized that it is practically possible to learn almost anything online. Yeah I know you can't learn to fly (for example) cause you still need an aircraft.

I feel like we are living in a unprecedented time in history where we have access to all the knowledge in the world at literally a "touch" of a button and can spend time to learn and enrich our lives with anything. This ease of access, is seriously going to jeopardize the business of higher education. I believe that in the next 10 years University education will get massively disrupted.

From my own experience, I feel like I learnt more outside of my formal education than the 4 years of Engineering and 1.5 years of MBA. And the rapid pace at which things keep changing around us, anyway continuous education is the way forward. I am not sure students of the next generation (and their parents) would be keen to spend a significant portion of their earnings on a degree that can be easily obtained online and you can choose your teachers and build your own curriculum. Ultimately though, if employers stop insisting on University degrees and recognize your education online, that would spell an end to University education the way we have known it!

Race, Nationality and Religion

My nationality, race and religion has always been at the forefront of my "classification" within the society at home and abroad. With social media increasingly fueling people to be overly religious, xenophobic and racist, I feel that it is time to talk about these topics from a pseudo-scientific perspective without going down a slippery slope. So my dear readers, please try to read this blog post without any bias.

Nationality - By far, I think this is the easiest to identify and categorize human beings on. All you have to do is ask for their passport. But if it were that simple, then life would be easy. There are certain nations in the world that allow dual-citizenship. In that case you can have 2 nationalities (e.g. Swedish-French, American-Italian etc.). You are legally carrying 2 passports and both countries recognize you as their citizens. 

Then there are people who change their nationalities during their lifetime. For e.g. an Indian citizen can renounce their citizenship of India and become a citizen of USA etc. In that case, you have had one nationality for a few years of your life and you changed your nationality for the next few years of your life and so on.

Now, according to the very broad definition of xenophobia, it is the fear or hatred of foreigners (which would mean foreign nationals). If you decide to become a xenophobic and spew your hatred on someone, you have to make sure that they are really of a different nationality. For e.g. Anyone in the world can become an American or an Australian or a Canadian as long as they follow their immigration processes. I believe that's what the nations have been founded on. So you can't just look at a person and call them a "foreigner" and marginalize them.

This xenophobia gets even worst when people of the same nation discriminate amongst each other based on their "place of origin" in the same nation. (e.g. in India - discrimination based on the state that you "domiciled" in)

Religion - Coming from India, this is a very contentious topic. But I guess, again, religion is quite easy to understand and categorize. You follow a faith and you abide by the principles of that faith. So you could be a Catholic, a Hindu, a Muslim, a Buddhist etc. Your religious identity is very distinct from your nationality. While statistically speaking there is a higher probability of having someone from some religion coming from some nationality it is just a statistic. I mean, theoretically an entire population can decide to change their religion overnight and still maintain their nationality (in almost all countries). I do understand that some countries are formed on the basis of religion, and you are not allowed to "freely" practice another religion if you do not follow the state religion.

Race - This has been the most difficult to comprehend classification for me. As far as I have researched there is no solid-scientific basis on which to classify people into races. While we continue to desperately classify populations of people into races - this classification is inherently flawed and very difficult to prove. If you think I am wrong, I request you to comment and redirect me to credible sources on race. This classification  has caused innumerable conflicts, wars and genocides and we continue to fight amongst us on a classification that has no clear scientific basis.

The general arguments I see online sounds something like this - My ancestors came here before your ancestors, so this land belongs to me and you go "back". This argument only holds for "Nationalities". For e.g. An Indian passport holder can only live in the USA for the duration of the time that her "Visa" permits her to stay in that country. There is no argument there. And for any reason if the "relevant" authorities (The people in the immigration who determine if you are fit to stay in their country or not) decide that you have to pack your bags and go "back" (to your country of citizenship) - you have to.

