Travel - another way to be happy

Travel has been a source of learning since centuries. It has brought great people together and great discoveries in human history. Being stationary and staying within a certain frame for long time becomes an handicap to seek new solutions. Travel and especially that involves visit to new cultures helps one to gain a new perspective necessary for improvement.

I am quite fond of travel more than all things except one. It not only makes me happy, able me to see new places and cultures but somehow also forces new ideas and new solutions to my queries.Travels brought remarkable turns in history most important of them in our recent history is that of Columbus. Ibn Khaldun mentioned in my previous blogs, was a great traveller and this entitled him honour as being the greatest analyzer of civilizations. 

I have been in a Mediterranean coastal city of Bodrum for last 8 months. In winter I really liked it but in summer its just full of tourists (not travelers). Today after work around 16:30 I thought of a sudden travel and went to bus terminal. Took a bus which was taking off for a 20 hours journey to a beautiful city of Gaziantep. Although I plan to get off after 12 hours at Konya, a city in Central Anatolia. 

Buses here are wonderful and provide life time experiences.  moving through Aegean with wonderful green fields, olives and figs- outside is dark with almost full moon. Bus is equipped with personal entertainment system, wireless internet and cold and hot drinks servings..

I was planning a blog on another topic related to mental happiness which I now conceal for next session. However I am hundred percent sure that travel has a direct link with happiness unless it is a forced travel due to some disaster. Even in those cases travels brought relief to people in history along with hardship.

While you travel there are two issues which make you happy but with one condition. These two issues are, ability to see new cultures and availability of time for your very own self. One can note numerous differences among people of different regions while traveling. During my travels I have noticed the rough and tough people of Erzurum where in winter minus 30 is a norm and easy going people of Aydin (a city I am falling in love with for some time by now) in Aegean region with warm and humid temperature. Ibn Khaldun in his book Muqadimmah wrote that climate has definite effect on the way people behave as well colour of their skin. I am sure that there is never a case in which one does not learn any thing from a new culture at a different place.  Small details may also bring new insights which helps to develop a new solutions perspective for the old problems. Travel brings this opportunity of learning. I will discuss the relationship between learning and happiness in detail in next blogs which would be a must read for those who are interested. 

Availability of time for your own thoughts is another vital benefit of travel. Travel lets you think in a move which is more productive than stationary thinking mode. Physical move or change of scene around you would trigger new hormonal activity in the brain useful for better working of the brain. That is evident from the simple example when people feel happy while on long drive and also are able to solve many problematic thoughts while in motion even during jogging or walking.

The only condition mentioned above to reap the fruits of travel is, you don’t behave in restrictive manner. It implies leave yourself free, become part of the place you are visiting but without letting it to be an extreme. If you continue to behave as an alien at a new place or during travel, you would neither be happy nor able to learn any thing new.

My suggestion.. leave all your problems at your office desk jump in to travel mode even if its a brief one, let it be unplanned and enjoy the unpredicted unexpected of the travel.
Some scholarships are also becoming available for travel! (sorry about quality of google translator, the original article is available at Seyahat)

Dealing with Mental Stress in Professional Life

Any stress or anxiety can be grouped under two broad categories. The first one is mental stress and other is physical stress. They are interlinked in both directions. It is said that peaceful mind leads to healthy body. However equally and might be more important is fact that only stress free physical condition can help brain to function. Physical stress should not however be confused with fatigue. In case body goes under physical stress like exercise or in broader terms we say ‘physical exertion’, the mind works much more efficiently. In fact physical exertion has been considered as a way to get rid of your thoughts (stressed problematic thoughts) for a long time.

While analyzing the living pattern of people 50 years ago one can see a lot of physical movement. This actually kept their brains in better shape with depression and anxiety at low levels in spite of harsh living conditions. 

Mental stress in a professional life is due to three main reasons, lack of ability, lack of passion and procrastination. The first two have been defined in previous blogs also i.e. lack of ability or lack of passion for the work you do. In both cases you’ll be under mental stress. The way out could be to increase your ability or develop the passion for work you do. 

