Happiness: Flow

I recently started reading a pretty famous book called Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Even within the first 30 pages or so, the book has been very thought provoking, especially on one of the most complex topics in human psyche: happiness. Specifically, the book has made me think of the link between happiness and money.

Ever since I have been a student money has been tight - we have skimped on buying gadgets, going on more vacations, fancy dinners, clothes, gifts etc. But to be honest, I do not miss things as much. Even within these uses of discretionary money, there are certain things that bring more joy to me than others. Most of them being experiences; a vacation which allows me to relax and rejuvenate, a massage that fixes my back, a memorable dinner. 'Things' on the other hand bring much less joy - unless of course, the thing is a book, which is a different category altogether.

While money has been tight, learning and friends have been plentiful. Kellogg has just been an awesome place to meet new people, make friends and acquaintances, and at the same time, learn a lot from both peers and professors. I find it hard to find anything else that could replicate that experience.

So what will happen when I do go back to work? I definitely have a list of gadgets I want to buy - a kindle, an iPad , Apple/Google TV, a larger television. I am sure they will bring some element of happiness. But hopefully, I will keep this learning in mind and instead spend on other items: like on vacations, and on building a large savings balance so that I can at some point afford to start my own business. Hopefully I will not forget the lessons of the cash-crunch of student life.

Brad Feld's TEDx Boulder talk

Must watch if you are even a little bit concerned about work-life balance

Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford Commencement Address

Solve Media Video

Another one of those great ideas that make you say "Duh, why did I not think of that?" Super awesome.

Solve Media from Solve Media on Vimeo.

Multi-Tasking is Bad for you

TED Talks Steven Johnson: Where good ideas come from

Ever feeling down and uninspired? Need something to energize you? For me, watching to a TED talk is often the way to re-energize me. Recently, I watched a TED talk by Steve Johnson, author of the book 'Where Good Ideas come from.' Here is a quick summary of the talk:

1. An idea is not a single item; its a network

2. Ideas are the combination of two or more 'plain old things'

3. Ideas come together in chaotic environments where people from diverse backgrounds come together. Thus your work place should be just a little chaotic, with people sitting close to each other

4. When people share their mistakes and thoughts with others (e.g., around a conference table), it is likely to generate a lot more ideas

5. While great ideas might seem to come in this one magical moment, they have long incubation periods. They have been there in your mind: you just realize it around that one moment you might think of as the 'Eureka' moment

6. Allow your hunches to connect with other people's hunches. The value of protecting Intellectual Property is overrated. We should spend more time sharing ideas than protecting them

What makes a good teacher?

I am taking a Kellogg course called Financial Decisions, taught by Professor Artur Raviv. This course uses case studies to reinforce the fundamentals of Finance we learned through the basic finance courses. Professor Raviv is truly outstanding; I finally feel that I am understanding not just how to compute the numbers, but understand how to interpret them, and use them to make decisions.

So after one particularly great class, I started thinking about what have been the common traits of Professors that I have really learned from? A few things came to mind:

1. Entertaining: Two professors that come to mind in particular are Professor Hennessy and Professor Sawhney. Both have a knack of cracking timely jokes, and thus keep the class very engaged and energized.

2. Simplistic : Professor Raviv exemplifies this - he explains potentially complex financial concepts in a simplistic manner, helping one gauge the intuition behind the concept.

3. Enthusiastic: If you are going to try to get students interested in your subject, you better be enthusiastic yourself. Professor Busse was a prime example - she taught the Business Strategy class to my section, and I have been enthusiastic about the subject since.

4. Experts in their field: Professor Galinsky was quite the expert on organizational behavior and leadership. One typical way he used to begin sentences was "Research has shown that...."

5. Concerned about students: I remember Professor Sawhney's introductory remarks in the Technology Marketing Class. He asked "Why are you guys here for a Kellogg MBA?" We replied - to learn, to expand our way of thinking etc. He said, "You are here to get a better job, and start a better career. I don't measure how successful I am by how students rate me on evaluations. Instead, if you can tell me that you learned something here that helped you get a job, or do better in your job, I will be happy."

