Sharpening Your Skills

Lessons from the Princeton Seminary Experiment: People in a Rush are Less Likely to Help Others (and Themselves)

June 16, 2015 By Nagesh Belludi 3 Comments

Vincent van Gogh's The Good Samaritan (after Delacroix)

In the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:29–37 in the New Testament,) a Samaritan helps a traveler assaulted by robbers and left half dead by the side of the road. Prior to the Samaritan, a priest and a Levite pass the injured traveler and fail to notice him. Conceivably, the priest and Levite’s contempt was because they didn’t sincerely follow those same virtues they espoused as religious functionaries. Possibly, they were in a hurry or were occupied with busy, important—even religious—thoughts. Perhaps the Samaritan was in less of a hurry since he wasn’t as socially important as the priest or Levite and was therefore not expected to be somewhere.

The Princeton Seminary Experiment

Inspired by the parable of the Good Samaritan, Princeton social psychologists John Darley and Dan Batson conducted a remarkable experiment in the 1970s on time pressure and helpful behavior. They studied how students of the Princeton Theological Seminary conducted themselves when asked to deliver a sermon on the parable of the Good Samaritan.

The students were to give the sermon in a studio a building across campus and would be evaluated by their supervisors. The researchers were curious about whether time pressure would affect the seminary students’ helpful nature. After all, the students were being trained to become ordained priests; they are presumably inclined to help others.

As each student finalized his preparation in a classroom, the researchers inflicted an element of time constraint upon them by giving them one of three instructions:

“You’re late. They were expecting you a few minutes ago…You’d better hurry. It shouldn’t take but just a minute.” This was the high-hurry condition.
“The (studio) assistant is ready for you, so please go right over.” This was the intermediate-hurry condition.
“It’ll be a few minutes before they’re ready for you, but you might as well head on over. If you have to wait over there, it shouldn’t be long.” This was the low-hurry condition.

As each student walked by himself from the preparation classroom to the studio, he encountered a ‘victim’ in a deserted alleyway just like the wounded traveler in the parable of the Good Samaritan. This victim (actually an associate of the experimenters) appeared destitute, was slouched and coughing and clearly in need of assistance. The seminarians were thus offered a chance to apply what they were about to preach.

“Conflict, rather than callousness, can explain their failure to stop.”

Researchers were interested in determining if their imposed time pressure affected the seminarians’ response to a distressed stranger. Remarkably, only 10% of the students in the high-hurry situation stopped to help the victim. 45% of the students in the intermediate-hurry and 63% of the students in the low-hurry situations helped the victim.

The researchers concluded, “A person not in a hurry may stop and offer help to a person in distress. A person in a hurry is likely to keep going. Ironically, he is likely to keep going even if he is hurrying to speak on the parable of the Good Samaritan, thus inadvertently confirming the point of the parable… Thinking about the Good Samaritan did not increase helping behavior, but being in a hurry decreased it.”

In light of their training and calling, the seminarians’ failure of bystander intervention is probably not due to indifference, self-centeredness, or contempt. (Compare with the plot of the series finale of American sitcom Seinfeld, where Jerry and friends are prosecuted for failure of duty to rescue.) The dominant cause is time pressure. Most of the students who believed they had enough time to stop did so. In contrast, the vast majority of those who thought they were late did not stop to help. In other words, the perception of time pressure or “having limited time” resulted in behaviors incongruent to their education and career: the devotion to help others. Time pressure triggered these well-intentioned students to behave in ways that, upon reflection, they would find disgraceful. The weight of a time constraint caused the students to put their immediate concern of being on time before the wellbeing of someone in need.

We’re in such hurry that we don’t stop to help ourselves

“I’m Late, I’m Late for a very important date,
No time to say hello. Goodbye.
I’m late, I’m late, I’m late, and when I wave,
I lose the time I save.”
—White Rabbit in the Disney musical “Alice in Wonderland” (1951)

The Princeton Seminary Experiment offers an even more personal lesson. As the researchers in this experiment expound, when we speed up and feel rushed, we experience a phenomenon known as “narrowing of the cognitive map.” That is, we miss details, we are not present enough in the moment to notice what is really important and we do not make the most beneficial choices for ourselves.

As we make our way through life, not only do we not stop to help others—we also do not stop to help ourselves. We neglect our own needs. We fail to nurture ourselves. We surrender, we settle, we lose hope. We compromise ourselves and become what we often settle for.

Our noisy world and busy lives constantly make us hurry as somebody always depends on us being somewhere. We constantly rush from place to place as if our lives depended upon it. We rush while doing just about everything. We are at the mercy of commitments often imposed by others.

Life moves quickly. And we’ll have missed it.

