Published December 1-5, 2022
1
Introduction
A few weeks ago, I was sitting in the waiting room of a doctor. I had my 300-page spiral writing book with me. I was writing out some ideas for a presentation that I needed to make a few days later. A young girl sitting across asked, “Sir, what are you writing? Are you an author?” I smiled and answered, “No, I am an entrepreneur. I write because it helps keep my mind clear.” I then explained to her my writing system.
The other day, at a conference I was attending, an attendee walked up to me and said, “I noticed that in the entire room of 60 people, you were the only person making notes. How did you develop this habit?” I showed this person my notebook and how I made notes, and then explained why.
Some other questions I get regularly: Why do I still use a notebook and pen to write rather than a digital gadget? How do I blog daily, and why? How do I manage to be punctual? Why am I not on social media? Why don’t I use a calendaring tool? What is my approach to meetings? How and what do I read? What apps do I use? And so on. That is how this series came about: “my life system.”
We are creatures of habits – good and bad. Over time, the hope is that we build on what’s good and reduce the bad. I have tried to learn from books, conversations and observations to become better. I wrote about some of my beliefs and habits in my Proficorn series. As I reviewed those posts, I decided they needed an upgrade. And hence this series.
When I was in Pune for a meeting some months ago, I saw 2 formulas blazoned at the reception. 1.00 raised to 365 = 1.00. Below that: 1.01 raised to 365 = 37.78. The implication: if we can make ourselves 1% better each day, that leads to a 37 times improvement in a year. Each of us has an opportunity to create better versions of ourselves – do a kaizen on ourselves.
It is never too late to learn and improve. It requires a realisation that we can be better than we are, a humility to accept when we are wrong, and an openness to change. Every mistake we make should be introspected to see if there is change needed in our core processes. Done repeatedly, we become better. A system is a set of ideas or rules for organising something; a particular way of doing something. Apply it to our way of living and we get a life system.
This series is not about providing life hacks – the Internet is full of those. It is about sharing how I think and what I do – the path and system I have chosen to follow, after many iterations and improvements. Each of us has to craft our own life system.
2
Punctuality
Being on time shows respect for the person you are meeting. Since many others are not punctual, it also means that if you are punctual, you may need to wait – which needs patience. For online meetings, I typically will wait for 2 minutes before I message the other person and 5 minutes before I call. Thanks to online meetings, punctuality has dramatically improved. With the “stuck in traffic” excuse gone, the only two left now are “my previous meeting ran over” and “I had trouble starting Zoom.” And there are only so many times that these can be used. So, better to be on time than to keep apologising.
There is a small nuance to being on time. I tell my colleagues that if we have a Zoom call at 5 pm, then they need to be online at 4:59. If it is their link, then they need to start the meeting at 4:58. If they join at 5 pm, they are already late. I set alarms on my phone to ensure that I follow my own credo on punctuality. When I was coordinating a Zoom course for my colleagues on the works of Jim Collins, I would set a timer with the seconds counter to ensure we started exactly on time. (It is an idea I picked up from Collins himself in one of his interviews – 5 pm means 5:00:00.)
Once we make punctuality a habit, we are less hassled. When travelling for a meeting, we will start building small buffers to ensure we are early not late. When taking a flight, I make sure I reach the airport well before time so that there is no last-minute stress in case the check-in or security queues are long. It just requires a little planning rather than scrambling at the end. Punctuality is also infectious; once others start realising that you are always going to be on time, they too start showing up on time.
In my case, I don’t wear a watch – I haven’t worn one for 40+ years. I do have my mobile most of the time with me. And I am never down to a race for the last few seconds to be punctual. I am also one of those who likes the clock in the room to be set to the right time rather than a few minutes ahead – our brain auto-adjusts the time difference so it is kind-of pointless to set the clock ahead and then deduct those minutes each time you see it!
The same idea of punctuality should apply everywhere. When doing presentations at conferences, I ask the organisers the time I have. When I start speaking, I set the stopwatch on my mobile to ensure I complete on time. Of course, it does need practice. I recently did a presentation with 119 slides in 30 minutes – I had segmented the deck and knew exactly where I needed to be at each segment. I rehearsed it multiple times. Needless to say, I finished on time – with a few seconds to spare.
PS: My previous post on punctuality.
3
Making Notes
I write a lot – in meetings, and otherwise. Although I used to make notes even when I was younger, I took it to an extreme after I read David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” many years ago. One of the points made in the book is to write down things so that the mind is free. It is as simple as that. Most of the time we are always bothered about our next actions. We have to remember to do this, do that, tell someone something, and so on. My approach is to get it out of the mind and onto a paper. (For some, it could be into an app – whatever works best.)
In meetings, I make copious notes. While I have tried digital tools (the best one I came across thanks to a recommendation from a friend was reMarkable), I still find the combination of paper and pen works best. I write a lot and write fast. It keeps me completely focused during the meeting. And as I get ideas, I note them down prefixing them with my initials or a lightbulb, thus enabling me to reference them easily later.
If one doesn’t make notes in a meeting, one will remember the big ideas clearly. But I have realised that it is also the seemingly small ideas that matter. A phrase one hears, a memory that comes by, a trigger from the gut – these are hard to remember after the meeting. Especially, if one is in a series of back-to-back meetings. The best way then is to capture the moment by writing it down to come back to it later.