Any other reason given for this argument is - xenophobic and/or racist. You can't discriminate people based on how they look, how they speak or how they dress. Human beings have existed on this planet for 150,000 years. I can confidently say that none of our 100K+ years of ancestors stayed in the same place as we stay now. You can potentially only trace back your ancestors to a few hundred years? Same goes with race. Whatever physical features of a person you see have come after 100K years of intermingling between homo-sapiens coming from around the world and evolution. Some blood-lines have had distinct features that have propagated to their off-springs, but that's about it (I am talking about skin color, eye color, shape of eyes, type of hair, height etc.)

It is time (I know this sounds so cliched) we keep these differences away and work together towards the greater good of humanity and the planet!

Resilience

 As the COVID-19 pandemic rages in most parts of the world even after the positive news of the availability of a vaccine; it got me thinking about the resilience of our species. We have been around for at least 150,000 years (and there is a lot of evidence that we have been around for a lot more). We have had pandemics often, but we have adapted and survived.

While we wait for the medical community to come up with solutions, I am positive we will adapt and survive. That's what we have been doing all these years. So while future seems bleak, we will find a way around this as long as we remain patient and do our part.

However, I also think that we should take the COVID-19 pandemic as a wake-up call for our species to get serious about saving the planet and working towards averting climate change. This is going to be the existential challenge of the future generations, and unlike a pandemic, our species have not really seen a climate disaster of the magnitude that we are going towards.

Mindfulness

So I managed to read the Miracle of Mindfulness a third time. It is a super simple book and can easily be read in a day. It is the only book I have read more than 2 times in my life, because I felt I was too shallow in understanding it.

I realize that every time I read it, I understand a little bit more about mindfulness. While it sounds very mystic and spiritual, it indeed is a very simple concept. The problem really lies in how difficult it is to be mindful every breath of your day!

If I have to summarize my understanding of mindfulness it would be - Your mind has a continuous stream of thoughts (Monkey Mind). How you "react" to those thoughts decides how you "feel" (Fear, anxiety, stress, love, hate, anger, jealousy are all feelings - outcomes of thoughts that came in your mind). When you are practicing mindfulness - all you are really doing is completely focusing on whatever task you are currently doing (eating, sleeping, reading, walking, etc.). From a mind's perspective you are neither engaging in thinking about your past or your future (consciously or subconsciously). Also, even when thoughts indeed come in your mind (which they always will!), you are acknowledging the presence of "those" thoughts, but choosing not to "engage" in them (By not "engaging" I mean you do not "feel" or "drift" with the emotion that your mind generates with regards to those thoughts). 

If you are a practitioner of mindfulness, you might as well correct me. This is my current understanding and it may definitely change as I try to implement it more in my life and potentially understand and experience it more. And if you are not yet a student of mindfulness then I recommend you give it a shot for a few days/ weeks/ months to really "experience" it.

Game of Life

So I am approaching a very significant age milestone in my life. Naturally I have been ruminating about age and life in general for the past few weeks. My current understanding of the journey called "life" is a bit more gamified than before. At this stage of my life I equate it to a game.

Why do I think of life as a game now? Well, we spend first 2 decades of our life learning skills (tooling) to survive the rest of it. If we survive the first 2 decades, then we "apply" these skills and get better at it (experience). As you progress through life you collect coins (salary). The world brings obstacles in our path and based on our "knowledge" (our weapon of choice) of how to overcome the obstacle, we "solve" and move on. There is nothing truly "right" or "wrong". Whatever you do is based on your understanding of approaching life at that point in time.

As you grow older hopefully you develop more skills and/or gain more experience increase your risk appetite and the game continues. Of course there is always that probability that you do something stupid or something happens and you are terminated. The game of course only gives you 1 life (unless you believe in rebirth then you re-enter the game in a new body and start all over again - Life does not give you the possibility to save your progress mid-way unfortunately).

So if you wish to be good at this game called "Life", you need to be continuously learning and evolving. Your only weapon to survive this game is your ability (skills) to manage obstacles. The last and most important aspect is - the journey itself is the entertainment, there is nothing at the end other than the "credits" (a euphemism for game-over) which you are not really looking forward to.

