To-dos

I belong to the older generation of people who still use a notepad to write down their action items (To-do lists) and then strike the items out once they are done. I tried a lot of web-based and mobile-based alternatives, but none can give me the satisfaction (or the pleasure) of physically striking out an item off the list once it is done.

Now, most of my weekends start with me writing down a huge-list of action items for the weekend and then when Sunday night comes, more than half of them are not done (there is a reason why I call myself the God of procrastination). Maybe that’s what makes me grumpy on Sunday nights.

Long time ago I had read this story of an old woman, who sits down to write a small little mail (yeah postal mail) to her grandson, and ends up taking the entire day cause that’s the only thing that she had planned for the day. The moral of the story was – work expands to take over all the time that you have.

However, I generally face a different ordeal. Small and easy things on my list I end up doing. The boring difficult ones keep getting postponed till I hit a day on which I have no option but to do them.

This weekend however was a surprisingly satisfying one. I ended up almost finishing my entire To-do list (yeah the most difficult item on the list was done from 2300 to 0130 on the Sunday night!). Ha, the sweet smell of success. Thought I put up a blog post to celebrate this achievement.

Anyway, I am toying with following the pomodoro technique of time management. Let’s see how it goes.

Lazy Training

Gyms in general and exercising in particular is a very boring and tiring activity for me. So much so that, I have managed to be a lazy bum most of my life (and I continue to do so!). Recently however, I used guanxi (with my German ex-boss) and managed to get 12 sessions of free training on a rather new kind of training regime.

So what do I mean by it’s a new kind of gym? Well to begin with – their are no weights. There is cardio equipment (like bikes, elliptical machines and tread mills) and then there is this small little device called the NMES. It’s amazing to note that NMES has been around for more than 40 years but has rarely been used outside the realms of professional sports.

A typical session consists of me gearing up in a specially designed suite that plugs into the NMES device followed by 20 minutes of floor based or cardio exercises directed by an instructor. That’s all it is. I could be in and out of the gym in less than 40 mins (yeah changing, exercising, showering – the whole nine-yards). And in those 40 mins I could burn well over 300 calories along with a nice feeling of my muscles having worked out.

So what does NMES actually do? Well like the name says – it’s neuromuscular electrical stimulation. So the NMES device makes my muscles workout the same way my body would have if I was actually doing strength training. But the cool part is – in strength training, we are only engaging targeted groups of muscles at a time. But with NMES, its possible to strengthen a bigger set of muscles at a higher intensity and in a shorter time.

So, do I look like Arnold Schwarzenegger (yeah I had to Google his last name to get it right) now? Nope. But well, to be frank (and truthful) I tried quite a bit of strength training long long ago (in 2008) and what I could achieve after 3 months of dedicated strength training, I could go to the same level in less than 6 sessions! And then it seems a safer option than lifting weights wrongly and injuring yourself. And for busy (a.k.a lazy) people like me, 20 minutes of workout is easier motivation 2 times a week!

The Chope Inefficiency

People in Singapore food courts generally follow a practice of holding their seats before going to buy food. In the local lingo it’s called to “Chope” seats. Now, over the last several years, I have perfected the art of chope-ing as well.

Unfortunately, I ended up being at this very popular food court the other day where people were much more efficient at the game than I ever was. I ended up waiting for more than 30 minutes just to get a seat to park my bum, before I even went to a food stall to get my food.

That’s when my empty mind, realized the extreme inefficiency of this practice. If I am a hotelier, one of my key KPIs is – table-turnaround time. In layman’s terms – it’s just the number of tables (and subsequently people) that I can serve in a given unit of time. This KPI includes the time required to take orders, serve, clean table and then get the next set of people in. If you wish to see this efficiency – go see an Udupi restaurant in India or a Ramen place in Singpaore.

Now when you chope a seat, you are effectively keeping the table empty (which could have been occupied by someone else while you were ordering your food. If you order from good stalls, on an average it takes 10+ minutes to get your food. And during lunch times, people eat for approx 15+ minutes anyway. So almost 2/3 of the turnaround time of an average lunch time patron is wasted because of the chope! If we stop this practice, the number of people eating at a seat can go up from approx. 2 an hour to 4 an hour? (Yeah my math may be way wrong out there! But I hope you get the concept!). So next time you go eat, don’t chope, just order and then take your food and scout for a place. You will be doing the food court a great service!

Tradeshow booth

After having spent more than 20 “Business Days” in a year (almost a business month to be precise) manning tradeshow booths, now I have become a self-proclaimed expert at Tradeshow Booth Management (TBM). Before I start charging you guys for opening my mouth, I thought I give you all a free preview of what to expect (after all, you guys are my loyal audience!).

