Pressing the "Pause" button

I have been thinking about how to become a better - person, husband, father, colleague and a leader. I recently had a major ankle surgery that forced me to take a pause. It made my head a little clearer on what I want to do? where am I heading? and finally the most important question - am I healthy enough to run a marathon at sprint speed or will I drop dead? But where, really, is the time to try out all of these things that I suggest we do?

Lets take time to pause and take a step back... as W H Davies says -

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.
No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

I recently watched this TED talk by Pico Iyer, on The Art of Stillness (https://www.ted.com/talks/pico_iyer_the_art_of_stillness?language=en), sometimes you just need to “sit still long enough to find out what moves you most, to recall where your truest happiness lies and to remember that sometimes making a living and making a life point in opposite directions.”

The Power of Pause (Ana Dutra):

“I don’t know a single executive who likes to be described as tactical, short-term oriented or as somebody who gets unnecessarily “in the weeds.” And yet, so many solid executives present, occasionally, all these behaviors, even when the situation doesn’t call for them.

Why do people who have the potential and ability to think strategically, empower others and prioritize issues seemingly choose to micromanage — to act in a way that’s myopically short-termed and dive into every problem thrown their way? The answer is that it’s not a conscious choice. No executive chooses to behave this way, just like no executive wakes up in the morning thinking “today I will really mess up and frustrate lots of people.”

Executives behave that way when they don’t allow themselves to pause and reflect about what really matters. Imagine a tennis player practicing with a ball machine that is adjusted three notches above the pace the player is able to handle. No matter how good the player is, if balls are spit at an unreasonable speed and range, the player will quickly feel exhausted, overwhelmed and defeated (feel familiar?). Only by pausing, adjusting the machine, and deciding which balls to go for, the player will obtain results and become an even better player. Just like our frustrated player, executives need to deliberately pause and reflect instead of continuously try to tackle each and every ball tossed at them.

Now imagine that the balls — or issues, challenges and opportunities thrown at us on a minute-by-minute basis — are either rubber balls or crystal balls. There are also other team members in the game. If we don’t catch all the rubber balls, they will either bounce or somebody else will catch them for us. If we don’t catch the crystal balls, they will break. The problem is that, the more exhausted, overwhelmed and frustrated we are, the harder it is to distinguish the rubber balls from the crystal balls.

But in the absence of the clarity to separate the balls, all balls look alike and we will tend to try to catch all of them fearing that we might be dropping a crystal ball. Only by allowing (or forcing) ourselves to pause we can ask ourselves which balls are really crystal balls and will, therefore, break if we don’t catch them.

At a higher level, as leaders, pausing and reflecting enables us to ask what our role really is, how to more effectively empower others to be the best at the roles they are supposed to play and, therefore, what we should really get involved with. Pause and reflection create space for us and for others — everybody becomes more effective and can grow.

Pause also creates high quality energy, increasing our resilience as leaders and our ability to deal with more complex issues. There are a number of ways to pause, physically, mentally and emotionally. A pause can be created by a walk around the block, 20 minutes of meditation, exercising, immersing into a hobby, or simply a high-quality coffee break. The important point is to create time and space to empty your mind and then reflect and filter issues.”

Pausing creates the necessary time to think, rethink, energize and act in the right direction..

1) I have started a everyday 10 minute thinking routine - wake up early and read or listen to music or podcasts or whatever makes you happy!

2) Do a few things everyday you really enjoy doing. Don't create a laundry list of things to do. Keep it simple and concentrate on things you want to achieve. Delegate. You are not a superman to do all that you are given

3) Schedule a "your time". Plan in advance and don not put off for a later time.

4) Stop multi-tasking. Stay with single tasking. As they say "the best way to do many things is to do one thing at a time"!

5) Cut down on unproductive activities. as the world grows smaller lots of communication happens over phone, email, video conferencing which creates a smaller slot to think before acting.

So, as W H Davies says - lets take the time to pause, think and take time to watch the nature's smile before its too late!

Ciao till next time...Harsha

When to sell a stock?

I recently re-read this simple statement over and over again. Philip Fisher has a way of communicating that makes it sound easy....

Excerpt from "Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits"

There is still one other argument investors sometimes use to separate themselves from the profits they would otherwise make. This one is the most ridiculous of all. It is that the stock they own has had a huge advance. Therefore, just because it has gone up, it has probably used up most of its potential. Consequently they should sell it and buy something that hasn’t gone up yet. Outstanding companies, the only type which I believe the investor should  buy, just don’t function this way. How they do function might be best understood by considering the following somewhat fanciful analogy.

Suppose it is the day you were graduated from college. If you did not go to college, consider it to be the day of your high school graduation; from the standpoint of our example it will make no difference whatsoever. Now suppose that on this day each of your male classmates had an urgent need of immediate cash. Each offered you the same deal. If you would give them a sum of money equivalent to ten times whatever they might earn during the first twelve months after they had gone to work, that classmate would for the balance of his life turn over to you one quarter of each year’s earnings! Finally, let us suppose that while you thought this was an excellent proposition, you only had spare cash on hand sufficient to make such a deal with three of your classmates.

At this point, your reasoning would closely resemble that of the investor using sound investment principles in selecting common stocks. You would immediately start analyzing your classmates, not from the standpoint of how pleasant they might be or even how talented they might be in other ways, but solely to determine how much money they igt make. If you were part of a large class, you would probably eliminate quite a number solely on the ground of not knowing them sufficiently well to be able to pass worthwhile judgement on just how financially proficient they actually would get to be. Here again, the analogy with intelligent common stock buying runs very close.

Eventually you would pick the three classmates you felt would have the greatest future earning power. You would make your deal with them. Ten years have passed. One of your three have done sensationally. Going to work for a large corporation, he has won promotion after promotion. Already insiders in the company are saying that the president has his eye on him and that in another ten years he will probably take the top job. He will be in line for the large compensation, stock options, and pension benefits that go with that job. 

Under these circumstances, what would even the writers of stock market reports who urge taking profits on superb stocks that ‘have gotten ahead of the market’ think of your selling out of your contract with this former class-mate, just because someone has offered you 600 per cent on your original investment? You would think that anyone would need to have his head examined if he were to advise you to sell this contract and replace it with one with another former classmate  whose annual earnings still were about the same as when he left school ten years before. The argument that your successful class-mate had had his advance while the advance of your (financially) unsuccessful classmate still lay ahead of him would probably sound rather silly. If you know your common stocks equally well, many of the arguments commonly heard for selling the good one sound equally silly.”

Ciao till next time...Harsha