I always carry a 300-page spiral notebook – I have bought dozens of these, so I do not have to worry about finishing one and then having to go buy another. It is 20 cm x 27 cm. The spiral binding makes it easy to fold and write comfortably on both sides. I typically complete one notebook in about 2 weeks. I reserve the first page as a daily index for future reference. Once done, I put a sticker on the front with the start and end date.
I always have 2 pens with me – standard issue Bic “Round Stic” fine or medium, in blue and black. I like Blue Fine and Black Medium. I haven’t found them in India yet, so I buy them in bulk on my US visits. Each pen costs under Rs 10, so there is no regret even if I lose one. I keep two pens with me just in case the ink runs out on the pen I am using – this way I do not have to scramble around for another pen. Of late, learning from a colleague, I have added a red pen so I can highlight key points after a meeting.
I also carry with me a folded sheet in my pocket for times when it is unwieldy or unwise to carry a notebook – walks, weddings, movie theatres, social gatherings. I then rewrite these points into my notebook so everything is in a single place and I don’t have to deal with scraps of paper.
When travelling, I have a small bag (my son named it “BB” – Bangkok Bag, after the place we bought it). I can fit my iPad and the spiral book in it which helps when travelling.
Much of what I have said can be accomplished via an iPad and some note-taking app. But I like the certainty of paper and pen (no battery issues!). Also, the ability to quickly flip pages to refer to some past writings is easier. Just like we have spatial memory when reading physical books, I can generally tell where I wrote something so it is much easier to reference.
PS: My previous post on making notes.
4
Writing
I am writing all the time – I find I think better when I am with my notebook and pen. My notebook and pen are always with me. The mind is always at work. I am not much for meditation. My equivalent of meditation is sitting in a place with my notebook and letting the thoughts flow out from the mind. My book becomes a mirror into my mind. I don’t worry about organising my thoughts when I am writing – there is always time to do that later.
One change I have made in the past year is to my early morning thinking and writing. Earlier, I used to write in my notebook. Now, I write on the computer. I identify the topic that I want to think about more deeply on the previous night before I go to sleep. At times, I will even open a Word document and put the title – this way I don’t have to waste time after I wake up thinking about what I am going to write on. I write in a list (as an outline). It is much more efficient than writing in sentences and paragraphs.
Consider the idea for this series. I was on a flight from Goa to Mumbai and started thinking about what I should be blogging next. I wrote out the obvious 4-5 ideas that I had been thinking about. And then as I was reflecting on the conference I had just attended and some of the conversations I had, the idea came that it would be good to write about my process of note-taking. And then I thought: why stop at that? Why not make it into a much broader theme on my “life system”? I opened my book and let the thoughts flow – in about 15 minutes, I had listed about almost 30 themes to describe in such a series.
A trigger from a conversation I had had the previous night (“You are the only person making notes. How do you do it? And why?”) became the spark for a new blog series. As I had answered that question, I had a gut instinct that there was something interesting and I had noted it in my book. And so when I was thinking in the flight (“contiguous uninterrupted time”), the idea took on a life of its own.
Many times, I end up just rewriting old ideas. There is nothing that repetition will not improve. As Heraclitus put it, “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” It is never exactly the same idea, and we are also not the same. I may rarely look up older notes but the slow evolution and natural selection of ideas is visible in my writings.
5
Blogging
An extension of writing is blogging. In today’s attention-starved world, blogging seems very old-fashioned. People want tweets and pithy LinkedIn or Facebook posts, not longer musings – all of which I am incapable of. Because I believe that making a good point requires more than 140 or 280 characters. Length is important to understand a person’s viewpoint to appreciate the point being made. Of course, the same can be said as a series of tweets, but I still prefer the undistractedness of blogs where there is no pressure to like, reply or forward. I like the simplicity and cleanness of how a blog page looks.
It has been more than two-and-a-half years since I restarted my blog. I post daily (twice now), but I do not write daily. I chunk my writings typically on the weekend. The daily post format ensures that I do not wait for the perfect essay – which may never happen. I do not hesitate to write half-baked ideas – future iterations will make them better. Once I decided that I am not in the race for followers, likes and shares, it brought a lot of clarity to me. Most importantly, I write for myself, not for others. Writing helps clarify my own thinking and creates a discipline of reading. For me, this is a virtuous cycle – reading-thinking-speaking-writing.
At any time, I have a list of topics that I can write on. And that is good enough to get started. Once I start writing, the ideas flow. Some of the writing is original, while at other times I will aggregate what others have written in a single place. This reading and collating also helps me learn new topics. At times, I find myself going back to my earlier writings to refresh my own thinking.
Blogging has become a great outlet for my thinking. I cannot now think of stopping. The rhythm of having something new to be posted daily has created just the incentive for me to ensure the cycle of looking at the world around with curiosity and imagining a better tomorrow in my mind and words does not stop.
Blogging is in some ways a public diary – albeit with many restrictions so as not to offend anyone. My writing has covered the three themes I like: marketing, entrepreneurship and India. Of late, marketing has been more dominant as I seek to craft the right future vision for Netcore. I still remember keeping a daily diary as a teenager and blogging almost seems to be an extension of that.
As I look ahead, I don’t think I am ever going to run out of topics to write on. We live in exciting times – so much is happening around us. And as long as I keep my own spirit of being open with my ideas and thinking, this blog will continue.