Do I finish whatever I start?

I just finished watching a presentation by Angela Duckworth, the author of Grit. In the presentation, she asks a question that nobody ever really asks you, it was “Do you finish everything you start?”. It started to percolate into my head and I realised that in the past, I was not someone who finished things.

I would begin things when they felt like they were interesting and stop them when they felt like they were no longer interesting. It is a curious phenomenon, it shows that I am choosing to finish things that I start, maybe they are things that I was assigned rather than chose or perhaps they were things that I chose and am continuing to stick with. Regardless, I can proudly say that I am doing great on the above question.

I must also add that I do not pick things that I know I cannot do. I do not take on additional load when I know I cannot finish them. I know my commitments take time, effort and one hundred percent mental focus. I do not kid myself that I can pull off feats that are seemingly impossible, because they are impossible. That is actually a good word, it is important to clearly demarcate your boundaries and things that you are not going to enter into.

When I say something is impossible, it is after due consideration that I say it. I know that I cannot train for a marathon in three days and I don’t delude myself that I can do it. It might be fun to try and fail but I’ve got other things on my plate. Why should I take time away from something that I truly love and invest that time into something where I cannot be world class and also do not like? I would not.

Life has got its own way of teaching you things and this is that way, you must learn to speak the lingo that life uses and understand what it is trying to communicate to you.

In conclusion, I’d like to proudly say that I finish whatever I start.

Why is Marriage causing every girl to quit her career?

The love of my life quit her job, got married to another man and is now a housewife. A friend of mine who was absolutely phenomenal at what she did, got married two years ago and her life now revolves around her family. She doesn’t seem to be doing anything at all. Anything that she does looks like a token approach to a career. Nothing serious, just to avoid staying idle. In school, I had several teachers who fell into that category. That was two decades ago. Are things still the same today?

I heard from a friend yesterday that she was joining a club which is meant for the ‘wives of busy men’. Although she didn’t fall into this category, I was surprised to hear that there are several hundred women in my city that fall into this category. This is not new, women have been taking care of their homes for times immemorial but in the past most of them were uneducated or semi educated women. What is the fascination of a woman with a Masters degree to sit at home and look after kids is beyond me.

I find that there is a dangerous predicament that we as a society might find ourselves in when half of the educated population doesn’t join the workforce or is underemployed in some fashion.

I don’t know whether the society is to blame or the women themselves are choosing comfort over ambition. At the end of the day, this is a sorry state of affairs.

Superhuman Email Client a disaster?

A while ago, I followed a link from Product Hunt that led me to a website called Superhuman. The site didn’t have much to say except a big box that asks for your email and a button below that says “Request Access”. I didn’t make much of that on that day, but I heard about Superhuman on a podcast and decided to look it up.

Apparently, Superhuman is an email client super charged with AI that makes email a super fast experience. Personally, as a person who consciously chose to remove extra tabs like ‘Social’ from Gmail, I detest technology doing too much work thereby controlling what we focus on rather than leaving that choice with us. However, I do agree that there are people in the world that perhaps need something like this to deal with enormous email volume.

The scary things about Superhuman

Undo Send: The option called Undo Send allows people to rescind an email that they’ve sent. It is available as an addon for Gmail which I’ve been using for more than five years. It is great, it allows me to not make silly mistakes like send emails with Typos or forget attaching files etc. I see a large sinister underbelly of this feature.

Message Read Status: In this magical email client, we will now be able to see immediately when someone has read a email or not. It is like blue ticks in Whatsapp or ‘seen’ in Instagram. What could possibly be wrong with this?

In this twenty first century that we live in, we are constantly bombarded with things that bring us unnecessary anxiety.

Did they read the message?

Why haven’t they responded if they did?

Should I say this?

What if she misinterprets it?

Is it alright to say this?

I wish I did not have say that.

In a world like this, where a large percentage of people are facing unnecessary anxiety from skewed ego gratification needs of engineers sitting in silos in Silicon Valley. This adds fuel to fire.

In the real world, you cannot take back words that have exited your mouth.

In the real world, you cannot take back words that you have said. Once words have exited your mouth, there is no way to take them back. You are responsible and accountable for what you say. This the truth of life. When popular apps provide options like “Delete Message” or “Unsend” we are training entire generations that it is alright to say something and take it back without consequence. It fundamentally alters human behaviour.

While I do not have access to this client and hope I never do. I fear the implications it will have on the rest of the world.