Motivation vs. Habit

 As I grow older, I realize that motivation is difficult to sustain and if you plan to do things because you are motivated, you generally are setting yourself up for failure. Of course, there are few awesome people out there in the world who do things out of motivation and passion, but for the rest of us a lazy weekend or a bout of Netflix is enough to kill that motivation. And then being the self-proclaimed "God of procrastination" doesn't really help me much in that aspect as well.

Over the last few years, I have realized the easiest way to work towards a goal is by forming a habit. I know I have written about habits before, but I realize I understand them better; only now. If I had discovered this trick a few decades ago, I would have been a better person. Just to give you context, I will provide two examples from my life:

My company gives me access to LinkedIn Learning. It is a treasure trove of amazing videos to learn about almost anything under the sun. Now if I set a goal like "I want to get certified in xyz", it is too far-fetched and insurmountable because of the number of lessons required to be taken and the discipline/ motivation required to study through them. However, if I set a habit like - I will listen to 15 minutes of LinkedIn Learning lessons everyday, then in a matter of 1 month, I can do almost 7.5 hours of lessons - a respectable amount of time to study a lot of things (most courses are less than 12 hours).

Another example would be my resolution to read more books. Like everyone else, I am distracted, I binge watch and then I surf aimlessly. Reading books is a boring task that requires motivation and will-power. Now how about this - at the beginning of the year make a list of books you want to read. Arrange them in this order - Jan - Book 1, Feb - Book 2 etc. Then see the number of pages in Book 1 (e.g. 300). Resolve to read 10 pages a day. Viola, you can read a book in a month.

I think forming habits is the lazy man's way towards a resolution.

The irony of hindsight

 So 17/Nov/2020 we quietly celebrated the first anniversary of the discovery of COVID-19 on WhatsApp. I think that date is disputed and based on this article by SCMP. WHO declared its existence to the world only on 31/Dec/2019. As I look back, I find it ironic that I took a day off on 31st December of 2019 to celebrate the end of a decade and the start of a new one! We had no clue of how bad this pandemic is going to be all the way till Feb 2020!

As we prepare to look forward to the last month of 2020, I do not see hope in things improving any faster. Outbreaks continue, lock-downs are common place and travel, tourism and a host of other related activities are a distant memory. While we all await the vaccine with bated breath, my pessimistic mind says, it ain't gonna happen so soon. And then distributing the vaccines across the globe is going to be another "unprecedented" logistics nightmare!

I remember reading articles and thinking about "Vision 2020" and "How will the world be in 2020" a few decades ago. No where did we talk about locking ourselves in our homes, wearing masks, avoiding people and working our a$$ off from home. But here we are in 2020 now, and that is the new normal.

Continue reading books

Books haven't been my go to source for entertainment ever. Almost 3 years ago, I tried to build a "book reading" habit into my daily routine before I sleep, and I have managed to keep it that way now for a while. Yesterday I managed to finish my 12th book of this year and I am happy to say that I managed to stretch my resolution of reading a book a month to the third year. I hope to keep this resolution (forever?).

Of course, sometimes I read really small books and sometimes I get stuck in super big ones. Overall, I just manage. I have realized that I am not a fan of fictional books, but they are the fastest to read. In non-fiction, I am not particularly fond of "self-help" books. I think I mainly love reading business books, and recently have taken special liking for history. Managed to read 2 books about India's history this year and the 3rd book is on its way in the postal mail as I write this blog post.

I don't manage to retain everything I read in a book, but well, bits and pieces and some novel ideas do stick in the back of my brain for most books. If you are consuming all your information these days from news sites and social media, I implore you to read books of topics you like. And if you are a voracious reader, I admire you!

The US elections that just went by, seem to me like one of the most divisive elections I have ever seen (in my lifetime). It could be because of social media, or just that anything that happens in the USA gets a lot more media coverage than anything happening anywhere else. Anyway, reading all the caustic news occasionally, has strengthened my resolve to read more books I like and not get unnecessarily bothered by political  happenings on the other side of the planet.

Time

Sorry for disappearing for almost a month. Life changed suddenly (like it always does) and I am in the midst of that change. I will probably write about what I have "been through" in a subsequent blog post once I am through this.

