akbar's blog

On becoming a Father

I have been thinking about what is different in my life after Sahana, my daughter arrived. My friends have asked me what feels different. I didn’t have any right answer for that question as I was busy with being one and never spent time on thinking about it. I think I have my version of what is different now that I am a dad.

I think everyone has preferences, strengths, weaknesses, tendencies etc which can be categorized in 4 categories. Physical, Mental, Emotional and Spiritual. That’s not written in stone but one way to slice it. And among these 4 categories there is order. People over a period of time build a stack of importance using these 4 categories. I think being a dad/father/mother/parent brings a lot of insight, shift in the top categories.

For example: Mine are ordered – Spiritual, Mental, Emotional and Physical (yeah last physical – which explains why I don’t know anything about Baseball and why I carry those extra 20 pounds on me!). I think after Sahana came to our lives, I was affected more spiritually and mentally than emotionally or physically. I mean, I have gotten used to little physical inconveniences like – sleeplessness, more work etc but they don’t discourage me from anything nor they inspire me.

What affected me more was I became more spiritual. The whole experience from the moment I learned that Sangita is pregnant till today is this great spiritual dance. Everything that happens to me, around me has a spiritual meaning tied up with Sahana. I do believe she brought in a lot of luck for both me and my wife. If she brought more patience to Sangita, she brought me more spiritual depth.

As for the mental side – I have shed everything that has short meaning in my life. I used to treat work in a specific way. I wanted it to be more my way and that was the reason why I went to work for myself. But now, after this change – something in that area has shifted for me. I still have the same passion towards my work but less stubbornness. I focus on what is most important and drop everything that is trivial. Thats been very refreshing in the past 3 weeks since I started to work full-time. Especially interesting how it is affecting my 2 other areas of life – emotionally – spending more quality time with Sahana in the evening and physically – going to sleep early and getting more than enough sleep than when I used to work for myself.

I wholly welcome all these changes in my life. I am happy to be a dad.

History – Very interesting

I have never been a big fan of History. In school we all went through Indian history, World history etc – but my sole purpose in learning those was to just get some good grades and go to the next class/level. Recently I happen to be browsing the history aisle of Barnes and Nobles and I decided on checking out some of the books there. I did come across a very interesting book and I was hooked.

It’s called ‘A little history of the world’ by E.H.Gombrich.

I love that book. I think this book taught me more about History than all my schooling did. I know it doesn’t cover everything comprehensively but the way it’s explained is awesome. The best part of reading it has been how my imagination flares up. I can literally close my eyes and see everything that is being described in the book before my eyes. I love it. I love watching futuristic movies because at some level I love to see how these artists think the future is going to be. But now I think history has the equal interesting things to show and teach something.

I would highly recommend it.

Deliberate Practice, Habits and Rituals

A conversation with friends at dinner made me think about deliberate practice a little bit more tonight. I have been thinking about Habits and Rituals for quite some time. Countless articles and books dissect genius and find out that the success is basically nothing but an outcome of “deliberate practice”. It is said that if you practice anything deliberately for 10,000 hours you would be one of the very few masters of that thing on this planet. I believe it’s completely true. Malcolm Gladwell talks about this and everyday some blog post talks about this.

If we all knew that the secret of success is deliberate practice why aren’t we all super stars in our chosen field already? Because it’s far more harder to do that than to say it. I mean the practice may not be that hard at all, but the deliberate part of it is definitely hard. I have been reading Tony Schwartz’s The Power of Full Engagement. It’s a very interesting idea of looking at our lives from the perspective of *energy*. There are many ways we can divide up our lives. We humans can’t take the whole day by it’s own – we have our own way of chunking and handling our days. Some people divide it by tasks. There is a whole plethora of books, techniques, like GTD, about how to best manage tasks. Some people divide it by time – instead of taking up a task and doing it, they spend certain amount of time on the task at hand, once the time is up they relax take a break and may be decide to spend another chunk of time on it – Pomodoro technique is one of the many available ones.

But Tony Schwartz talks about dividing it up based on energy. He doesn’t completely define or care about how enthusiastic you are at any given time or whether it’s physical energy etc – but it’s more subtle than that. He talks about how we have certain energy (a mix of physical, mental and emotional) and we don’t have whole lot of it. So, his core idea is – to manage energy. How does he recommend it? Rituals.

Think about it, the most successful people around you definitely have some kind of ritual that makes them stand apart. The friends who are healthier than you are the ones who have a ritual of working out religiously. The people who are peaceful are the ones who attend meditation regularly. Similarly people who are good at doing what they do have some ritual which they follow – no matter what comes into their life.

So these rituals are very simple steps that these people follow to make them who they are. The cool thing about a ritual is – once you get a hang of it, once the body and mind gets used to it – its welcomed whole heartedly. And there are theories around that too (like 21 day rule, or 40 day rule etc). But rituals make or break a successful career, path etc.

Next comes habit – once you follow these rituals regularly and get over that hump of resistance – it’s all smooth sailing from there. It will become a habit. Habit is a mental shortcut. It’s what we do without thinking consciously. It’s the mind’s way to store up a whole lot of instructions in very few synapses. Habits can go both ways. Habits could be a mental short cut helping you or they could also be your blind spots. Habits that are resourceful are the ones that help us.