So what exactly is a Tradeshow?

Officially – Tradeshows are events to put the customers and suppliers in the same location so that meaningful conversations evolve naturally and you have a better prospect at forming business relationships. I know, I just made that up – but well – that is the spirit of a Tradeshow anyway.

Unofficially – It’s an event where bargain hunters and senior people with lots of free time on their hand come looking for well-made goodies and free gifts to collect from all the booths out there and eat good food. Rest of the time, try to catch up on some winks here and there in the conferences or pretend to be working hard while checking your Facebook. If nothing else, then it’s a place to court your potential employers and look for industry connections who can introduce you to those.

Now for some background. Presently I sorta earn my living by telling people how great is analytics and how everything will change the moment they start analysing stuff in their organization. I am mighty impressed by what I sell and most of the times, I do sound and am completely genuine. But, I am not pretty, handsome, attractive or anything that can make someone stop and notice me. Mediocre at best and with a smile that can even cause me problems at the remotest of places, I do not exactly qualify as a “booth” candidate.

Though my company invests in attractive goodies and we have a brightly colored (read tempting) goodie bag I only encounter goodie-bag seeking tradeshow delegates approaching me. The true “potential” customers either shy away or are too busy in pretending they are busy and not interested. So all day (and sometimes all night) I stand there waiting for the perfect customers to come, only to give away goodie bags to cheapskates.

Here is my advise to companies buying booths in Tradeshows:

1. Don’t waste your money and your employee’s time. You might as well treat them to a spa. At least they will be happy
2. If you still plan to waste your money, then put a good looking (read – beautiful or handsome) employee who will attract hoards of people by their killer looks
3. Prominently display your goodies, but have a strict policy on giving it to only those people who are ready to listen to your boring 20 minute Powerpoint presentation on how amazing your product and your company is. The goodies should be “earned” not given away!

And why am I writing this? I just spent an entire day grinning into the void and listening to an irritating jingle coming from a booth next to me. Now I can’t freaking get the tune outta my mind. To top it all, my legs and back hurts because of standing in a suite for 10 hours doing absolutely nothing.

Urban Forest

For over the last 5 months I have been using this device to consciously track my steps, the floors I climb and my sleep. It serves as a constant reminder of how lazy I generally am and encourages me to get my daily dose of 10K steps and 10 floors. I know it is just a glorified (read expensive!) pedometer.

Now doing 10K a day requires moderate effort like taking occasional casual walks during lunch and late in the night. However, what amazes me is – Singapore as a country is so vertical that doing 10 floors a day is absolutely effortless. Most of the times, my first 10 floors of the day are done even before I reach my office just because of the maze of stairs that I have to climb to go the train station and then change trains at the interchange and finally walk down to office.

Never before in my life do I distinctly remember having so many places that I had the option to take stairs. It is truly amazing to see how built-up this little island is and how vertical spaces have been used!

Clarity

Got myself a new pair of swimming goggles. It is sort of an annual event. Whether I swim or not during the year, I always buy a new pair. However, the kind of goggles that I buy, over the period of several weeks, become increasingly foggy till one point of time I am swimming blind with goggles on my eyes. So they only serve the purpose of protecting my eyes partially from the chlorinated water.

Anyway, the new goggles now clearly show me what I actually swim in. Swimming pool waters seem to have the most disgusting things floating around. Besides all kinds of human excretions there are dead insects, band-aids and other kinda filthy objects – the less said the better.

With the new goggles now, I can clearly see where I am going and what I am headed into. This slows me down tremendously as I try to dodge, avoid or turn course to keep me away from it. Now frankly speaking, it’s the same water I have swam in for the past several years. The only thing that has changed is my vision of the reality.

This is sort of analogous to what happens to me in real life. When I have clarity of thought and a very good idea of what is gonna happen to me in the future, I am scared, and I slow down in my pursuit of happiness. But when I have no idea what I am heading into, and the future is all foggy with me running blind directly into it is the time when I perform to the best of my abilities. Yeah a philosophical post but resonates with my general fear of the future!

Who’s got the Monkey?

I am presuming most of you are already aware and actively reading the Harvard Business Review. It is a must read magazine for anyone who is gainfully employed.

Now, over its history (since 1922 or 1980 … the way you wish to look at it!) it has published quite a large number of articles. Not all of them are interesting. And it is extremely boring to actually go and read articles to figure out if they are great or not.

I asked the big bad world of the internet and managed to get two different lists of HBR Top 25 articles and HBR Top 10 articles (based on some random research done by some individuals). And then over the course of last 2 years managed to read all of them.

My favourite HBR article of all times is – Management Time: Who’s got the Monkey? This article was originally published in 1974 November – December. I am sure if you do some creative Google searching you can get the article for free. Apparently it’s one of the top 2 most re-printed articles ever (the other being – The Core Competence of the Corporation).