We fail to nurture ourselves We’re too busy, we’re too hurried and we’re too rushed. When people place demands on our time, our first resort is to cut out that which is most valuable. We are so busy meeting deadlines that we cannot make time for our loved ones. We abandon physical exercise to get to meetings on time. We avoid medical checkups critical to our well-being. We engage in behaviors that can put ourselves at risk for negative consequences in the future.

As our world continues to accelerate and our pace of life picks up speed, the clock’s finger turns inescapably. Life moves on by quickly, and soon enough we’ll have missed it entirely.

Idea for Impact: Be ever-conscious of the fact that time is the currency of your life

The German theologian and anti-Nazi descendent Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) wrote in his “Letters and Papers from Prison”, “As time is the most valuable thing that we have, because it is the most irrevocable, the thought of any lost time troubles us whenever we look back. Time lost is time in which we have failed to live a full human life, gain experience, learn, create, enjoy, and suffer; it is time that has not been filled up, but left empty.”

Make the best use of your time. Interrupt your busy life to help yourself by living more fully in the present. Nurture yourself. Your needs belong to the top.

How to Process that Pile of Books You Can’t Seem to Finish [+ 5 Other Reading Hacks]

April 21, 2015 By Nagesh Belludi 1 Comment

If you’re an avid reader, you most likely have a stack of books you’ve started reading but never seem to complete. You may have the habit of eagerly devouring a book until another arrives. Consumed by enthusiasm, you start reading that new book and set the first aside. Continually finding more to read, this shortcoming repeats itself. Inevitably, you are left with a pile of books on your nightstand.

The following tips will help you read more than one book at a time, process a pile of books, and finish all the works you’ve ever wanted to read.

Rotate your reading and stick to a pile before adding more books to your reading list. To process a pile of three to five books, use this disciplined system: when you’re in the mood to read, choose the book on top of your pile. Then, read it as long as you feel like reading it. When you’re done reading, don’t put back the book back on the top of your pile. Instead, put the book at the bottom of the pile. During your next reading session, pick up the second book, which is now at the top of the pile. Rotate your reading. In this way, you can progressively read every book and finish everything before taking on a new pile.
Don’t add new books to your reading list until you’ve finished the texts at hand. As you process each group of books, don’t add anything to your reading list before you’ve finished everything in the existing pile. Focus on one pile of books at a time.
You may not need to read every page or chapter to “read” a book. Pre-read a book by finding its summary on the Internet. Customer reviews on Amazon.com often have useful summaries or a list of significant ideas. To read a book quickly, first skim through its preface, table of contents, and index. Next, browse its substance by scanning section titles, subtitles and chapters, and by glossing over any pictures and illustrations. Read the first and last paragraphs of each chapter, and executive summaries. If you feel like reading any section of the book, read each paragraph’s first line to develop a conceptual understanding before reading the content more closely. Consider taking a speed-reading course to improve reading speed and comprehension.
Give up if you find a volume uninteresting or unnecessary. You’re not obligated to finish a book just because you’ve committed to reading it.
Choose books with a variety of topics, themes, or genres. The variety will keep your interest.
Review what you’ve read. If you’re not sure which book to read next, instead of choosing from a wealth of new titles, consider rereading a book that you’ve previously read and found useful. A good book’s valuable concepts can’t be entirely absorbed with just one reading. As film critic Dana Stevens once wrote, “Going back to a book is a way of daring that past self to find new evidence for that old love.” Some books invite periodic perusing for further intellectual stimulation or for reinforcement of various insights. Moreover, it often takes multiple exposures to a useful concept for you to store it in your “little brain attic” (to borrow Sherlock Holmes’s term for mental models) and incorporate it in your behavior.

If you’re looking for something good to read, here’s a list of books I read in 2014 and recommended in an earlier article.

While we’re on the topic of reading, I recommend How to Read a Book, American educator Mortimer Adler’s classic guide to intelligent reading.

Creativity by Synthesis (Combining Ideas): A Case Study on the Darwin & Mendel Theorems in Biology

April 14, 2015 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

One of the fascinating aspects of invention is tracking the continuity of ideas across an arc of time and tracing the progression of ideas over time. My previous article examined how blending antecedent ideas to form new ones led to the invention of the Gutenberg’s press, the rotary steam engine, and the Wright Brothers‘ first powered flight. In this article, we will explore a related mental model for creativity.

A fundamental component of creative thinking is combining whole ideas (or just certain elements of ideas) to create a new concept. When we synthesize—i.e. fuse ideas to forge new ones—we mirror the footsteps of some of humankind’s most imaginative breakthroughs.

James Maxwell’s work on electromagnetic radiation developed from the synthesis of seemingly unrelated concepts such as electricity, magnetism, light, and motion. His theory of electromagnetism was one of the most significant discoveries of the nineteenth century. Albert Einstein described Maxwell’s work on electromagnetism as “the most profound and the most fruitful that physics has experienced since the time of Newton.”