So what does it entail in the end? Why am I talking about this? I think the only way to make deliberate practice easy is to make a habit out of it. And the only way to create a successful habit is through a ritual. I think that pretty much is a sure path to success in whatever you are planning to do.

Being a programmer it’s nearly impossible to keep track of all the technology that flows by. I am like a kid in a toy store when it comes to all the technology around me (no not the gadgets part of it, but the problem solving part of it). But I can’t be successful in what I want to do if I don’t deliberately practice good problem solving in my career. To make my life easier, here are couple of rituals I have been following –

1. First 90 mins of my day are really important – when I wake up, my mind is fresh and anything I take up at that time just gets absorbed. So, for the first 90 minutes of my day I work on stuff that I love most – in this case – Cocoa programming.

2. Priority List – The night before I sleep I make a list of highest priority things for the next day. That way I can just get on the most important things immediately without wasting time.

3. Email and Chat – When I am focusing, I turn off my email and chat – that really helps.

4. While driving (alone) – I take up a idea/concept I learned and try to explain it to the non-present 5 year old sitting next to me. Just try to break it down. (I know I know it’s kinda crazy, but it’s part of my ritual)

5. While idle – I try to chant and focus on my breath trying to stay in present.

There are couple of things I want to add to my ritual like blogging – both personal and technical but I don’t want to overwhelm myself and lose it.

So there you go. The secret of any success is : Deiberate Practice <– Habits <– Rituals. Craft easy and simple rituals and pretty soon you will be successful at what you want to achieve.

Here are some of the books to explore if you want to learn more:

1. The Power of full Engagement

2. The now habit

3. War of Art (not the other Art of War)

Mere Gurudev…

Thinking of you Swami.

Lyrics:

My Gurudev I offer these flowers of my faith at your feet
Whatever I have, you have given to me, and I dedicate it all to you.

I have no love, nor do I know you.
I don’t even have the strength to worship you,
But this mind of mine, this body of mine,
my every atom is dedicated to you.

You are the only one in my heart and my thoughts.
You are the one who I call out to.
Now Make me your instrument…all I am I offer to you

Purpose of Meditation (Well one of)

I have been a fan of meditation for a long time. Even though I don’t do it regularly, I have done it pretty regularly in the past and I often try to sneak it into my everyday life. There have been a lot of explanation on as to what meditation does and how it affects us. Internet is filled with that literature. We all know it’s good for us. But I often wonder what would be the end result. What could be the end of meditation?

I came across some answers in the past – which I tried to capture it here and here. But I still keep thinking about it now and then. An another answer occurred to me the other day. Meditation for me is peaceful and it makes me a witness to my life rather than a participant. The days I meditate, I usually tend to have control over my thoughts, emotions and thereby actions. I get into this witness or 3rd person stance where I watch myself on the stage of life.

I think there is a reason for that. I think the reason meditation gets me into witness position is to let me align things. What things? My thoughts, my speech and my action. The triumvirate of my daily life. It lets me subtly adjust these things so that they align. In India there is a word for that – ‘Trikaranasuddi‘ – the matching of thought, word and deed. By noticing myself during the day I become observant of what I am thinking, speaking and doing. Any mis-match produces stress and thereby gets me to correct it.

If you think about it – the stress we have in our daily level comes from this mismatch. If my words don’t match what I think and if I do something other than what I say, there is stress and meditation usually reduces that. I never understood how and now I think this is the reason why. As always I have made a drawing out of it –

The Limbic myopic

Our brains evolved over thousands of years. We don’t have to scan the whole evolution chain, but take into consideration of the era where were hunters. Our limbic brain evolved first. We still got it. It’s the part which is closely connected to our backbone and nervous system and lives in our skulls. The pre-frontal cortex, the part of the brain which lives behind our foreheads – developed way later. These 2 systems – limbic and pre-frontal basically define us in our lives.

We have evolved and made ourselves expert in thinking and using our pre-frontal cortex. The pre-frontal cortex is called an executive mind – which we use to plan things about future and think ahead of time. Limbic is more of a raw impulse brain. This is also called the lizard brain – whose sole function is to keep us alive and protected.

I think everyone of us have one of this brain as dominant brain. For some people the lizard brain is dominant and for some the executive. If you scan the list of your friends you can easily tell who has which dominant.

Limbic dominant people tend be more impulsive. They act in now and they are usually cluttery, often late and are able to change their plans and mind easily, sometimes very surprisingly. The Executive brain dominant people are the ones who are cautious and plan ahead. The can change their plans but if it fits into their mental system. Again we all are not that simple and we let our lizard and executive brains become dominant in various areas of life.

That’s one point I wanted to talk about. The second one is about our vision. According to researchers we can focus on about 2 cm wide area at any given time. Everything else is peripheral vision. When we watch movies – we are not noticing everything, even though we may feel like we do. We notice everything peripherally and what we focus on is totally dependent of what is important to us at that moment. Which brings me back to the first point.