The Who’s got the Monkey article is light hearted but has an extremely important message on managing your time in the office. I always seem to struggle being on top of all the things I have on my plate and everyday it seems the workload keeps growing. The strategies given in the article have helped me actively control my work without getting too stressed. Being light-hearted and at 6 pages it’s a short read on a commute but it does have a super long lasting impact.

Family Soap

I belong to a generation of soap users in India that believed that 1 Soap was enough for the entire body and the entire family. We fondly loved the one green soap-bar that was purchased along with the family grocery once a month.

This was before the time that there were Aeroplanes, digital telephones and Satellite television (or at least I didn’t know of their existence). My naive self believed that this one soap could miraculously clean my hair, my face and my body and that is all that I needed for my morning bathing routine that lasted about 5 minutes (yeah, just to make myself clear – I was small then).

Hamam Soap Commercial

Somewhere along the way, there came TV (or rather I started watching and believing it). Marketers convinced us that we need a guy soap, that is different from a gal soap. Then they convinced us that we need different kinds of soaps from head to toe. I am amazed why they never taught me that I need a different soap depending on the day of the week. (Marketing 101 says – if you can’t increase your customer base, then sell more products to the same hapless customer).

Anyway, the gullible consumer I am, over the period of several years ended up buying so many soaps for so many things that at one point in time my soaps were the most expensive component of my grooming routine (I guess they are even now!).

Then I guess marketers figured that to make their shareholders happy they need to come up with more soap options. So they started consolidating the soaps back again. Now slowly and steadily we have reached a state where we get – a 3-in-1 Body + Hair + Face soap. Viola an innovation so intense that they charge me close to 10 SGD for this one (mind you the green bar was like a few cents back then!)

Of course, being the staunch believer in anything that gets marketed to me, I have been using this soap “After sport” (as if I am an athlete) and feeling good about it. Only yesterday did I realize that I have just gone back to my good old days of the Hamam.

So this is an appeal to all my marketer friends. I have got more hard earned money yearning for your attention. Please senselessly advertise more banal stuff to me. I promise, I won’t disappoint you.

Take this Metalheads!

Accidentally figured out last week that the symbol in the picture below actually stands for - “I Love You” in sign language. I was flabbergasted. Generations of heavy metal fans like me grew up believing it was the symbol of the devil or just plan 666. It was the sign of the horns all the while. It stood for anti-establishment and our rebellion against the system – till now.

And now I know. It just means – I love you.

Imagine drunk men with long hair and beard wearing t-shirts that signify they are horrible creatures and are against everything nice, cute and sweet in this world. Then they shout and scream at the top of their voice and head-bang to loud music while the guitar solo guy plays the riff from his best anti-establishment song. And then the collective crowd of burly men raise their hands high up in the air and say “I love you”. Haha, heavy metal concerts will never be the same for me again!

And just to further offend all my metal-head friends – here is Britney crooning to “I love Rock ‘N’ Roll”

I love Rock ‘N’ Roll

The Experiment

When I say Justin Bieber is the greatest entertainer in the world, I am not being sarcastic. At the tender age of 19 he has achieved more in his life than most other artists do in their entire lifetime. He is the most popular celebrity on twitter (and internet) and he has the capacity to cause widespread sorrow and joy for millions of people around the world by his actions.

But (yeah there had to be a but there!). His clientele (fan-following to be precise) seems to be uniformly distributed across the teenage girls age-group. I am sure there are middle-aged men who swing to his grooves, but I am also sure that they are statistically insignificant.

 

While Formula 1 as a sport is wholly uniformly distributed across men in the older age group and the category of men listening to Justin and seeing Formula 1 should (I am presuming) be a significantly low number.

I am not exactly sure about what was going on through the Singapore Grand Prix organizer’s mind when they decided to bring in Justin for the closing concert for the F1 Grand Prix. I mean, men my age, don’t particularly mind *seeing* Rihana, Shakira or Katy Perry in concert after an exciting F1 race. But seeing Justin would not exactly be a manly thing to do.

As someone pointed out to me, this could very well be the organizer’s last ditch effort to get teenage girls to come see F1 (cause I have heard that generation can do anything to see Justin and also loves to spend a lot – any marketer’s dream). So to see him live, a 3 hour race with cars roaring and zipping by is not really a discomfort. And after these gals see the race, they love the excitement and become avid F1 fans.

This probably will be the most significant marketing experiment of the century and business schools all around the world will study this event as an amazing  showcase of appealing to a new segment altogether by just bringing in their most favorite celebrity to perform. Or, I guess, I am really missing something really really big here.