Since Gmail introduced Quick replies, I’ve been getting a ton replies to emails from people that say “I’ll do it” or “I’ll look into it, Thanks.” which are definitely responses from Gmail Quick Replies. Sometimes, that is not the reply we are looking for. Had there been no quick replies, people would have taken a minute to write out a proper response that would make sense and add value.

Although the intent of quick replies might be to reduce the typing of frequently occurring words or responses, it has a multitude of secondary implications. What if the message required a larger response that you replied to in one word? What if the entire message was fundamentally flawed? One might argue that the option to respond is still available and it is left to the human to take the final decision. However, as every human also knows, making something convenient encourages the usage of it and vice verse with something that is inconvenient.

Autocorrect is for humans to avoid typos. If it begins to dictate what we type, we are the slaves, not it.

Conclusion

Superhuman is currently in a private invite only beta. It may eventually become open for public. There are some features that are good such as follow up reminders and maybe the spam detection filters are superior. However, building a product from scratch that involves some features that could alter behaviour of people is rife with peril.

Gentleman like to Geek like?

I placed an order for something on the internet on a website which shares the name of a river in South America. I used to be a happy customer of this company, that is until they started playing silly tricks that create small inconveniences in my life which snowballed into bigger inconveniences. 


The first is the unavailability of the number of the delivery person. First, they had no number provided. After which they transitioned to providing the number of the the person. Now, they provide a number which I must dial and enter another code which they fondly refer to as a “PIN” in order to get connected to the guy or sometimes just get a message saying “The person you’re trying to reach is speaking to someone else”. This entire ordeal is a complete waste of time. 


The second, and far more inconveniencing is a delivery code. They call it a One Time Password (OTP), as if I didn’t have enough in my life already. At the time of delivery, we need to provide a code to the person for the item to be delivered to us. Hurray! How wonderful!. For someone like me who receives a lot of parcels, this a pain in the behind. They used to do it for high value items, of late, they have started doing this for all items which further exacerbates the problem. 


I would like no calls to me for delivery and I would like someone else to take my parcel in my absence. They haven’t considered this at all. 

A friend of mine tells me that this company has a policy of refunding customers in case they claim that they haven’t received the item. Even if the company has proof that the item was delivered, the company policy is to trust the customer and delight them. Such a policy would have caused the company to book massive losses on their books owing to the sheer population of this country.


They got rid of the simple and effective gentleman style system of signature on delivery and created this geek style monster which serves nobody but them. 


This company which is from the United States of America has lowered its standards to lower than Indian companies. 

Letting Go of Parts of Your Life

My Journey with Hyderabad Toastmasters comes to an end

I left my Toastmasters club this September. I did not renew my membership. After being with the club for around 7 years, I had to take this decision and let it go. The reasons for why I did this are worth exploring.

Toastmasters has helped me immensely. Thanks to Toastmasters, I have visited clubs across the globe and made friends with highly influential people whom I would have never met had I not been a part of this organisation.

As this is a forum for public speaking, Toastmasters gave me a practice ground to test my speeches in front of an eager audience. I never chose to pick up any leadership positions as knew my reasons for being in Toastmasters were only to improve my public speaking skills.

Then Why Did I leave?

If I gained so much from Toastmasters, why did I choose to leave it?

When I joined my club, Hyderabad Toastmasters in 2012, I was in awe of the speakers that spoke on the stage. The platform was a place I felt I had to be at to grow. It was an exemplary experience from start to finish. The contests at the club level were invigoratingly competitive. So much so that someone who would win the club level competition would pretty much win the Division level competition.

Fast forward to today in 2019, the club meeting is hodgepodge of different speakers at different levels. The standards of who you need to be in order to get on the stage has fallen. The overall experience meeting after meeting reeks of mediocrity. From “Wow!” to “Meh”.

I won’t go into what the reasons were for this as that is not important for us here. However, I would like to mention that the dilution in club quality happened over a period of a couple of years. They lowered the bar for one person which kick started a chain of new member additions which further lowered the quality. Once the bar is lowered for one person, it allows several others also to come on in.

To conclude, I want to say thatI had to choose my course of action keeping in view the current club position. Thereby I chose to leave the club since I no longer find it valuable to be a member of this club. I do not feel that I am gaining anything by attending or participating in a meeting. Perhaps I’ve out grown the club.