Even more profoundly, Darwin and Mendel’s work exemplifies the most groundbreaking synthesis of ideas. Combined more than four decades after their deaths, their ideas shaped the foundation of life sciences, as we know it. Allow me to elaborate.

Theory of the Descent of Man - Darwin's Theories of Evolution

Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution

The word “evolution” was first used in English as early as 1647. Long before that, pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Anaximander (611–546 B.C.E) speculated that humans must have evolved from an animal and that this evolution must have sprung from the sea. By the end of the 18th century, naturalists conjectured that different life forms develop progressively from more primitive forms. They also hypothesized that all life forms were interrelated. Erasmus Darwin (1731–1802,) Charles Darwin’s grandfather and a natural philosopher and physiologist, as well as the French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744–1829) argued along those lines. However, most of their thoughts on evolution and the relatedness of all life forms were purely speculative.

Darwin’s most notable scientific contribution was his vast body of evidence supporting the aforementioned hypotheses. Even more significantly, Darwin identified natural selection as the mechanism that determines evolutionary change. In his seminal treatise, “Origin of Species” (1859,) Darwin distilled the theory of evolution through two foundational concepts:

In any ecosystem, individuals of the same species are likely to differ in their measurable characteristics. Such variations tend to be inherited.
Living beings—plants and animals—reproduce more quickly than nature can impart the resources for their survival. Individuals of a species must therefore compete in order to live and reproduce in a competitive ecosystem.

Charles Darwin’s work on evolution was really a synthesis of concepts from comparative anatomy, paleontology, geology, geography, and animal breeding.

Advancing his theories further, in “The Descent of Man” (1871,) Darwin described humans as an outcome of evolution. Humans have the same general anatomical and physiological principles as animals and are in fact an advanced animal form whose superior traits are a consequence of evolutionary progression. Darwin hypothesized that humans share a common ancestry with animals, more specifically evolving from primates.

The Big Gap in Darwin’s Theory: Lack of an Explanation for Heredity

In the introduction to The Descent of Man, Darwin wrote, “It has often and confidently been asserted, that man’s origin can never be known: but ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.”

Darwin’s theories about the evolution of humankind created an instant uproar among advocates of Christian theology and its concept of a wise, benevolent, and omnipotent Creator as laid out in the Book of Genesis. Since then, few scientific theories have been as hotly debated among nonscientists as evolution and its opponent, creationism (and recently, intelligent design.)

After The Descent of Man, it was more than a decade before Darwin’s work came to be scientifically established. Darwin’s work remained deficient—if natural selection was to have lasting effects, these advances had to be conserved and passed on from one generation to the next. He agreed with scientists who argued that his evolutionary theory failed to explain how variations are transmitted from parents to their offspring.

Mendelian Inheritance in Andalusian Fowls - Cross-breeding Experiments by Gregor Mendel

Cross-breeding Experiments by Gregor Mendel: Evidence of Heredity

Between 1856 and 1863, independent of Charles Darwin (1809–1882,) Moravian monk Gregor Mendel (1822–1884) conducted extensive pea plant breeding experiments in his monastery’s garden. He systematically studied what farmers had known for centuries: that crossbreeding animals and plants creates “hybrid” offspring with desirable traits. Based on his pea plant experiments, Mendel laid the foundational rules of genetic inheritance and heredity.

Synthesis of Darwin and Mendel’s Work as the Foundation of Life Sciences

It was not until the 1930s, long after both Darwin and Mendel’s deaths, that biologists started to study Mendel’s work on heredity in conjunction with Darwin’s theory of natural selection. Scientists were then able to understand how variation of characteristics is passed on to new generations and how evolution is a process of descent with modification. Mendel’s laws provided justification of inheritance, thereby completing Darwin’s theory of natural selection. Subsequently, Darwin’s theory became the basic mechanism of evolution—evolutionary genetics was established as biology’s central theorem and the bedrock concept of all life sciences. From that point on, Darwin became one of the most influential persons in human history.

Scientists continue to fine-tune humankind’s understanding of evolutionary biology as new evidence and fresh insights pour in from biochemistry, genetics, archaeology, neuroscience, and various other disciplines.

Seven Ways to Motivate Yourself

April 7, 2015 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Most people often know what they should do, but can’t seem to make themselves follow through. Here are seven quick and easy ways that might help you get motivated.