If there is one thing that I feel we all have equal access to (regardless of race, wealth, color) is - time. Every human being on the planet gets 24 hours a day. Irrespective of how rich you are, you can't trade time and everyone is equally wealthy in terms of the number of minutes you have in a day.

We are obsessed with money, but if you are a middle-aged salaried man like me - you need to guard the finite resource - time - by trading away money to do things that take too much of your time. To value your time, you need to have an index cost to each hour of your time so that you can do a cost-benefit analysis of your "time" much more easily.

I know it sounds simple but this "cost-benefit" analysis can get really complex. There are some things we do with our time that are genuinely required. For e.g. spending time with family is priceless. Working out, eating, sleeping, daily ablutions are a required (mandatory) use of time. So then, this analysis is something we need to seriously do about the discretionary time (browsing, socializing, entertaining) that we spend. Or the chores (cooking, cleaning, paying bills) that seem to occupy all of your weekends. I know I have written about time-boxing before, so I am sort of repeating myself.

Anyway, this brings me to my last argument on this topic. As much as possible try to do the following two things with your chores:

• Automate
• Outsource

 If repetitive things can be automated (auto-investment, auto-bill-payment for e.g.) then do it! Save time on non-value added activities. If you can outsource boring, non-value added chores (filing taxes, washing, cleaning (to maids/ robots/ consultants)) then do it. Only DIY if you enjoy (entertainment) or have a health benefit (cleaning 1 hour is your workout of the week!) or it is really worth it (for you).

How to get rid of your dandruff in a week?

 If this sounds like a click bait article, I am sorry. I thought I share something I found out a couple of years ago and it seems to have worked for me till today.

Now before you proceed, here are some disclaimers:

• I am not a doctor or a dermatologist or even remotely associated with the medical profession
• People on the internet can write anything they want, and you should not trust them
• This is my personal experience, and everyone's experience can be totally different
• I am not being paid to write this blog post (or any other) so this just my honest opinion

Okay, with that list out of the way - let me tell you my story. As a school going kid, and subsequently through out my life, besides my weight and my looks the other thing I was always embarrassed about was my dandruff problem. I have had dandruff in my hair for as far back as I recall. I tried a lot of remedies - medical, Ayurvedic or advertised. Nothing really ever worked for me. Anti-dandruff shampoo was always a part of my grooming arsenal, and it just managed to sometimes reduce it, but I never really got rid of it. I tried crazy remedies like egg, beer, yogurt, shampoos with ZPTO on my head and other than the awkward smell, it didn't impact much.

 

A few years ago, someone advised me to use the Selsun 2.5% suspension shampoo to wash my hair everyday for a week and then subsequently alternate days for a month. The shampoo contains Selenium Sulfide. And it is apparently not available over the counter in USA. However, I can get it in a pharmacy in Singapore without a prescription.

My dandruff has completely disappeared ever since. I switched to using their Selsun Blue version once a week subsequently, and it dandruff has not recurred again. I am not "absolutely" sure if its really the shampoo or my diet, or my horoscope, or climate change, or just the fact that I am dangerously close to my 4th decade on this planet, and apparently dandruff is not an old person problem.

So all the best!

5 Tips for Remote Teams

The whole internet and also my workspace seems to be freaking out about working remotely and working from home. It has been 2+ months now that most of us are locked up at home and working remotely. Having an Asia-Pacific wide work role, I just realized that I have always worked remotely with geographically dispersed teams and other than the fact that I am spending a lot more time physically at home, nothing really has changed work-wise. My workload has of course increased in the pandemic, but I don't think there is any drop in me and my team's work efficiency.