Toastmasters is a part of my life and there comes a time when you need to let go of parts of your life to allow newer things to take their place.

My Views About IKEA

I had the opportunity to visit IKEA yesterday (it was a Monday, for those of you who are curious) at Hyderabad. I’m sharing my views about IKEA here.

Things I liked

  1. IKEA has amazing Stuff, the best quality you’d find.
  2. IKEA has almost everything you’d need for a house.
  3. Modular parts of IKEA allow people to customise what they build as per their needs. I got a table, I had to purchase the top and the legs separately. If the top ever got damaged, I could buy a new top and use the same legs, that is what modular means.

Things I disliked

  1. IKEA is difficult to understand, there is a learning curve which is something I dislike. Picking up some small items is alright, but bigger items require understanding of how different modules come together. This is exacerbated by the next point.
  2. IKEA staff are aloof and have no intention of helping customers by design (IKEA chose this). IKEA wants customers to do everything themselves. I’ll explain this below.
  3. If you are coming with pre-determined items in mind and have looked them up on the app, the items marked with the location are easy to find, but the ones which say “Found in Market Hall or Showroom” are not. It took me quite a bit of time to find a couple of items and even some staff members misguided me until they checked in the system and gave me the correct location.

My Views Explained

IKEA has been in the business of making modular furniture for decades, I think it started in the 1940s. They have amassed an enormous amount of experience in making the highest quality furniture. For someone purchasing at IKEA, quality should not be a concern.

If you are one of those lucky or smart ones that is building your house from scratch, visiting IKEA early will save you a ton of work later on. It also gives you a fantastic idea of what you can do with your house. The showroom provides a lot of possibilities for almost every kind of requirement.

There are a few things I dislike about IKEA in India, let me elaborate on this.

IKEA wants to make the customers do all the work.

  • They want us to clean up the dishes after we eat at their restaurant.
  • They want us to pick up heavy objects which come in different shapes and sizes from their warehouse ourselves and take it to billing after which we need to drop it off at their delivery counter if we want it shipped home. All this without any help from IKEA staff.
  • They want us to go to the staff vs make the staff proactively reach out to help us. This was confirmed to me by some staff members.
  • They want us to put the items on the conveyor belt at the billing counter and remove them from the belt after the billing is done.
  • They want us to figure out how to build everything without help from people. They have great resources that do not involve people such as guides.
  • They have communicated to their staff to not help the customers with picking up items either directly or indirectly. I don’t know of any other reason.

IKEA is all about DIY, I know that, I get that, I am a big supporter of the DIY movement. I’ve invested in several crowdfunding campaigns which support DIY projects. I have made several DIY projects myself using different parts.

Having said that, I am an Indian and live in a city which has a population that exceeds New York City. DIY in India seems completely meaningless to me. The phrase ‘DIY’ started as an internet buzzword for the ‘Do-it-Yourself’ way. It meant that you could make the item yourself without the help of a professional. In the US, this makes sense because people do not want to spend a few hundreds of dollars on services of a professional.

A country like India which has cheap labour does not need this. Instead of a few hundred dollars, we would spend a few hundred rupees or perhaps a couple of thousands.

This is something that IKEA either does not understand (which is unlikely because it is a multi-billion dollar conglomerate and they would have worked out all possible permutations and combinations) or is trying to change the behaviour of the Indian consumer (which anyone in business knows is a futile exercise, no matter how big you are).

DIY was born out of high prices, not out of choice. If people want to choose DIY, they are free to, but IKEA need not shove that down people’s throats by mandating it.

In my humble view, IKEA needs to adapt itself to the Indian market and consumers if they wish to survive and thrive. Unless they plan to cater only to the NRI community, they need to get more people in the store and help out with stuff.

I had a list of what I wanted before I went into the store, had there been any provision which would have allowed me to submit that list and get all the items directly at billing, that would have been a great thing.

I’m also looking forward to online purchase and delivery of items for things purchased in IKEA.

I had an average experience at the store but the quality of the furniture is top notch. Waiting for the next updates from IKEA.

Why Coding is Humbling

After a frustrating 30 mins of looking for what went wrong in the code, turns out that it was a semi colon on line 54. Computers have their way of making you feel like a complete idiot when such an experience happens.

After 2 months of actively learning code, I had a slump for the past two weeks. I was just not able to get myself to start coding, it was a low period. I suspect burnout, but I can’t say that for sure.