Television Sensitivity

Recently, I was watching a news feature on the Pakistan Floods on CNN. The report showed how much people were suffering from lack of adequate health care, and how these two brace doctors from the US had set up camp in an affected area, working practically round the clock to provide health care and help fight off chances of an epidemic.

Then the report ended. And a voice over - coming up, Lindsay Lohan gets caught again with some drugs/alcohol related stuff. Seriously? That is how you transition from such a sensitive subject to one that does not affect anyone? You had me, and possibly hundreds of thousands of viewers tuned into the Pakistan situation. How about three seconds to say, 'to donate to this cause, go to www....' (by the way, one link is here ).

Compare that to the Lifetime channel. My wife and I watch this one show every week - Project Runway. There - I embarrassed myself on my blog :) Coming back to the point - it was revealed last week that one of the contestants on the show, who actually won the last three challenges, was HIV positive. For the last ten years. And he had kept it a secret from everyone, including his parents. He finally revealed it on the show - and understandably, it was an emotional situation. The show ended with him talking about his story - but to Lifetime's credit, the bottom of the screen showed information about the AIDS Healthcare foundation, and a link to learn more and donate. I have no idea what the intention between putting that information there was - but it was the right thing to do.


CNN, time to learn from Lifetime!

P.S. I just noticed that Lifetime's website says 'Lifetime, the source for women's entertainment including games, movies, shows, full episodes, style, astrology, sweepstakes and more.' Now I am even more embarrassed :)

Kellogg Convocation for 2nd years

This Thursday, I attended Kellogg’s convocation event for 2^nd years, hosted by the KSA and by the Dean’s office. The convocation was held to welcome students back to school for their 2^nd year, and the event was followed by welcome reception, giving us a chance to catch up with our peers over friend chicken and brownies (that’s what I ate).

KSA president Zach Hollander kicked off the event with a welcome from the KSA, reminding us of our responsibilities as 2^nd years, to help and guide the first years. I think that atleast 90% of Kellogg 2^nd years would end up helping 1^st years in some way or another. Why? Well, quite simply put, we received an amazing amount of help from our seniors. And we are going to give back. For me, that means leading the Public Speaking Club, helping with the High Tech Trek to the west coast, and helping students with case prep as part of the Consulting club. And helping in any other way that I can.

Zach’s speech was followed by the customary look back at the 1^st year through a slide show of pictures with some irrelevant music playing in the background. One good think that they did this year was to crowd source the selection of pictures, by letting us upload pictures to a Google document. As a result, we did not end up with 50 pictures of the KSA leaders and 20 of their best friends. Well done KSA!

Dean Blount took the stage next, and updated us on all the work she has been doing since she joined Kellogg. It’s quite remarkable how much she seems to have achieved in a few months. Her key message to us was – take some time off the self-reflect. Some of the most successful people that she knows achieved the success because they took the time to listen to the voice inside, which was telling them what to do. She suggested that we spend 5 hours away from all phones, people, email, Facebook, twitter etc. – at which we all gasped. 5 hours? I mean if she had said 30 minutes, I might have been OK, but 5 hours? Such is the level of addiction with all these gadgets, social networks etc., that I am struggling to finish this bog post without checking email or updating my status to ‘writing a blog post.’