I believe you must have already read a lot of articles by now about leading remote teams, so here is my list for you:

1. Communicate a lot more and a lot often - Unlike when you are sitting next to each other in the same office, casual conversations do not happen remotely. So make sure you as a manager make it a point to talk to your team much more often and over-communicate.
2. Do video calls - While this sounds creepy, our brain is still wired to interpret other people's emotions by looking at their faces when they are speaking. It is bit of an effort for some people as they have to "get dressed" and be "presentable" but this is the single most important thing to build rapport!
3. Use shared drives, shared folders and all the tools available to collaborate - Email is old school. While email is important, a lot of collaborative tools make it easy for multiple people to collaborate and work simultaneously on software, documents, presentations etc. Use them everywhere!
4. Track progress and items through a central repository - Trello is my tool of choice to track items that my team is working on. Choose yours, and use it de facto for all deliverables!
   
5. Do not expect people to be always online - I think this is a golden rule for building trust. Let your team work in hours that are most comfortable to them. There is no point in making them respond to emails/ instant messages instantly. Everyone is responsible and setting such unreasonable expectations just makes people more stressed and distracted.
   

Eisenhower Matrix

In my quest to be better organized in life, I read a lot of "self-help" stuff online and offline. Most of it I read and forget (cause it ain't that impressive). Something that has stayed in my mind for a while now is the concept of an Eisenhower matrix. I wanted to write about this in my previous post but was worried about making it too long. So here it is!

This matrix was apparently invented by Eisenhower (the US President) and it expects you to classify all your activities into 4 quadrants:

Eisenhower Matrix (also attributed to Stephen Covey)

1. Do First - Urgent and Important - Things that are urgent and important have to be done first (I think we all understand this - so I have nothing much to add). The only thing we need to be careful about is - not all items on your list are both urgent and important. What may seem urgent may not really be (e.g. A customer email asking for something). And what may seem important (for e.g. because it came from your boss) - may not be that important.
2. Plan or Schedule - Not-urgent but Important - This is the most tricky quadrant. We (or rather me!) procrastinate a lot in this quadrant. Learning that new thing (programming language/ skill/ musical instrument etc.) taking care of your health, talking to your family members etc. is important. But since it is not urgent, it gets postponed (forever). If you don't schedule time for it, it never happens.
3. Delegate - Urgent but Not-Important - This quadrant consists of a lot of chores that are urgent, but can be delegated to others to do it (For e.g. you can schedule your bank to automatically pay your bills, credit cards, renew your policies etc. These are all tasks that are urgent, but can easily be delegated).
4. Eliminate or Don't do - Not-urgent and Not-important - This is easier said than done. But a lot of things (social media?, status meetings, weekly catch-ups and the list goes on) are neither important nor urgent. There are more efficient ways of doing those things and it is best to learn to say no! I struggle a lot at this.

So next time you go on a retreat or take a break to ruminate, spend some time to think about all those things that are in your Quadrant 2 (Not-urgent but Important). What you start working on today will help you sometime down the line! It's best you think about them now and schedule them!

Repeat Everyday

As I grow old, I realize that I can probably learn almost anything as long as I decide to do a tiny bit of it everyday and religiously stick to my routine. Note that I ain't saying I would be "good" at that something, I am just saying - "I can learn something". I believe that forming a periodic (daily/ weekly/ monthly) routine is the easiest way to start to do anything in life.

So for the last several years, I have been struggling to learn Vietnamese. It's a difficult language (may be not as difficult as Mandarin) but still difficult because of all the tones that they use! I had several false starts and I almost gave up. Till I found this app for my phone called Duolingo. It's a fun little language teaching app that promises to teach you a new language in "15 minutes per day". (The caveat is - it doesn't tell you how many days!).

Anyway, it's been a year since I have been diligently doing my Vietnamese learning on Duolingo everyday 15 minutes for 365+ days. I just got a nifty little celebratory badge from them indicating so.

Can I speak Vietnamese fluently now? Hell no. Do I know more Vietnamese than what I did a year ago? Hell, yes! I can count, I can read, I can name some colors, I can tell the time, and if you listen to me carefully enough you can get the context of what I am trying to say (sometimes!).  Anyway, as long as I continue, I can only get better. So this is a small little success that I thought I share with all of you and inspire you to start your learning journey today! I actually have shared Duolingo with a lot of friends and what started as a lonely exercise now has become a mini-community learning a language of their choice everyday.

