We are all prisoners anyways...

Lights out Alice!

The ADHD that I am, can't really seem to get anything done unless I have five other non-priority tasks in my list that I prioritize over the one thing I definitely need to get done. Which is why I get a bit of reading, a bit of writing et cetera done when I am supposed to get the work done.

Page 170, Om Swami, A fistful of wisdom:

Anything second hand cannot be knowledge; it is merely information. When we use that information and arrive at a conclusion based on our own experience, that is knowledge. 

The primary difference between the prisoner and the pet is the degree of surrender. Being a pet of your own home (intellectual discovery) is far better than being a captive of someone else's belief system.

Lights out Alice!

I just hate it...

I just hate a lot of it Alice!

The fake smiles, the fake platitudes, the fake conversation to pry out information to be used against a person.

Why is it such a big deal to disagree? Why can't we be comfortable with working with people with differegt belief systems and opinions? Don't all the books teach against having an echo chamber for a team and yet everywhere I see instances of leaders migrating towards people who resonate with their belief systems or act in a manner not akin to their personality.

Maybe I do not understand the game well enough. Maybe I do not understand people well enough. Maybe I am looking at it in through a narcissistic lens and am unable to see the objective point of view.

They say time teaches everything but I believe that the only thing that happens through passage of time is conformity. We stop asking questions and start building narratives and explanations as to why things are the way they are. 

This is where young people/ people who have not been exposed to the system before come in. Especially the ones who do not shy away from iterating things as they see it. They call out the flaws and are not swayed by the window dressings or "you will not understand but this is how corporate works".

WHY? 

Industry is not a person or a being. Every company or person at any point in time has the ability to stop and question why things have reached a point where there are a slew of processes to get anything done where there need not be one. Corporate structure and heirarchy seems to be designed to ensure glacial movement of ideas and subdugation of anything innovate through systemically designed pass-the-baton approvals.

But hey Alice, what do I know. I am just the lowest guy in my totem pole who doesn't know anything so obviously I am going to crib right.

Is anybody there?

Lights out Alice!

It has been a while since I came here to pen my thoughts. No, the veracity and the velocity of my thoughts have not decreased although, the quality has definitely taken a hit. No, I would not use being busy as an excuse because it is just that, an excuse. I wile away enough time throughout any given day to be able to spare quarter of an hour to center myself and pen down my thoughts.

Yes, the fact that I know that my thoughts are not unique and whatever I may be going through is something that is not massively different from what any other person goes through saps some of the motivation. Deep down, we all want to contribute meaningfully to the world, but the reality is that only some of us get that privilege and it has to be earned, either by going navigating through difficult circumstance or being observant enough to understand nuances in every situation. I am neither. 

Coming to the brass tacks, where am I right now? I was sort of grounded in February, with the only trip coming over the weekend in Hyderabad, personal in nature, to meet with Satya and brainstorm about EVs. The month of March is crazy with the amount of travel- 4th -7th Kochi, 10-14th - Jaipur, 14-16th Indore, 17-19th Bhubaneshwar, 26-28th Kochi, 28-30th - Chennai. For all this travel, I don't seem to be enthused by it at all. Mostly because there is a lot of turmoil on my professional front with boundless uncertainty as to what my role is. My department is filled with people who are trying to cross each other and micro manage and hence the environment is not great to work in. I don't want to be pushy, for fear of repercussions, but it is leaving me doing nothing meaningful, which is detrimental to my career. It is a sub-optimal situation that I am still trying to navigate through since there is no clear answer as to what is the right solution.

On people front, I need to improve my ability to interact with people in my first meeting. I generally have seen that I am pretty shy, to the point of looking rude, in the first few meetings. Inadvertently, I am generally gathering data on what the other person is like, their behavioural traits, what they like and what they dislike so I can curate the right personality to appeal to them. I know it sounds very shallow and superficial, but to be fair, I think most humans do this sub-consciously. I am just slower and more aware of my actions, although I am in no way trying to absolve myself or justifying this behaviour. This is definitely an area I need to work and improve upon.