After a few more updates from Dean Roxanne Hori from the Career Management Center and Professor Michelle Buck, Kellogg’s director of Leadership Initiatives, we got some invaluable advice from Professor of the Year, David Besanko. He had a very simple and inspiring message, “Learning Hurts, Embrace the Pain.” He explained that he meant the following: We all have a tendency to self-select courses, teammates, situations that are within our comfort zone. It takes effort to step outside the comfort zone, and to do activities that will truly develop us. Professor Besanko said that his is most likely the last 9 months we would have dedicated to our learning, and to take full advantage of these, we should try to do the following:

1. Take courses outside your comfort zone. So if you are a marketer uncomfortable with numbers (I am totally stereotyping here), take Financial Decisions. Or if you uncomfortable with speaking in public, take a course which will force you to voice your opinions, or join the Public Speaking Club (blatant advertising for my club, of course).
2. Build teams from people you typically you do not work with. I noticed that several of my teams from 1^st year largely consisted of Indian guys. Not that there is anything wrong with Indian guys, it’s just that we lose out on the variety of opinion that a more diverse team might bring. So this year I am consciously trying to team up with people who I have not worked within the past.
3. Take a principled, fact-supported stance on issues being discussed in class. Debate, express your opinion, even if the majority is against you.
4. Last, but not least, build some work product that you are proud of. This might be a case that you write with a professor, which gets used in subsequent Kellogg courses.

I left the convocation really excited for the 2^nd year. One of the things I am really looking forward to this quarter is the Venture Lab course, through which I will be working with OCA Ventures as an intern. So here’s to the 2^nd year, and beyond.

Is the Web Dead?

In one of the most fascinating articles about the Web I have read in the recent past, Chris Anderson, the editor-in-chief of Wired magazine and the author of the book/concept the Long Tail argues that the Web is Dead. The title of the article is quite catchy, but as the Web would say,"The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated."Instead, Chris explains how some essential characteristics of the web are changing:

1. There has been a considerable change in traffic on the internet; from FTP and web being the majority in 2000, to video and peer-to-peer dominating in 2010.

2. The larger websites have become the media giants of 2010. Look at Facebook, Apple iTunes and Youtube; in 2001 the top 10 websites accounted for 31 percent of pageviews in the US. Now, the top 10 websites account for 75% of page views. And these larger players are likely to encourage closed gardens to monetize to the maximum, rather than make it all open and completely accessible. A case in point is iTunes.

3. The way we access the web is changing; more and more content is being consumed through smarter, thick clients like apps, on smartphones and tablets vs. the browser. A large part of this is because these thick clients offer much better user-experience. As a result, the internet is being used as a dumb transport mechanism.

4. The big web properties are acting more like all-or-nothing media giants, vs. what Chris calls the 'come-one-come-all collective utopianism' of the Web. Chris compares this to the natural path of industrialization: invention, propagation, adoption, control. Very strong argument!

5. Other than search, the web has not proven to be a great mechanism for advertising. A case in point is banner ads; they have always suffered from low CTRs, and are generally ignored by users. However alternative advertising mechanisms presented outside the pure browser-page based ads could be pretty attractive. This could include advertising mechanisms like sponsored social goods, banners in social games, mobile app based ads, video ads etc. While all of these are available on the browser, they are increasingly being used outside the browser.


In some sense, I do agree with Chris; especially since tablets and mobile phone based apps often provide a very engaging user-experience, far better than a general purpose browser. But there are several reasons why the web is far from dead

1. The web remains the largest source of information, and the currency of exchange of information - web links - get more and more important as this information is spread across the web rather than concentrated at one place. Even large properties like Facebook and Twitter rely on the exchange of information through links. In fact, as soon as I complete this blog entry, I will post it on facebook and twitter, which is probably why you are reading it.

2. App traffic is growing because of video, but is traffic the right measure? It takes several times more bandwidth to consume an hour long video, than is needed when keeping the user engaged for an hour with a traditional web page. So the metric for comparing is not exactly fair.

3. There are several innovations in web browsers - particularly from Google Chrome - that might help bring back the browser.

4. The B2B web is likely to remain on the web as far as I can see - I mean how else could you write something that can easily be used within and outside an enterprise, than as a web application. In fact, enterprises are still in the midst of completing the transition to web-based applications, so the thought of moving from the web to this new app based web is hard to think of.