So here is what I am trying to get to –

1. We have 2 kinds of brains – limbic and executive
2. One of it is dominant in our lives based on what we have trained our minds to. (Like I use executive mind for food, but limbic for drinks)
3. Our vision often lead us to make silly mistakes because of the focused area we can concentrate on at any given time.
4. If we have limbic as dominant in our vision area then what we have is – Limbic Myopic

The great example of Lymbic Myopic is the guy who searches through the fridge to find the beer and can never see it right in front of his eyes (I have been there). Women are usually better in searching and looking when compared to men. That’s the reason why they use ‘Screenplay Searcher’ to find the movie mistakes after the movie is done. These searchers are mostly women. With social network effect we have www.moviemistakes.com to do that for the rest of us.

This myopism also pops out when we think about ourselves and how smart we think we are. It’s very famously know as Dunning-Kruger Effect

The limbic myopic pops out in lots of situations – searching for the keys to witnessing accidents. We are all victims of it in some form. The key thing is to become aware of those blind spots in our lives and try to be watchful when we are in those situations.

Inspired from the readings of – Why we make Mistakes, The Procrastination Equation and Smart World

Addicted to New, Obsessed with More

That is how I would describe sometimes I feel. I mean, I can start to think about million things and I can blame it on all of them for this unsettling feeling. But in the end it all comes down to taking responsibility for my own feelings and my own issues. There is this constant nagging within which basically lures me into this trap of “Newness”. It’s like I am a *bee* which just goes from one flower to flower seeking more and more and something new. I am addicted to newness. This shows up very easily as to what I do when I read news. I jump from link to link not even giving my brain a full reading opportunity. It’s like Twitter has set a internal reading limit on my brain and I can’t read anything more than 2 sentences. Boredom has become more of a habitat than a situation. Boredom has become so easy to acquire.

Then the obsession with “Moreness”. I want more and more of stuff. It could be anything. As long as it tickles my 140 char taste buds I will take it. Boredom also plays a role in this. The natural pull has become to seek new and then get bored easily and then see more new. This vicious circle has literally has me in it’s grip (there you go, I am objectifying my problem and putting it outside of me).

This is crazy. I mean sometimes I feel like I think this situation is medical – like ADD. But I don’t think that’s correct. I wasn’t like this before. It’s just one of those weird stages I am in. There is only one way to fix this – becoming aware of it and cutting the habit off. It’s hard when you have Google reader and subscribed to 4000 blogs. It’s like falling in a bottomless pit.

In addition to becoming aware of it I also need to get back to my daily meditation. I know, with a baby arriving in the next 1 week – it might sound as an impossible task to do. But I think I will take this baby step first and try. Because the other option really sucks.

Re-friending, re-trying

Today after a long long gap we got to hang out with a bunch of old dear friends whom we had lost couple of years back. It was very nice to catch up. The initial awkwardness aside – great food and drinks really helped. It was fun. It was kinda nostalgic and also left us with a feeling of warmth. Hope this attempt would work this time.

I think, in my life there have been 2 kinds of responses to these conflict based situations.

Give up on situation
Give up on people

Giving up on situations was easy. Totally mental and never felt any emotions. Giving up on people has been hard. I think it’s hard because it’s connected to the heart. There were so many times in my life where I was faced with decision where I had to give up on a friend. It was becoming too toxic. It was painful. They also leave too deep a scar. No matter how many times I have done it, it never gets easy.

So here is to hope that we would be successful this time.

Dream

I had a very bizzaro dream a couple of days back. In the dream I was in a place there were just temples everywhere and I was taking pictures of Gods inside of them. Polaroid pics. As I was taking those pictures I came across 3 kinds of people.

1. Those people who hated me taking pictures as they believed being a muslim I shouldn’t be taking pictures of Hindu gods.

2. Those people who believed that the pictures were Intellectual property of the temples and hence I should turn them in to them.

3. Those who sympathized with me but asked me to abandon the pictures taking project all together.

I remember that I refused to give pictures in and had a long fight with the temple people. And then I woke up. Couldn’t get the dream out of my head for the next 15 mins – felt almost real.

Getting a out of state vehicle registered in CA

After spending 3 hours at DMV and realizing all the mistakes -I figured people waste time at DMV because it’s not explained clearly what to do and what to expect. Here is a checklist and a process list – if you want to register a out of state vehicle in California.

Checklist:

Get the paperwork – Vehicle title (signed by the seller), Registration documents.
Get the form at the counter for registration & transfer of title.
Get a screw driver to get your number plates out.
Get a novel, magazine to read while you wait.
Have a smart phone with you handy so that you can check FB status.
Make a note of odometer.
Check card. No credit cards please.
2 days before get a smog test done.

Process:

Once you get the form and a token number – fill in the form.
Go back to parking lot, get your Vehicle Verified/Inspected.
Get the license plates off of the car
Wait
Read
Browse
When they call you – present your ID, The form, Vehicle inspection, Smog check
It will cost you about $250
Get out of there as soon as possible.

If only this was explained as simple as above at the DMV site, I could have saved couple of hours. Phew.