Ability increase would need time and financial resources. You will need to invest time and money to improve your ability. You can start with small steps like learning from someone doing the very same work better than you, studying and learning to improve and later may go for some professional courses to improve your ability.

Increasing the passion for work is much more difficult, and there is only one tool for that. It is to do very same things in a different way, the way which is interesting and enjoyable for you. Again the process should be slow and gradual. No short cut or immediate fix is possible. Passion can also be increased for work you do by adding your favorite chunks to it. 

The third important reason for mental stress is procrastination. In simple words it is lack of ability to start working on a certain task. Procrastination is sometimes taken as equivalent to day dreaming. However day dreaming till a certain limit can be considered healthy while procrastination is never an healthy approach. 

What leads to procrastination? It is either lack of interest in a certain job (lack of passion?), fear that one is not able to do it (inability?) or simply postponing it for later stages. The first two reasons are same as explained earlier in this blog. The last reason i.e. postponing to a later stage has again a very simple solution. When you have a task, divide it in to smaller chunks and   start finishing them... never start doing them... start finishing them.You’ll see that when each small chunk is finished your mental stress level will drop down.

In next blogs I may share simple formula to get rid of physical fatigue which is also very crucial for professional success.

Education System - Are we completely lost Globally?

Modern education system of our time is producing educated people but with least knowledge of use. Students strive to learn a lot of subjects of which they excel in only limited and also only limited people are able to do. Putting an effort of almost 16 years to finish university and ending up as master of none is a real pity. Education system of past was concentrating on useful knowledge gain through student teacher interaction and without restriction of school boundary. It produced great people in every part of globe but our modern system failed to do so and we can count on fingers the number of people who left an impact during last 2 centuries.

Almost all great achievers of their times received minimum formal education or a combination of formal and informal education. Formal education as defined by current situation is simply a diploma generating mechanism. This formal system can be traced back only to 500 hundred years. West mainly developed it. Its a famous story that when British planned to take India, their Consultant told them that education system of India was producing people with useful knowledge and skills and this must be changed. Therefore they introduced disciplined education system where students were memorizing the logarithms that were of least practical use for them. This disciplined system is also mentioned in a great book ‘Disciplined Minds: A Critical Look at Salaried Professionals and The Soul-Battering System that Shapes Their Lives’ By Jeff Schmidtas. He wrote, ‘For understanding the professional, the concept of ideology will emerge as much more useful than that of skill.’ In short skill is missing from our disciplined minds!’

What exactly was the system and reasoning which produced greatest minds of their times? There were two major reasons behind the success of that system. First one was undisciplined education system. The system was not forcing one to become some one but it was facilitating him/her to become what he/she intended to become. It was a flow of knowledge from teacher rather than the books. Second reason was concentration on a single subject rather than trying to learn many.

Undisciplined education system implies that there was no boundary for place or content. One needed not to go to college or university to get the knowledge. It could have been achieved at any place. The greatest scholar of his time Avicenna   learned astrology from a grocer who happened to be an Indian with its knowledge. In old times we frequently heard that great journeys were made by students to reach some master of its time and gain knowledge from him/her. As a result of such journeys the student was not attending classes from the master but in fact was spending time with this great master. During that time he/she was able to learn the habit of education. Ibn Khaldun considers this habit of education more important than education itself. Famous British Historian Arnold J. Toynbee considers Ibn Khaldun, the founder of philosophy of Economics, some branches of Psychology and Study of Civilization as creator of the greatest valued work. This habit was neither achieved through spending a semester with the teacher nor with 40 minutes lecture a day. It was almost 24 hours in touch scenario. It is known that Avicenna was able to takeover his teachers by age of 14, this was the main reason! It also implies that content was not strictly dictated. Students were able to choose subject of their choice. We know it can be of great value as also mentioned by Hazret Steve Jobs in his lecture at Stanford in 2005.

