Jet lag and the sleeping cycles

I am jet lagged, it’s been ages since I have gone through this disorder and it’s taking a heavy toll on me. So while going through the bouts of untimely sleeping, I am coming to this thinking that sleeping more than once within 24 hours for a long stretch can be very helpful to a human body.

Infact, I had read an article a year back that people in old times used to have a break during the sleep and used to resort to eating, sex and entertainment (sex definitely is one form) during that break. SO for example, people would sleep by the dusk and wake up midnight for about 3-4 hours and go back to sleep.

Wont it be nice if we get back into that mode again? Imagine sleeping around 8 in the evening, waking up at 12 in the night, spending 4-5 hours on various things listed above and going back to sleep at 4 and waking up at 8. I am sure it will keep all of us very healthy. Also, the time spent for personal things will be far more than what gets spent now. Other format can be, every 8 hours of working/doing things will lead to 4 hours of sleeping, the timing can be left to one’s discretion. It will really get into flexi living in a real sense.

I think this will boost productivity to a great extent – 8 hours of work and 8 hours of personal time – split between group (family, friends etc) and solo (reading, listening to music) activities.

Life as a journey

While having a coffee with my partners on the occasion of 4th anniversary of our venture, I happened to ask them how has been their experience. Obviously, on such occasions, the norm is to recount all the good things that have happened over the period. There were a few things that could have been done better (a very professional way of saying, you moron, you didn't know what you were doing) but that was it. 

And then we moved to the future specific discussion. One of the partner, by nature is very risk sensitive and will have all the worries of what can go wrong. I was checking very specifically with him as he is the one who seems to have lost the appeal of a laughter. I asked him, do you have any specific goals? Obviously the answer was, we need to be big and profitable. I probed further, how big? I knew he will figure out very quickly, he is very intelligent for sure, that I am leading to something else.

Thats the time I asked if he enjoyed the journey and will he, if it is bereft of goals.

We are all so driven by goals and rightly so, all our childhood our goal has been to score closest to 100%. That one outcome had all the relevance of spending a year in the school. As we progressed, next goal was to get into a job and that one outcome was the reason we did the management (I am exaggerating a bit) education and then ofcourse a sweetheart to go after to marry her.

The outcome is so important for us. 

Instead, if we start enjoying the journey what will happen? Yes, there is a real threat of getting lost and not knowing how much has been the progress, yet, if everyday/every moment is what you are looking forward to, you will try and make it memorable. Whenever we recount past, what comes to our mind is moments and not the outcomes. Then why are we so obsessed with them?

A brain transplant?

While sitting on an exercise bench and between the two modes, my mind started wondering, what sits in my brain is something that I have acquired over a period of time, hence my reactions to a situation and my way of thinking is an outcome of how this is wired in my brain. 

What will happen if we can transplant memory?

What this means is, as we age, we accumulate a lot of data in our brain and hence our ability to interpret the situations keeps getting better upto a certain age, if we can transplant such a mature brain in a young body and let it develop from there, will we get 120 years of data that can be interpreted in a much better way? Ofcourse there is an issue of ram, having the data is one thing and having an ability to interpret this data will be completely a different thing.

For the moment assume that we are able to transplant this brain to a better ram body, what can come our of it? I read in a magazine sometime back, our brain has the storage capacity of 250 million petabytes. I am not sure how much of this get filled over a period of time and ofcourse there is the issue of relevance of what gets filled over a period of time. So, 250 million petabytes and a very good ram, will it make a man a superman? 

There's a lot of experiments happening in the scientific world, i want this one to happen for sure.

Real Estate appreciation

" You remember the PITTIE drafters company? the drafters we used in college, are selling their factory land and are moving out to a new location to make a killing on the real estate prices, they would have made more money in this deal than in running the company till date. Hence, always invest in the real estate". so said a friend of mine who studied engineering with me.

That sentence is making me think. Is it important to be a real estate businessman before being a normal one? I was wondering, either they ran the company very poorly, or invested in the real estate too much to not invest in the company, in which case they ran PITTIE drafting company as a real estate company. Take another case, HLL sold their prime real estate, the office in south Mumbai for Rs 425 cr (pardon if my nos are wrong), it was touted as a major decision they took 40 years back. Look at the financials, even if they would have bought this prime real estate for a cr and waited 40 years to get to Rs 425 cr, can it be termed as an important decision to make? purely from the financial point of view, ROCE for this decision will be less than 14% without adjusting for the inflation. Hence, why do companies particularly in India, like to make big investments in real estate than in the companies they wish to run? My gut is, real estate in India is a bit murky business and if someone wants to invest an undeclared income, real estate could be a primary driver.

Actually, in any country, if real estate is growing more than the GDP growth, my guess is, its a wrong signal since real estate should be growing on the back of economic growth. The land is valuable only if it can generate more wealth by using it than selling.

Why do people buy flats? my thinking is, its a pure emotional driver than a financial one. One more reason can be, money is easily available in the form of a loan for the real estate, hence to push ourselves in regular savings mode, this can be a good investment. Purely, if one was to make a financial decision and not get driven by the loan availability, you will choose to never invest in a flat as that money can fetch better returns in any other business that delivers ROCE in excess of 30%. The added benefit of not staying in your flat, others buy, decorate and rent better flats to you at much lower rentals and no sweat of getting tagged to a location.