Anyway, I have now decided to challenge myself a bit more this year. I have a very weak upper body and I have sucked at pull-ups all my life. So now, I have installed a pull-up bar at home, and all I am practicing all these weeks is to hang on it (dead-hang) for 30 seconds everyday. I hope, I can do 10 pull-ups someday in the future, however far away that future is!

The future of work

I know you have read at least a thousand blogs by now that talk about the future of work after the lock-down. This one is no different. Just the fact that since you are my readers, I am entitled to dump my opinion on you. My company is forcing us to work from home since the last 3 weeks and I realized a few things this weekend:

1. These 3 weeks have been the most efficient work-weeks of my life! It doesn't matter that I don't go to office, my work follows me home and is happy to be with me anywhere I go (during lunch and even on nature's calls)
2. I don't really need to physically interact with my colleagues to get things done. We are all very comfortable working virtually with each other and life goes on. Water-cooler gossip has gone down and that's about it
3. Most of my work is with prospects and customers, so even when there is no lock-down, having a physical space in office is actually just a waste of space.

So this is what I feel should happen in the not so distant future. A lot of companies (especially in my sector) will not lease offices anymore. It's an unnecessary expense that can be easily gotten rid of. In stead, a lot of employees like me will be made to work from home. Offices will pay for equipment so that we can work from home smoothly (internet/ chairs/ desks/ monitors/ calling equipment/ webcams etc). The cost per employee is definitely lower than running an office. We will all meet once a week or at definite intervals in a co-working space for the physical interaction that is needed once in a while.

Organizations will save office lease costs and employees will work their asses off from home. Imagine when work is actually at home, there is no more work-life balance!

Count your blessings

To all my friends who are complaining about this lock-down - count your blessings!

1. We are amongst the lucky few who can continue to work from home (make a living, earn money) while we are locked down at home
2. We can absolutely survive (and thrive) from home (everything is available online - entertainment, essential foods, pharmaceuticals, capital goods etc. - you name it you can order it!)
3. We can entertain ourselves (video games, card games, board games, Netflix, Amazon Prime, TV, YouTube etc.) You name it you have it!
4. We can study any subject we like online and even get some certifications! (Coursera, Udemy etc.)
5. You can virtually talk with anyone around the world at anytime through video chats (use it!) No friend is far away. We can do high-quality HD video calls with people tens of thousands of miles away! That's unprecedented in the history of mankind.

The best outcome of this pandemic has been that most of my prospects are now open to doing video conferencing without having to physically see me in a meeting room! All the IT security measures have magically disappeared as now I can login remotely to most systems (which they earlier didn't allow). I hope this sustains after all this is over. I am hoping we finally end up reducing global business travel and reduce our carbon footprints!

Body weight exercises

You don't need a gym membership to be fit. All you need is determination. I know I sound like a "guru" there, but after spending thousands of dollars over several decades on gym memberships that I hardly utilized and didn't see much of a difference, I can tell you that I see more progress (relative to where I started) in a year of only doing "body weight" exercises than more than a decade of pumping puny weights in gyms.

So let me get started. These are the exercises that you can easily do at home (or hotel room, or at office when no one is looking) without any equipment whatsoever:

1. Burpees
2. Push-ups (and other upper body variation exercises)
3. Squats/ Lunges (and other lower body variation exercises)
4. Planks (and other core exercises)
5. Sun Salutations (and other stretching/ Yoga exercises)

All you really need is 30 minutes (or 3 - 10 minute intervals) or (10 - 3 minute intervals) or 20 minutes or 10 minutes or just 5 minutes a day. I hope you get what I am hinting at - you need to "make" time and the discipline to do it even if you don't see any progress for weeks together.

If you are currently unfit and can't even do a single set of any of these exercises, then try their regressions. Start from what you can do.

Repeat. Everyday.

Eventually you see progress and that's what should keep you motivated on your path to fitness! So if you have been a lazy bum like me, drop whatever you are doing right now - and try your first push-up, or your first squat (if you are in a public place and can't push up!). There you go! Now let's start.