In Islamic school of thought teacher has always been important. It is said that great Caliph and companion of Prophet Mohammad, Hazret Ali stated, ‘who ever taught me even a single word is my teacher’. Teacher student relationship has always been key to success. A student used to be proud of his famous teacher and vice versa. When a student was able to supersede his/her teacher, the teacher was more than happy. A teacher used to have thousands of students of a certain subject. Bahudin Zakeriya, a great scholar based in Multan is said to have more than 20,000 students attending his lectures on religious matters at same time. Today a similar approach is used using World Wide Web by ‘coursera’ a web site providing free online courses from leading University teachers from Stanford, Princeton, John Hopkins and many others.

The second reason was that minds were concentrating on a single subject. Modern science is telling us that human brain can learn almost anything it wants. A child can learn several languages before age of 5 and many other things. In fact it is the half-truth and half-truth is always more dangerous than a complete lie. Yes our brains can learn almost every thing, but not in the way modern formal and disciplined education system is promoting. Looking back at giants one can see whether it were Greek, Pagan, Roman, Muslim or Modern Age scientists, they worked on a particular issue for a very long time. This long-term interaction with a specific subject did not stop them from becoming master of other subjects also. Almost all great achievers were good at Philosophy and Logic, which are quite contradictory subjects. Therefore being an expert in one field does not hinder success in any other.

From Muslim achievers till 12th century one can see that most of them were equally good in many fields. It took only 2 years of Avicenna at age of 16 to become the Royal Physician. His statements about healthy body and combating with diabetes are same as used by modern age doctors. He is also considered as father of clinical treatment and diabetic diagnosis. (Ref: wikipedia, Avicenna) He acquired basics of all this in 2 years. Similarly he wrote few hundred treatises on Mathematics also. There are numerous such cases. Similarly Al Jazari, the father of Robotics spent his whole life working on mechanic systems. He was also inventor of world’s first automatic water extracting system and drink machines (Ref: History Channel, Al Jazari). Similar has been cases with Galileo, he was unfortunately enrolled in modern medical college but when he discovered his interest in mathematics, he shifted to it and later worked in that field, and this happened because he accidentally attended a geometry class! We all know that Darwin spent a good part of his life studying evolution although he was intended to become a doctor but ended up as a naturalist. Sir Isaac Newton worked extensively on selected fields. However unfortunately the gravitation theory proposed by him was exact copy of the theory explained by Ibn Khaldun in his famous book Muqadimmah (1378).

One can easily see that modern formal education starts with a bit of this and a bit of that approach. A student may end up spending 16 years of education to become Jack of All but Master of None. When we see the successful athletes or sports men we clearly see that most of them have concentrated on a single skill and succeeded. A similar approach is required while educating the children. Quoting Ibn Khaldun, the greatest evaluator of civilizations, one can see that he wrote in Muqadimmah’s part on education system that a child should start learning music, then astronomy, logic, philosophy etc. for 2-3 years each and religious education should not start before age of 7. Considering this suggestion of 2-3 years, one can see that great mathematician Omer Khayaam spent 3 years learning math, Avicenna spent 2 years to become a physician.

For a comparison reason let us calculate the time required to gain a good base of a certain subject as per modern education system. If a student in formal modern system studies on average 2 hours a day a certain subject making it 10 hours a week (of 5 days) or 40 hours a month. For any 1-year education system it is almost 10 months making it 400 hours. If continued for 16 years, it makes 6400 hours. Now taking another student who studies a certain specific subject in accordance with his aptitude and age for 8 hours a day will need 800 days to finish same material which is simply not too more than 2 years. Somewhere back in history some one was clever enough to play with the education system making it wasteful for students.

Lastly, let us see what Noam Chomsky who is considered as father of modern linguistic and most important intellectual of our century says about education system. ‘According to Chomsky there is an instrumental approach to education. It is characterized as mindless, meaningless drills and exercise given "in preparation for multiple choice exams". Chomsky suggests that society simply reduces education to the requirement of the market. Students are trained to be compliant workers (Ref: The Educational Theory of Noam Chomsky, 2011 New Foundations). Very last information about this great master of our time, Chomsky's primary education was undertaken at Oak Lane Country DaySchool, an independent institution that focused on allowing its pupils to pursue their own interests in a non-competitive atmosphere!