Be decisive. Avoid analysis paralysis. The best way to get unstuck is to start somewhere. Don’t wait for the right answer and the golden path to present themselves. Focus on action, which will get you started and build momentum. You can adjust your course of action later. See my previous article: “When in Doubt, Do.”
Avoid the desire to prove yourself. The need to prove yourself to others can be off-putting because you may foresee them disapproving of your work. Let go of the need to prove yourself to everyone else, and free yourself to accomplish what matters most to you. Overcome the fear of failure. Consider low-risk actions.
Develop a Plan B. The most successful people are those who acknowledge when their current plans aren’t working and switch to Plan B.
Accelerate. If things seem under control, you are probably not approaching your goal quickly enough.
If you have made mistakes, don’t be shackled by regret. Things will eventually work out. If you are chained up by a worrisome activity and can’t seem to make progress, switch to another productive activity. Try my ’10-minute Dash’ technique to beat procrastination.
Play favorite scenes in your mind. Envisioning triumph, moments with a loved one or images of playing with a pet have an incredible ability to inspire you.
Try something new and befriend the unfamiliar. Break away from your comfort zone. You will only grow when you let go of discomfort, explore a different path, and try something new.

The Trouble with Targets and Goals

March 17, 2015 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

In a well-known 1992 Harvard Business Review article as well as a book on translating strategy into action, Robert Kaplan and David Norton explained the need for a “balanced scorecard.” They encouraged leaders to develop tools with which to monitor the performance of any organization. The authors explained, “Think of the balanced scorecard as the dials and indicators in an airplane cockpit. For the complex task of navigating and flying an airplane, pilots need detailed information about many aspects of the flight, like fuel level, airspeed, altitude, bearing, etc.”

Goals are effective apparatus—a persuasive system indicating what achievements matter the most to an organization. Well-defined objectives, expressed in terms of specific goals, often direct an organization’s performance, sharpen focus on the execution of the organization’s strategic and operative plans, and boost productivity.

In terms of an individual within a company, goal-setting is especially important as a way to provide ongoing and year-end feedback. You can give employees continuous input on their performance and motivate them by setting and monitoring targets.

Still, there are four things to look out for when setting and managing targets:

Some organizations get so overwhelmed with setting and meeting targets that managers tend to adopt whatever behaviors necessary to meet the goals set by their superiors.
Some organizations get carried away and set too many targets. While goals are beneficial, having more of them is not necessarily better. In fact, too many targets can lead to stress, muddled efforts, and organizational atrophy. In this instance, employees feel as if they’re being asked to throw darts in multiple directions all at once. Adding to the confusion, priorities can even conflict with one another—e.g. decreasing production cycle-time while not hiring more workers or buying more equipment. According to a 2011 study by consulting firm Booz (now named Strategy&), 64% of participating global executives reported facing too many conflicting priorities. The celebrated management consultant Peter Drucker famously advised his clients to pursue no more than two priorities at a time:

Develop your priorities and don’t have more than two. I don’t know anybody who can do three things at the same time and do them well. Do one task at a time or two tasks at a time. That’s it. OK, two works better for most. Most people need the change of pace. But, when you are finished with two jobs or reach the point where it’s futile, make the list again. Don’t go back to priority three. At that point, it’s obsolete.

Sometimes, organizations can be so eager to reach a target that they institute an overly aggressive system (unreasonable “stretch goals“) in an attempt to drive people to heroic levels of performance. Instead, it’s best to have goals that represent what senior management thinks ought to happen, not the contents of their wildest dreams.
When grading an employee’s performance depends heavily upon that individual meeting his targets (e.g. bonuses promised to salesmen who achieve certain revenue targets,) it can pit employee against employee. This tends to create an unhealthily competitive environment with colleagues scrambling over each other to get to the client or show off their achievements to management. Conflicts and rivalry between employees is one of the dominant criticisms of the individual performance rating system and the forced ranking system that many companies currently practice.

Idea for Impact: In goal-setting, less is more and simple is better. A few well-chosen, consequential targets and goals can sharpen an individual’s or an organization’s focus and boost productivity. Too many targets can lead to stress and even disaster.

Wife asks “When is it going to be time? Our time? My time?” and Google CFO chooses to retire

March 11, 2015 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

To supplement yesterday’s article, “When Can Your Loved One Become an Important Client?” on making time for ourselves and our loved ones, here’s a memo published yesterday by Google CFO Patrick Pichette announcing his retirement after a 30-year career that he deemed left him with too little time to pursue anything else.

Google CEO Larry Page called the memo “a most unconventional leaving notice … Well worth reading—it will warm your heart.”

A trip to Africa in September 2014 was the genesis of Pichette’s choice to retire at age 52. One morning, Pichette and wife Tamar were watching the sunrise from the top of Mount Kilimanjaro and appreciating the expanse of the Serengeti Park beneath. Then,

And Tamar out of the blue said “Hey, why don’t we just keep on going”. Let’s explore Africa, and then turn east to make our way to India, it’s just next door, and we’re here already. Then, we keep going; the Himalayas, Everest, go to Bali, the Great Barrier Reef… Antarctica, let’s go see Antarctica!?” Little did she know, she was tempting fate.