The computer makes you humbler in that way, you learn to realise that you must have made some mistake somewhere and you just haven’t found it yet. Hard to blame a computer when you were the coder that wrote the code.

I’ve since picked up my pace and I’m on the path to becoming a full stack developer. I realise that the only way is to keep going no matter what kinds of things I experience.

I was told by the AltCampus mentors that after a initial honeymoon period that looks like coding is easy, I will enter the desert of despair. The phase where everything seems to be going haywire, not a single line of code I write seems to do what I want it to do and I just cannot wrap my head around the fact that I must keep coding.

At the time this was mentioned, I thought “That is for those other people, I’m immune to such things”, but lo and behold, I fell into the same problem. This is where wisdom comes in, wisdom lets you know that you are to expect certain things and be prepared for them rather than be shocked by them at that time.

Is coding hard? Yes.

Am I sticking through it? Absolutely!

Make It Functional

Don’t try to build the car, build a skateboard first.

– Henrik Kniberg

After nearly two months at AltCampus, I felt the load was getting overwhelming. I have a daily website I make, the classes to attend, exercises in the classes to do, work on problem solving through the Codewars website.

Phew! that’s a lot. Well, as it turns out, it is a lot, which means that it is difficult to do. I reached out to my mentor Prashant and asked him what I’m supposed to do in this case, his answer?

“Don’t try to build the car, build a skateboard first.”

He continued to explain that I was trying to get too much done in too little time and instead I must focus only on getting the thing which I am doing to be “Functional”.

The analogy here is that of the process of building a car vs building a skateboard.

Let us say we have four months to build a car.

Month one, we create the wheels.

Month two, we create the chassis.

Month three, we add the engine.

Month four, we put everything together and may get a functional car.

Or, we could build a skateboard in month one and build on it from there.

Start with Something functional

The goal is to start with making something functional. A tap that dispenses water at 1 drop/second is better than 0 drops/second.

Now, I can focus on making things as Version 1.0.0 and think of building something better for version 1.0.1 and so on and so forth.

This way of thinking has taken a huge load off my shoulders, I no longer have to feel stressed about making everything perfect. I know that there will always be a version 2, 3 and 4 to add functionality.

Examples of this can be seen everywhere.

  1. The first iPhone did not have 3G or copy and paste.
  2. Instagram started with only 1 filter and only worked on iOS.
  3. Uber was an app that could only be downloaded with the link and you could only get that link from someone who was already using it.

Making it Functional is the goal of any endeavour, we can always iterate and improve later.

Figure Out the Bigger Elements First

I was asked to clone a website, I started with the usual way. Begin with the header and go down, but midway, I had to scrape whatever I did and start again. This got me thinking on an important subject, figure out the big parts first.

What I was doing is jumping into the nitty gritty of the work rather than focus on the big picture that is the whole page. If I had focused on the whole page, my code would have been far cleaner and easier to read in addition to being easy to write.

Let me take an example. If I jump into the code and start from the header without considering the entire page, I end up repeating many elements. However, if I take a few minutes to look through the page and find common elements and a main structure of the page, I would save an enormous amount of time during the coding.

This just happened to me today, after my first div soup, I took a step back and looked at the whole page, I got a sense of what was required where and wrote it down. Turns out there were only three major elements. A header, a main and a footer. Only after I did this did I continue to make the page and guess what, it was very easy after that.

Learned a lot today, practice makes man perfect. Or perhaps I should say perfect practice makes man perfect.

Yes, it is Day 30

Today is Day 30 of the 180 Day website challenge I am doing. It has been a great ride until now.

When I started the challenge, I had no idea of how I would make one website a day for 6 staight months. I figured that if I had no website to upload, I could just whip up some vanilla HTML and CSS and write “Hello World” in the most fancy way possible. Which is close to something I have done a few times.. :). However, I can say that on most days, I never had an issue coming up with an idea for a website.

The challenge actually gave me a framework for putting things into a place which could later be seen. Had it not been for the challenge, I would have no place to put these ideas together and host them live. I would have made individual one off websites which would have vanished in the desert of despair. Taking on such a challenge gives you a few gems that you can put in your permanent portfolio. This is in addition to the skill enrichment you get.

I must add that this challenge has been made easier because I’m currently at AltCampus, without which, I might have slacked off or put this on the backburner and let it to die like several other endeavours.

30 days complete, 150 more to go. You can see the websites here.