Struggling in Quadrant III, Its Common!

Going back to our model of assessment of ones professional life we must note that the scoring is done for what you are currently doing. WAP tool introduced in one of previous blogs allows one to assess his/her condition about what is being done and what is wanted. However in later blog a tool was introduced to let you assess where do you currently stand? Those who used this tool, must have found themselves in one of the four quadrants as shown below when scoring for passion and ability is done for their current work.

Quadrant I of Satisfied people was discussed in last blog. I was planning to discuss Quadrant IV today. However with the feed back I received, I was asked to explain Quadrant III. Those who found themselves in this Quadrant labeled as Struggling should not feel bad. 

Most of the people on this planet are expected to be in this Quadrant. You would be in there when you lack passion and even ability to perform your current work. The most important two reasons behind this could be, i. either you were forced to choose what you are doing, or ii. you started and then developed limited ability and limited passion and got stuck in this Quadrant.

Now the question is what one should do to improve the situation or get rid of this position. We found that people in this block lacked ability and also passion for their work. The first and most important step they should take is to re-assess their aptitude. It might be true that you have developed limited ability and limited passion for your work but you need to re-assess seriously. If this re-assessment shows that you want to pursue the existing work either you feel you may make it a passionate work for you or you may excel in it, then either through working hard on ability you move to Quadrant I or falling passionate for it would lead you to Quadrant IV. If you improve on both, you'll be in Quadrant II.

On the other hand if this re-assessment concludes that you are not interested in developing your ability or passion for the work you are currently doing, then you must go back to WAP  tool.  It would give you the other choices available with an idea about your degree of passion and ability.

Once you are done with this step, you may see a range of new options. Considering those options and working on them one can gradually move out of this quadrant.

Note: For those readers who expect that a quick fix is available or only reading can help, I am sorry to say, they would be disappointed. Please use the tools introduced and you'll feel the gradual improvement.

If you are in Quadrant I

Those of you who took time to read the previous blog Professional Life, Where do you Stand? might have been able to locate themselves in one of the four quarters mentioned in that block. The only exception could be if you locate your ability and passion at 2.5 score then things could be weird.

In this blog I'll explain the situation when you lie in first quarter. In order to be in this quarter your score (on scale of 1-5) should be between 2.6-5.0 for ability and between 1.1-2.4 for passion. 

As one can see that in this case the ability is in upper half of score line while passion is in the lower one. This situation arises in cases where someone has to take up a career due to one reason or another and then develop ability to do work with success. This could be due to family pressure, unavailability of other opportunities or availability of good chances to move up in a certain profession making it a priority. 

However if the said person does not have or has low level of passion for this profession, he/she would be in the first quarter. I consider this quarter as quarter of 'satisfied' people. They are in general satisfied with their work mainly due to their developed ability to do it and related financial gains. They are satisfied also due to fear of loosing in any other field as they consider themselves able only in that certain profession.

However for those who have been honest with their evaluation and consider that although they are able but they don't have the passion for their current profession, this quarter is of no good. They need to move horizontally from their position. Their ability to do their current job is an advantage as well as a disadvantage. It is advantage in a sense that it provides self confidence to them that they are able. It is a disadvantage as it puts their brains working and behaving in a certain way. They are unable to think of new ways to handle things.

If they really want to do things they have passion for, I would suggest them an hybrid transfer model. In this model they should change their field of profession to the one for which they share passion, but with care and time. They should start investing time and resources to make their place in profession of their passion. For a mid level executive or professional this transit period may vary from one to three years. During this time one may start working in profession of choice starting with 20% shift to maximum possible which in ideal case is 100%. However even if 100% is not achievable due to any condition especially financial constraint, any move or work in profession of one's passion would move him/her to condition of peace which is second quarter of our model. 

Professional Life, Where do you Stand?