… then she asked the killer question: So when is it going to be time? Our time? My time? The questions just hung there in the cold morning African air.

A few weeks later, I was happy back at work, but could not shake away THE question: When is it time for us to just keep going? And so began a reflection on my/our life.

… I am completing this summer 25-30 years of nearly non-stop work (depending on how you wish to cut the data). And being member of FWIO, the noble Fraternity of Worldwide Insecure Over-achievers, it has been a whirlwind of truly amazing experiences. But as I count it now, it has also been a frenetic pace for about 1500 weeks now. Always on – even when I was not supposed to be. Especially when I was not supposed to be. And am guilty as charged – I love my job (still do), my colleagues, my friends, the opportunities to lead and change the world.

Third, this summer, Tamar and I will be celebrating our 25th anniversary. When our kids are asked by their friends about the success of the longevity of our marriage, they simply joke that Tamar and I have spent so little time together that “it’s really too early to tell” if our marriage will in fact succeed.

If they could only know how many great memories we already have together. How many will you say? How long do you have? But one thing is for sure, I want more. And she deserves more. Lots more.

Allow me to spare you the rest of the truths. But the short answer is simply that I could not find a good argument to tell Tamar we should wait any longer for us to grab our backpacks and hit the road – celebrate our last 25 years together by turning the page and enjoy a perfectly fine mid life crisis full of bliss and beauty, and leave the door open to serendipity for our next leadership opportunities, once our long list of travels and adventures is exhausted.

… In the end, life is wonderful, but nonetheless a series of trade offs, especially between business/professional endeavours and family/community. And thankfully, I feel I’m at a point in my life where I no longer have to have to make such tough choices anymore. And for that I am truly grateful. Carpe Diem.

Pichette has sounded affable when I’ve heard him lead recent Google corporate earnings calls. CEO Larry Page hasn’t been talking at events since 2013 because of vocal cord troubles; Pichette has been the one to answer for Google’s large spending and disappointing earnings numbers. He has persistently defended Google’s moonshot projects and speculative investments in many new products and acquisitions that haven’t made money for stockholders.

Pichette’s memo is perhaps the finest “spend more time with family” message ever written in announcing a retirement (or resignation.) Although it’s “carpe diem” for the immediate future, he’s left the door open for more opportunities “once our long list of travels and adventures is exhausted.”

Idea for Impact: Get Your Priorities Right

Undeniably, Pichette’s decision to retire and my own ‘retirement’ for identical reasons (my decision came about on a trip to Alaska in March 2009) are outside the realm of possibility for 99% of people. Yet, this inspiring memo serves as a reminder to us to invest more time on our loved ones and on ourselves. We don’t need to constantly succumb to the demands of the world at the expense of the needs of our loved ones and our own deep-held aspirations.

When Can Your Loved One Become an Important Client? [Work-Life Balance]

March 10, 2015 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

A 1997 advertisement for AT&T Wireless speaks to one of the greatest challenges faced by working parents: balancing the responsibilities of their jobs with those of their families. This is especially difficult for parents of children under age 18.

The desire to balance work and family life is often stronger for women who tend to take on more of the responsibilities of housework and childcare.

The AT&T Wireless advertisement features a professional woman, three daughters, and an adolescent babysitter. The mother rushes to get herself ready to go to the office while her three daughters are preparing their own breakfasts. Here’s a condensed version of their conversation:

Eldest daughter: “Mom, why do you always have to go to work?”

Mom: “It’s called food, video, skates…”

Second daughter: “Can we go to the beach?”

Mom: “Not today honey, I’ve got a meeting with a very important client.”

Four-year old daughter (sadly): “Mom, when can I be a client?”

Mom (after a moment of contemplation): “You have five minutes to get ready for the beach or I’m going without you.”

At the beach, the mom’s cell phone rings. She answers it while her middle daughter shouts out, “Hey everybody, it’s time for the meeting!”

Idea for Impact: Make Your Loved Ones Your Most Important Clients

Striking that delicate work-life balance has puzzled people for ages. Personally, I’m not fond of the term ‘work-life balance’ because it offers a false dichotomy and implies that one’s personal and professional lives are separable. I prefer the term ‘work-life choices.’

It’s not so much about balance as it is about understanding what you value and setting the right priorities. Learning to balance the demands of conflicting priorities is not simply a thought exercise.

As I’ve detailed and exemplified in my three-part course on time management (time logging, time analysis, and time budgeting,) successfully organizing your life hinges on three key habits.

