Blog

The most visited page on the blog is my 6pack abs story.

And the most asked question is “which protein shake did you use?”

The answer is there in the blog.

But.

Welcome to the lazy web.

We read something. And we have questions.

And we ask those questions.

Without checking, if those questions have been asked already or not?

There is a high chance they have been asked already.

Yet, we will assume our question to be so important that we expect the writer to answer.

But the writer has got multiple of such questions. Several of them asking the same thing.

The writer has shared the answer already. And is now not likely to answer to your specific question.

Because the question has been answered. Does it really matter if it wasn’t “your” question that was answered?

That is how life behaves.

Most questions have already been asked.

And most answered have already been answered.

They are part of books, part of legends, part of history, part of someone’s experience.

They are part of the blog post called life.

And yet, we will keep asking the same questions.

Waiting for an answer.

Life is not a customer service helpline.

It’s an encyclopedia.

The hard work has to be done by us.

Becoming great isn’t the same as becoming good.

In fact, good is the enemy of great (Jim Collins).

If you are good, you believe continuing on the same path will lead to greatness.

Doing 10 times the amount of good will make you 10X better.

And we all succumb to this “easy” path. Of resigning to being good.

Great is about changing the orbit. About risks. About patience. About tenacity. About judgment.

It’s about talent too. Much lesser though as we would like to believe.

You become good by honing your talent.

You become great by realizing talent isn’t everything.

One of the biggest challenges of organization building is last mile accountability.

Which, in my opinion, starts with last mile expectations.

What is it that I expect this individual to be focusing on?

Not multiple things.

Just one thing. At one point of time.

And what is the outcome I expect from it?

It’s supremely hard to get to this.

In a small setup, everyone ends up doing everything. And while that’s necessary, it rarely brings in accountability.

So when things fail, one doesn’t know what to fix. Who to fix.

In a large setup, everyone hides behind the organizational chart. There is excess and it’s easy to be missed, if one lays low.

So when things fail, it’s cover your ass time. One again doesn’t know the root cause.

Here is a good question to ask – that helps see the problem clearly.

“What one failure will make me fire this person?”

If you are unable to answer this, or there are multiple failures as a response to this question – you are in trouble.

The goal is to find that one metric that someone is responsible for. And the company cares about.

“Here are Multiple metrics” is the wrong answer. “It’s hard” is the wrong answer. “Too early for us” is the wrong metric. “Don’t know how to do it” is the wrong answer.

If you don’t know why you would fire someone, then the person should be let go off today.

There are 4 kinds of people

1. Those who love you and celebrants your wins.

2. Those who hate you and criticize what you do.

3. Those who pull you down because they don’t want you to win.

4. And those who call out your bluff when you go wrong.

It’s a fact that one will go more wrong than right.

Which means there should technically be more type 4 people than type 1.

So isn’t it strange that we find more type 1s around us?

Or, we want more type 1s around us?

People who call out your bluffs are honest. They are truth seekers. They know you might not like it, yet they risk it. Because that’s what they do.

And only they will help you see your blind sides.

Those who call out your bluff are far more precious than those who call out your wins.

If you asked people this question

“What’s the one thing you would want, if you were lost somewhere?”

It’s quite likely most people will respond

“A map will be all that I need.”

Except,

It’s the wrong answer.

A map won’t help, because you don’t know where you are on the map.

Same is true for life too.

When lost, most of us crave for a map.

A diagram of which road leads to where.

We rarely stop to realize that in the absence of our own location on the map, the map is just a useless item.

What might help, is to retrace our steps. To try and go back where we can came from. Our fundamentals. The core. The origin. The point that might explain it all.

Because no matter how lost we are, we always know where we came from.

Recall the first time you drove a car! It’s a miracle that our feet, hands and eyes coordinate that 2,000kg machine. Especially if it’s a stick-gear car.

That’s a lot of moving parts at one time – within us and the car!

Recall how that felt the last time you drove a car.

Nearly not as much as a miracle, I assume!

To the extent we added more moving parts.

Music

Singing

Checking messages

Paying tolls

Road rage :)

I don’t know if you have ever tried, the next time you are driving, try and pay attention to your feet and hands. What they too.

It’s likely you will be left amazed yet again at how this is so natural to you now.

Same goes for tying a tie.

Same goes for writing.

Same goes for typing.

Same goes for brushing.

Same goes for buttoning your shirt.

Tying your shoe laces.

It’s all a habit now!

A habit that you don’t pay attention to anymore, and it continues to deliver. Almost without fail.

And if you were to pay attention to it any day, you might just falter.

Habits will win over awareness, almost everyday, in the battle of life.

The question then is – what are you habits?

1. You have to be told what to do

2. You know what to do

3. You do it

4. You do it well

If you feel stuck in life, which stage are you stuck at?

Knowing where you are is the first step to knowing what needs to be done to move ahead.