Thank you to all who read, used and appreciated the previous blog. However I was expecting more comments especially to see if readers were happy with what they were doing or not?

Now we move a little ahead. It is a slow process and there exists no fix for our problems in professional or personal life. In this post we would try to locate ourselves in a certain 'quarter' of professional life. The tool is developed by me and in next few blogs I will further elaborate it. My aim is to come up with a set of questions and a mathematical formula similar to DICE. The result of data put in that formula should be able to predict with reliable accuracy the chances of success of any new venture one plans to take.  

In this blog I would suggest readers to try to locate themselves in a suitable quarter in following figure. It is related to professional life.

For instance if you feel lack of ability to do your existing job/work and you also don't have much Passion for it you would be in Quarter III, i.e. Struggling, on contrary if you are able to to do your current work/job and you have good passion for it you would be in Quarter II, which implies In Peace. However even if you are in Quarter II, I would be suggesting measures to improve the situation in my coming blogs.

I once again invite the readers to analyze their situation and share with us in which Quarter they are currently.

Simplest Personal Development Tool - WAP

A great difference exists between USA and other countries on the planet. No matter you like the country or you hate its governments, one has to admit that something is really different up there.  This something has transformed USA in to worlds' (considering its superiority in space program more than one world is a valid case) super power. In addition to natural resources, military power and a culture of spending time and effort, the single most important difference exists in style of children raising.

In most of the world including Europe it is very common to ask a small child what will you become when grown up? based upon exact location parents expect answers as Engineer, Doctor, Bureaucrat and to some degree Musician, Writer. In the original USA style the question and answer both are different. The question asked to child (if asked) is what will you do when grown up? Therefore even if the person holds a super ordinary job, he is proud of it as he/she is doing something not just holding a profession.

Try putting the question 'What does Google do?' to someone on street. The probable answer would be 'it is a search engine' or at best 'it helps to make search'. The second answer seems to be true but try putting this question to google itself and the answer would be  'Google is a global technology leader focused on improving the ways people connect with information. Google primarily generates revenue by delivering relevant, cost-effective online advertising.' 

See the difference, the success of google lies in the fact that they know exactly what they do or should be doing. Unfortunately most of us never find answer to this simple question. Guy Kawasaki in his lecture 12 lessons I learnt from Steve Jobs, said that while being interviewed for your ideas by investors you must tell what on hell you do in first 30 seconds. Agreed, but I would like to take the idea to self development case.

I would suggest using the simple tool I call WAP, i.e. What you do, What you are Able to do and What is your Passion? (What do, Able to do, Passion to do). The system works in very simple manner. Take an A4 page and put the questions as following.

Now try to fill the Current Situation Column. This might be not what  you wanted but you are following or you had to follow. Later fill the column Wish Situation and note the difference. Please share if you had same answers for both, little different or too different.

In my next blog I would be discussing how this tool can be used to make your life easier and for switching to the condition where you are doing with ability what you have the passion for.

Harry Potter Vs Michael Porter

If some one randomly on the street is asked who is Michael Porter the probable answer would be no idea. However a similar (not same) surname holder Harry Potter is a well known name although virtual. 

Michael Porter is  Harvard University Professor, the highest recognition one can attain.  He is pioneer of competition theories. He showed the world that competition is good for improvement of lives, economic and social theories do not need to contradict each other and investment in environmental protection is beneficial for business. All these concepts when first introduced in late 70s were not only controversial but even considered to be opposite to the truth.

On the other hand Harry Potter as a brand is worth USD 15 Billion. If success is measured solely on grounds of recognition and money made, then Harry could be considered far ahead than its rival Michael. Fortunately this is not the case. The real success is not measured on these grounds alone. I am sure no one or may be only few will remember Harry Potter after a decade. We have seen similar cases with many characters of past like Lord of the Rings also. On the other hand Michael Porter as a brand is worth few trillion dollars if his impact on business is measured and is still in lime light after 4 decades of his start. However he could not make that much money for sure!