Think about it....

conversations

How we think is an outcome of our conversations was not something i understood till I read an article about relationships and its impact on us as human beings. This article was not so much about the conversations, it basically was about being in a relationship which meant most no of conversations with that person and those conversations driving the shaping of the brain.

And it started dawning on me, every conversation is like a pair of hands of a potter, a curve here and there alters the very shape of the outcome. Just think about it, you are in a conversation with your colleague, you are passionately articulating about something and this colleague is cutting it all the time indicating the flaws in the thinking. What will that do to you, make you feel so drained, and what does draining do, releases toxins in the body and in the process killing some cells. I am exaggerating a bit but thats what happens as we do talking/listening/arguing for atleast 4-5 hours every day or more. Imagine, every interaction can potentially add or take away a part of us and we indulge in them as if we think thats the only way to make our presence felt in this world.

The method of vipashyana is talked a lot about for cleansing of our minds, why does vipashyana help us in cleansing? My thinking is, Vipashyana is about making our mind still and not letting it get affected by our thoughts. Infact, an instructor of mine used to advocate that during vipashyana, you should be able to screen your thoughts and not indulge in any of those, in a way, be aware of those but do not get affected. I feel conversations are exactly opposite of vipashyana. As we should do vipashyana occasionally, we should indulge in conversations occasionally and only those which will add to us. Its not about doing only those that suit our thinking, post every conversation we should feel energised and those are achieved irrespective of the tilt towards a particular way of thinking. Ofcourse, the ownership of making them energising is not only on others.

Sustainability

A friend of mine doing a consultancy stint in sustainability was talking about how large organisations can do a lot if they choose to be sustainable. The issue, as per him is, they pay lip service to sustainability and are interested only to the extent of publishing annual reports that has a page on sustainability.

I understand his frustration. I was sharing with him, Its the same when it comes to large countries talking about global warming, they feel its more for others than themselves and that nothing is going to happen immediately so why bother. The day it starts hurting them, they will wake up and get serious about it.

On the flip side, I was thinking, what is sustainability - maintaining the current lifestyle for the future generations. And, how have we come to this lifestyle, by our own choice, by doing a lot of innovations and inventions. So why this effort of preserving this lifestyle? if 17th century or 18th century people would have thought about sustainability, would we have achieved the current lifestyle? Don't get me wrong, I am more of a preserving type, I still drive around a 10 year old car, but I do get these questions, what am i pushing to sustain?

There are two examples I have which can trip sustainability paradigm. First is about eating. Do we know how much quantity of food in the world is had everyday per person? its highest in USSR at 1.01 kgs per day to lowest in India at .567 kgs per day from amongst the surveyed countries. Most of the developed world is around 900 gms to 1000 gms per day, developing world is around 600 gms per day. Within this consumption, the affluent in the developing world consume close to the averages of developed world taking the average for the poor far lower. Over a period of time, the consumption of calories per day has gone up from sub 2000 to in excess of 3200 in the developed world and 2600 in developing world. The question I have is, if we have improved on the comfort and in the process have reduced the calorie consumption, shouldn't we be staying at the 2000 levels than taking it to 160% and more. We all know the disadvantages of over eating, that itself leads to high medical costs. Is this the sustainability we are looking to preserve? the best that can happen is, we all go down to even food consumption and to 500 to 600 gms per day reducing the pressure on the resources that get used up. And through invention, if we can improve the photo synthesis efficiency from close to 1% to even 2%, we may see abundance of food energy with the least amount of resources.

The second is about energy. With the evolution we have seen in extracting energy of the past, we have become the highest consumers of energy and in the process making life far comfortable than that has ever been thought on this planet. If we add up the nos, the earth has received abundant energy for the last 4.2 billion years from the sun and it has been preserved through plant and animal life. Except in cases where the energy has already been utilised by burning the CH, most of it is still preserved and we will need different methods of extracting the same. Utilising the same will mean release of CO2 and in the process heating of the planet but that is more due to the energy utilisation than the abundance or scarcity of available sources. In that sense, its not so much of sustaining of the available resources but reducing the consumption of the same. By innovating, we should become energy efficient than just the conservers.

In both the cases, we need to change, we need to invent the next stages of evolution so that we prolong our comforts and our experience of the planet.

Peer pressure and entrepreneurship

"How can you leave such a good job that pays for your car, a house and promises phoren postings?" asked a friend of mine when I had almost made up my mind to move on and plunge in the darkness called entrepreneurship. It was a very important question for me to answer. Infact, one of the blogs I wrote in those days was, what will it take for me to continue with the daily life without compromising the basic necessities.

This probably is one of the most important things one needs to consider while thinking of entrepreneurship. How long can you live in a world of your own that does not need external validation. Its the toughest time as you have not proved anything, you are burning cash for the business and hence not in a spending mode, are trying to leverage your personal equations than positional ones.  Many of the highly intelligent people I meet in the corporate world and doing wonderfully well have this urge of doing something on their own. I definitely ask them to consider this question before even thinking of entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurship is madness at one level. It will take you out of your social circle, sometimes owing to the change in lifestyle or simply your inability to compete on objects of desire. That can lead to low self esteem and inturn an indirect impact on the business.

Hence, for you to succeed, you will need nerves of steel and huge self confidence, an ability to believe in self to the extent of ridicule. If peer acceptance is an important criteria for your existence, I am not sure you will find joy in entrepreneurship.