What Decisions are you avoiding?

(repurposed from David allen's email)

Every person, without exception, has at least one (and usually several) key projects or things to do hung up and pending, simply because it requires a decision about something and there's no clarity about what action is needed to move forward on making that decision.

If you can't decide about something, it means you lack enough information to feel comfortable making some choice. Therefore, the question would be, "So what action do you need to take to begin to get the information you need to make that decision?" Nine times out of ten, there's a specific action to take, such as "surf web re: xyz" or "text A & B to find out about xyz" or "start reading page abc."

Every once in a while, though, the information you need has to come from inside—i.e. your intuition. You need to make the decision about how long before you actually do it; Four days? Four hours? Whatever that answer is, you simply need to park a trigger in a calendar or tickler file to yank your chain at that point.

So, what decisions are you avoiding? What data would you like to get? Where could you start to get it?

Are you OK with not deciding? For how long? What reminder should you insert in your systems, for when, in order for your psyche to let go and really relax in its thinking?

What's a Guy to do with Teenage and Adult Kid?

As your kids grow up, they're not kids anymore. We call them kids - as in children, offsprings. They don't like it. I could call them my 'sons'.

I'm talking specifically about a son that's an Adult now. What should be a parent and adult son's relationship? How should they interact? As Friends, they say. Easy for them to say, because there's a history in place that you can't erase.

As a parent, I don't want my son to make mistakes, I want my son to be the best, get the best. As a friend, I want him to be 'his own', even if that means making wrong turns or risky turns or outright dangerous turns.

A friend that's of the same age does not see things the same way as a parent; fortunately or unfortunately.

Son is driving a car and there's a friend in the passenger seat. That friend is a friend of the same age. Son does something with the car, drives down an unknown road and there are unknown things ahead. What does a friend say, 'let's do it. Go for it. Atta boy!'. Scenario 2. The 'friend' is the father. Same situation. Only difference is, father knows he did the same thing when he was young. So, should he warn the son and say, 'don't do it, there's a danger out there that you don't see.', or should he just keep quiet and urge him the same way the other friend might have, knowing fully well that it is not the right thing to do.

Or is it? Why did the father do those things when he was young? He survived didn't he? He lived didn't he? He succeeded didn't he?

Father as a father says, son, you're too young to date. Father as a friend says, get a girl friend, go and date. No matter what the father says, son will not trust. Whatever is said will be met with skepticism.

My dilemma is, how do you build that trust and remove that skepticism?

I hope, over time, as little incidents build up that demonstrate to the son that I, the father, am truly a friend. When, hopefully, I stop 'parenting' and giving advise.

But then, don't friends wish good for each other and advise? If one of the two roommates and good friends is not studying, doesn't the other say, 'you gotta study man, you're goofing off way too much'?

I don't know. I am trying. Perhaps trying too hard. But that's better than not trying, I hope.

Oscars for Slumdog Millionaire - what a sham

Sure I am happy for all those hard working folks that made SM. Am I happy for India? No way. Am I happy for the people of India? Far from it. You should have seen how people were glued to TVs, how the press goes ga-ga over it.

We Indians should be ashamed of ourselves as this behavior.

The last time something similar happened was when Gandhi won awards. And then of course this month Aishwarya Rai was released in Pink Panther and the entire sub-continent thinks we are on top of the world! Come on people, be real.

We are a land of how many? We like to pride outselves of our culture, of our intelligence, of our math skills, of our software engineers. What we don't understand and realize is how we've been exploited since hundreds of years. Today, it is modern exploitation. We do the world's back office operations. Sure we earn a few dollars like a servant that makes some earning, but there is no value addition. The money is being made elsewhere.

We are the software developers of the world, but we don't own the Intellectual property. We are white collar 'majoors'.

We can't even get ourselves a proper name. Our film industry is coined Bollywood; oooh so original. Bangalore is the Silicon Valley of India - wow! Heck, even the word Hindu is not original. The people living in Hind started being called Hindus.

Anyway, what bugs me and therefore drives me crazy is that we ought to stop drowning ourselves in this self-intoxicating urine.

Why can't we create something original? Movies, Software, technology, whatever.

Unfortunately, what is our original we don't value. Instead of valuing and marketing the heck out of Ayurveda, we ignore it just as we don't even care about Sanskrit and Vedas. We know how Germans have dedicated themselves to a deeper understanding of our culture.

The Challenge.

Here's the challenge. Let's create something, let's market something where it is truly original. Where we can show the world the stuff we are made of and the world comes to us to buy our products and not just our labor. I want to invite anyone who agrees with me to start a dialog, start brainstorming and ultimately action. We've got the brains, we've got the money or know how to get it.

Let's go get'em India - Chak de India