3 Keys to Success

Those who still remember the use of transistor radios can easily see that there were two absolute necessities to listen to your favorite channels.  The first one was to have the power supply either as electricity or from the batteries. In case you do not have it, no matter how sophisticated and elite your transistor was you could never listen to it. Secondly in order to listen to your favorite channel you needed to be at the same frequency as of that specific channel. There were dozens of channels transmitting their programs but one could listen to his/her choice only if the transistor radio was also set at the same frequency.

In case of personal success or success in career the same two rules are valid. First of all you need to have the ‘power supply’ i.e. your skill and energy. In case you do not have necessary skills or develop them in time you’ll not be able to jump on the opportunities lying in front of you. You need to foresee the future demand and develop your skills accordingly, but in time. Once you have the skills or power supply the next move should be to adjust your frequency to the frequency of success. We may find many people around us who are quite successfull in spite of having skills of lesser degree than many unfortunates. They in fact found the frequency of success and tuned themselves accordingly. The most important way to get this frequency is to spend time with those who live by that frequency. There is a famous saying about wealthiness, ‘your wealthy companions make you rich or kick you out of their circle’. They’ll kick you out mainly because of mismatched frequency. It does not correspond that you should also be involved in some if any unlawful activities but it means that your brain also starts thinking, deciding and acting in the ways theirs do.

The third prerequisite in my opinion is to complete the tasks in all aspects. Giving an example of one enrolled in a medical school we know that he/she needs to take a certain number of courses and pass all of them also. The degree will never be awarded if any course is not taken or failed. In our lives while working on any task whether related to career or personal development we must take on all issues and resolve all of them. The trick in this sense comes from the chemical process known as titration. In this process certain chemicals need to be added with some specific amount to get the required product.

Therefore in summary, one must develop the skills required (power behind the engine), should be consistent with the success frequency (right surrounding and right attitude) and should take on all issues dealing every issue in full. 

3 Great Lessons from Hazret Steve Jobs

In this so called modern era marks of Hazret Steve Jobs can not be avoided unless one is living in some pre-historic and non discovered region of the earth. Most strikingly although world wide web (www) was not discovered by him but it was developed on a computer known as Next produced by the company with same name and owned by Steve Jobs. Later his venture led to invention of wi-fi. Taking these two products down from shelves would immediately change this era from modern age to the middle ages.

I was reading a wonderful book about him entitled, ‘Steve Jobs -The man who thought different’ by Karen Blumenthal recently. Although whole book is wonderful but three lessons extracted by the author about Steve Jobs were amazing. I could not resist myself from sharing them here.

The first one is about focus. In fact Steve Job’s point of view in this regard coincides with that of Ibn Khaldun stated about 700 years ago. Ibn Khaldun wrote in his book Muqadimmah that time has come (!) when there is a great pollution of information. A lot of information is becoming available to every one. People are using it without knowing how to analyze or produce it. Steve Job also said similar thing while describing focus. He stated, ‘People think focus means saying yes to the thing you have got to focus on - (however) focus means saying No to the one hundred other good ideas there are. You have to pick carefully’. He stressed upon rejection of non-related issues resulting in focusing to the required one. It is simple to understand as rejecting the non required and distracting issues would help one to concentrate and handle the one he/she should have been doing. 

Being easy said, it is not easy enough to implement. This is explained well by the second lesson explained in the said book i.e. ‘simple can be harder than complex’. This explains a lot of things why humans intend to make complex analysis, decisions and products. It is easy to do so because this involves a lot of constraints and dimensions and any related failure can be blamed on one of them or one of the unknown complex reasons. However once your analysis, decision and product is simple, it becomes more difficult to find a reason for failure or an issue to blame. Creating simple thing is difficult and so is defending it. For simple products if they don’t serve the purpose they are not of any other use! Thats why simple devices thought by Steve Jobs when served their purposes were hot cakes.

Lastly Steve Jobs believed that if someone does not keep planning for future he wouldn’t have any! It is also restated by some other experts as ‘failure to prepare is preparing for the failure’. One always need to plan for future and most of us may do it quite well. However the success comes to only those who dare to risk failures in their quest to implement those plans.

Lastly may I dare to disagree with Hazret Steve Jobs famous saying ‘dots are connected backward only’. This is true but there are other ways also to connect the dots for success. This issue I’ll be explaining hopefully in my next blog soon.

Exposure and Wb Formula

Taking it from the end of last blog where I quoted a professor of mine Prof. Coskun Yurteri stating, ‘America is all about exposure’ I can elaborate further and say ‘life is all about exposure’! In our acquaintances we can easily find people who had exposure to experiences of life or different conditions. When compared one can easily notice the difference in behaviour and perspectives of those who had the exposure and who did not get such a chance.