This implies another very important factor about success. Short cut and sudden fame or success is short living. While dedicated work and value leads to the real success. Today Michael Porter is known in all business communities and his ideas are for sure making lives of people on globe better. This all recognition is due to continuous hard work and dedication.

Shortcut to Success!

Human beings try to seek shortcuts to reach their goals. All other animals rarely show this behaviour. They in general follow a certain path whether it results in a win or a loss. Human beings on the other hand diverted from this instinct and with time developed a thirst for shortcuts.

Especially after the industrial revolution the pulleys started to move much faster. With advancements in digital age this speed became enormous. Great success of few (hundred) people convinced almost whole human race that shortcut to success exists. In fact cases of few can not be generalized for all. In spite of this people and young people of course started to believe that there exist shortcuts. 

Some of these few successfull people  started to convince others by selling idea of quick success and of course with little work. This worked amazingly for them only. People were hungry about the recipe to achieve quick success and they cashed the idea. It should not be forgotten that people who may even get some quick success rarely leave an imprint on human history.

Looking back in to history, all those who really left their mark paved their way very carefully through continuos hard work and steady accumulation. In his speech at Stanford in year 2005, Steve Jobes mentioned about a fact that one can connect dots only by looking back. It emphasize the need of collection of tools which might seem irrelevant at a certain time but later in future prove to be of great use. 

In order to gain the real success I foresee two important ingredients. Accumulation of skills and their use when required. Accumulation of skills and continuous work towards improvement provides the necessary tools to human beings for shaping the future.  Equally important is the use of these accumulated tools at the right time. Combination of these two factors lead to success and no other shortcut.

Is Luck Hereditary?

Today morning my very same friend came up with the idea that luck is hereditary. I can understand that he reached this conclusion based upon what he sees around himself. He must have noticed the offsprings of rich people enjoying life and living at a standard much above 99% of the remaining population. However I once again felt that I should disagree based upon two major issues.

The first one was what the history, the real history excluding last two hundred years shows us. Starting from three great prophets who changed the world forever, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad one can see that none of them was born lucky. Moses, raised at enemy's home under threat, Jesus born to a lone mother who was not among the lucky ones and Muhammad who was born 6 months after death of his father. But all these great people changed human civilization for ever although with the help of divine force. Does it mean that divine force acts irrespective of your birth status? Then came other great people in history, the scientists, inventors, writers and founders of great countries, none was born lucky. 

Second issue is how you define luck. Is it something related to financial gain, fame or just doing something that matters? For me it is the very last one. However people like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates have shown that all three are possible without being born lucky. Luck starts to work on your side once you start to focus on something. The best way to become lucky is to decide 'what you do'. 

Secret was a great hit both in printing press and screen. It basically revolved around the concept of faith and wish. In simple words you have to be very careful about  what you wish to achieve and then you must have faith, that it is worth struggling and achieving. Great teachers of our times like Jack Cranfield or Bob Proctor started their lives from scratch but once they decided what they wanted to do, the path was clear.

One of the greatest teacher of Secret was great philosopher of last century, Sir. Dr. Muhammad Iqbal. He believed that even fate can be changed through self esteem. I'll be sharing  his teachings in coming blogs.  

Luck or Act

Today morning I was having a small discussion with a friend of mine. Our friendship is as old as I am if not more. While talking about success in life he came up with the conclusion that all that matters is luck. His views are supported by many great achievers also and great speakers like Guy Kawasaki also. 

I do not have any problem with admitting the role and importance of luck in success. However my key word is act rather than luck. For me the equation is simple enough, your luck can help you only if you are in process of acting. Luck would be at your side only when you are in motion. You may see yourself lucky by not getting any trouble if you stay at your own place sitting quite and calm or leading a peaceful path in your niche. 

Niche is what makes the real difference. People who feel comfortable within their niche start feeling lucky because they are not exposed to different conditions. They might be successfull to some degree also. However the real success of life comes when one leaves his/her own niche. Leaving the native niche is first step towards being successfull and lucky. Had you not been lucky you would have been stuck in the very same niche. So for me the key word is act!