Decide your life’s values. Decide on what truly matters to you and why.
Rank those values according to their respective priority levels. The American philosopher Henry David Thoreau once wrote in “Journals” (1838-1859,) “the cost of a thing it will be remembered as the amount of life it requires to be exchanged for it.” Each decision you make involves tradeoffs: choosing to do one thing entails not choosing to do some other thing.
Allocate your time, money, and other limited resources on what matters most to you. As I wrote in The World’s Shortest Course on Time Management, discern the few things that you must do; then, focus on those and avoid the rest.

Postscript: Remarks on the AT&T Wireless Advertisement as A Great Example of Emotional Advertising

The Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Field Guide for Effective Communication remarks, “Ads like this one show how the cell phone becomes a solution to a problem for working mothers. It captures an element that the cell phone is not only an instrument of freedom, not only an instrument of wealth creation, but also an instrument that makes it a little easier to have fairness in a world with a lot of stress.”
Robert Goldman, Professor of Sociology at Lewis & Clark College, notes, “A 1997 AT&T ad opens with scenes calculated to evoke the everydayness of home life, bringing forth the feel and texture of real—unreconstructed and un-retouched by the camera— interactions from that messy area we know as family life. The video of the ad exemplifies Hyperreal Encoding designed to make a case about the realness of the story being told, perhaps even making the case that it bears some resemblance to “your” own life. A woman scrambles to get herself ready to go to the office while her three girls are taking care of their own breakfasts. The oldest is preparing eggs for breakfast, while the baby plays with food containers from the open refrigerator door, and the four-year old disinterestedly spoons her cereal around her bowl, onto the table, and perhaps the floor.”

Seek Discipline, Not Motivation: Focus on the WHY

March 3, 2015 By Nagesh Belludi 7 Comments

Motivation is glorified as a personal trait. While it is beneficial to be motivated, folks who actually manage to get things done are those who find a way to work at whatever they are interested in even when they do not really feel like doing it.

Discipline is Fixating on What You Want

“More than those who hate you, more than all your enemies, an undisciplined mind does greater harm,” the Buddha taught as per the Dhammapada.

Seek Discipline, Not Motivation Whatever form of personal character it takes—self-control, dedication, endurance, persistence, resolve, willpower, or self-regulation,—discipline is one of the biggest differentiators between successful and unsuccessful people.

The British philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell wrote in “On Education” (1926,) “Right discipline consists, not in external compulsion, but in habits of mind which lead spontaneously to desirable rather than undesirable activities.” Discipline is the conscious ability to prevail over distractions, avoid opportunities for gratification, regulate your emotions and actions, overrule impulses, and exert mindful self-control to fulfill your immediate goals and aspirations.

A Simple Hack to Develop Discipline: Focus on the WHY

Many of the goals you strive for—like losing weight—require you to choose between a smaller but immediate reward and a larger but remote reward. For instance, if you are dieting and are presented with a cake, you face a choice between the immediate indulgence of eating the cake and the more distant incentive of losing weight. Renouncing immediate pleasure in order to reap future benefits can pose an enormous challenge.

Research by Dr. Kentaro Fujita of Ohio State University shows that participants who considered why they had to do something were better able to inhibit their impulses when presented with immediate temptations. They also exerted greater self-control and stuck with a task longer than those who thought just about how they could do something. For example, Fujita’s research suggests that if you focus on your ultimate goal of losing weight, you are more likely to reinforce your dieting discipline. You are more likely, then, to indulge in a slice or two of pizza and avoid eating the entire pizza than if you would just try to fill up on salad and avoid eating the pizza altogether. This complements my “cut back, do not cut out” tip for dieting success based on how abrupt deprivation from pleasures often results in guilt and over-indulgence.

Idea for Impact: Focus on the ends rather than the means. To build up discipline and self-regulation, keep your goal itself at the front and center of your concentration instead of focusing on how to reach it.

Creativity by Blending Ideas to Form New Ones: A Case Study of Gutenberg and the Printing Press

February 24, 2015 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Ideas Evolve over Time by Blending with Other Ideas

One of the fascinating aspects of invention is tracking the continuity of ideas across an arc of time. Through education, exposure, and experimentation, people’s creative thoughts can stretch both temporally and across various disciplines of knowledge.

When people develop a new idea, they often share it with others, who may then use this idea to expand their own understanding of concepts, invent even fresher ideas, and spread them. Ideas thus evolve over time.

