Why I am so domesticated?

Why don't I do crazy hours these days?

Why do I work so hard at work and come home all spent out?

Dunbar's number

Heard about this for the first time on Seth Godin's blog.
Basically, do we believe that the maximum number of stable social relaitionhips that a person can have is 150 (on an average).

My thinking: Agree mostly but depends on how overworked the person in question is. My Dunbar's number would be less than 150 and dwindling. Blame my job and the flux of change in it.

Teamwork

Last few months I've been working this global project,in which I am at the fag end of the execution chain. It has been a great lesson on understanding dynamics of teams spanning across nationalities,mindsets, differential levels of rigour.
Also, the 'local' execution also involves keeping a small set of 4 people completely aware, motivated and focussed on details.

Have spent quite a bit of time thinking about the 'concept' of team and why some are better than the others.
Am I doing the right things in my own team to encourage the spirit of 'never drop the ball' or am I encouraging the beginning of an endless 'blamegame'?
Am I doing enough 'team' things apart from writing substance-less 'team' emails?
Building great teams is an art that needs to be perfected over years and great teams are like seed which will spread across the organisation.

Pondicherry Promenade

The Pondy beach front on a Sunday morning is awesome. Without any care in thw world, you've got to go there to soak in the ambience. It is comforting to know, that 10 km away from you in the sea, there is a place , from where all your pressures and worries seem frivolous.
An Ice Cream at the Arun Ice cream bar is the final clincher.

Reading in general

A oft-levelled charge against me is that I buy a lot of books and hardly read them. That I like to populate my bookshelf with lots of books and I don't read more that half of them.

Well during this weeklong stay at home I dispelled a few of those criticisms by reading a book which was long pending to be read.

This particular book in question is titled 'I dare' and is the biography of Kiran Bedi. As the pic above illustrates, I bought this book on 25th June 2006 (More than 3 years ago) while I was staying in the Kalyaninagar area of Pune as a summer intern.

Take-aways:

• Wonderful lessons in leadership.
• How to work in the midst of stifling systems.
• A confidence and a sense of having 'finished' something which I started a long time back.
• Maybe it's the first is a series of good 'finishings' that I am going to accomplish and become a good 'finisher'.

If you're good at something, never do it for free.

I am generally a guy who feels things -- Like Zinedine Zidane, Steve Jobs feel things.
I mean I feel pain and happiness, dreams and nightmares etc...
But there are sometimes, when the mind is super-clear and calm. Generally late in the night, after about 11:30 when I dont want to listen to any music or anything. You know exactly how much to work, how much worry and how much pain to feel.

This is an open letter to the complex,jumbled up forces which were holding me back till sometime ago. It is now time to clear all delusions, presumptions and the fog that clouds the mind, yours and till sometime ago, mine.
There are a few things, call them my quirks, which I have realised recently that I very little tolerance for. Somewhere in the top 3 would be the below mentioned two behavoirs. It cuts me up when

1. I don't get a response when I try to communicate with all good intention.
2. I get a response based on a few obsolete, invalid presumptions.

And you, have time and again oscillated between the above two unacceptables. Needless to say, I am not pleased.

Don't get me wrong, I am not infallible. I may be wrong, but for some strange reason, I don't hope I am wrong.

It's high time that I officially declared all my good intentions towards you, withdrawn.