We also notice that many people with higher level of education (merely degrees) behave and act in much worse manner than those who although do not have education but have exposure and knowledge. Exposure in its own state is a very powerful tool towards creation of a successfull personality and when and if it is combined with knowledge, a person of very fine texture comes in to being like my good friend Mr. Fahim A. Balkhi.

There are three types of exposures, Intentional, Un-intentional and Reactionary. Intentional exposure is active exposure where someone shows his/her willingness and effort. It can be attributed with ease to people who travel around the globe  for sake of seeking the knowledge or having new experiences. Unintentional exposure is the passive type of exposure where one does not make any effort but is left to certain exposure for good or bad. No one would like to have bad exposures intentionally but for the later type bad exposures are risks. 

None of the exposure goes in vain. As well documented by life of a legend of our time Steve Jobs the founder of Apple, nothing went un-connected. Exposures become really useful if one strives to gain knowledge from them and uses the experiences gained as building blocks for future use. Being exposed to certain situation, place or reality is much less important than the analysis of that specific experience. The analysis of any situation would lead to the gain of knowledge. The most simple tool for this is called Wb by me. Wb stands for ‘whats the benefit?’. It is easy to remember as World Bank (WB) also works on same principle!

Wb requires that anyone going through a certain good or bad experience or exposure should withdraw the conclusion based upon ‘whats the benefit (for him/her)?’ from that specific event. People are exposed to many situations but this exposure serves as building blocks for future only if situations are analyzed, the issue of Wb is addressed and some type of record is kept about it. Non-recorded experiences is lost experience! While analyzing any bad or failure exposure one may record the failure and the reasons behind it but more importantly should concentrate on question of ‘how it could have been avoided or situation improved’. 

The last type of exposure is Reactionary which can be intentional or unintentional i.e. active or passive. It may switch between both types from time to time. The common examples of this type of exposure is someones involvement in a certain issue after some event i.e. as a reaction. Most striking example of reactionary exposure is of Mr. Arnoud van Doorn after he noticed world wide protests against the film he supported against Islam few years back. His reactionary exposure led him to discover very different aspects and changed his whole life.

Lessons a Clock in Zurich Taught Me

Today early after noon while standing at a small railway station just at outskirts of Zurich a traditional clock hanging at platform taught me a wonderful lesson. Swiss are famous for their watches and time keeping but the lesson this conventional hanging clock taught me was some what very remarkable. 

When I arrived in Zurich today, I was very calm to enjoy the re-experience. One tip I would like to share about travel is, don’t hesitate to pay a little more if that makes you reach any  place well in day time. At airport exit by chance I met a person Alberto who accompanied me to the train station mentioned above. We took tram, walked and talked. He seemed to be a warm blooded European and soon I discovered the reason, he was an Italian!. 

Any way coming back to the clock. Please watch the video embedded at the end of blog of that clock. All clocks work in same way but this clock was remarkable in sense it was clear and attracted my attention. It is story about continuous movement of second’s arm and movement by minute’s arm by one minute. I noticed that second’s arm start from 12 (our starting point for the case), passed towards the minute’s arm slowly, passed it and moved towards the place of 12. The minute’s arm only moved one minute ahead when the second’s arm passed the position of 12 and not when it passed the minute’s arm.

This was great lesson of the day and based upon that lesson I prepared following illustration. It presents a wall clock with Minute’s Arm and movement of Second’s arm in two colors, blue and red. Lets analyze this illustration starting from top right corner numbered as 1, and move in clock wise direction. 

In the top right corner the minute’s arm seems  to be at number 1 on clock. In second figure it is about at 5, in 3rd it is at 8 while in last one it is at 11, nearest to ultimate goal i.e. 12. I call the blue track of second’s arm’s movement as Asset while that in red color as Credit. The clock taught me following two lessons about success in life especially in career.

When you are in starting phase (like figure 1) you have very less amount of Assets and you have to put a lot of effort as Credit to move just one step ahead. As you build up your skills, the amount of credit required decreases with being minimum shown in figure 4. In this case you rely on your asset and need very small extra effort to move ahead.

The second and more important lesson was related to the instance when the minute’s arm move a step ahead with respect to the position of second’s arm. As you’ll notice from embedded video below, the minute’s arm did not move a step ahead when second’s arm reaches it or crosses it. The minute’s arm moved ahead only when a certain amount of extra effort was put in place beyond the existing level of existence of minute’s arm.

In simple words, you always need to build on assets to maintain your position, always need to invest (credit) to move ahead and finally in order to move ahead a single step you may need to apply an effort of few steps (depending upon your assets value).

Here is the mentioned video, please comment.

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.

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!