Building on Antecedent Inventions

Considering the collaborative nature of idea formation, every new idea is arguably a conceptual sum of its predecessors. The power of blending ideas to form new ones is shown in that most seminal inventions are based on antecedents—inventions that came before them. For instance,

James Watt’s “invention” of the steam engine (or, more precisely, his invention of the separate-condenser steam engine) was in fact an attempt to modify Thomas Newcomen’s steam engine. Newcomen’s work was itself based on Thomas Savery’s invention of a steam-powered pump to extract water from mine-shifts. Later, James Watt adapted his separate-condenser to produce continuous rotary motion and expanded its use far beyond pumping water. Continuous rotary motion sparked the transition from hand-production methods to machine-power and became the driving force of the Industrial Revolution.
The Wright brothers’ first heavier-than-air powered flight was the culmination of their experience with bicycles. This first flight demonstrated their ability to improve prior inventions by applying previously-reached solutions to controlled flight issues. [See my previous article on how the Wright brothers argued and developed their ideas.] Within fifty years of the Wright brothers’ first successful airplane, humankind’s concept of distance had changed dramatically: aircrafts could fly across continents in hours—sometimes faster than sound. Just a short time later, aircrafts were traveling into space.
British Mathematician Andrew Wiles’ much-celebrated proof of Pierre de Fermat’s Last Theorem was based on the work of some of the greatest mathematical minds who, over three centuries, had also puzzled over Fermat’s Last Theorem. Contemporaries Gerhard Frey, Jean-Pierre Serre, and Ken Ribet also influenced Wiles’ work. Until Wiles’ success in the mid-nineties, the theorem remained inaccessible to proof for 358 years. In the 1840s, German mathematician Richard Dedekind attempted to solve the theorem and in so doing, laid the foundations of algebraic number theory.

Idea for Impact: Creativity is accessible through the often-subconscious process of blending what you already know to form new ideas.

Gutenberg's Invention of Mechanized Printing: Blend of coin punch and mechanized wine press

Case Study: Gutenberg’s Invention of Mechanized Printing

In the 15th century, Johannes Gutenberg invented mechanized movable-type printing. His invention revolutionized the dissemination of knowledge throughout the Western World and played a pivotal role in the development of the Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation, the Age of Enlightenment, and the Scientific Revolution.

The earliest forms of printing evolved from letter and coin punches, which were in vogue even in the Neolithic era. Woodblock printing was fashionable in East Asia since the second century. At least two centuries prior to Gutenberg’s invention, manual block printing with movable type had existed. However, this technique was hardly known in Europe, where all manuscripts were laboriously copied out by hand or stamped out with woodblocks before Gutenberg’s invention.

Gutenberg blended the flexibility of a coin punch with the power of a mechanized wine press to invent mechanized printing. For each character to be printed, Gutenberg used his skills as a goldsmith to cast individual pieces of metal type. These pieces could be quickly assembled into blocks depending on the composition of characters on a page.

Gutenberg’s mechanized press was an adaptation of the wine press, a historical contraption used to crush grapes and extract their juice for winemaking. Gutenberg’s press consisted of a fixed lower bed and movable upper platen containing composed type blocks. The platen was inked, covered with a sheet of paper, and pressed by a small bar on a worm screw. Pressing the upper and lower surfaces together formed a vise and left a sharp impression of inked characters on the paper.

The hand-operated Gutenberg press was further mechanized in the 19th century. Engineers introduced James Watt’s invention of the double-acting rotary steam engine to create steam-powered rotary presses, altogether creating industrialized bulk printing.

Bill Gates and the Browser Wars: A Case Study in Determination and Competitive Ferocity

January 20, 2015 By Nagesh Belludi 1 Comment

Competition Drives so much of our World Today

We live in a hypercompetitive age where winning is the outcome, often necessary for survival—in classrooms, sports, trade and commerce or at work. The archetypical successful person is determined, aggressive, and obsessed with winning at everything, sometimes at any cost. Of course, competition is healthy; but, winning may come at a hefty price—always striving to win or being overzealous can be both unnecessary and unproductive. Besides, collaborative or naturally uncompetitive individuals tend to find competitive people somewhat unpleasant.

History provides but a few vivid portraits of intense competition that compare to the mid-90s’ “browser wars,” a narrative characterized by the dogged determination and intense competitive spirit of some of the world’s greatest entrepreneurs.

Bill Gates and Microsoft are legendary for using brute power: whenever a new competitor emerged, Microsoft would muster its financial resources and its smarts to storm into those markets with alternative products that would eventually dominate. Up until the dot-com bust, Microsoft not only out-competed Borland, Lotus Development, Corel, and other rivals that were previously in the lead, but also crushed upstarts such as Netscape.

“The Browser Wars”: Rise and Fall of Netscape

At the start of 1995, a new software called Netscape Navigator took the computing world by storm. Unlike primitive browsers, Netscape could display text and graphics on websites. Early web buffs eager to discover the marvel of the nascent internet were no longer restricted to downloading text alone. In addition, Netscape could render web pages on the fly while they were still being downloaded. Users did not need to stare at a blank screen until their dial-up connections loaded text and graphics.

Even more astounding was the fact that the upstart Netscape Communications, Netscape Navigator’s creator, had been co-founded by a 23-year-old programmer just a few months previously and seemed well-positioned to take advantage of the imminent consumer internet revolution. Netscape was on its way to an extraordinary 90% market share amongst internet browsers. What’s more: the company’s spectacular IPO was drawing near and was to start the dot-com boom.

Netscape’s meteoric rise could not escape the attention of the world’s dominant software company. Early in 1995, Microsoft was particularly occupied with finalizing Windows 95. Its launch, scheduled for August 1995, would prove to be the largest, most expensive consumer marketing endeavor in history. Moreover, the U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) had embarked on an intrusive investigation into claims of unfair business practices as alleged by Microsoft’s competitors.

While Netscape was capturing the Web browser market, Microsoft and Bill Gates had seemingly missed the paradigm shift created by the consumer internet. Financial and technology analysts wondered if Microsoft was destined to lose its supremacy over software. Microsoft could not wait on the sidelines and cede business opportunities in the upcoming consumer internet revolution.

Browser Wars: The Rise and Fall of Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer

Bill Gates and Microsoft Jumped on the “Internet Tidal Wave”

Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, and the Microsoft team were not to be trifled with. Microsoft simply could not afford to be the underdog. Its strategy was transformed entirely when, on 26-May-1995, Bill Gates wrote the groundbreaking internal memo, “The Internet Tidal Wave.”

Bill Gates deployed an extraordinary amount of capital and talent to battle for control over consumer internet. Just after the August-1995-release of Windows 95, Microsoft released an inferior Internet Explorer 1.0. In 1996, Version 3.0, matched the features of Netscape Navigator. Finally, in 1997, after bundling Internet Explorer 4.0 into Windows 95, Microsoft started to take a significant market share from Netscape.

In 1998, the DOJ and twenty US states alleged that Microsoft had illegally thwarted competition by abusing its monopoly in personal computers to bundle its Internet Explorer and Windows operating system.

By 1999, Netscape was an inferior web browser and quickly lost its dominance. The software’s market share dropped from 90% in 1996 to a meager 4% by 2002.

In subsequent installments of the browser wars, Netscape Navigator’s open-source successor, Firefox, regained market share from Internet Explorer. More recently, Firefox and Internet Explorer have had to contend with Google’s Chrome, which has grown to be the dominant web browser.

Microsoft Set Out to Destroy Competitor after Competitor

Historically, Microsoft has never been a substantial innovator. Instead, the company’s most famous strategy was to be a “fast follower.” The variety of rivals’ projects made no difference—competitors could pioneer anything from graphical user interfaces (GUI,) pointing devices, spreadsheets, word processors, browsers or gaming consoles and Microsoft would catch up in due course.

Consequently, the most important Microsoft products started essentially as copies of existing products made by competitors or upstarts that Microsoft was able to purchase early. MS-DOS evolved from QDOS, which itself derived from CP/M. Microsoft Windows was inspired by Apple’s Macintosh, which, in turn, had been inspired by a prototype mouse-driven graphical user interface that Steve Jobs had seen at Xerox PARC. Microsoft Excel borrowed from VisiCalc and Lotus 1-2-3. In addition to riding the coattails of bona fide innovators, Microsoft excelled in smart integration—it combined nifty functions and features into a single product or into a suite of easy-to-use tools such as its Office productivity software.

Microsoft’s Once-Invincible Strategy of Being a “Fast Follower” Wasn’t Sustainable

Alas, in the last 15 years, Microsoft’s “fast follower” competitive strategy has proven unsustainable. As its dominance in the enterprise world grew, Microsoft’s impressive financial performance relied mostly on its “old faithful” franchises. In fiscal 2014, the Windows operating system, Office productivity suite, and servers/cloud businesses contributed 78% of Microsoft’s revenue and almost all of the gross profit.

Despite the competitive ferocity of Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, and others at the company’s helm, Microsoft has been unable to return to its domineering ways in the internet’s recent mobile- and social-computing trends. In fact, Microsoft stumbled in category after category of consumer computing and technology, including search, social networking, phones, music players, and tablets. Google, Facebook, Apple—lead by entrepreneurs just as intensely competitive as Bill Gates—have soared ahead, altering the social-media-tech consumer experience.

Recommended Reading: If you like business history and entrepreneurial success stories, read ‘Forbes Greatest Business Stories of All Time’, Daniel Gross’s engaging profiles of twenty great American entrepreneurs: Revolutionary War financier Robert Morris, McDonald’s ‘founder’ Roy Kroc, Walt Disney, Microsoft’s Bill Gates, et al. For more stories of Bill Gates’s fierce competitive instincts, read Stephen Manes’s “Gates”.

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